Chris Slade, the drummer who helped drive AC/DC’s 1990 album The Razors Edge, has retired from drumming at 79. He said a small stroke from about seven years ago had worsened, making it impossible to keep performing the way he wanted.
“Hello, everybody. It's with a heavy heart that I'm announcing my retirement from drumming,” he said in his announcement. Slade added: “I'm near enough 80 years old. I've been drumming professionally since I was 16 with Tom Jones. I've had a good innings. And thank you all for coming to the shows.”
The Razors Edge and 2015
Slade’s name is tied to AC/DC’s 1990 album The Razors Edge, the release that helped define his place in the group’s history. He also returned to AC/DC in 2015 for the Rock or Bust tour when Phil Rudd ran into legal trouble, giving the band a familiar replacement at a moment when it needed one quickly.
That return was not a full-time homecoming. Malcolm Young called Slade and asked him to stay on as Phil Rudd’s understudy, and Slade said, “I wasn't very happy about it. Who would be, right? They wanted to keep me on in case.” He refused, which left AC/DC to move back toward its preferred lineup once the pressure eased.
Tom Jones to Uriah Heep
Slade said he had been drumming professionally since he was 16, starting with Tom Jones and then moving through Manfred Mann's Earth Band, Asia and Uriah Heep. That span is the real business story behind this retirement: one drummer, across multiple acts, over decades, now stopping because the physical cost caught up with him.
He also put his own ambition plainly. “And I'm afraid that has screwed me up. I'm really jealous of people like The Stones or Paul McCartney who are going well into their 80s, and I wanted to do that.” The comparison is simple and blunt: he wanted the same late-career runway, but the stroke changed the terms.
Bye for now
Slade closed with, “But it looks like I can't. So, as I say, with a heavy heart, it's bye for now.” For readers who followed him through AC/DC, the practical result is straightforward: there are no further performances to plan around, and his retirement ends a career that stretched from a teenage start to age 79.
A separate royalties ruling involving Blur Drummer shows how long-tail music disputes can linger, but Slade’s case is cleaner: the issue is not legal, it is physical. The remaining question is the one his announcement leaves hanging — what specific treatment or condition made the stroke effects worsen over time.
