The SDE Interview: Fine Young Cannibals

Roland Gift and David Steele tell the FYC story…

Fine Young Cannibals haven’t released any new music in almost 30 years, and haven’t played any concerts since 1991. That means it has become easy to forget just how massive the trio were. At the start of the 1990s, Fine Young Cannibals were arguably the biggest band on the planet.

Hits like ‘She Drives Me Crazy’, ‘Good Thing’ and ‘Johnny Come Home’ were an irresistible mix of soul, funk and pop, while second album The Raw And The Cooked was a multi-platinum No 1 smash both in the UK and US.

They began when guitarist Andy Cox, bassist David Steele and drummer Everett Morton’s previous band, successful politically-charged ska collective The Beat, split in 1983. For a singer, they recruited Roland Gift, whose Hull-based band Akrylikz had supported The Beat.

Morton left before debut single ‘Johnny Come Home’, which reached No 8 in 1985. Fine Young Cannibals’ soulful self-titled debut made the Top 20 and was an underground word-of-mouth in the States, before 1989’s more modern, Prince-influenced The Raw And The Cooked saw the band become a genuine phenomenon. 

However, Fine Young Cannibals were unable to follow it up, spending several years trying to get a third album together. Eventually, after one-off single ‘The Flame’ promoted a 1996 singles compilation, they drifted apart.

Since then, Gift has released just one solo album, 2002’s Roland Gift, the same year Cox’s duo Cribabi released their sole LP Volume. Steele’s new duo Fried made one self-titled album too, in 2004.

While Gift resumed touring a decade ago, FYC have generally kept a low profile. Now, there’s a new 4CD+DVD box set, FYC 40, which celebrates four decades since their debut. An SDE exclusive blu-ray of The Raw And The Cooked has also just been released, featuring a host of mixes of the classic album, including David Kosten’s new Dolby Atmos version.

Quite how Fine Young Cannibals took over the chart is a remarkable story that hasn’t been told enough. Here, in exclusive in-depth exclusive interviews, Roland Gift and David Steele tell SDE how it all happened. It’s a story featuring Prince’s lava lamps, a freeloading Lauren Bacall, the second coming of Elvis Presley, an unreleased Steve Martin remix, turning down Jack Nicholson, music’s most divisive manager, Michael Jackson… and a 21-year ongoing dispute over the word “leatherette”.

Hi Roland, and hi David. Does it feel like 40 years since Fine Young Cannibals started?

Roland Gift: No, it doesn’t. I was talking to a friend recently, about how we’d go to clubs when we were 16 and how we don’t feel any different now. We don’t go to clubs anymore, but we don’t feel that different inside. It’s the same with this box set. No way does it feel like 40 years.

David Steele: It’s scary when you put it like that, it sounds like the anniversary of D-Day. Forty years? That’s a really long time. I can’t believe how old I am. I feel like I’m in my fifties, but I’m in my sixties. Not in a morbid way, but it feels like time is running out, like it’s going faster and faster.

David, when The Beat split, were you, Andy and Everett always going to start a new band together?

David: If we were going to do something together again, it had to be something amazing. It couldn’t just be The Beat 2. That’s one reason getting Fine Young Cannibals together took so long.

How did the approach to Roland come about?

David: We spent a long time looking for other singers, then there was a chat about: “What about that guy from Akrylikz?” Roland was more of a sax player than a singer in Akrylikz, but he’d sung a couple of songs and he had a charisma.

Roland: Akrylikz did probably 10 dates supporting The Beat. I’d then left Hull and moved to London, where I was in a new group. Andy’s wife phoned me and I went to Birmingham to meet everyone.

David: When we got in contact with Roland, he said: “I’m mainly a singer now.” He came over to Handsworth, we played him some stuff and it started to work.

Roland: It was one of those moments where you look all over the place for something, when it’s right next to you. I’d been there all along, but David and Andy had to go through what they did in looking for singers before thinking of me.

What do you remember about Arkylikz’ shows with The Beat?

Roland: Mostly, it was a lot of fun. The Beat were nice to us, and there was a bit of money: enough to eat and sleep. 

David: They were more like an LA ska band than a British one. Roland always had charisma, but they were all funny guys, a nice bunch of lads with hyper-energy.

Roland: There was a nasty moment at Top Rank in Birmingham. We’d signed a few autographs, which was a first for us. On the way to a chip shop after the gig, some mods got out of a car. We thought they were carrying rolled-up posters for us to sign. In fact, it was pickaxe handles and they laid into us. That was weird.

Was it an easy decision to join Andy and David’s new band?

Roland: I could have done more with the group I was in, but I took the opportunity to see what would happen with David and Andy instead.  I was a bit mercenary. It wasn’t a done deal, as I could have gone back to my other group, but I thought: “David and Andy have done this before, so maybe they can do it again.” I was being quite selfish.

How soon did songwriting start to gel between you?

Roland: I was given a tape over Christmas of some backing tracks they’d been working on. I wrote ‘Move To Work’ and ‘Funny How Love Is’ over the holidays, so pretty quickly we realised we had something worth pursuing.

David: In The Beat, the songs just poured out. The Cannibals always took longer. It was more like: “Take a beat off there,” “Try the chorus from that song.” 

I’d got better at writing songs by then, with an understanding of what choruses, middle-eights and pre-choruses are. I’d written a lot of The Beat’s songs, but it just took a while in the Cannibals to write great ones.

Why did Everett leave?

David: It was hard, as we couldn’t get arrested. 2-Tone had gone from being a wave of mass hysteria to nothing. Now, people love that era again, but back then it was nothing.

Dave and Roger had started General Public, which flopped. Dave would say he wrote The Beat’s songs, when really he wrote the lyrics. But trying to convince record companies I really had written their music was impossible and nothing was happening. Any of us could have given up at that point. We weren’t a band that worked immediately, it took a bit of time. 

On top of that, Everett had his own drum style, which didn’t quite fit the Cannibals. But we stayed friends after he left and I loved Everett more than anyone. He died four years ago, which was like losing family. Maybe I’m too uptight, but I haven’t told many men that I love them. When Everett got ill, he was one of them.

What were your initial hopes for the band?

Roland: Initially, I thought the Cannibals might be a way to establish myself as an actor. I was open to anything that might come along, then, once we started working together, it quickly became something serious. 

It’s like a relationship: you can meet someone who seems nice, but you don’t necessarily think you’ll get married. It can take a while before you think: “This is worth it.” Pretty quickly, though, I thought: “Yeah, this is the thing to do.”

I did some acting as a result of Fine Young Cannibals, like Sammy And Rosie Get Laid and Scandal, but I soon became more concerned with singing than acting.

Was there a particular moment when you realised FYC would be a long term relationship?

Roland: ‘Johnny Come Home’. As the first single, it worked on a number of levels: it was catchy but heartfelt, and it wasn’t an obvious subject for a pop song. That felt like an area we could occupy, that it was something we could mine.

David: Once we had ‘Johnny Come Home’, it took off. The whole world wanted to sign us. It went from nobody wanting to take our phone number, to every record company in England offering us whatever we wanted. 

Did you know straight away ‘Johnny Come Home’ would be a big song?

David: I didn’t know how big a hit it would be, but I knew: “OK, that’s a hit.”

Roland: I never felt that way about any of our songs, as that side of things was so out of our hands. When you release a record, you really release it: you let go of it and it’s out of your hands. 

You don’t have ownership of it anymore. All you can do is think: “I really like it, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t do well,” but there’s no guarantee.

Before you signed to London Records, you had a memorable appearance on The Tube. What was that experience like?

Roland: That was a big thrill, as me and my friends would talk about The Tube on Friday night in the pub before going to the clubs. Being on it was a real treat, and the people who worked on it were nice and friendly.

We were doing showcases for record companies at a studio in Birmingham, where The Archers used to be recorded. That’s where The Tube director Geoff Wonfor came to film us. Doing that show made us feel we were on the inside of the industry.

David: The Tube was great, but we’d already started to get interest by then. We’d gone back to The Beat’s old manager, John Mostyn, who started to manage the Cannibals and sort us a deal. 

A combination of John and ‘Johnny’ meant The Tube got to hear about us. Even before it was shown, the hype had started around us. London had been the first label to show interest, but they only offered a singles deal. Whatever happened, we knew we at least wanted an albums contract.

Roland: Years later, I was in the doldrums for a while. What got me out of it was doing shows in 2013 with Jools Holland. The first time I’d met Jools was that Tube appearance. I introduced myself to him, but my hand was wet as I hadn’t dried it after washing it, after I’d been to the toilet. Jools immediately wiped his hand in disgust.

‘Johnny Come Home’ felt like a companion song to ‘Smalltown Boy’ by Bronski Beat…

Roland: That’s a fair description. We were labelmates on London with Bronski, so there was some kinship there. We’d see them around at London’s office, and Jimmy Somerville later sang backing vocals on ‘Suspicious Minds’.

FYC 40 has Anne Dudley’s mix of ‘Johnny Come Home’, which was due to have been the original single version. How easy a decision was it to stick with your own mix instead?

Roland: It was easy for us, because ours was clearly better. There’s a lot of bluff in the music industry. Nobody really knows what’s going to be a hit. Clearly, London didn’t think the original of ‘Johnny’ was going to be a hit, otherwise they wouldn’t have made us work with Anne Dudley.

David: Working with Anne was us trying to do a proper version of ‘Johnny’ in a fancy studio. We threw it away, as it wasn’t as good as the original. 

Roland: I always like to go with feeling. That can make you seem determined or awkward, but I’m intuitive on whether something feels right. I value that. You have to stick with what you believe. When we got together, the three of us had that in common.

You followed ‘Johnny Come Home’ with ‘Blue’. How important was the political side of the band?

David: Politics was important for everyone at the time, not just the band. It was important for the country. We lived in Handsworth, and it was grim. But, although politics was important, so were a lot of other things: ‘Johnny’ was only political in a secondary way.

Roland: Politics was very important, until they didn’t play our records. After ‘Johnny’, Radio 1 made us “Band of the year”, or something like that. But, when ‘Blue’ came out, with its references to governments and urban decay, they didn’t ban it: they just didn’t play it.

David: At the time, I think we just thought: “OK, there’s no airplay for that one.” We never could get ‘Blue’ right. I’m not sure we ever did.

Roland: Releasing ‘Suspicious Minds’ was a way to get us out. It’s what saved us from that hole.

Why specifically choose ‘Suspicious Minds’ to cover?

Roland: It was a risky thing to do, which was fun, knowing people would ask if it was naff or if it was cool. Where were we on that knife-edge? 

‘Suspicious Minds’ was a lot of things: kitsch, cool, tongue-in-cheek, but also sincerely felt. There’s a bit of everything in there, and I like that. I don’t like it when music takes itself too seriously. 

‘Suspicious Minds’ is a great song, and we liked that it was from Elvis’ reemergence, his second coming. We listened to a few songs from that period. ‘In The Ghetto’ was the next-closest contender.

Did the timeless sound of the debut come easily?

David: Reading our old interviews, it can sound like everything was planned, but I don’t remember there being any masterplan. 

The huge change for me was in how I wrote. In The Beat, I wrote on bass. In the Cannibals, I switched to writing on keyboards. A lot of our songs came from the Hammond, and later piano, as opposed to bass. 

We were always massive Stax fans, but I wasn’t trying to write Stax songs, it was more that this was the music coming out when I wrote on Hammond.

Did you know from the start of the band that the album/tour/album/tour treadmill wasn’t something Fine Young Cannibals would be caught up in?

Roland: No. Maybe if we’d been ten years younger, we might have done that. At the start of the band, I was keener to tour than Andy and David. They were more jaded, having done so many tours of America with The Beat. 

As another example of the way nobody knows how best to make something happen, everyone said to us: “To break America, you’ve got to tour there.” But we became quite popular there quite quickly, without having to slog around in the way we’d been told.

Did it feel a long time in between the two albums?

Roland: It did. People were complaining and thought we were one-album wonders, as it was so long between the two. Proving people wrong when they write you off is always a pleasure.

David: Not really, as there was always stuff happening. It wasn’t like a Coen Brothers film, with us locked in a room. The first record slowly spread around Europe, so we’d find ourselves in Italy six months after Britain. We were always working.

In between the two albums, David and Andy became one-hit wonders as Two Men, A Drum Machine And A Trumpet, when ‘Tired Of Getting Pushed Around’ reached No 18 in 1988. How did that come about?

David: That was just for fun, something we thought would be a Cannibals B-side. Then Pete Tong pressed up some white labels, gave them to some people in Ibiza, and it became a big club track. It was never meant to be a single; I hardly think it’s a masterpiece.

There was one annoying thing attached to ‘Tired Of Getting Pushed Around’, though. Andy and I did some music for Planes, Trains And Automobiles. Steve Martin was a big fan of ‘Pushed Around’ and wanted to do a Steve Martin version of it with us. That would have been great, but London banned it from happening. They already thought we were never going to finish the second Cannibals record and their view was: “God, if we start putting Steve Martin on ‘Pushed Around’, it’s never going to end.”

Before finishing The Raw And The Cooked, several songs were previewed on the soundtrack of Barry Levinson’s film, Tin Men. Were they written specifically for the film?

David: The sound of the band was already changing. Barry asked us for a soul-sounding soundtrack, and we had to tell him we weren’t doing that style anymore. ‘Johnny’ was the start of where we intended to go: half-programmed, half-live.

Even now, The Raw And The Cooked is an album on which you can’t predict where it’s going to go next…

Roland: No, you can’t, and that’s good. It is that kind of record. But that wasn’t intentional, it just happened that way.

David: The style of the The Raw And The Cooked is more about its production than the songwriting. Some of it, like ‘Tell Me What’, is more of an old-sounding Stax song. Something like ‘She Drives Me Crazy’ obviously isn’t like that. Then you have songs like ‘I’m Not The Man I Used To Be’. Trying to put breakbeats on a normal song like that has been done a billion times now, but it was fairly original at the time.

When did the idea come of having the Raw classic songwriting and Cooked contemporary dance aspects?

David: The idea was to have one side of old-sounding soul songs and one of the more modern songs. Once we sequenced it, it just didn’t work. It was a great concept, but it sounded better once we jumbled the songs up.

Roland: The title came after the songs were done. Once you create an album, you have to give an explanation for it.

We wrote whatever came to mind, pulling together everything we could. That’s what we named the album after, but I don’t think the name was significant.

‘Don’t Let It Get You Down’ is an extraordinary song to have on such a huge album…

Roland: That’s the most experimental song on there, sure. We were thinking of Prince when we wrote it. 

David: ‘Don’t Let It Get You Down’ is an interesting song, a weird experiment that came about from getting into Derrick May, Todd Terry and doing remixes for Chicago and Detroit people.

It’s a song some people really love. We did some stuff with Jean-Baptiste Mondino, who was obsessed with ‘Don’t Let It Get You Down’ and said it was our best song.

Is it true you approached Prince to produce The Raw And The Cooked?

David: I’m fairly sure Prince didn’t get near our request. That’s an idea which reminds me of the stuff we tried that didn’t work. On the first album, we were into early hip-hop, The Clash and The Rolling Stones: stuff that isn’t on that record at all. We wanted to change after that first album, and Prince was a massive influence, especially Sign O’ The Times.

Roland: Instead, we worked at Prince’s Paisley Park studio with his engineer, David Z. 

What was David Z like to work with?

Roland: David was good, very at home in Paisley Park. 

David: Before David, it never worked when we tried working with other producers, as they wouldn’t get our dynamic in the band. I’m more of a bassist than a keyboardist, so a producer would say they’d want to get a proper keyboardist in. I’d think: “Yeah, that might be good,” but when it came to it, they’d just sound professional. Not in a good way, but in a piano bar way, so I’d have to go back to playing keyboards after all.

When we were told we couldn’t get Prince, but that we could work at Paisley Park with David Z, we thought: “Well, that sounds like fun.” I’ve worked in other celebrity studios, and they’re usually chaotic. But the people Prince had running his studio were so great to work with.

What was it like working at Paisley Park?

Roland: The studio itself was like any studio, really. It wasn’t eccentric, like Lee Perry’s studio with all its juju stuff hanging around. 

I thought there’d at least be joss sticks or something, but Paisley Park was state of the art. It was just a new studio for hire, not somewhere loads of people had been over the years, like AIR or RAK. 

David: Prince had two studios there: one that anyone could use, and the one where he and his own people worked. As we were working with David Z, we got the actual Prince studio. That meant it had the Purple Rain guitar in the corner and Prince’s lava lamps on the desks. 

We picked up that Purple Rain guitar, but we didn’t want to take the piss. Can you imagine if we dropped it? Just seeing it opened my mind, seeing Prince’s wah-wah pedal and his flanger. 

At the time, I only liked using straight keyboards. When David Z said: “Why not try putting it through a flanger?”, my initial thought was: “Hmm…” but when David said: “It’s Prince’s flanger…”, I went: “OK, then!” And you can hear it on ‘She Drives Me Crazy’, as well as Prince’s wah-wah.

Roland: It was Prince’s studio, so obviously that was a big thing, but there was nothing peculiar about it, apart from the fact it was on the outskirts of Minneapolis. That’s how you knew you were in Prince’s principality. 

David: Paisley Park was this world of funk and coolness but, outside there, Minneapolis was like Fargo. David would take us to the Riviera Supper Club: imagine the restaurant in any episode of Fargo and it was that.

Going back to trusting your intuition, ‘Good Thing’ was famously written in five minutes…

Roland: Yeah, it was. David played the tune, I started singing a lyrical idea I’d had and that was it. 

That happens now and again, when a song writes itself. It feels like you’re not doing it. It’s good to know when to trust it, to stop once it’s ready.

There’s a song I haven’t released yet that’s like that, ‘Do You Really Want To Know’, that I wrote with Errol Brown. Not the one from Hot Chocolate, a different Errol. He played me the chords, and I sang over them straight away. 

On the other side of the songwriting equation, ‘She Drives Me Crazy’ was apparently a marathon to write…

Roland: It took ages, probably six months. We played it to the record company before we finished it, which was involving other people too early in the process. 

Sometimes, you can end up doing it by committee. You’ll get a better result from time to time, but it doesn’t feel as much fun.

David: It started out as just the beat and the guitar. Roland couldn’t quite get it, then after we’d gone home one night, he came up with the falsetto. That was: “Wow!”

At that point, it was still called ‘She’s My Baby.’ We knew that was a working title, none of us liked the lyrics then. The second David heard it, he said: “Right, this is the one.” There was something cool about it, we just hadn’t worked the song itself out. 

What was the key to finally getting it right?

Roland: Being in the studio with David Z helped, as we had to get on with it. The same as we’d done with ‘Johnny Come Home’, we didn’t want to leave with the job half done, and we had to get ‘She Drives Me Crazy’ done by a certain time.

David: We used Prince’s drum machine on it. David Z has a story of how he put a snare in a massive room with a special mic to get the drum sound. And that did happen, but I reckon it was the power of Prince’s drum machine.

Roland: Getting the title was key. David (Steele) pushed for that, changing it from ‘She’s My Baby’ to ‘She Drives Me Crazy’. Once there was pressure on and we had the title, the whole concept materialised. The line “What is wrong with my life, that I must get drunk every night?” popped into my head, fully formed.

In terms of the production, it’s a sparse song for one that took so long…

Roland: True, but it can take a while to get rid of stuff. And it is sparse, but at the same time there’s a lot there.

David: ‘She Drives Me Crazy’ is a funny song, as we didn’t see it as the big hit. We thought we’d already got that done, with ‘Good Thing’, so ‘She Drives Me Crazy’ is a song we mucked about with a lot: speeding the guitar up, slowing it down, playing it normally and bleeding it all together. Sonically, the guitar on ‘She Drives Me Crazy’ is amazing.

We also tried to copy Prince, without having his manual, by varispeeding the vocals and putting normal vocals on top. ‘She Drives Me Crazy’ was a “Try this!” song, not a “This is the big hit, so we’d better do this properly” song.

How did it feel to take off in the States?

Roland: It was a bit abstract, really. We were over here when our records were selling by the bucketload over there. It was just numbers: two million, three million, four million… It didn’t mean anything. Even the chart positions felt abstract.

I joked with Roger Ames at London that we’d pluck numbers out of the air which would then appear. We could do things to help or to mess it up, but mostly it was out of our control. It felt different once we went over there and actually saw people at the shows.

David: That success in the States was a combination of really fun and total madness. And it was unexpected. If we’d come back on the second album to a ‘Johnny Come Home’ level of success, that would have been pretty good.

The shows there were always great, complete mania. The only weird thing is that I could never get ‘Good Thing’ right live. That used to slightly bug me.

What made the band so successful in the States?

David: Looking back now, it’s so bizarre that we were one of the biggest bands in America. In a weird way, we were more important there than in England. We stood out in the States as these English weirdos, whereas we’re used to that kind of people over here.

Roland: A lot of it was luck. When we first got together, there was talk we wouldn’t do that well in America, because MTV was a very white channel. That changed because of Michael Jackson, so that was timing.

By the second record, Al Teller had taken over from Irving Azoff as head of our American label, MCA. Al thought he could make an impression with us, that we were a good group for him to make his mark as one of his projects. 

And our songs were genuine. They weren’t gimmicky, which is why I think they’re still played. It’s a mixture of luck and craft.

How starry did it feel at the centre of that success?

David: Lauren Bacall wanted tickets for the Beacon in New York and left a pile of albums to be signed. Weird stuff like that kept happening. When we were in LA, Michael Jackson kept calling us up, saying: “Come to Neverland.” Every time, on the morning he’d wanted us to come, he’d cancel.

Roland: We also got invited to go to Jack Nicholson’s house for a party. We had a show the next day and, being the dutiful band we were, we thought it was too risky to go. Now, I wish we’d gone.

David: If I’d had the choice, I’d have preferred to meet Prince than Jack Nicholson, though my mum would have been impressed if I’d met Jack. 

Part of the problem was that, as well as John Mostyn, we had this insane co-manager, Tony Meilandt. Tony would make stuff up, but half the stuff he said was true, so it was impossible to figure out what was real and what wasn’t. He’d tell us some complete nonsense, then say: “Warren Beatty and Madonna want you to come for dinner,” and that would be true. 

One day, Tony said: “Al Green is coming up Broadway in his car and he wants to meet you now.” And there he was. It’s like what people say about lottery winners: after a while, it starts to feel normal.

What was the funniest part of being so successful?

Roland: I bumped into a guy who was married to a woman I once knew. He told me how, in the past, he’d pretended to be me. I thought that was hilarious. 

David: A friend told me how he was walking in the desert in Africa. He hadn’t seen anyone for three days, then he got to a hut and ‘She Drives Me Crazy’ was playing on the radio.

An equivalent thing happened to me during lockdown. The centre of London was so quiet, maybe three other people there, and I was walking to the British Museum. It was so eerie, then I heard someone blasting out ‘She Drives Me Crazy’. Some songs just follow you around like a dog.

How important was dance culture to the band? There are some fantastic remixes on the box set…

David: Having worked with Wee Papa Girl Rappers and Monie Love, it was something we did right from the beginning. Prince Paul is a genius, so having him do a remix was fantastic. Having Pete Tong as our A&R was great, he’d have ideas for remixers too.

There are a couple of new remixes on the boxset too. I said: “No, this is shit” to a couple of them, London would say: “No, it’s great!” To be fair, we’d come to an agreement: they didn’t try to steamroller us into accepting a remix we didn’t want.

Roland: I’m not mad on remixes, to be honest. Todd Terry’s ‘Missing’ remix for Everything But The Girl was great, or Fatboy Slim’s ‘Brimful Of Asha’ for Cornershop, but on the whole I don’t go for them. I wouldn’t stop someone doing it, I’m just not a fan.

Does that apply to Surround Sound mixes too? You’re talking to the website releasing the Atmos Mix The Raw And The Cooked on blu-ray here…

Roland: To be honest, yeah. Sorry, I’m not that kind of music fan. I grew up listening to records on a transistor radio. The way I like listening to music is to have it playing in another room. That’s my aural bent, I’m just not an audiophile.

When I was living in Hull and looking for a record player, I went into a proper hi-fi shop, thinking I’d spend about £300. I was nearly talked into spending £1,000, but I managed to escape and bought something much more reasonable from John Lewis.

David: I’m really looking forward to hearing those David Kosten mixes, I can’t wait for a copy.

Why do you think the band drifted apart?

Roland: I know exactly why: we didn’t have a manager who could hold us together. When I say “hold us together,” I don’t mean drugs, we weren’t into that. I’d got drugs out of my system long before the Cannibals.

The problem was, after The Raw And The Cooked, John Mostyn resigned after finding a group who he thought would be the next Beatles: Ocean Colour Scene. That left us with Tony Meilandt. Tony was really good in some ways, really bad in others. 

David: Tony was legendary, and bonkers. He was cool and not cool. He had really good taste in music, food, TV. But Tony was really into drugs. He spent like crazy and that put pressure on him. It wasn’t so much the band who went mad after The Raw And The Cooked as the people around us.

Roland: The atmosphere around us was that The Raw And The Cooked had done so well, but the next album had to keep on that upward trajectory, as otherwise it would be a failure. That was ridiculous, but we’d stopped working in the way we had.

David: The dynamic of the band had changed, so that we weren’t really a band anymore. Every band has a love/hate relationship, where you go “That’s shit!” at a bad idea. I felt like we couldn’t say “That’s shit!” anymore. At the beginning, we’d had that relaxed mood. 

Everybody wanted a massive hit. If we’d just made a cool record and not worried about that, maybe we’d have made a fourth and fifth album.

Roland: It was a bad atmosphere. Then I took off and did a play, which didn’t help.

Was that when you appeared in Romeo And Juliet for the Hull Truck Theatre Company?

Roland: That’s right. I needed to get away from the band’s environment, as it had gone a bit toxic. When I got back, we moved to New York. We’d worked a lot there, and we wanted a cool New York vibe. 

When we were in New York, David said to me: “Tony tells me you and Andy are looking for a new bass player. Is that right?” And it wasn’t the case at all. Tony thought divide and rule was the best way to operate. He’d say the same thing to David and Andy about me. We’d have been better with Brian Clough as manager, someone who knows how to get the best out of people.

You’d always been able to deflect external pressures before. What had changed?

Roland: I’m not sure, but I think there can be fissures in any relationship, which can then expand. For instance, I was on the cover of Rolling Stone, which was upsetting not so much for Andy but for David.

I wasn’t in awe of Rolling Stone. I didn’t care about it, I just took things as they came. I’d grown up in what people would call an alternative environment. Drugs had been around from when I was very young. I’d stay in communes from when I was little, as my mum was involved with grassroots politics and women’s lib. It wasn’t a sheltered life, I’d seen stuff, so things like Rolling Stone didn’t carry as much weight as they might have. To me, that cover wasn’t a big deal. It was a big deal when it first happened, like our first Blitz cover or getting our first John Peel play. 

That crack was there in the band because David and Andy always had a fear – I think especially David – that they’d get dumped by a singer who would go off and take all the attention and credit. That’s because that’s what had happened to them in The Beat with Dave Wakeling and Ranking Roger. So me getting a Rolling Stone cover? The fissure widened.

David: The pressure Roland had was different to me and Andy. When I was out, people would think they knew me, but it was more that they’d think: “Did I go to school with that bloke?” If I was properly recognised, it was mostly by fans wanting to say nice things. Whereas Roland had builders singing ‘Johnny Come Home’ and ‘She Drives Me Crazy’ at him every time he walked down the street. 

Roland: There were also personal things, like I’d had a child between finishing The Raw And The Cooked and moving to America. I’m sure that affected me.

David: Massive, life-changing things happened to Roland, whereas I was just the same, really.

Could a different manager have kept you together?

David: It’s hard to figure out. I’d like to blame the manager, but I’m not sure that’s true. You have to take some responsibility yourself. 

If we’d had a different manager, it would have helped. Tony definitely liked to split us up. Rather than say: “Roland says you’re getting his nerves a bit,” Tony would say: “Roland really hates you.” Obviously, that’s not great, and Tony did it to all of us. Equally, you could say we should have just said to each other: “Hang on, what’s going on here?” It’s a bit of both.

Roland: If we’d had an experienced manager, I’m sure we’d have been OK. That’s why I mention Brian Clough, as he’d have known what to do, how to keep us together. But the Cannibals didn’t have the person who could have done that.

In the sessions for the third album, you worked with Lamont Dozier and Teddy Riley. They seem to represent the extremes of those Raw and Cooked sides of the band…

Roland: That happened because we weren’t working well together. It was: “What can we do to fix this?” It wasn’t enjoyable at all. It was like moving someone else in to try and fix your marriage.

David: I must have had the music for 50 different songs, but none of them got finished. After a while, I couldn’t figure out if any of them were any good or not. Some songs stuck around for so long, I’d hear them yet again and think: “Is this good or terrible?” 

Working with other people wasn’t right for us, even though we tried it. For the third record, maybe we should have done something like Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation Of, keep the soul sound with a hip-hop thing and some live stuff. 

Was there a definite end point of the band?

David: After a while, we said we’d do one more record and that would be it. Once you’ve decided that, it’s over, isn’t it?

It had stopped being fun. It’s like a football team: you’ve won the Premier League, then you start losing games and start feeling down. We were like strikers who just couldn’t score. We didn’t know if it was the strikers losing form or the midfield not providing enough service.

Roland: I know when it ended for me. We were working in the studio on a song I’d written with some other people. I thought we were all making an effort to make it work.

That night, I went to an industry preview screening of Bernardo Bertulocci’s new film, Stealing Beauty. Bertolucci wanted someone to write the music for the film, and I was being considered for that. I got to the screening room in Wardour Street and saw Björk there – and David and Andy. We all knew we’d be there that night, but none of us had mentioned it in the studio. After the film, I told David and Andy: “This is mad. What is this about? We’re working together, but none of us are saying anything.” That was when it was over for me.

David: You can stay married to some people forever. Others are amazing for three or four years, but they’re not going to work out long term. Maybe we were just more like that.

What do you think of the final single, ‘The Flame’?

Roland: I like it, it’s a good swansong. That’s the shame of it, that we probably could have done more. We had more to offer, but it didn’t happen that way.

Are you still in touch with the other two?

Roland: Andy more than David. David said some pretty bad things about the Cannibals when he got his new group Fried together. 

David said the Cannibals were like leatherette in comparison to what he was doing now, which was the real thing. He was diminishing himself by saying that, and I don’t think it was a nice thing to say for people who liked the Cannibals. It was an off thing for him to say.

David: That comment really pissed Roland off. In that interview, I did also say that leatherette has its own charm, that I love the stuff you get on diner seats, which is its own thing. 

I wasn’t talking about Roland’s vocals at all, I was referring to how Fried used strings: how strings were set up then in a different way to how they’d been used by Marvin Gaye, and that Fried were trying to recreate that. It was about me as a musician.

We had an offer to reform last year. The manager behind it told me Roland was angry about that quote. I have said sorry to Roland, and it honestly wasn’t like I was trying to make a big anti-Cannibals statement with it, but it really annoyed Roland. That’s where he is, and I can’t do much about it. And that’s fine.

What happened to Fried, anyway? I loved the self-titled album you did in 2004.

David: I think Fried is the best record I ever made. Just before its release, London got bought by Warner, who closed London down. So the album came out, but not really properly.

Fried got picked up by Sony, but we were managed by Rab Andrew and Gerry McElhone: lovely, funny guys who also managed Primal Scream. The Primals had just left Sony, so our managers were un-mates with the label. 

Then, as Sony were about to relaunch us, (singer) Jonte just didn’t get on the plane over from New Orleans, where she lived and where we’d made the album. Sony said: “We can’t relaunch you if you’re not getting on the plane.” They were so pissed off.

What would it take for the three of you to reform?

David: I don’t think it’ll ever happen. Maybe if aliens insist it’s the only way they’ll let Earth survive. It’s not impossible, but to do something amazing would take a lot of work. Also, it got a bit weird recently, when Roland advertised Fine Young Cannibals reunion gigs. That added a little bit of spice.

To me, reunions are like guys who do civil war reenactments. It’s a good day out and you get to do some jousting, but there’s something about you at your peak that you can’t recreate. Artistically, it doesn’t seem valid, as you only get to have a moment in life.

Roland: Oh, we couldn’t, I don’t think. If we did, I don’t think it would be good for the audience.

What are you working on now?

David: The last few years have been tricky. I’ve been trying to sort out The Beat, after Saxa, Roger and Everett have passed away. I’ve tried to sort that out for their families, which has involved a lot of lawyers. I’m hoping that will end soon.

I’m also trying to get Fried back on streaming. On one of our songs, ‘Back From The War’, we wanted to sample the helicopters from Apocalypse Now. Our engineer was John Casali, a lovely and persuasive Yorkshire guy. John phoned up Lucas Films and asked for any helicopter outtakes from Apocalypse Now – and Lucas Films sent them to him. John eventually won an Oscar for Best Sound for Bohemian Rhapsody, which didn’t surprise me in the least.

John has been trying to place ‘Back From The War’ into a cool film. Maybe that’ll happen, or maybe it’ll end up on a crisp advert.

Roland: I did a musical play, Return To Vegas, which I adapted for Radio 4 a while ago. I’d like to develop that. Another play I did for Radio 4, The Punk’s Progress, is something I’m turning into a graphic novel. I’ve commissioned an illustrator to do the art. It’s about me and some Hull mates following The Clash around. I’d like to develop both of those plays into films.

Do you prefer writing to acting?

Roland: I do. I’m not looking for acting work. I’ve acted for mates, but I don’t want to do auditions and get rejected, which is a big part of an actor’s lot. 

I prefer creating something from the beginning, which is what you also do with music. Being an actor can be like being a session musician. 

Roland, how did you get involved in playing yourself in U&Dave’s reality sitcom, Meet The Richardsons?

Roland: I’ve known (writer/star/stand-up comedian) Lucy Beaumont for years. It’s a Hull thing. Akrylikz were in the same year at art college as Lucy’s dad, and her mum was in a drama group run by someone I know. 

Lucy was my opening act for a couple of shows and, when she was starting out, she’d stay at ours in London.

What about new music? It’s been 23 years since Roland’s self-titled solo debut and 21 since Fried’s.

Roland: I’ve been playing new songs live, so they’re very well road-tested. I will do a new album, and I’m also releasing a Christmas single, ‘Everybody Knows It’s Christmas’. I wrote it with Ben Barson ages ago and I’ve always meant to do it properly. 

With FYC 40 coming out, I asked London if they’d like to release my Christmas single, as it might help sales. I know it’s catchy, having played it live. And it’s nice that the box set allows some shows to happen, which I’ve just announced will be happening next year. That makes it all more of a celebration, more eventful.

David: After Everett, Saxa and Roger passed away, I realised I don’t know how many years I’ve got left. I could have 10 years, maybe 15. How do I want to spend the next 15 years? I’m not into deep dish stuff, and I’d like to do some more music. I’d rather do something new and mindblowing than something old.

What’s your favourite Fine Young Cannibals deep cut?

Roland: ‘I’m Not The Man I Used To Be’. I was quite young when I wrote that, and it has more resonance now.

When was the last time you thought “I’m not the man I used to be”?

Roland: I used to compete as a swimmer. Even when I stopped competing, there were certain people at the pool who I’d sail past. Then I noticed I wasn’t going past them quite so quickly. In some cases, they were now going faster than me. I’m working on changing that.

What are you happiest about what Fine Young Cannibals achieved?

David: I don’t think in those terms, as I’m not perky enough for the modern media world. I am conscious of how lucky I am, doing The Beat, then Fine Young Cannibals, then Fried. That’s a pretty good run, and I can’t ask for anything more than that. I’ve had a very lucky life.

Roland: Longevity: that it’s still meaningful to people. When we got together, we’d listen to a lot of American soul that was about 25 years old at the time. That’s one thing we wanted to do from the start, to make records people would still play 25 years later. It feels good that we did that.

Thanks to Roland Gift and David Steele who were interviewed for SDE by John Earls.

Fine Young Cannibals’ 4CD+DVD box set FYC 40 was released by London Records last week alongside the SDE exclusive blu-ray of The Raw And The Cooked, featuring 11 versions of the album including a Dolby Atmos mix by David Kosten. Pre-orders have shipped and the blu-ray is still available to order only from the SDE shop using this link or the button below.

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