A TRAILBLAZER SINCE THE MID-60S, EDDY GRANT IS ONE OF POP’S GREAT SURVIVORS. AS HE’S HONOURED BY THE CAMDEN MUSIC WALK OF FAME, THE SINGER-SONGWRITER REVEALS ALL ABOUT HIS NEAR-FATAL HEART ATTACK, TAKING ON DONALD TRUMP AND HOW HE’S BEEN UNAFRAID TO MAKE HITS OUT OF POLITICALLY-CHARGED SUBJECT MATTER...
STEVE O’BRIEN
At the dawn of the 70s, Eddy Grant, it seemed, had it all. There he was, a guy in his early twenties with a wife, a couple of sprogs, and a victorious career as lead guitarist and songwriter of The Equals, most famous for their chart-conquering hit, Baby, Come Back. He was almost the poster boy for clean living, proving that you didn’t have to be a drug-chasing libertine to be a pop star in the 60s. If there was an anti-Keith Richards at the time, it was Eddy Grant.
Heart attacks aren’t supposed to be on the agenda for teetotal, vegetarian, sports-loving twentysomethings, but on New Year’s Eve 1971 that’s exactly what happened to the man born Edmond Montague Grant when he found himself in intensive care, having suffered a massive coronary.
“Oh brother, it was brain shattering, heart shattering,” the now 75-year-old and fighting fit Eddy Grant tells Classic Pop, over Zoom from his home in Barbados. “It stopped me dead and made me look at my life in a different way.”
Little could he have known then, lying there in the ICU, that his greatest successes were still ahead of him. He’d chalked up a trinity of Top 10 hits with The Equals: (1968’s aforementioned UK No.1 Baby, Come Back, 1969’s Viva Bobby Joe and 1970’s incendiary Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys, which was later covered by The Specials), but his biggest pop hits were still to come.
“When something goes wrong with your heart, you become this old man. Even walking to the bathroom is a pain,” he says, wincing at the memory. “Your whole set of circumstances change and you have to slow down. You have to think about everything very carefully before you act.”
Reluctantly, Eddy walked away from The Equals, the multi-racial rock-soul outfit he’d helped form in 1965 (“I tried to make an adjustment,” he says, “and the adjustment couldn’t be made within the context of the band”), taking 12 months off to let himself mend. For the next few years he wrote songs, produced other artists (The Pyramids, Prince Buster) and set up his own recording studio at his home in Hackney. In 1975, he finally released his debut solo album, the eponymous
