<\/p>\n
Among music\u2019s great mysteries are what happened to Fine Young Cannibals, and whatever happened to those three guys?<\/p>\n
We\u2019re getting some answers now, as the group\u2019s self-titled debut album turns 40, leading to the Dec. 5 release of a new compilation, \u201cFYC40,\u201d whose various configurations include remixes, videos and concert material in addition to the chart-topping hits \u201cShe Drives Me Crazy\u201d and \u201cGood Things.\u201d<\/p>\n
FYC — formed by Andy Cox and David Steele of the (English) Beat and vocalist Roland Gift, then playing saxophone with the ska group Akrylykz — was on top of the world in 1998 thanks to those songs and its double-platinum sophomore album \u201cThe Raw & the Cooked.\u201d The group won a pair of Brit Awards and was nominated for three Grammys and did big business on the road. And then nothing; even the band\u2019s break-up played out quietly.<\/p>\n
Gift, now 64, released a mostly unnoticed solo album in 2002 and has also been acted in both film and TV. He also wrote a musical drama, \u201cReturn to Vegas,\u201d for the BBC. More recently he\u2019s taken part in Jools Holland\u2019s annual \u201cHootenanny\u201d show for BBC television and opened the dates for the Go-Go\u2019s Belinda Carlisle in the Britain. He\u2019s just released a holiday single, \u201cEverybody Knows It\u2019s Christmas\u201d and is playing his own \u201c40 Years of Songs by Fine Young Cannibals\u201d shows, which will hit the road in earnest in the U.K. next May.<\/p>\n
All of that brings Gift to Zoom to discuss…well, all of that, as well as what good things we can expect from him in the future…<\/p>\n
You\u2019ve been more active, certainly more visible, of late. What account for that?<\/b><\/p>\n
Gift:<\/b> For a long time, I wasn\u2019t really sure; I didn\u2019t really have a clear vision of who I was, what I wanted to do. But I do now, and I think that\u2019s made a difference. I have had sort of epiphanous moments, but it\u2019s really been sort of one thing after another, almost like I\u2019ve been laying the foundation for this. <\/p>\n
A few things just sort of fell into place, like it happened to be the 40th anniversary of FYC, and then Dua Lipa and Jennie from Blackpink did an advert for Chanel where they lip-synced to \u201cShe Drives Me Crazy.\u201d <\/p>\n
Then a promoter said, \u201cWe\u2019d like to do a couple of gigs with you and see how that goes.\u201d And then I had this Christmas song…A lot of things have kind of fallen into place, and that\u2019s given me the jet fuel that I needed to sort of get things going.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s your perspective on Fine Young Cannibals all these years later?<\/b><\/p>\n
Gift:<\/b> I\u2019ve been playing the songs on a regular basis for quite a long time, with my own songs, so they\u2019ve never been that far away from me. It\u2019s always on the radio as well. That was one of the things we wanted to do as a group, create songs people would be listening to 25 years later, just as we were listening to music that was created 25 years before. <\/p>\n
We\u2019d get together and play Marvin Gaye or Otis Redding or Sam Cooke or Aretha Franklin, or the (Rolling) Stones, those kinds of songs. We wanted to be making records that people would be playing well after they were first created. So I\u2019m pleased that we did. But, like I say, I\u2019ve been playing them, the radio plays them, so it\u2019s a funny one, really. It doesn\u2019t feel like it\u2019s 40 years. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s quite a gauntlet to throw down for yourselves in terms of a creative goal. Did you — sorry — drive yourselves crazy coming up with songs that would achieve that?<\/b><\/p>\n
Gift:<\/b> I think it was tough, yeah, because we did hold ourselves to a high standard. With the first record we didn\u2019t have anything to prove; the first one was enough of a success to be asked to do a second wone, so we were kind of under some kind of pressure to do it, and to do it well. I think it was a big relief after we did \u201cThe Raw & the Cooked;\u201d I remember (after) the last session we did, I was just walking down Oxford Street heading towards this bar, and I could just feel the bricks being taken out, one by one, from the rucksack I\u2019d been carrying, like, \u201cOh, this burden is lightened…\u201d<\/p>\n
Were you at all surprised by the success, and the life some of that material has had, especially \u201cShe Drives Me Crazy?\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n
Gift: <\/b>Yeah, I am. I\u2019m amazed. The longevity of that song…you let them go and other people decided what\u2019s what. But, yeah, I\u2019m amazed.<\/p>\n
Then the album comes out and goes through the roof and that was it. What happened?<\/b><\/p>\n
Gift:<\/b> I know exactly what happened. Our record company hadn\u2019t experienced the success they\u2019d had with us before. Our managers hadn\u2019t experienced that level of success before, and we hadn\u2019t. Nobody knew how to deal with it, and the little kind of fissures that existed, like they do in any relationship…Being in group is like being married, and leaving the toothpaste top off or finding butter in the jam jar can make a couple resort to violence. (chuckles) <\/p>\n
If we\u2019d have had a good manager….someone who would manage personalities and egos and could keep their eye on the distant horizon because they were experienced and they weren\u2019t over-awed themselves by the seeming success…I think it might have kept us together. <\/p>\n
Did you even start to make a third album?<\/b><\/p>\n
Gift: <\/b>We tried to. The record company was saying, \u201cThis next one has to sell even more;\u201d if it sold a quarter of \u201cThe Raw & the Cooked\u201d it would have been successful. Then we decided to base ourselves in New York; we\u2019d had great times going to New York, but it\u2019s different being a visitor, even a working visitor, that actually living there. <\/p>\n
And living there wasn\u2019t conducive to creativity, really. Our English manager resigned; he found Ocean Colour Scene and thought they were going to be the next Beatles. And the American manager was more kind of rock \u2018n\u2019 roll than we were; I was eating macrobiotic food and doing Tai Chi, and he was drinking vodka and cranberry and doing crack and cocaine. <\/p>\n
Was it an acrimonious break-up, or did it just fade away?<\/b><\/p>\n
Gift:<\/b> It faded away. I can remember it being the end; we were back in England and we\u2019d been in the studio working on a song I\u2019d written with a couple of guys called \u201cIt\u2019s Only Money.\u201d We seemed to be getting somewhere; it\u2019d been kind of tense, but we were still trying to work together as a group. <\/p>\n
That night I went to Soho to see a screening of Bernardo Bertolucci film called \u201cStealing Beauty;\u201d he was looking for songs for his film and Bj\u00f6rk was there…and so were David and Andy. We came out and I said, \u201cLook, where are we? We\u2019re all in the studio together, we seem to be getting somewhere, but we all knew we were gonna be here tonight and none of us mentioned it.\u201d <\/p>\n
I remember David said, \u201cI\u2019ve got to go. I\u2019m getting some tiles delivered for my kitchen from Italy.\u201d And Andy didn\u2019t want to talk about it in the street. He went his way, I went my way and we never got together after that. I\u2019m not blaming them; I was as guilty as they were. It was just a shameful situation. <\/p>\n
Probably no prospects for a reunion, then?<\/b><\/p>\n
Gift:<\/b> I couldn\u2019t see what kind of circumstances there would be that would have that occur. I talk to Andy from time to time…but on the whole, not really. We do talk when there\u2019s, like a contract for publishing to be renegotiated, something like that. But generally, there isn\u2019t that much to talk about.<\/p>\n
With \u201cFYC40\u201d coming out, are there any songs from the catalog that you\u2019d like to see get their \u201cmoment,\u201d or more attention than maybe they did back in the day?<\/b><\/p>\n
Gift:<\/b> Not really, no — it almost seems like we got more than we deserved in a way. My favorite is \u201cI\u2019m Not the Man I Used to Be.\u201d I was quite young when I wrote that, and it makes sense now in a way id didn\u2019t so much when it was written. It was a bit precocious, really. But I can sing it with a different kind of authority now than I could then.<\/p>\n
There were pretty high expectations for the \u201cRoland Gift\u201d album back in 2002. What happened there?<\/b><\/p>\n
Gift:<\/b> It was strange. We were doing a European promotion tour with just me and a guitar player, and we did something in Berlin. It was really cool, very vibey, and people were kind of excited. <\/p>\n
Before we got to the next town there was a European sales meeting (of the record label) and they decided they weren\u2019t gonna be promoting the solo record. It was really kind of funny to see the sort of change while we were in Germany, and how people kind of walked off the job as it were. But at the same time I didn\u2019t have the thing that I\u2019ve got now, which was the vision for it. <\/p>\n
The songs, I think, are good and some of them I still play live, but it didn\u2019t have that thing that you need behind it that makes the difference between a record and a record that somebody wants to buy.<\/p>\n
What else is coming up in addition to the shows in May?<\/b><\/p>\n
Gift:<\/b> I did \u201cReturn to Vegas,\u201d which started out as a film, and I\u2019ve got this other thing for the radio called \u201cA Punk\u2019s Progress\u201d that\u2019s about when me and a couple of mats followed the Clash around England, and then I got a job working as a roadie with them for a while. <\/p>\n
I\u2019ve commissioned somebody to adapt it as a graphic novel, and that\u2019s going well. That also has the potential to be quite a good little movie. And with these I have a home for new songs I write. If I do a record on its own it\u2019s just, like Roland from the 80s doing a record, whereas if it\u2019s with a film, one will help the other. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s the proverbial double-edged sword of what a successful past means to the present.<\/b><\/p>\n
Gift:<\/b> You can\u2019t rely on the past. If you\u2019re a new artist it\u2019s different; there\u2019s some kind of excitement, you\u2019re like the new thing. But I\u2019m not new. So I can\u2019t rely on the FYC legacy. And I don\u2019t want to play just the old stuff and live off that…It doesn\u2019t feel creative. I like the challenge. I will throw the gauntlet down because I want to grow, I suppose. I don\u2019t want it to feel like a job. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.cleveland.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Among music\u2019s great mysteries are what happened to Fine Young Cannibals, and whatever happened to those three guys? We\u2019re getting some answers now, as the group\u2019s self-titled debut album turns 40, leading to the Dec. 5 release of a new compilation, \u201cFYC40,\u201d whose various configurations include remixes, videos and concert material in addition to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2201400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2201400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2201400"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2201400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2201401,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2201400\/revisions\/2201401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2201400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2201400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2201400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}