31 August 2024 – The Booking Hall, Dover
When I first heard of The Chris Slade Timeline, I was a little confused, they aren’t really a cover-band featuring AC/DC’s drummer, they aren’t an AC/DC tribute act with one of the slickest guitarists on the circuit in James Cornford and surely they aren’t an originals band are they? They are in fact all of these and more. Chris Slade has had a very successful drumming career so far, playing with some of the most well known artists over the years. He has recruited a bunch of stellar musicians to help him illustrate his career, playing, in many cases, his own versions of tracks by many of these varied artists. To do this he uses two great singers, Bun Davis who handles all of the AC/DC songs, of which, as you would hope, there are quite a few and the rest of the vocal duties are picked up by his bass player, Steve Glasscock. On instrumental duties we find the aforementioned James Cornford and then on keyboards and second guitar when necessary, Michael Clark. Chris doesn’t claim to have actually played on all of the recordings of the songs that he and his band perform throughout the night they are simply songs that he has performed while being part of the lineup of those bands.
Chris and his band opened the set with one of my favourite AC/DC tunes, Dirty Deeds, swiftly followed by Big Gun with vocals beautifully handled by Bun, it was then time to switch it up and let Steve have his time on the mic with the track Joybringer by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, who Chris played for as part of the original lineup throughout the 70’s. This back and forth of vocalist then seamlessly continued as we were treated by tracks from Gary Moore (a wonderful rendition of Parisienne Walkways), Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb (Chris has played with both Gary Moore and David Gilmour), Led Zep’s Kashmir (Chris played with Jimmy Page in The Firm) and even the Tom Jones classic, Delilah. All this as well a great selection of classic AC/DC tracks, Hells Bells, Back in Black, You Shook Me All Night Long, Thunderstruck and Highway To Hell to name but a few.
All of these songs are introduced by Chris explaining his link to each and played beautifully by his band. At first, I was concerned that flipping vocalists might prove to be strange for the audience but as we listened to each performance it became clear that we were just getting the best possible performance of each song.
Chris and his band have toured all over the place and seem to be showing no signs of slowing down, so take my advice and check them out the next time they play at a venue near you.
The Chris Slade Time Line has a new album out, Timescape, featuring re-recordings of many of the above tunes, it also has a second disc of original material, so it would appear that the set list may soon be going through a bit of an evolution… we’ll have to wait and see
Visit chrisslade.com for details of future shows near you