Music journalist and broadcaster Billy Sloan on being Scottish music’s crystal ball and interviewing superstars in the bath

Interview by Cheryl Caira

Where did your lifelong love affair with music begin?

As a teenager, I watched Top of the Pops, with bare-chested rock gods like Roger Daltrey or Robert Plant, but I was quite a late developer when it came to music. For somebody who’s spent nearly 50 years writing and broadcasting about music, I never bought my first record until I was 15, which is positively ancient! Kids these days have about 10,000 of their favourite songs on their tablet or their phone. But it’s because we didn’t have a record player in the house until then.

How did you go from buying your first records at 15 to a life in music?

The pivotal moment was about a year after that – the 21st of October 1971. I went to see The Who at Green’s Playhouse in Glasgow, and just seeing my four heroes up in front of me on stage was a mind-blowing experience; that was my game changer. And I decided on the spot: I need to get into music somehow. I knew I didn’t have the talent to be a rock star, so I thought I’d try it through journalism. I still have my ticket for that gig: it was 95p to get in.

Billy Sloan with singer, Dolly Parton

How did you first start?

I wangled a job as a steward in Green’s Playhouse. You never got paid for it, but you saw all the gigs for free. In May 1973, I was at the stage door because the star was arriving, and there were all these fans outside screaming. The limo drew up, the guy burst through the door and virtually jumped into my arms. It was Ziggy Stardust. So I had to escort David Bowie to the dressing room, which was under the stage. If you had told me that 10 years later I would be sitting in the dressing room at Murrayfield interviewing the great man, I would have thought you were nuts.

Has championing Scottish music always been important to you?

Well, when I started on Radio Clyde in 1979, I didn’t know what I was doing. Nobody did. Simple Minds didn’t know what they were doing at that time. Altered Images, Skids, Big Country – they didn’t know what they were doing. We were all learning on the job. I used to just go in on a Thursday night with a bundle of records, play them and say: ‘Look, I think this is great. I hope you like it.’ Everybody thought that I was sitting with some kind of crystal ball predicting the next Scottish band to hit the big time. I wasn’t! I just played my favourite records and it turned out that there was a whole legion of people who agreed with me.

Interviewing Grace Jones in the bath

Are you still as passionate now?

It’s pretty uncool to admit that you’re a fan because, you know, you shouldn’t be. But I’m still a fan, and to sit in a room with Rod Stewart, Elton John, Mick Jagger, Dolly Parton, Tom Jones, Neil Diamond, Bono or Diana Ross or whoever else… I do get excited. To be sitting listening to Paul McCartney telling you how he used to sit at the kitchen table with John Lennon and they would write songs together over a cup of tea – if you’re a music fan, it doesn’t get any better than that. It still gives you an adrenaline rush when you’re talking to people of that calibre.

From all of the legends you’ve met, is there one that stands out as a unique encounter?

Grace Jones was a pretty intimidating character. She was on tour in Milan, and when we got to her hotel for the interview, we were told that she’d been out with her entourage until 5am, they’d taken their phones off the hook, and under no circumstances were they to be disturbed. That was Saturday, and by 6pm on Sunday we threw in the towel. Our bags were in the back of the taxi when the PR guy got the call – Grace will do the interview now. So we went up to this penthouse suite, full of scantily clad female supermodels and the most handsome guys you’d ever seen. Only I couldn’t see Grace. Suddenly, this big, burly minder called me over to the bathroom and said: ‘She’s having a bath. You’re doing the interview in the bath.’ I kept waiting for the punchline. He was deadly serious. So I walked into the bathroom – and there she was lying in the bath, completely naked. So I sat on the toilet seat, put my tape machine in the bidet, and pressed record.

Sloan with David Bowie

So at least you returned with the story…

After I interviewed Grace Jones for 20 minutes while she was in the bath, I thought: nobody’s ever going to believe that I did this. So I said, could we get a photograph? Fully expecting the burly security man to grab me by the throat and drag me out. But she said, ‘Sure’ – so I’ve got this great photograph of me sitting on the bathroom floor with her leaning out of the bath with her arms round me, all covered in soap suds. A few years later, I went to see her playing in Birmingham, I took the picture, and she signed it for me: ‘To Billy – splish-splash, I was having a bath.’

Who’s on your hit list for the future?

There aren’t really any of, what you would call, the new artists where I think: oh, I really want to tick him or her off. I’d still love to interview Madonna – she’d be fascinating. I’d love to interview Ringo Starr – or another one who was just here a few days ago: Bob Dylan. But we’re now getting to a period where people like Dylan, Tom Jones, Neil Diamond, Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards – they’re not going to go on forever. And we’re left with a bunch of artists who I don’t think can lace their boots, to be brutally frank. That’s the reality of it. God love him, but I don’t think Ed Sheeran is in the same ballpark as a songwriter as Paul McCartney. But that’s just my generation – kids these days might say I’m talking a lot of nonsense. I can only call it as I see it.

One Love, One Life: Stories from the Stars by Billy Sloan is out now