Fine Young Cannibals - The Raw & The Cooked

By 1988 when this record came out, I’d given up on music. I hadn’t liked much that had come out of the decade. All the synth saturated stuff I loathed and I had turned my attention to acting. One day I went over to Birmingham to see Andy Cox and David Steel, they had been in The Beat, and I wanted to see what they were up to. They played me ‘She Drives Me Crazy’ and ‘Good Thing’ and I just thought what is this? I recognised Roland Gift’s voice, but couldn’t initially place it, but as soon as they told me his name, I remembered him from his previous band Akrylykz who had supported The Selecter in Hull University when the 2 Tone Tour passed through there.

When I heard the album, I wished I’d done it myself. They were messing around with Tamla and soul and creating their own sound with it. Andy Cox said it was 30 years of pop music condensed into 30 minutes and that’s what it was; everything that had influenced me all wrapped up and repackaged. It renewed my faith in music and I thought maybe I can get back into singing and making it and eventually I did get the confidence together to do it again and this was one of the albums that enabled that to happen.