Feature: FYC at 40 – Roland Gift’s Holiday Look Back…
Roland Gift (Photo Credit: Linda Nylind)
For most revelers, the Holiday Season automatically triggers warm, comforting feelings, filled with sensory delights like the fragrance of pine trees, the taste of cocoa, eggnog, or mulled wine, or the orange glow of a winter hearthside fire. But Roland Gift is not so easily moved by surface aesthetics. At 64, the former Fine Young Cannibals vocalist feels cautious, somewhat conflicted, and he has the quirky Yuletide memories to justify this. For instance, he says, “I remember one Christmas as a child, having to ask someone to leave. We used to play this board game Risk, and this one guy was getting a bit too emotional. I was quite young at the time, probably about 11, and I asked him to leave, and he did — he did go. But that was one of those huge games that we played at Christmas.” Getting kicked out of someone’s house is bad enough. But getting the heave-ho over the holiday? Gift sighs, just thinking about the social ramifications of such a dishonor. “Yeah, you’d have to be pretty bad for that to happen,” he figures.
So this year, Gift decided to write, record, and release an uplifting little reminder to himself — and to others — of the joy of seasonal possibilities. Dubbed “Everybody Knows It’s Christmas,” the new single opens on a slightly shadowy rhythm and the ruminative opening verse “25th of December/ Another year gone by/ Did you do what you promised?/ Did it turn out right?”, and tumbles to a chiming carillon crescendo that could morph into a swaying handclap singalong over both family gatherings and pints with the lads/lasses in any Christmas-eve pub. And given that it’s trilled by Gift, one of the most unique, honey-throated soul stylists ever, the track is a guaranteed pop panacea, a cure for whatever happens to be ailing you this holiday, even frustrated political despair or Scrooge-dismissive cynicism. And its value should only grow exponentially year after year.
Luckily, this ordinarily busy singer/actor (who started as a saxophonist in a ska band in Hull before being offered the lead-singing mic) was between projects this late in 2025. His dance card is usually packed with film, theatre, and playwright opportunities, but currently it’s revolving around a brand-new, career-spanning Fine Young Cannibals retrospective called FYC40, a completely remastered collection that dates back to the trio’s self-titled 1985 debut disc, released right after two ex-English Beat members discovered Gift’s incredible voice, bassist David Steele and guitarist Andy Cox, who promptly invited him to join their fledgling FYC combo. The anthology includes that album’s first two breakout hits, “Johnny Come Home” and a rousing cover of the Elvis classic “Suspicious Minds,” followed by a cavalcade of signature anthems like ”Good Thing,” “She Drives Me Crazy,” up to the farewell 1996 single “The Flame” plus a special bonus disc of top-flight remixes; It’s also available in multiple formats, including a deluxe four-disc, four-DVD box set containing more vault rarities, remixes by Faithless, Arthur Baker, De La Soul’s Prince Paul, and Soul II Soul’s Jazzie B, plus DJ Q tweaking the group’s cover of The Buzzcocks’ “Ever Fallen in Love,” and a DVD of every Fine Young Cannibals promotional video, classic BBC appearances, and a full 1989 “Live at the Paramount” concert. It’s a pretty inviting Christmas, uhh, Gift, it must be said.
“But it’s always a bittersweet time, Christmas, because, like in that song that I wrote (“Everybody Knows It’s Christmas”), “Let’s have a drink to absent friends/ To those we’ve wronged, we’ll make amends.” It’s bittersweet, because we’re all heading in the sme direction, one way or another….”
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IE: The first issue, most important of all: Jimmy Cliff just passed away. Were you a fan? A friend?
ROLAND GIFT: I wasn’t a friend, but I was a fan. And yeah — I remember going to see The Harder They Come when it first came out in England, and it was great. And although I knew his songs before that, just because we used to have them in the house on record — we used to have these compilation records of reggae songs, and then some of his songs were on them, along with a lot of other people from that era, or people who featured in that film. But it was a rare film, you know, and it still is a rare film — a film made in Jamaica with mainly black people in it, and Chinese, as well, actually. So that was the first time I put a face to a singer; it was in The Harder They Come.
IE: Well, I don’t know about you, but I started writing in ’77, and every punk rocker I knew got into reggae the same way, through the Harder They Come soundtrack.
RG: Right. But we had those records before the film, and they were just in the house — they were just records that were in the house. But I know that quite a lot of people got into The Harder They Come, not so much when it first came out. But it was one of those that, as reggae became more popular in England, was a good introduction, because there were so many different reggae artists, actually, in that film. And I also think it’s amazing that so many reggae producers were Chinese. And people didn’t realize that. The Chinese had a lot to do with reggae in America, and I like that — I like when things are not what they seem on the surface, like ganja being really associated with Jamaicans or West Indians, but it was Indians hat took it over there, and ganja was being called that because it’s named after the Ganges River in India. So I like it when things sort of seem like, “Oh, this is very English” or “This is very American.” But actually, there’s a lot of other influences that don’t necessarily get promoted, but are there, if you just kind of look under the surface.
IE: Where did your dad hail from? And how did he influence you musically, growing up?
RG: He came (to Britain) in ’58, and he was from St. Kitts, but I think probably Calypso was more his thing than reggae, really. But I don’t remember him being that mad on music — we did have a Radiogram, and it’s like a piece of furniture, but it’s also a record player. It’s the kind of thing that people used to have in their houses, kind of like a big piece of furniture that you could store your records in, and then lift the lid and you could put them on under the lid, and it looked like a slide board. So we used to have that. But I don’t really remember what he liked that much, but there were Calypso and reggae records. You know the card company, Hallmark? They used to do records, and they used to do knockoffs of reggae records that were already out, and they would have session musicians play on these. And I think Elton John had played on them when he was first starting out — they had good musicians on them, but they were kind of like knockoffs of existing reggae tracks.
IE: Well, I would be remiss if I didn’t throw your mom in there, too. How did she influence you with her (secondhand shop) access to the most fabulous clothes around? Did you just drop by the shop and say, “Mom, I’ll take this and this and this…”
RG: Yeah, I’d drop by the secondhand shop. But my mom was a bit funny — she often wouldn’t want to sell you things, and she wouldn’t often let you take them, because she wanted to sell them. But if you went somewhere else to buy them, she would see it as some kind of treachery. So it was a little bit tricky — it was never very straightforward with that lady.
IE: A main question I wanted to ask is, Do you remember the first time someone around you — or you yourself, actually noticed that you had this amazing voice?
RG: Yeah. The group I used to be in when I first made a record was called The Akrylykz, and — this was before we’d cut a record — there was a guy who had a recording studio in his house in Hull, and we did some demos in there, and there was a guy called Thurston Benz who was a lecturer in sociology at the technical college, but he also used to put gigs on. And he’d heard the demo tapes, and I sang on one of them — KIND of sang on one of them —, and he said to he group, The Akrylykz, “Oh, you should get Roland to sing!” And that gave me a little bit of…ruthless ambition, because three of us were singing in the group, and it just made me become the singer, become the sole singer in the band, with that little bit of encouragement. I was also in a little bit of a drama group, prior to that, and that’s where I first sang onstage. And again, somebody just said something a little bit complimentary, which just sort of buoyed me up enough to pursue it.
IE: When you look back at that era, there are very few singers of that magnitude — the main one is probably Ali Campbell from UB40.
RG: Oh yeah. Yeah. Strangely, Ali Campbell and I used to talk about how we shared a grandmother. I used to live on Ivor Road in Birmingham. My family lived at 66, and at No. 80 were Dave and Betty Campbell, who were his grandparents. And Dave and Betty Campbell’s son and daughter had a group called The Ian Campbell Folk Group, and then Ian Campbell, who was the father of Robin and Ali from UB40. So I always used to visit Betty — Dave died, and I always used to visit Betty when I went back to Birmingham. I’d take her a bottle of whiskey, and sometimes we used to have New Year’s with the Campbells when I was growing up. So yeah — there’s a closeness there.
IE: How and why did you pick the Harry Pye painting (of Santa meeting Frosty the Snowman) for your new Christmas single art and video?
RG: For a short while, I lived in a house in Crouch End before I moved into the house that I live in now, and he knew the person who lived next door to where I’d been staying. And he was doing this thing called “Specialized,” which was singing special songs, and they would go on a record for charity — a young person’s charity or a homeless charity. And that’s where we first met, and then he did a similar thing for a song called “Crushed” that I had out. Well, I didn’t really have it out — it was a demo that I released, and he’d done something for that. And I just thought that for this Christmas song, it would be a good thing to have him do what he did for me quite a while ago for the Christmas song. We’d always sort of kept in touch, so it’s just one of those things…In fact, when we first did the video for “Crushed,” he did it with people, and I didn’t think much of the people that he’d gotten in it, so he ended up doing illustrations. So it’s kind of funny how that happened.
IE: Are you an art lover? And do you paint yourself?
RG: No. Sometimes I do manic things — I’ll make art things, art objects, sort of sculptural things. I like to use stuff that I just find — I like to find things and make it into art. It might be some skirting board and an old basketball, so it’s sort of found art. So I tend to do that. And I’ve been around art, I suppose — my grandfather on my mother’s side, he used to restore paintings. He used to restore oil paintings, and he used to live in Hull. And during the war, Hull was bombed quite heavily, so sometimes if there’d been a hit near the art gallery and paintings had been damaged, he’d go in and assess the damage, and take the paintings out and repair them. So I suppose there was always that sort of sense of art in existence around the house. And we did have some oil paintings in the house that were something to do with my grandfather, so I suppose there’s always been, in some way, some kind of appreciation. So art? I’ve always been around it. But I’ve never had any desire to have something hanging on the wall that would be worth millions, and you dare not have somebody stand next to it in case their cigarette sets it up in flames. But I quite like mass-produced things. I like photographs, because everybody can have them, and records — that was what was always good about records.
IE: Spinning back into our Christmas theme, are there any odd or surprising items that you now can’t help but associate with the season?
RG: I find that I don’t have the need to have a Christmas tree anymore. And I think it was probably because when the kids grew up, it was something that they would want. But when they stopped having Christmas at home, or when they moved out, I didn’t feel the need, or I didn’t feel obliged to go through that thing of bringing this thing into the house that sheds its needles after about two days, and you end up getting ‘em under your toenails. I mean, I will bring greenery into the house, but the whole Christmas tree thing? And then the disposal of it afterwards? So that’s one thing. But you can still have the baubles without the tree. And I do remember egg nog being made as a kid — it was egg yolk and sherry. But my tradition is to make sausage rolls for breakfast on Christmas Day. That’s what I do, or the thing that I do mostly. Sometimes it might be a different bird that we’ll roast, and there are lots. We did once do a bird within a bird within a bird — I think it was a quail within a pheasant, within a turkey. But there’s something a little bit gross about that at the same time. But the sausage roll, I think, is the tradition that’s been maintained the longest, and has never been neglected. It’s one I’ll probably carry on doing forever.
IE: What’s the best Christmas gift you ever got?
RG: The best? Hmm..hard to say. I can’t think of a best Christmas present — I like the day itself. That’s what I look forward to most, and what I remember most of Christmas — just having a day when people come and enjoy the meal together, and watch It’s a Wonderful Life again.
IE: What about watching A Christmas Story? “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid!”
RG: Eh? No — I never saw that! I have not seen that! Who’s in it? Hmmm…..
IE: Your play — not “Pilgrim’s Progress” by John Bunyan, but “Punk’s Progress” —that’s a true story? You actually gave Joe Strummer a safety pin (onstage from the audience) when he needed it?
RG: Yeah, I did. I did.
IE: But didn’t you end up becoming a roadie for (The Clash)?
RG: Yeah, I did. I followed them for a bit on that tour, and then they finished up with four nights at the Music Machine (in London’s Camden Town), in the next street, though, the next street to the one I’m in now. And I went down there early in the day, when the roadies were putting the stuff in, and just kind of hung around. I’d also gotten to know The Specials, because they were on the same tour, so I was recognized. And then Johnny Green, the tour manager, said, “Do you want a job?” And I said, “Yeah!” Because it was great to sort of feel part of it, so I got the job of fixing the backdrops, and when hey came onstage, Johnny Green, he tour manager, was on one side, and I was on the other, and then we would pull these blackout curtains down, off the backdrop, and it would reveal a Messerschmitt on one side and then on the other side, it was a tank in Northern Ireland, in Belfast, and that was their backdrop. So yeah, it was great to feel part of it. And I remember, I was on the floor, fixing the backdrop, and Joe Strummer lost his temper with Johnny Green and was banging his guitar on the backdrop. And Johnny Green had to say, “Steady on, Joe! There’s a man working underneath there!” I was just fixing a clamp, clamping the backdrop together.
IE: I started writing in ’77. And how do you describe that era to some kid today? It’s impossible. It was just magic, don’t you think?
RG: What, the punk era? I guess it’s a lot easier these days to kind of capture that era, because there’s so much footage available now on the internet that you can kind of see glimpses of that theory and get some kind of sense of it. I know I get quite a nostalgic feel about it when I look through the ‘70s. But it’s amazing what you can see now.
IE: We’ve established that you don’t collect art. What do you collect, if anything?
RG: Um, I suppose I’m more interested in collecting experiences than things. I’m more interested in creating than going and getting, as it were. I like the creative process, I like things to come out of the ether into this kind of solid world. That’s kind of what I’m more interested in. So no, I don’t have any…I mean, I’ve got records, and then I’ve got books, but I’ve collected film books, I’ve done that — I’ve got a library of film books, but it’s not like I would bid high for a first edition or something like that. If something comes along, I’ll happily have it. But I’m not a rabid collector.
IE: What are some of your favorite films? And also seasonal films?
RG: Well, It’s a Wonderful Life is a favorite seasonal film. Alfie is a favorite film with Michael Caine. The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Billy Liar, Saturday Night, Sunday Morning, A Taste of Honey, Tom Jones with Albert Finney — I really like that film —The Graduate, Saturday Night Fever, The Parallax View, Donnie Brasco. I like Raging Bull, Mean Streets, and Gloria.
IE: Is there one thing on your agenda for you and your family this Christmas that you’ve got to see or do?
RG: Actually, we used to have a little bit of a tradition, where I’d meet these friends and we’d go to a place called The Wolsley, which was just down the road from Fortnum and Mason’s, and it’s kind of a big, flash showbizzy restaurant — it’s not just showbizzy, but you’ll get showbizzy people in there. But anybody can go in — it’s not like a member’s club. So that used to be a tradition for awhile, butI don’t do that anymore for some reason. But I often like to see a show at Christmas. That’s quite a nice thing, to go and see a matinee and then go for a meal afterwards. That’s quite a traditional thing to do. It might be a ballet, it might be…I mean, one of the last ones we saw — it was a while ago, actually, it was not one of the last ones — but I went to see “Jerusalem,” and that was good, and then I saw “The Ferryman” by the same writer, Jez Butterworth. So that’s always quite nice. And I always like a matinee, as well — a matinee is not so good when you’re an actor, doing a matinee, but it’s quite good as an audience member. But sometimes a matinee is a bit more relaxed, because they’re not thinking about it so much, so it can actually be a good performance, because they’re a bit more relaxed, because they know they’ve got to another one later. So sometimes that works really well. Uh, having done matinees myself, as an actor!
-Tom Lanham
