Here I spent decades, hell, most of my life, thinking Eddy Grant’s synth-fueled, hard-rocking, reggae-flavored, let’s dance dawn-of-the-eighties MTV anthem “Electric Avenue” was about having a good time. I guess it would have helped to listen to the lyrics.
Because, and you probably know this, my lyrics-conscious brothers and sisters, it’s actually about a riot, the Brixton Riot of 1981 to be specific, and Eddy isn’t heading on down to Electric Avenue to have a good time, as I spent decades believing. He’s going to light shit up, and I’m not talking electricity. And it wasn’t the first protest song by the Guyanese-British musician–he’d been on the front lines since the mid-sixties as guitarist of the Equals, the UK’s first major interracial rock group, for whom he wrote the incendiary tracks “Police on My Back” (which the Clash culturally appropriated!) and “Black Skinned Blue Eyed Boys.”
The Equals were a top-notch rock/soul/reggae/pop act, and their most popular songs were apolitical, from their first (and biggest) hit “Baby Come Back” (1967) to “Viva Bobby Joe” (sample lines: “Bobby Joe and his funk machine, yeah, yeah/Everybody’s gonna see a sensation, a sensation”).
They had some bubblegum in them too; “Michael and the Slipper Tree” must have resonated with the kiddie crowd, ditto “Rub a Dub Dub” (the Equals Jamaican-born lead vocalist Dervan “Derv” Gordon wants to smell like a rose for his baby). And “Laurel and Hardy” is kiddie novelty rock at its most blatant. “Honey Gum” isn’t as chewy chewy as you’d expect, but it still has bubble-blowing appeal. Why, they even recorded a cover of The Music Machine’s bubblegum standard “Little Bit of Soul.”
Which isn’t to say they didn’t have an edge. “Police on My Back” and “Black Skinned Blue Eyed Boys” weren’t exceptions to the rule. They returned to social commentary on the fuzz guitar-fueled “Stand Up and Be Counted,” on which mighty lungs Gordon sings, “Your long hair will make you as black as me.” And “Be you a hippie, be you a straight/You can’t get higher than reality.” Groovy! And it has this weird little flute and percussion coda that’s great. And then there’s “Have I the Right,” which you think is going to be a protest song but isn’t—Gordon’s just asking his baby if he has the right to love her! And tell his friends about it!
“Softly Softly” has a bit of bubblegum in its DNA, but Grant’s fuzz guitar and Gordon’s soul power vocals (“Loooord, help me!” he cries at one point) have a zero Bazooka Joe quotient. “I’m a Poor Man” is a soul blockbuster with lots of incredible fuzz guitar by Grant. And Grant’s guitar is all over the hard-driving “I Can See, but You Don’t Know,” which, if you check out the promotional video for the song, you’ll see it features a little kid pounding on the drums!
So yeah, Grant was always very aware of the fact that his being black in England made him a police target, and the Brixton riots were a last straw. He moved to Barbados not long afterwards, during which he lost a whole slew of songs, but he made things right by writing “Electric Avenue,” which first saw the light of day on 1982’s Killer on the Rampage, his sixth solo release. And by solo, I mean he played every damn instrument on the thing and produced it as well.
On the cover, Eddy’s wearing very short red shorts while standing on two rocks in a cove, looking like he’s wondering how he ended up wearing short red shorts while standing on two rocks in a cove. And the cover doesn’t make much more sense than the lyrically muddled reggae tune “Another Revolutionary” or the clunky and appropriately undanceable pop tune “I Don’t Wanna Dance,” which inexplicably went to Number One in the UK. Those Brits make me wonder sometimes. “War Party” is a “no way am I signing up to fight your fight” anti-war protest, and not bad considering the opposition.
But back to “Electric Avenue.” No wonder it was a smash hit—“Electric Avenue” is funky, robotic dance reggae with a cool synth-line and a hard rock guitar. Eddy shouts “Boy!” twice at the beginning, but to me it sounds like he’s shouting “Oi!” And have I mentioned that he has this gruff and powerful voice that he could probably use as a sledgehammer? I don’t think there’s a real bass involved, and I have my doubts about the drums, but the machines just add to the reggaefied Gary Numan vibe. And that melody! Totally unforgettable, as is the chorus, which is what fooled me into thinking it was a party song. “We gonna rock down to Electric Avenue/And then we’ll take it higher” hardly makes me think riot.
The lyrics, of course, tell a different story. Why, he opens the song with the line, “Now in the street, there is violence,” and when he sings, “Deep in my heart, I abhor ya,” you both know who he’s talking to and that he means it. He never goes so far as to say he’s going to throw bricks at the cops, or overturn a police car—hell, he never even mentions the police’s disproportionate and indiscriminate use of “stop and search” powers against black people that helped ignite the riot. But Grant is not Bob Dylan, and this is not a topical song—it’s a bad time song disguised as a good time song.
Eddy Grant was putting out music as politically charged as the music of The Clash, but he had a dog in the fight—unlike the pale faces in The Clash, he was exactly the kind of person the police were likely to stop for no reason, and he’d been dealing with racism for decades. The Equals never toured the United States because their label thought the enlightened folks there would get riled up by a multi-racial act.
Unlike The Clash, Grant LIVED “Police on My Back.” The Clash version may have it all over The Equals’ version when it comes to speed, dynamics, and muscle, but The Equals version has a ramshackle authenticity to it that the faux-revolutionaries of Sandanista! could never equal. “What have I done? Tell me/Please somebody” ad libs Gordon at the end, and there’s no way you can fake the desperation in his voice.
“Electric Avenue” is a stealth protest song you can dance to. It’s not the only one, of course. But it’s one of the very best ones, and just to show he knows racism is ubiquitous, he drops in a reference to the Miami riots of 1980 at the end. You never heard KC and the Sunshine Band mention ‘em! So what say you we rock on down to Electric Avenue?
And then we’ll take it higher!
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
