“People say to me, ‘Oh, Pink Floyd got lucky.’ I say they didn’t get lucky. They got Gilmour, and they wouldn’t be anywhere without him.”

Drummer Chris Slade argued that Pink Floyd “wouldn’t be anywhere without David Gilmour”, and called Jimmy Page a great player even though he refused to comment on his “songwriting genius.”The 77-year-old Welsh drummer has got a portfolio one can only dream of — in addition to his now-iconic stint with Manfred Mann’s Earth Band in the ’70s and his widely known contributions to AC/DC from 1989 to 1994, Chris Slade has also played with the likes of Gary Numan, Tom Jones, Olivia Newton-John, Gary Moore, and Uriah Heep, to name a few.

Slade’s impressive career also saw him join forces with David Gilmour in the ’80s, and has nothing but the best to say about his former collaborator. Speaking to Igor Miranda in a recent interview, the drummer noted even suggested that without Gilmour, Pink Floyd would never have gotten as big. Reflecting on what it was like to work with the prog icon, Slade offered (transcribed by Ultimate Guitar):

“It was amazing. He’s a great guy, tremendous guy, very generous with his time and with his money. He sold his London house for two million pounds and gave it to the homeless, all of it. He’s a very intelligent guy who really thinks about his music, and I think that’s what makes him such a great guitarist. He really, really thinks about the stuff he plays. And, you know, people say to me, ‘Oh, Pink Floyd got lucky.’ I say they didn’t get lucky. They got Gilmour, and they wouldn’t be anywhere without David Gilmour”.

Incidentally, Jimmy Page and Paul Rodgers had been looking to recruit Slade around the same time. Asked whether it was really true the duo waited for him to finish working with Gilmour so they could get him playing with them, the drummer offered:

Yes, it’s true. When [Jimmy Page] called me, it was the same day that David Gilmour called me; an hour-and-a-half apart. I’d been down the pub to have my lunch and a few pints, I already said ‘yes’ to Gilmour and picked up the phone. ‘Hello, Jimmy Page here.’ I thought it was a friend messing [with] me… [He] went, ‘No, no, no, it really is Jimmy Page…’ And I said I had committed to a tour with David Gilmour. I thought that would be the end of it. My heart sank a bit, and then he said, ‘Oh, that’s okay. We’ll wait.'”

“And I actually took the phone away from my head and looked at it just like they do in the movies. Am I hearing this? Is this real? And they waited for [me]. In the end, it was a year… I was amazed at that. Truly amazed. I thought my stars are doing the right thing here. They must all be in the right place.”

Asked whether Page was the “songwriter genius” everybody says he is, Slade offered:

“To be honest, they were writing songs. I find it difficult to comment, because I didn’t buy the album. He’s certainly got something going for himself, whatever that is. He’s a great player, and he’s a nice fella. And, you know, when you work with somebody in a band, you don’t want somebody who’s not a nice fella.”