I.R.S. 6273
Producers: David Z, Fine Young Cannibals, and Jerry Harrison
Track listing: She Drives Me Crazy / Good Thing / I’m Not the Man I Used to Be / I’m Not Satisfied / Tell Me What / Don’t Look Back / It’s OK (It’s Alright) / Don’t Let It Get You Down / As Hard As It Is / Ever Fallen in Love
June 3, 1989
7 weeks
In the early ’80s, British ska group the Beat scored several top 10 singles in England, but didn’t have much luck in America, where a conflict with a similarly named band forced them to identify themselves as the English Beat. The band achieved their album chart high in 1982, when their final studio album, Special Beat Service, reached number 39. The sum of that group’s parts may have been better, at least commercially, than its whole. While English Beat frontmen Dave Wakeling and Ranking Roger went on to marginal success as General Public, former Beat guitarist Andy Cox and bassist David Steele recruited actor/musician Roland Gift to front their new group, named after the 1960 Natalie Wood-Robert Wagner film All the Fine Young Cannibals.
The group’s 1985 self-titled debut album reached number 49, while its only single, “Johnny Come Home,” stalled at number 76. In spite of the group’s mediocre chart performance, some took notice of the Cannibals, including director Barry Levinson, who used songs from the group’s first album as temporary tracks in an early version of the film Tin Men, which starred Richard Dreyfuss and Danny DeVito. Levinson was such a fan that he eventually contacted the Cannibals and asked the group to write new music for the film. The result was “Good Thing,” “Tell Me What,” and “As Hard as It Is.” Levinson also cast the group in the film as a soul band. Meanwhile, the Cannibals also covered “Ever Fallen in Love,” written and originally recorded by British pop-punk aces the Buzzcocks, for the 1986 soundtrack to Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild.
While the songs for the films would serve as the heart of the Cannibals’ follow-up album, they were having trouble coming up with more material. In an effort to end their writer’s block, the Cannibals asked a record company executive to hook them up with Prince. The elfin superstar wasn’t available, but David Z, a Prince cohort whose brother Bobby was a member of Prince & the Revolution, was up for the job. The plan was to bring the Cannibals to Minneapolis, which to them was “nowheresville,” David Z says. Since they would have nothing else to do, they would have little choice but to complete the album. “When they got off the plane, Roland Gift had a big bag of brown rice because he probably thought that he couldn’t get any in Minneapolis,” David Z recalls.
The producer booked the band at Prince’s Paisley Park Studio. “The rest of the album was basically done in the studio,” he says. “They had some songs, but they were all disjointed.”
One of those songs was a track called “She’s Me Baby.” As the song began to take shape, Steele changed the title to “She Drives Me Crazy,” and it was suggested that Gift sing in a falsetto. “Roland was still very shy about singing in the studio,” says David Z, “especially on ‘She Drives Me Crazy.’ He was very uncertain about singing that, but it came out pretty cool.”
Gift’s hesitancy could be attributed to the fact that he mostly played saxophone in his pre-Cannibals bands, Blue Kitchen and Akrylyx. “He didn’t consider himself a singer at all,” says David Z. “He was a saxophone player.”
Gift also proved to be somewhat of an enigma during the sessions at Paisley Park. “He led us to believe he was a vegetarian the whole time, eating brown rice,” says David Z. “On the last day of the recording we decided to get some steaks and throw them on the grills. Roland sat down and started eating a steak and someone said, ‘The head Cannibal is eating meat.’ Everyone was surprised.”
Many were likely surprised by the Cannibals’ success, too. “She Drives Me Crazy” became the group’s first hit and climbed all the way to Number One on April 15, 1989. Less than two months later, The Raw & the Cooked reached the pole position. With the album still lodged in the Number One position, “Good Thing” became the trio’s second chart-topping single on July 8, 1989.
THE TOP FIVE
Week of June 3, 1989
1. The Raw & the Cooked, Fine Young Cannibals
2. Like a Prayer, Madonna
3. Beaches, Soundtrack
4. G N’ R Lies, Guns N’ Roses
5. Don’t Be Cruel, Bobby Brown