Luther Grosvenor

Luther Grosvenor (also known as ‘Ariel Bender’) was one of the most inventive guitarists of his generation.
A flashy young axe-slinger, he emerged at the tail end of the 1960s and turned everything on its head by making sure that technique wasn’t everything and fun was just as important. From 1967 to 1970, Grosvenor was guitarist with Spooky Tooth, one of the most influential British rock bands of its day.

Releasing four albums, including the million-selling ‘Spooky Two’, the band toured extensively both in the U.S. and Europe, building a loyal fan base which even included the Rolling Stones - who contacted Grosvenor as a possible replacement for Brian Jones in 1969. He turned them down, but went on to play with other bands and got involved in other projects.

Music-News Claudia A. was invited to talk about Luther’s new album ‘If You Dare’ – his first solo album in over a decade.
A good-humoured and very hospitable Luther welcomes me in his home. With him is keyboard player and producer Mike Triggs, a charming Liverpudlian who co-wrote some of the songs on the new album.

Music-News:
Luther, there have been massive gaps between the releases of your solo albums. The first one in came out in 1972, the second one in 1996 and now it’s your third solo album with ‘If You Dare’. Why such long gaps?

Luther Grosvenor:
I had a long career you know, I played with Spooky Tooth, then Stealers Wheel, then joined Mott The Hoople and after I left that band, I formed another one called Widowmaker. Then I thought it would be time to do something different and I got married, had kids and became a serious family man, so I didn’t play the guitar for a number of years. Throughout the years of not playing I always had people approach me asking, “Luther, would you like to try this?” or “Luther, would you like to try that?” and I always replied with “No, I’m not interested, I’m a little rusty now, it takes time and effort to write tracks and get a band together” and so on. But to cut a long story short, I came through again and wrote a solo album called ‘Floodgates’ in 1996, after taking up an offer by record executive Bob Laul (for whom I had played on a Peter Green tribute CD). When ‘Floodgates’ came out, it was a great album for me and it all went well, although I didn’t make an awful lot of money from it. But once the experience had died off, I became a family man again and also, you can only play when your mindset is right. Then I gradually got through to get the Ariel Bender Band together which was in 2005. In 2008 my Ariel Bender Band collaborator Mike Triggs and I began to write some material that you can hear on the current album ‘If You Dare’. So yes, I’m back in gear and this time I won’t go back to sleep again!

MN:
Song like ‘Dusty Track’ or title track ‘If You Dare’ have great melodies and beautiful harmonious arrangements, without ever sounding overproduced or too polished and slick…

Mike Triggs:
It’s a good point you just made. The likes of ‘Dusty Track’ and ‘If You Dare’ are very melody-based, you’re right. But there’s something about Luther’s voice as well that doesn’t make it too polished. If you had a really kind of sweety voice going over the top on those songs, it might make it too sickly-sweet – but Luther brings a kind of roughness to it in his voice, which I think balances the track from being just melody-based to having a slightly rough edge to it.

LG:
Mike is a keyboard player and he’s very good at what he does. With my former band Widowmaker for example, it was all very guitar-based, but it's a different concept if you work with a keyboard player because you tend to get into a more melodic type of song than you do when listen to a song like ‘Heroes’ or ‘Kids’. So what you have on ‘Dusty Track’ or Emis Song’ is something very melodic because you have the power of the keyboard or organ. It’s just not like a guitar thing anymore. It’s very difficult to do a melodic song without the keyboard going on. You have ‘Dusty Track’ which is piano and Mike is the reason we recorded that. When we started recording we set up all of our gear and Mike played back that piano track of ‘Dusty Track’ on a demo and I said, “Jesus Christ, where did you get that from?” and that’s where the song came from. I knew there was something there as soon as I heard the demo. We spent actually months on that song because we couldn’t find the right choruses. You know, sometimes you write songs and get it all done and dusted in two to three days, and sometimes things take longer. Of course, in the meantime we would work on other tracks. ‘If You Dare’ – the title track – once again a big production song which I wrote about ten years ago with Gary Oswell, that took longer as well. You know, once you got the structure down of what it is, you have to think in terms of what the guitar part is gonna be, or the keyboard part. Everything has got to be worked out. On the other hand you have a track like ‘Heroes’ and you just play it off the cuff, whatever you feel like at the time.

MN:
Luther, tell me about ‘Fire and Water’ – you don’t sing on that one but Marc Eden (of Men & Gods) delivers the main vocals. How did the collaboration with Marc come about?

LG:
Marc was in the Ariel Bender Band for once, but also, he only lives about twenty minutes away from me and always kept in touch with Mike and myself. Occasionally he would pop in here. He’s a real good friend of Mike’s. I mean, we were recording the album at the time anyway and so I said to Marc, “Look, there are a couple of songs I’d like you do here”. So Mike and I got the backing track down for ‘Kids’ and at first I was to sing it myself. But then I said to Mike, “Look, let’s get Marc on this” and he happened to be available at the time. You know, he came around and he did that thing in twenty minutes! Really Claudia, he came around and he nailed that and we were all quite excited. And when ‘Fire and Water’ came through I said to Mike, “Marc should sing this as well – be a guest singer on those two tracks”. ‘Fire and Water’ took a little longer than ‘Kids’, more words and more complex and so on.

MN:
Both ‘Kids’ and ‘Fire and Water’ are particularly suited to Marc’s voice.

LG:
Absolutely, Claudia. You know, I even said it to Mike. I said, “I’m really glad I didn’t sing those songs, because it wouldn’t have been as good as that”.

MN:
What is the inspiration for ‘Kids’?

LG:
I wrote that song myself and it's very self-explanatory in a way, you know. I got three kids, my eldest son is 45, my younger son is 31, my daughter is 29. I wrote that song about myself growing up and about my kids growing up. “Kids they drive ya crazy, kids they’re havin’ fun, kids they’re all so lazy, keep you on the run…” The words are very simple and the chorus is very simple. If you listen to other songs on the album like ‘Nobody Knows’ for example, you have more of a song structure there and also a story. ‘Kids’ is not a story. It’s very much like ‘Fire & Water’ – if you listen and analyze the words of that song, they’re abstract. There’s no meaning at all. It’s like listening to one of the greatest songs of all time ‘Whiter Shade of Pale’… nothing adds up, nothing means anything.

MT:
What I say to you on the point of what Luther was saying, going from one thing to the other… when you’re older there is no middle part between when he was a kid and the now. I don’t think the song is going to deep into a story about all these different stages of childhood and growing up. The song just says “I used to be a little s*** when I was a kid, I was one of those brats”. It’s not meant to be deep or meaningful or something like that, it’s just a great tune and fun lyrics.

MN:
I feel that compared to your previous solo album ‘Floodgates’, the overall sound on the new album is less 70’s rock n roll style but goes into a different direction.

MT:
I think I understand where you’re coming from with this question. On ‘Floodgates’, the songs were recorded with a whole band and with a more live kind of feel and the band was all recorded together in a big studio. Whereas on this one we didn’t, it was me and Luther in his home studio recording stuff separately, so it doesn’t have that kind of live rock n roll sound to it.

LG:
I mean, I took the lead vocals on the ‘Floodgates’ album on eight tracks, and like Marc on the ‘If You Dare’ album; Jess Roden took over lead vocals on two numbers on ‘Floodgates’ – ‘I Wanna Be Free’ and ‘Fire Down Below’. They are quite similar to ‘Kids’ and ‘Fire and Water’. So those four tracks do have a similarity in what you call rock n roll sound, but other than that the two albums are completely different, yes. We moved on from what we did on ‘Floodgates’ and also, it’s a case of doing what you want to do at a particular time. Mike and I finished with the new album only a few weeks ago and so you’re not putting anything into comparison with what you did on the last album, do you.

MN:
So are you planning on touring to promote the new album?

LG:
I think at the moment it’s too early to say. I’ve spoken to Mike about it earlier this morning actually. We’ve done a few interviews and everyone is asking the same thing, “Can you see yourself going back on the road?” First of all, I would say, “It’s early days but if we need to and if we can, then we will”. If the album is doing quite well, then obviously people buy it and then Mike and I will say, “Let’s get the guys together, let’s rehearse and let’s go and do some shows”. That in fact is easier than recording an album. If there is a need to get a band together and rehearse to prepare for shows, you gotta be very clever and just go out for two months. A short tour with good promoters like Pete Purnell (of Angel Air Records) maybe, and well organized.

MT:
Yeah, if a situation arises where we can, basically we gonna do it. We would love to.

MN:
Luther, do you think that with this new album out, you might gain a new fan base?

LG:
That’s another thing Mike and I spoke about this morning. You will always have the hardcore Spooky Tooth fans or Widowmaker fans or Hoople fans and so on. And you will always get the guy who will buy the ‘Floodgates’ album. You obviously gonna pick up new people anyway. But I don’t think new fans will be sixteen or nineteen or so. In reality, this is a heritage album. To be perfectly honest, I’m not interested one bit in who buys the record, whether young or old or whatever. I know I’m getting on a bit and my main market is the older generation, but you know, along the way of this new record I would like to think that a 18-year old boy might also pick up this record or a 20-year old girl. But realistically, I think the marketplace for ‘If You Dare’ is maybe for people age 30 – 60.

MT:
It would be nice to get some people who aren’t even aware of the situation, you know.

LG:
It would be great if the younger generation would like and buy the album too, but we’ll see. That record is gonna take me wherever it wants to go.

MN:
Many thanks for your time and generous hospitality, Luther and Mike, and best wishes for everything.

(Please read my review of ‘If You Dare’ in our ‘Latest Album Reviews’ section)