GRAND SLAM
Mike Dyer – vocals
Laurence Archer – guitars
Benjy Reid – drums
Rocky Newton – bass
“I want everybody to see this as a new band… and anybody that hasn’t heard Grand Slam since 1984, I want them to see this as a fresh invigoration of the project moving into the modern times.” – Laurence Archer
WHEN SPEAKING with Grand Slam co-founding member Laurence Archer, and front man Mike Dyer, it is extraordinarily clear that theirs has been a true journey of destiny, one where early unions ended up leaving unfinished business on the table, and one which finally sees Grand Slam attending to said-business with the brand-new album Wheel Of Fortune. Do not make the mistake of thinking this is a band returning from a past: it’s a band fulfilling their present and future with a willfulness and desire that permeate every song on Wheel Of Fortune, from Archer’s faultless, fearless fret-driven song architecture on “Spitfire” to Dyer’s swagger and style on “There Goes My Heart”. There are moments such as “Come Together (In Harlem)” where the moody strut of original co-founder Phil Lynott is unmistakable, yet the multi-layered steamy swing of “Pirate Song” makes it very clear where Grand Slam are coming from.
The story is one of persistence and craft, of ensuring that the best elements of Grand Slam’s history were absorbed and fused with the experiences and drive of relationships stretching decades.
“I stopped playing for about ten years and I started a film career” explains Laurence Archer, “I was working in film and TV for almost 30 years, and even though I’d still been playing on and off, I stopped altogether for about 10 years in the 2000s. In 2018 I was away on location in Guadalupe, and I arrived at the decision to record the Grand Slam songs properly, because essentially, what has been out there has not really been representative of what we did back then. Phil and I had done some work in progress demos in his back yard studio, and unfortunately, someone stole them and released them. So, it’s always been a goal of mine to re-visit those songs and do them properly, and I’d been thinking about showcasing them properly for over 30 years, instead of hearing these horrible demos that people put out.”
Archer and Dyer have a history which goes all the way back to the ‘80s, when the two were based in London, in a band called Rhode Island Red.
“He took me under his wing,” Dyer remembers. “Ironically, I’d met Phil Lynott and Scott Gorham at the Liverpool Empire backstage when I was a little, fat, spotty, long curtain-haired fourteen-year-old in my unofficial Thin Lizzy t-shirt, I actually spoke to Phil, and he was very kind to me. During the Rhode Island Red days, we were looked at by Phonogram and London Records, Status Quo’s management were interested, but it just didn’t happen, they wanted instant results when we were just treading water, so Laurence and I went our separate ways.”
It was the better part of 32 years before Grand Slam came back together in late 2018, and Archer knew he had an important phone all to make. Dyer remembers every minute of receiving said call. “My wife got a phone call on Christmas Day. She said there was a ‘Laurence’ on the phone. The last time we’d spoken to each other was 30 years ago. And the Laurence I heard on the phone sounded like a man on a mission, as if he’d had an epiphany. I was instantly excited because Laurence and I had never got what we’d given in the past, we’d got ‘stuffed’ by the usual suspects in this business. But we really had something, and it had been ripped apart. Here was a chance to not only revive what we had but fulfil what we’d never had the chance to before.”
In 2019, Hit The Ground was released to great enthusiasm and acclaim from both Grand Slam and Phil Lynott fans. “I wanted people to enjoy the songs as they should be, and Mike’s phrasing and toning is not like Phil’s, but it has a similar air to it – Mike’s from Liverpool, so there’s some Irish connection there!” Archer chuckles. “Look, I know it sounds weird but we’re both Scorpios, we’re both around the same age, and our birthdays are two days apart. We have a lot of connection and Mike fits the part. The way that he took on the original songs that I wrote with Phil, and the way he’s taken on the songs that I’ve written on Wheel Of Fortune clearly shows that. I put the basis of the song together, I give a rough melody line, I might write the chorus line, and I give that to Mike. He goes away and he comes back with his thing, it’s not my thing, it’s his thing and it just works. I think he can naturally see where I would want to go with the end product, and his vocal tone – his ability – fits everything that I write.”
For his part, Dyer had spent the intermediate decades developing his creative and vocal talents, having already got close to breakthrough success with the band Tokyo in the ‘80s.
“And then by accident I went off and did musicals!” he laughs. “I trained for a year, learned to sing classically, was the narrator for Blood Brothers (which changed my life) and then toured with Jesus Christ Superstar. I was performing in sold out auditoriums for years. I ended up writing a musical called Exposure The Musical, which was put on at Andrew Lloyd Webber’s off West End St. James Theatre in 2016. It was really rock and roll, and that’s always been in my tribal heart. So, when that phone call came, it really was a no-brainer. I’ve been the driving force of my other projects, and with Grand Slam I’m not, which is wonderful because I get to enjoy it, get to concentrate on listening to Laurence, and focus on writing lyrics; they’re the be all and end all to me, poetry.”
There were, naturally, nerves involved for Dyer when it came to making 2018’s Hit The Ground. With the half-dozen Phil Lynott compositions in various stages of completion, Dyer’s talents were vital in bringing them home.
“Laurence sent me ‘Sisters Of Mercy’ and I was having nightmares about it because I could hear Phil’s breathing and him talking between takes. It felt so personal. And as I lived with that song, I got to the point where I thought there was no way I could do it. And then one of my boys – he was seven at the time – dragged me to the closet and said, “look at all the shoes you’ve got Dad. You can wear any shoes you want, Dad, just wear your own shoes. You don’t have to wear Phil’s.”
Joined by Benjy Reid on drums and Rocky Newton on bass, some best laid plans for the band were set for take-off until Covid 19 brought the world to a standstill (it is one of the main reasons Hit The Ground will also be enjoying a 2024 release alongside Wheel Of Fortune), however the creative fire and will to propel Grand Slam got stronger still.
“The way I look at it is that from writing those songs with Phil in 1984 to now, my writing style and the way I write hasn’t really changed that much,” furthers Archer. “I’m not a shredder, I prefer to write songs and build that way. So, there’s that timeless continuity in how I write, fusing with all the experiences we’ve had as people over the years.”
Wheel Of Fortune is a testimony to both Archer’s aforementioned songwriting architecture and Dyer’s powerful love of language; he wasted no time sinking his teeth into the storytelling aspect of the songs. From WWII fighter pilots to ethereal reflections on lost loved ones and near-death experiences, Dyer is a supreme storyteller.
“There was a song that we wrote in the studio,” Dyer begins, “it was midnight, we had an idea, we’d done nine tracks, we needed one more. We were all getting a bit spiky, and Laurence was playing this really haunting guitar. Suddenly the thing came together, and we ended up with a song called ‘Afterlife’... and my God, it’s everything that I stand for, having just lost my mum, and had a near death experience myself.”
“The title track of the album, ‘Wheel Of Fortune’, was influenced by some of the very hard times we’d both been through with this band. We’d just won a court case, and it got me thinking about the whole irony of game shows where people are shown what they ‘could have won’. ‘Spin the wheel of fortune/It’s the price we pay/Give three cheers for the losers/You’ve jeopardized everyone.’ It was essentially that, ‘give three cheers for the losers’ irony and it was very much about the guy that tried to stuff us.”
Archer comes in on the song discussions. “With ‘Pirate Song’, I was filming in Corfu, Greece for 28 weeks, and the production used to take us out for meals every night. There were these traditional Greek players getting up and playing old traditional Greek music. I got chatting to one of the guys, who actually came to work for me on the film and set, and asked what these traditional songs were all about. He said they were nearly all about piracy, the smuggling and whatever. I had an acoustic guitar with me and worked on this thing. In all Greek music, they basically have this ‘open drone’ going on in the background. So, I de-tuned the guitar, started doing this thing, and the next thing I know I came up with this song.”
“Which incidentally marked my first ever one-take,” exclaims Dyer proudly. “I sang a live vocal on the demo. I’d never in my wildest dreams think I’d be talking like this, but I always wanted to do a first take like Daryl Hall. I remember even standing in watching Daryl Hall sing and it pissed me off so much because he'd literally go in there and nail it, one take which is not normal. The vocal on ‘Pirate Song’ is the first time take I’d ever sung it, and it stayed on the album. We just made a full avatar animated video for it.”
“Another song Laurence sent me was ‘There Goes My Heart’, and with total respect to Laurence, I’m not a man of ‘hearts’ in that sense,” chuckles Dyer. “So instead of singing about the ex, I twisted on it. It sounds like your heart, but what you’re singing about is your E type Jag. We shot the video for that in Spain, and that very much has a twist in it too.”
“‘Come Together (In Harlem)’ is the only one song on the album which came from ’84,” offers Archer, “Phil had a little bit of a thing about pop music as we call it, and he started going down this pop line at the time. The song’s out there on YouTube in various guises, so I went away, completely rearranged it, wrote another part, and just brought it into our back yard. The whole song is really about ‘let’s come together’. The original subject matter was derived from Harlem by Phil, and we’ve extended the song into something else.”
With Grand Slam having just completed videos for ‘There Goes My Heart’ and ‘Come Together (In Harlem)’ in Spain, a series of dates being planned as you read, and an overall joy at everything going on in their world, Grand Slam will be here whether you are or not, because this not a band rumbling in from their past, it’s a band firing forward into their future.
“We have a strong bond in our writing and our perception of what we want to do,” says Archer, “so make no mistake, Grand Slam has only just started.”
“We have a direction that is in my heart, it’s a tribal thing,” Dyer concludes, “and the Wheel Of Fortune album is Grand Slam in big boy pants without any scaffolding. This band is something very special; I’m slightly biased I know, but God, I’m really proud of that.”
Album Discography:
Hit The Ground [2019]
Hit The Ground – Revised [2024]
Wheel Of Fortune [2024]
