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“FYC 40” is the name of the hit collection including new remixes from one of the most wondrous bands of the 80s: Fine Young Cannibals. They paired electro with soul and jazz – carried by the falsetto Roland Gifts, who talked about kitchen sink dramas. “She Drives Me Crazy” was a worldwide hit, but after just two albums and arguments between Gift and his colleagues Andy Cox and David Steele, it was over in the early 1990s.
Fine Young Cannibals mixed the sound of the future with the sound of the past. How could that be planned?
Not at all. This came purely intuitively. Like the line from “Johnny Come Home”: What is wrong in my life, that I have to get drunk every night? I lived in Hull, went clubbing for days. Lay in bed and stare at a spot on the wall. It grew legs and started walking around. A hallucination.
No blacks, no Irish, no dogs.”
They described themselves as the first black punk from Hull.
When I was 11 I moved from Birmingham to smaller Hull and was one of three black kids at my school. But I didn’t have any major problems with racism. Never saw signs that said “No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs.” Where I lived there were black people, Irish people, and we all had dogs.
How did you discover your falsetto voice?
There was a pub, Polar Bear, and the bouncer, a wrestler called Smudge, said: “Can you do falsetto? Keep working on it. You’ll always get a job as a falsetto singer. It’s just going to be hard in this town.”
You have Caribbean roots. What did you think when you saw the far-right “Tommy Robinson March” through London, with hundreds of thousands of participants?
Robinson’s subject is Pakistani grooming gangs that exploit white girls. There were racists at the march, but also those who simply felt unheard or disenfranchised. I grew up in a left-leaning, activist environment: workers are good, bosses are bad, unions are good, company is bad. I’m afraid many demonstrators were just angry because they feared for their jobs. My sister was married to a Pakistani man. People thought she was his prostitute. The last time I experienced open racism was in the late 1980s, when I was denied access to a hotel bar.
You wrote your masterpiece “I’m Not The Man I Used To Be” when you were 26. What bad things have you experienced?
I played the saxophone in the ska band Akrylykz from 1978 and considered myself a discontinued model. And in dreary Hull too. We had a record out, but I missed the boat. Do you know Akrylykz?
Group therapy for the Fine Young Cannibals?
Uh …
Exactly. I was ambitious and wanted more.
They went into hiding for years and have now released a Christmas single, “Everybody Knows It’s Christmas”. Are you still interested in current music?
Naturally. But not for the charts. When Fine Young Cannibals were in the charts, everyone knew what was at number one. If you ask anyone on the street today, hardly anyone can tell you what the number one record is.
How often do you get offers for a Fine Young Cannibals reunion?
Most recently a few years ago, to support Simple Minds. I might work with Andy – but not with David. We didn’t part on good terms, and our manager, who played us off against each other, is also responsible for that. Andy also told me that he was almost 70 and that one tour was too much for him. My neighbor at the time was the sports psychologist Christopher Connolly, who tracked down Tottenham Hotspur. I asked him for group therapy for the three of us. That came to nothing. Three is a tricky number – no marriage, no case for couples therapy. In any case, I would have preferred to continue with Andy and David rather than become a solo singer. The American ROLLING STONE only wanted me on the cover at the time, which rightly upset them. Well, there will be no reunion. But I’m working on a solo album.