Fine Young Cannibals’ Roland Gift is leaning all the way to the left, so much so that he could be lying down. It’s unclear, as he’s on a video call from his native U.K. and his background is so blurred, he looks like he’s floating horizontally above his sofa. This is not how I expected to encounter Gift, who has been intersecting with my music universe for four decades, an occasion Gift is marking with the hefty compilation FYC40. An 18-song collection of instantly identifiable songs—thanks to his distinct voice—there is also a second collection of a dozen remixes from the likes of Prince Paul and the late Frankie Knuckles. Additionally, Gift just released an original holiday song, “Everybody Knows It’s Christmas.”
Says Gift about the idea to write a Christmas song: “You want to write a song with a person’s name in it, like ‘Johnny Come Home.’ You want to write a song that’s got numbers in it like ‘2-4-6-8 Motorway’ [by Tom Robinson Band]. I’ve got this song called ‘24/7.’ You want to write a song that’s got a place name. I’m trying to think if I’ve got one of those. That’s probably something I’m yet to do. A Christmas song is one of those, like a song people write for a football team. Somewhere in your subconscious, you’ve got a desire to do that.”
Gift is a slow talker, thinking things out before he lets the words unravel. Initially, it feels like he doesn’t know what his thoughts are. But his is a measured approach, and when he’s done talking, he’s left you with a lot.
What there hasn’t been much of is Fine Young Cannibals albums. The trio only had two. Their 1985 self-titled debut spawned the abovementioned “Johnny Come Home” and an excellent version of Elvis’ “Suspicious Minds.” In 1989, they released The Raw and the Cooked, whose standout hit singles, “She Drives Me Crazy” and “Good Thing”—both Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 songs. The multi-platinum album earned three Grammy nominations, but the Fine Young Cannibals didn’t deliver a follow-up, instead leaving an unblemished musical legacy.
Gift has performed a few shows this past year under the Fine Young Cannibals banner, including opening for Belinda Carlisle in the U.K. But much of his time has been taken up by drama: He writes and stars in the radio drama The Punk’s Progress, and the musical drama Return to Vegas. He might be projecting with the latter as he reveals he doesn’t want to tour North America with nine-hour drives in between performances, but, he says, “In my heart, I would prefer a residency at Las Vegas.
“I’ve got fewer years ahead of me than I have behind,” he continues, “I’m very conscious of that. It’s very tempting to go on the road, especially when people say, ‘We’d really like to see you.’ But to be out on the road all the time would be hell. I’d hate that. I like it when it feels like an event rather than a job. I only want to do things nowadays that I really like doing and there’s other things I want to do.”
Hope springs eternal, however, as the appeal of the international chart-topping “She Drives Me Crazy” is everlasting—even if it’s not Gift’s favorite from the FYC catalog as he reveals when he takes SPIN through “the Why & the How” of the memorable song.
SECOND ALBUM STRUGGLES
“With the first album, we had nothing to lose. With this next album, there was a lot of expectation. That, and also wanting to do something really good, we probably put a lot of pressure on ourselves that needn’t have been there.
Even with the first album, we’d had ‘Johnny’ out, and we’d had a second single, ‘Blue,’ which didn’t do very well at all. Then we did ‘Suspicious Minds,’ which got us out of the hole. But I remember going into a shop in Birmingham to try on some trousers, and I could overhear the shop assistant say, ‘Oh, is that guy from that group?’ And one of them goes, ‘Yeah.’ And then the other one goes, ‘Yeah, one-hit wonders.’ There was pressure to be more than a one-hit wonder. All those got in the way of the album coming out sooner.”
THE WORDS
“I remember people saying to me, ‘Come on Roland, come up with the lyrics.’ I was happy to do that, but life had changed a lot for me, and you have to find out what it is you have to say. You’re not just pleasing yourself. You’re trying to please the people you’re with as well, which can be a tricky thing. Groups are like marriages. Sometimes it goes smoothly and sometimes it doesn’t.
Whenever I write songs, I don’t really know what it’s going to be about, or what’s coming. I’ve sat down with people, and we’ve picked a subject, and we tried to write. We’ll spend the afternoon talking about politics and stuff, and we’re going to do a song about that. Then it comes out as a little love song. So I never know what’s going to come. But that’s what I like about writing. That song came along, and we were grateful that it was there, but it wasn’t in any way planned. It felt more like, ‘Shit, we’re here. We are spending money. We better make it worthwhile.’”
FALSETTO
“It’s the first song that I’d sung falsetto on. When I lived in Hull, which is a town in North England, we used to go to this pub called the Polar Bear. It was great, best pub in town. It had all different kinds of people and different rooms. There was one room called The Snug. The other parts of the pub were more rough and ready, but this was where people would get dressed up to go into. There was a fireplace and there was carpet. There was this guy who was very flamboyant. He said to me before I was leaving for London, “Can you sing falsetto?” I never had but I said, “Yeah.” And he said, “You’ll be alright then.” He was a strange guy. He wore a purple fedora, and he’d lost half his jaw, but he used to do the lights in the big theater in town. I always wondered if him saying that came out in ‘She Drives Me Crazy,’ that he had planted the idea and it would mean that things would be alright.”
DAVID Z
“It took quite a long time for the record to come together. We had what we’d worked on, and when there was nothing to be had, there was nothing to work on, then maybe the studio or the person we’d worked with wasn’t available anymore. There’d been a lot of discussion about who can we get to help. Phil Collins was suggested at one point, and we thought. why not ask if Prince would do it. He didn’t, but [Prince’s engineer] David Z was available. He wanted to do it, and it seemed like a good idea.
We had the shape of it. We had the falsetto. The bones of it were there. The architecture was there. It was the soft furnishings that had to be decided on.
At that point the song was “She’s My Baby.” David Z was quite happy with that. He thought it swung, but still wanted it to be “She Drives Me Crazy,” which was a good call. David’s got a version where we cut up words from a magazine, David Bowie style. I don’t remember that happening but I remember us just trying to nut it out.”
PAISLEY PARK
“When you’re in a studio, unless it’s a really eccentric place, modern studios tend to be pretty much the same. Once you’re inside, everything looks pretty similar. Unless you’ve got a view of the outside, you’re just in this room. It could be New York, it could be Minneapolis, it could be Iceland. It could be anywhere. Prince’s guitar was in the studio so that made it different.
It was good when we were working on the other tracks as well and David Z could call people in, like the backing vocalists, and they would come and do it like really well, really quickly. Or somebody to come in and do keyboards, and it was great. Seeing how that talent was just a phone call away, was impressive, and everybody was really nice.
We didn’t meet Prince. But that way nobody’s disappointed either.”
THE BIRTH
“People think of us as an ’80s group, but the album didn’t start to make an impression until we were in the ’90s. It wasn’t No. 1 here like it was in America. Because we’d done so well in America, we probably didn’t pay as much attention to how we were doing in England.
We had a video [for ‘She Drives Me Crazy’] with Philippe Decouflé, a French filmmaker and dancer. The record company felt like there wasn’t enough of us in it, so Pedro [Romhanyi] did some more shots with us in it.
There was nothing smooth about the creation of the song or even the video. It’s like a difficult birth, whereas ‘Good Thing’ really quickly and easily. ‘She Drives Me Crazy’ took six months to come together, ‘Good Thing’ took five minutes. They started playing chords and I started singing. That can affect one’s fondness for a track.”
REMIXES/COVERS/SYNCS
“I don’t care for remixes. They’re not my area of interest. I don’t think I would perform any of the remixes. The Dolly [Parton] cover was amusing. Not many people cover our songs. I think they can’t hit the falsetto. Tom Jones did one with Zucchero. I’m all for that kind of reinterpretation, of people doing it their own way. I feel indifferent about [sync placements] but I was very impressed with the Dua Lipa ad for Chanel. It seemed to elevate the song, make it appear like it’s a classic but in a way that it hadn’t been recognized before. There was something very charming about that ad.”
NOT THE FAVORITE
“‘She Drives Me Crazy’ is not my favorite song. Sometimes a group’s favorite song is the one the audience likes the least. ‘I’m Not the Man I Used to Be’ is my favorite FYC song. I have a strange relationship with ‘She Drives Me Crazy.’ It was one of the songs where I would forget the words sometimes and I don’t normally forget words with songs. It’s great that it’s done so well. I’m very grateful for that. But it’s not the one I would necessarily save if I was in a shipwreck.”
Check out the Roland Gift store for the 7-inch and CD single: https://rolandgift.tmstor.es.
