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Phil Lynott's Grand Slam — Slam Anthems
(Cleopatra CLO3907, 1984/2023, 6CD)

by Jon Davis, Published 2023-10-07

Slam Anthems Cover art

The Irish rock band Thin Lizzy got its start late in 1969, but didn’t achieve much recognition until 1975 with the single “Boys Are Back in Town,” by which time they’d already been through a number of personnel changes. Even after becoming successful, turnover was the norm, especially in the lead guitar position, and even before the release of the group’s final album (Thunder and Lightning in 1983) leader Phil Lynott had embarked on a solo tour to promote his second solo album. But between internal conflicts and drug problems, Thin Lizzy effectively ended after a concert on 4 September 1983. Lynott gathered members of the backing band from his solo tour, dubbed them Grand Slam, and set about trying to secure a recording contract. By 1985, with no contract forthcoming, Lynott gave up on the project and started conversations with former Lizzy bandmates about getting back together, but his death in January of 1986 put an end to that. During its existence, Grand Slam had recorded a fair number of tracks, and Slam Anthems collects six CDs worth of studio recordings, demos, and live tracks to provide a definitive picture of a band that could have been. The first CD features 13 tracks and can be regarded as the album that never was. My first impression is that it sounds pretty much like Thin Lizzy — Lynott’s voice is immediately recognizable, and the basic style of hard rock informed with blues and a touch of Irish traditional music is the same. These are good songs, and “Crazy,” “I Don’t Need This,” “Military Man,” and “Dedication” could easily have reached a wider audience had they been released at the time. CDs 2-5 are live shows from 1983 and 1984, showing a band in fine form, playing a mix of Grand Slam songs, pieces from Lynott’s solo albums, Thin Lizzy songs, and “Parisienne Walkways,” a Gary Moore song that Lynott co-wrote. The recording quality of the shows varies from decent (considering the vintage of the performances) to marginal, though the performances are uniformly good. The final CD of the set presents 15 demo tracks, many of which are earlier versions of the songs on CD1, though there are a few extras, including one oddity that starts out as a cover of Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” and slips into Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.” The demos are of high quality technically, nearly as good as the studio tracks proper on the first disc. Phil Lynott was only 36 when he died, and Slam Anthems illuminates a chapter of his life that was not previously well known.

Filed under: Archives, 2023 releases, 1984 recordings

Related artist(s): Grand Slam

More info
http://cleopatrarecords.bandcamp.com/album/slam-anthems

 

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