Interview: Grant Richardson, Slide

Let him "slide" inside, ladies.

SOLID ROCK

SLIDE are a classy young band who play an accomplished brand of bluesy rock. The band are from Glasgow and are beginning to carve out a niche in the British rock scene. Glasgow bands like TEXAS and GUN have already established themselves. Slide meanwhile released an impressive debut album Down So Long in 1989. Consequently the band have been raising their profile with plenty of solid gigging. 1990 might be the year when Slide make the crucial breakthrough. I spoke to amiable vocalist Grant Richardson whilst he was back in Glasgow preparing for some Scottish dates.

How was the reaction on the Continent when you played over there recently?

"It was really good, especially in Spain. They were crazy. They just loved the gigs. We'd never been abroad so it was like a dream come true for us to see all these countries."

Is the follow-up to Down So Long in the pipeline?

"We've got about ten or eleven new songs, but we're going to release Why Is It A Crime? from the last album. We'll see how that fares before we determine whether to start work on a second album sooner rather than later."

Are there any contemporary singers that you admire?

"I like the guy from The QUIREBOYS - Spike! He kinda reminds me of ROD STEWART whose voice I've always admired. I think the guy from the BLACK CROWES - I don't know his name - has got a great voice." [Grant pauses and then qualifies his opinion.] "I don't think it's so much his voice, but the way he sings and the way he puts it over. He sounds like he's really been influenced by SAM COOK ad OTIS REDDING."

Have you been influenced by these classic soul singers?

"Even when I was a kid, all the things I listened to were mostly old soul music - people like AL GREEN, Otis, and MARVIN GAYE. Real soul! I then started listening to more sort of gritty soul like the TEMPTATIONS and SLY AND THE FAMILY STONE."

So what turned you on to rock music?

"I started looking for maybe something harder and the only place I could find that was in Rock music. I actually started getting into bands like AC/DC and AEROSMITH. Me and my friends liked the guys' voices and they had the hard backing I was looking for."

Is there a Glasgow scene, Grant?

"There's always been a thriving music scene in Glasgow. Nobody seems to say if a band comes out of London, 'Oh there's a scene in London.' I think people put that kind of tag on provincial cities of towns."

By the time you read this, Slide will have already finished their UK dates. So if you missed them this time - you missed out!!

Mark Liddell
Riff Raff
July 1990

Revenge...?

Riff Raff was a legendary rock magazine based in London in the late 1980s and 1990s. Edited by the ultimate music biz insider, Mark Crampton, and employing such talents as Mark Blake, Jerry Ewing, Mike Harris, Paul Smith, Chris Collingwood, Alan McCrorie, Simon Robinson, Lyn Guy, Anna Marx, Nick Douglas, Marion Garden, Peter "Grunty" Grant, Joe "The Crow" Mackett, Billy "The Kluck" Kulke, and, lastest and mostest, the incredible Liddell Brothers, Mark (a.k.a. "El Perro") and Colin (a.k.a. "Der Fly"). Unfortunately, Riff Raff was just too R n' R for its own good. A genuine working class rock mag, written, edited, and translated into 16 European languages in a drug-N-Jack-D-fuelled haze, often on the back of motorbikes, with spell checking by our staff of attentive rock bimbos (chosen purely for their blondeness and big knockers), it soon fell behind more trainspotterly, nerdish, and politically correct publications like Q, Kerrang, Mojo, Metal Hammer, and Horse & Hound. This website is an archive and kind of shrine dedicated to the writing of its greatest writers, some of whom, luckily for the Rock Kosmos, still continue to write about music. This is the REVENGE of Riff Raff...Rock on!