Roland Gift( Photo: Linda Nylind)
Hello, My Name is Roland
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6 illinoisentertainer. com january 2026
uckily, 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.
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
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