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FYC 40 proves that Fine Young Cannibals’ appeal went far beyond a reliance on studio trickery.
It’s a music quiz question for the ages: What connects Prince with the city of Hull?
Firstly, well done to all those of you who didn’t cheat, and secondly the answer, as those of you who did will know, is The Raw & The Cooked, the second album by the Fine Young Cannibals, of whom frontman Roland Gift had been raised in the city after his parents moved there when he was 11.
Formed in 1983 by ex-members of The Beat Andy Cox and David Steele, to get their singer the pair went through hundreds of potential audition tapes until, on hearing Gift, they immediately knew they had a unique sounding talent.
Released two years later, the success of their self-titled debut album was powered by the skittish R&B of Top 10 hit Johnny Come Home, but then Gift decided to try his hand at acting whilst the other two appeared in and contributed to the soundtrack of Barry Levison’s Tin Men.
As delays to the follow-up mounted, to keep an increasingly anxious label off their back Steele gambled and insisted that if they were to have a producer it should be Prince.
In an only slightly less gob-smacking compromise, they instead ended up working with one of the Purple One’s most trusted operators in David Z Rifkin – and to top that they became one of the first to work at the newly finished Paisley Park studio complex in Minneapolis.
The Raw & The Cooked was not, they still emphasise, a “Paisley Park” record, being long instead on the genre-crossing experimentation required to avoid being stuck in one niche or another, but its fortunes turned on the Rifkin-produced She Drives Me Crazy, the distinctive snare drum klatt and neat jams propelling it – and them – to mega stardom on both sides of the Atlantic.
FYC 40 proves that the group’s appeal went far beyond a reliance on studio trickery, however. Gift’s remarkable multi octave voice brimmed with a soulfulness that recalled some of the movement’s greats, a quality which enabled the band to for instance spectacularly makeover the Buzzcocks pop-punk classic Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve?), with hit-making results.
At the other end of the spectrum, Good Thing, I’m Not The Man I Used To Be and particularly the spellbinding Funny How Love Is make a strong case for Fine Young Cannibals as constantly punching well above their weight, whilst Don’t Look Back and the muscular funk of I’m Not Satisfied gave the likes of INXS a run for their money.
Some of the additional material included on FYC 40 points to yet another of Fine Young Cannibals’ dimensions: alive mostly for the 12″ single’s peak, a dozen remixes – including DJ Q’s fresh, garage influenced take on She Drives Me Crazy – demonstrate how their goods could be worked up into different forms.
Also, anything which offers up a guest spot to the legendary Frankie Knuckles (in the guise of a sumptuous and previously unreleased version of Johnny Come Home) just can’t fail.
In the end, following up a record that seemed definitive from the first note had predictable consequences, the trio splitting in 1996, their final single The Flame sounding particularly out of step with the Britpop era’s hubris.
Gift’s solo career after was also an unexpectedly modest one, despite the enviable pedigree. Life is full of surprises though, and this excellent anthology should at least remind the world of a brief period in which, thanks indirectly to the world’s coolest guy, a band from Hull were the unlikely kings of pop.
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