|
|
 |
| |
Eddy Grant embarked on a musical crusade to preserve Calypso material in between periods of massive chart success.
|
He’s electric! Eddy Grant’s hometown memories
The former Acland Burghley pupil tells
Dan Carrier about his Kentish Town childhood and the teachers ‘who made me what I am’
WHEN Eddy Grant takes to the Jazz Café stage tomorrow (Friday), the Caribbean-born singer-songwriter will feel he is playing a hometown gig.
Because although Eddy was born in Guyana and has lived out of England for more than two decades, he considers himself a Kentish Town boy. His father moved the family from the Caribbean in the 1950s, but although Eddy is aware of his roots, he spent his formative years in NW5.
“I started at Acland Burghley when I was 12 years old,” he says. “I came over from Guyana with my family and Tufnell Park was an interesting place to find yourself – there were perhaps two black kids in the school.”
He recalls the progressive atmosphere and the encouragement he received. It was the 1960s and Acland Burghley was fast earning a reputation as one of the country’s leading state schools for art, music, and drama.
“There were a number of really talented people at the school at the time,” says Eddy. “We started a school magazine that became quite notorious,” he laughs. “We set up a chess club, a debating society and had an active school orchestra that won competitions.”
Eddy played the trumpet and was encouraged by his teachers to pursue his music.
“The musical culture was strong,” he recalls. “They were all so enthusiastic, you couldn’t help but be influenced by it.”
Eddy can still roll off the names of the teachers that influenced him – Alan Breed, Don Kirkman’s drama classes, Joe Kusner and, as Eddy puts it, “his fantastic, beautiful and inspiring art department”.
“These are the people who are responsible for all I am today,” he says. “They gave me a very broad-based education.”
Burghley recognised Eddy’s talents and helped nurture them. He set up a group, Eddy and the Equals, playing lead guitar, singing and producing the band. Eddy used a guitar he had built in woodwork classes at the school. They scored three top-10 hits in 18 months in the mid-1960s, including the number one, Baby Come Back.
“Looking back, we were unconsciously making a statement,” Eddy says. “We were a mixed group of black and white boys, influenced by Chicago blues – Chuck Berry – and the all-black vocal groups.”
Eddy returned to Guyana in 1971 after a serious chest infection that attacked his heart and lungs. He immersed himself in the musical culture his father had taught him about.
“The big thing there is Calypso and I have loved it from a very early age,” he says. “There was a musician called The Mighty Sparrow who everyone across the Caribbean loved. When I came to England I wanted Calypso to be part of what I was doing, and when I returned to the Caribbean I wanted to explore it in greater depth.”
He soon discovered that the music he loved was rapidly being lost. Musicians who had mainly been played live were not being recorded, and the music which had been put down on record and tape was badly chronicled. Eddy decided he could not let this musical heritage be lost. He stopped working on his own music and set out on a mission to catalogue the Calypso of the 20th century.
“I took out six years from doing anything else – I put my music career away,” he says.
“I noticed that nothing was being done to catalogue and save and restore and take care of this massive musical heritage – music from the 1930s, 40s, 50s and 60s that was being lost. I got involved and bought a lot of the companies that owned the music. I have archived and saved it.”
Eddy tracked down old record companies and musicians and bought their back-catalogues. He now runs Ringbang music, which is dedicated to spreading the Calypso message and supporting musicians who play the genre.
He has enjoyed one major advantage over other performers who were using their art to portray political ideals: he could decide what course to take because he ran his own record label and therefore did not have to worry about satisfying record executives – although records such as Frontline and Electric Avenue have sold hundreds of thousands of copies.
Eddy developed a reputation for taking complete control of his output: he ensured he owned the rights to his records, which was unheard of at the time. “The music industry is so money orientated – the dollar provides the bottom line, period,” he says. “But by a beautiful accident that has never been the case for me.
“Artists are dependent on record companies. I know lots of major, major artists who throughout their careers have never really been free to do what they want – it’s all guided strictly by their record companies. Owning your own material and your own label means you simply do not have these restrictions.
“As I have grown older I have become more and more interested in people and the communities they live in, and I feel this has come out in how I write. That is why I made political statements in records like Electric Avenue.”
The return to London and a gig at the Jazz Café is emotional for Eddy – “being in Camden makes me feel like I have come home. This is where I did so much of my growing up” – and he is enjoying playing live. He has put together a backing band, The Frontline Orchestra, which is a new departure. For many years, he played all the instruments on his albums. “It all started by accident,” he says. “One day when we making a record a session player was meant to show up and did not. I thought: ‘why am hanging about? I can play this’. I vowed I would not be held up again. Music is very personal for me. It’s like a painter painting. That is why I like to work that way.”
He says he is enjoying the London summer, visiting old haunts between performing at Glastonbury and the 90th birthday concert for Nelson Mandela in Hyde Park. On Saturday he is heading to the Womad festival in Berkshire. At 60 he feels he wants to see what his music means to others.
“It has really given me an opportunity to bond with a crowd again,” Eddy says. “There is a mark of trust between the artist and the people who buy their music. Many won’t have seen me live and it’s different for me.
“I have a skill, and that is to make music. That is best done in a studio. It is the place you can maximise the talent you have. But the place where you can see how people are reacting to your work, the results of all that time in a studio, is on stage.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
