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Chris Slade about the secret of the AC/DC song “Thunderstruck”
A classic from the 2020 archive.
Drummer Chris Slade has already left some musical traces in the rock world. He started his career with today’s pop star Tom Jones. However, he became really known primarily through his drum playing for bands such as AC/DC, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band and Asia. In a detailed interview with the American Rolling Stone, the 73-year-old now spoke in detail about his career. And Of course there was no way past his time with AC/DC.
He met the band in 1989 to on her comeback album “The Razor’s Edge“To play. In 1994 he was replaced by the previous drummer Phil Rudd. But in 2015 he came back when Rudd AC/DC had to leave. In 2016, Slade traveled around the world with AC/DC. And sat on drums for their“ Rock or Bust ”tour.
Slade spoke in particular about his participation in “Thunderstruck”, the first single that was published in 1990 by the AC/DC album “The Razor’s Edge”. The song reached a total of platinum status a total of nine times and played a crucial role in the band’s comeback. Slade said about the admission of “Thunderstruck”: “It was one of the demos that I got to this album and which had no title. I was told that I should learn it, and then we went to the studio.”
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“I doubled the fillings and made the thing much bigger”
He also described what the then sound engineer Mike Fraser asked him as a musician: “He said: Can you play this twice? And I said: Sure, I can do that. They just seemed incredibly surprised that I could actually play the same thing twice. So it happened to me. I doubled the fillings and made it much bigger.”
The drummer also spoke about the origin of the associated music video. Slade said: “David Mallet was the video type, he put two cameras on the drums, and I thought: Wow, what’s going on here? The drummer gets attention! It turned out that he loves drums. He cut it so that the drums have damn a lot to offer.” The subsequent tour with AC/DC seemed to have surprised him less at the time. He also said: “I have done this all my life since I was a teenager. For me, like another day in the office.”