Slash speaks to Sunday Mercury about Stoke-On-Trent, Fergie, Donington and talk of a Guns N'Roses reunion

Nov 21 2010 by Paul Cole, Sunday Mercury

IT’S the unruly tangle of curls that gives the game away as he stands on the stage, the centre of attention.

It’s 1970 and he is The Little Drummer Boy, drawing appreciative oohs and aahs from the watching mums and dads.

At that moment, Saul Hudson commands his audience in the assembly hall of the Stoke-on-Trent primary school.

Fast-forward forty years and he’s centre-stage again, at the giant Download heavy metal festival.

Guitar hero Slash is back home in the Midlands, and this time the crowd is more than 100,000-strong.

“Yes, I really was that little drummer boy,” he says. “When I was at school in Stoke I was in a lot of plays. I remember being in The Twelve Days Of Christmas, too. I was the apple of my grandparents’ eye.”

Note there’s no mention there of mum or dad. His African-American mother Ola, a renowned costume designer for the likes of David Bowie, John Lennon and others, had returned to Los Angeles to set up in business.

His English father Anthony was an artist and spent a lot of time on the road, leaving Saul to be raised much of the time by grandparents Charles and Sybil Hudson at their home in Stoke.