Pass the Dutchie

510. Eddy Grant – I Don’t Wanna Dance (1982)

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The Intro

14 years after The Equals scored a UK number 1 with Baby, Come Back, its songwriter Eddy Grant scored another chart-topper with the sloping reggae hit I Don’t Wanna Dance.

Before

Edmond Montague Grant was born in Plaisance, British Guiana (now Guyana) on 5 March 1948. He later resided in Linden. Grant’s father was a trumpeter. Growing up, his parents lived and worked in London, and would send money back to him for his education.

In 1960, Grant and his brother Rudy (also a musician) were reunited with their parents in Kentish Town. He learned to read and write music while studying, and fell in love with rock’n’roll after attending a Chuck Berry concert at Finsbury Park Astoria.

Aged 16, Grant formed The Equals in 1964 when drummer John Hall suggested they start a band. Grant was lead guitarist and provided backing vocals, and they were joined by their schoolmate Pat Lloyd on rhythm guitar, plus Derv Gordon on vocal and his brother Lincoln, also on rhythm.

The Gordons were white while Grant and the others were black, which made The Equals the first notably mixed-race rock group in the country. But they had more going for them than this ‘novelty’. The Equals fused rock, pop, blues and ska like nobody else at the time, and they quickly gained a following in London, often suporting visiting US legends like Bo Diddley.

Grant wrote Baby, Come Back, which was originally a B-side to Hold Me Closer in 1967, but was promoted to become The Equals’ fifth single, and it climbed all the way to the top of the hit parade. He became their principle songwriter, and often their material would be political, such as Police on My Back, which was later covered by The Clash. Grant also wrote songs for the likes of Prince Buster and The Pyramids.

The Equals turned heads for a few years, presaging glam by experimenting with a flamboyant dress sense. Grant sometimes even wore a long blonde women’s wig. But in 1969 the whole band were injured in a car accident while touring Germany. Grant suffered the most, and decided to stop touring with the band.

Then in 1971, Grant suffered a heart attack and collapsed lung, and subsequently quit the band entirely. He decided to concentrate solely on production initially, opening Coach House Studios at his Stamford Hill home in 1972. Two years later, he began Ice Records (his second stint at running a label, after Torpedo a few years began previous). Production duties included working on albums by The Pioneers and his brother Rudy, working under the name The Mexicano.

In 1975, Grant released his self-titled solo debut album, but it failed to make any impact. Neither did the follow-up soca LP Message Man in 1977. That year is a fascinating one for Grant. Not only did he contribute to a new Equals LP – Mystic Syster – he also took up tapdancing and acting (at the behest of Norman Beaton, later the star of Channel 4 sitcom Desmond’s), and he also created some startlingly original music.

Under the name The Coach House Rhythm Section, he released the single Nobody’s Got Time. This remake of a 1975 track is house music, years before the term existed, featuring squelchy synths and a rhythm to light up dancefloors. And the B-side, a proto-instrumental called Time Warp, is even better. In 2010, Grant challenged Damon Albarn over the obvious influence of this track on Gorillaz’ Stylo. It was settled out of court.

In 1978, Grant melded his new electro and disco influences with pop, reggae and soca, and released his best album yet. However, Walking on Sunshine was only originally released in Africa and the Caribbean, because his UK audience had dwindled so much. The LP was doing particularly well in Nigeria, but at the height of its success, the government there banned exported records. This left Grant with more than 10,000 copies he couldn’t send over. He and his brother began selling them to UK retailers and disc jockeys, and when the banger Living on the Frontline began to get people dancing, Ensign Records agreed to release it as a single, and it charted at 11.

Shockingly, when the album was given a release by Virgin Records in 1979, it tanked, despite critical acclaim. The excellent title track failed to chart – although justice was served in part when Arthur Baker’s Rockers Revenge project released a brilliant version in 1982, which peaked at four.

In 1981, Grant finally scored a charting album in the UK with Can’t Get Enough. Its first single, Do You Feel My Love, climbed to eight. The second, Can’t Get Enough of You, reached 13, but I Love You, Yes I Love You, only scraped in at 37.

Ironically, just as UK success was finally coming, Grant left. He moved to Barbados and opened Blue Wave Studios, where he produced his most commercially successful album, Killer on the Rampage. The first single to be released was I Don’t Wanna Dance, which came together while Grant was waiting to go on stage while touring.

Perhaps Grant’s decision to leave the country makes more sense when you consider that he said in 2008 that it wasn’t neccessarily to be taken literally. He told The Daily Telegraph: ‘I Don’t Wanna Dance can mean that you don’t want to go out on the dancefloor or it could mean that you don’t want to go along with an idea. That’s how I try to write: you take it how you want, but I am basically a writer of protest’. And in light of the rioting that enveloped England in the early 80s, you don’t blame him for getting out.

Review

Grant’s sole number 1 being I Don’t Wanna Dance is somewhat baffling. Granted (pardon the pun), he was so ahead of his time in the late 70s that it was always unlikely that anything from Walking on Sunshine would become a hit single back then. But I Don’t Wanna Dance, while not without some awkward charm, is not number 1 material. It makes me think of Stevie Wonder’s only solo number 1, I Just Called to Say I Love You. An average tune, unrepresentative of an idiosyncratic artists’s typical material, some how capturing the UK’s imagination.

It would seem that record buyers in the latter half of 1982 just couldn’t get enough of commercial reggae (although to be fair, this single also made it to the top in other countries too). After all, this was the third number 1 of this type, coming hot off the heels of Musical Youth’s Pass the Dutchie and Culture Club’s Do You Really Want to Hurt Me. But this is an unremarkable and slight number 1, and it’s frustrating to know his next single would have been so much more deserving.

In the video, Grant tries to prove the ‘no man is an island’ theory wrong, by mostly miming from exactly that (which seems to have been made from a chunk of a house) while his romantic interest stares at him from a distance. There’s clearly been a row and Grant definitely doesn’t want to dance with her. But by the end, they’re sat facing each other on this strange island, and nothing is resolved. It’s marginally more interesting than the song.

After

So yes, I Don’t Wanna Dance outperformed the far superior follow-up Electric Avenue, released in 1983, as it peaked at two. Grant’s most successful melding of styles was catchy as hell and had a message. Some of my earliest memories involve strutting around my house to this 7-inch, aged three to four. In my head, Grant was singing about a futuristic street that was, erm, cool. Actually, the track refers to a real street, which was the first market street in Brixton to get electricity, and the race riots.

Electric Avenue was his last UK charting single for five years. In 1984, his would-be title track to blockbuster adventure film Romancing the Stone was cut, so it bombed. His lowest moment, I’d wager, was taking part in Prince Edward’s ill-fated TV special The Grand Knockout Tournament in 1987.

But you can’t keep a good man down, and a year later he was back in the charts with the anti-apartheid hit Gimme Hope Jo’anna. It reached seven in the charts and I recall a summer in which I totally missed the point of the song and sang it at my cousin Joanne incessantly.

Grant branched out from making hits once more. He became a music publisher and a nightclub owner, and his studio was used by huge acts including The Rolling Stones, Sting and Cliff Richard. He still released albums though, and will have dome well from the royalties for the 1994 number 1 cover of Baby, Come Back, recorded by Pato Banton featuring Ali and Robin Campbell of UB40.

In 2000 Grant invented a new genre – ringbang, which he said was an attempt to combine all rhythms that have originated in Africa. A year later, Grant returned for the last time to date with a remix of Electric Avenue, which reached five. Proving he wasn’t without a sense of humour (but possibly in need of money), he recorded a parody of Gimme Hope Jo’anna in 2004. Gimme Yop Me Mama was used in adverts for the yoghurt-based drink Yop. In 2008 he performed at Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday concert.

Grant made the news in 2020 when he sued US President Donald Trump for unauthorised use of Electric Avenue in a presidential campaign video. In 2024 the court ruled that the ruling shitbag had to pay Grant damages, and the case was settled out of court.

The Outro

Grant is an underrated artist, who has spent decades making music on his terms, and crossing boundaries confidently and with panache. He doesn’t really get the credit he deserves, although his more leftield electronic music is rightfully given its plaudits by DJs and fellow artists.

The Info

Written and produced by

Eddy Grant

Weeks at number 1

3 (13 November-3 December)

Trivia

Births

14 November: Scottish footballer Stephen Hughes
27 November: ‘Political activist’ and racist Tommy Robinson 
30 November: Boxer Tony Bellew

Deaths

16 November: Comedian Arthur Askey/Architect Peter Yates
19 November: Physician Leslie John Witts
20 November: Civil servant John Redcliffe-Maud, Baron Redcliffe-Maud
21 November: Spiritual healer John Hargrave
26 November: Actor Robert Coote
28 November: Ulster Unionist MP Hugh O’Neill, 1st Baron Rathcavan
2 December: Comedian Marty Feldman

Meanwhile…

28 November: Opinion polls show the Conservative government has an approval rating of up to 44% and is well on course for a second successive electoral victory, 13 points ahead of Labour. Support for the Alliance has halved in the space of a year.

2 December: The Queen’s Park by-election is held as a result of the death of the sitting Labour MP Frank McElhone. His widow, Helen McElhone, holds the seat for Labour.

3 December: The film Gandhi is released. It would win eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor.

509. Culture Club – Do You Really Want to Hurt Me (1982)

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The Intro

Do You Really Want to Hurt Me introduced the world to Culture Club, and their androgynous singer Boy George. Much like his idol, David Bowie, he was flamboyant and fearless when it came to breaking down sexual boundaries in pop.

Before

George O’Dowd had been one of the Blitz Kids – a group of people who frequented the Tuesday club-night at Blitz in Covent Garden, London during the early 80s. Along with Marilyn, Steve Strange (later the singer of Visage), Siobhan Fahey (one third of Bananarama) and others, they helped spearhead the New Romantic movement. Spandau Ballet were just one band who performed there in their nascent years.

In 1980, O’Dowd was spotted by former Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren – no stranger to rising pop movements. McLaren saw charisma in abundance and invited O’Dowd to sing with his new wave group Bow Wow Wow. He took the invite and performed as Lieutenant Lush. However, there were clashes between him and lead singer Annabella Lwin, so he decided to form his own band.

O’Dowd enlisted Mikey Craig on bass first, then drummer Jon Moss, who had played with The Damned and Adam and the Ants. Guitarist and keyboardist Roy Hay completed the line-up. They were initially known as The Sex Gang Children, but they wisely dropped the name (although the name was adopted by a goth-rock band a year later). Noting they had a gay frontman of Irish ethnicity, a black Briton on bass a blonde Englishman playing guitar and a Jewish drummer, they adopted the much more commercially friendly name Culture Club. O’Dowd became Boy George.

Boy George had been experimenting with cross-dressing and make-up since his schooldays, but as a would-be pop-star, he was able to go further. Wearing his hair in dreads under a large hat, and with make-up that softened his handsome face, it became difficult to tell whether their lead singer was male or female – especially as he was blessed with a beautifully tender singing voice.

Although EMI funded the initial Culture Club demos, they weren’t impressed and opted not to sign them, However, Virgin Records were keen and signed the band up. In April 1982 they released Culture Club’s debut single White Boy, which failed to chart. Three months later came I’m Afraid of Me, which sank too.

Culture Club songs were jointly written, although Boy George came up with most of the lyrics. One song, Do You Really Want to Hurt Me, had deep meaning for the singer. It was based upon his tumultuous relationship with Moss, which became a secret six-year affair. Musically, the song came together while they were rehearsing for Peter Powell’s BBC Radio 1 show. Unlike their typical upbeat material, it was a melancholy ballad with a soft reggae feel, courtesy of Craig’s bass.

Two singles down, Culture Club were worried they were in danger of being dropped. But when Virgin asked for Do You Really Want to Hurt Me to become their next single, Boy George was so worried he threatened to quit. Not only was he worried about the personal nature of this song, he also felt it wasn’t representative of the band.

Review

While I can understand Boy George’s reticence, and fear that they may lose some of their edginess, Do You Really Want to Hurt Me is a really lovely song. Yes, the singer’s appearance will have turned heads – but would have also put off a mainstream audience, too. The New Romantic era broadened sexual horizons, but many will have been horrified at Boy George and even confused as to whether they were looking at a man or woman – which is a step up from Bowie putting his arm around Mick Ronson.

Do You Really Want to Hurt Me was the perfect introduction to Culture Club. A lilting reggae-soul song eases the listener in gently. As personal as Boy George’s lyrics might have been, they also have massive appeal. Everyone has felt that pain. Read with the awareness of what was going on behind the scenes, it makes the lyrics all that more poignant. And the singer’s gentle, plaintive vocal performance hits hard. I’m unsure as to whether Moss was aware the song was specifically about him, but if he did know, it must have been weird for Culture Club to find themselves as bona fide pop stars, performing the song over and over as its success spread.

What’s also weird is the video. Julien Temple, who had directed the Sex Pistols’ The Great Rock and Roll Swindle, conceived an elaborate video, opening with Boy George on trial. This makes it the second number 1 in a row to have a video set in a courtroom, coming straight off the back of Musical Youth’s Pass the Dutchie. Which also makes it the second reggae chart-topper in a row.

However, this was a more complicated video, with messaging that may have been lost on many. Temple wanted to comment on the singer’s outsider status and show him on trial for his sexuality. There are flashbacks to him being thrown out of the Gargoyle Club in Soho in 1936 and Dolphin Square Health Club in Pimlico in 1957. Controversially, Temple had the jurors made up of people in blackface, to portray the hypocrisy of gay judges and MPs who had enacted anti-gay legislation. In the UK, this was bad enough – The Black and White Minstrel Show had ended in 1978. But in the US, it was too much, and the jurors were edited out.

After

Do You Really Want to Hurt Me was released in September, and was derided as ‘weak, watered-down fourth division reggae’ by Smash Hits. Culture Club could well have been dropped. However, Radio 2 DJ David Hamilton made the single his record of the week, and in October, Top of the Pops threw them the lifeline that changed everything. Shakin’ Stevens had been forced to pull out of an appearance, so Culture Club stepped in. Wearing the same ‘תַּרְבּוּת אֲגֻדָּה’ t-shirt he wore in the video (Hebrew for ‘culture association’), Boy George was an instant hit.

The Outro

Culture Club’s third single went to number 1 in 12 countries, including the US. Not bad for fourth division reggae.

The Info

Written by

Boy George, Mikey Craig, Roy Hay & Jon Moss

Producer

Steve Levine

Weeks at number 1

3 (23 October-12 November)

Trivia

Births

26 October: Olympic boxer Nicola Adams
28 October: Actor Matt Smith 
4 November: Footballer Neil Mellor

Deaths

26 October: Witch Sybil Leek
29 October: Army general Sir Sidney Kirkman/Composer William Lloyd Webber
1 November: Composer Leighton Lucas
3 November: Historian EH Carr/Surgeon Alan Parks
4 November: Royal Navy captain Stephen Roskill
6 November: Novelist Frank Baker/Novelist Frank Swinnerton
12 November: Tennis player Dorothy Round

Meanwhile…

27 October: The Homosexual Offences (Northern Ireland) Order 1982 comes into effect, decriminalising homosexuality in Northern Ireland for those aged 18 or older.
Also on this day, three RUC officers are killed by an IRA bomb near Lurgan, Northern Ireland.

28 October: By-elections are held in Birmingham Northfield and Peckham, due to the deaths of Conservative MP Jocelyn Cadbury and Labour MP Harry Lamborn, respectively. Labour win both – John Spellar and Harriet Harman are the respective new MPs.

1 November: Welsh language television station S4C launches in Wales.

2 November: The fourth terrestrial TV channel, Channel 4, begins broadcasting, with the game show Countdown.

508. Musical Youth – Pass the Dutchie (1982)

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The Intro

As a young boy in the early 80s, I considered Birmingham reggae group Musical Youth incredibly cool. A bunch of schoolchildren singing an incredibly catchy tune about… well, I didn’t know as I was very young. It didn’t matter though, because I loved Pass the Dutchie regardless of the subject matter.

Before

Musical Youth were formed in 1979 by the fathers of Kelvin and Michael Grant, and Frederick (known as Junior) and Patrick Waite, respectively. Frederick Waite Sr had been a member of Jamaican reggae group The Techniques and he was the original lead vocalist. Junior was their drummer and backing vocalist, while Patrick played bass. Michael Grant played keyboard while Kelvin was guitarist, with both also providing backing vocals. When they formed, the members ages ranged from seven to 15, with Kelvin the youngest.

Despite all attending Duddeston Manor School, Musical Youth gained live dates in West Indian working men’s clubs around Birmingham. Wearing their influences on their sleeves – which included Aswad, Sugar Minott and Gregory Isaacs – they released a double A-side single in 1981. Generals/Political was issued on local label 021 Records (021 being the Birmingham area code at the time.

In 1982, following an appearance on BBC Radio One’s The John Peel Show, Musical Youth were signed to MCA Records, who convinced Waite Sr to relinquish the lead singer role to the boys’ school friend Dennis Seaton. While supporting Culture Club at Heaven in London, the crowd went wild to their cover of The Mighty Diamonds’ Pass the Kouchie.

The Jamaican act had released their ode to smoking cannabis (based on 1968 instrumental Full Up by Leroy Sibbles) a year previous, and despite it being banned by their government, it raised their profile in the reggae scene.

There was no way MCA would let schoolboys release a song about a kouchie, which was a big marijuana bong. But there was also no doubt the song was infectious. So what could they do?

Co-producer Toney Owens hit upon an idea after getting home late one night on an empty stomach. What about changing ‘kouchie’ to ‘dutchie’ which was a patois term for a Dutch oven cooking pot? Once agreed, it was easy to change the other dodgy lyric – The ‘How does it feel when you got no herb’ refrain substituted the last word to ‘food’. The spoken word intro was inspired by the opening to U-Roy’s Rule the Nation.

It’s worth noting that Pass the Dutchie was also produced by the team of Peter Collins and Pete Waterman, who had been working together since 1980. Collins went on to produce many big acts in the 80s – and Waterman will of course become a fixture on this blog as the 80s progress.

Review

It’s not just nostalgia for my musical youth that makes me love Pass the Dutchie. It’s very refreshing to hear some reggae in this blog for the first time in a while. Yes, it’s lacking the deep bass of the original, and by transforming it from a cannabis anthem to a pop song about being a hungry school boy, it veers into novelty hit territory. But it’s better than that. The intro may also not be original, but it’s an inspired introduction and must have felt like a call to arms for black schoolboys – only a year on from the awful race riots that helped inspire Ghost Town.

Speeding the tempo up a notch from Pass the Kouchie was also a great choice, making it more palatable for the pop audience of 1982. In fact, Pass the Dutchie gets the balance just right – it’s pop-friendly, without feeling lightweight. It still feels like authentic reggae. It’s hard to believe Waterman is involved in the production duties, when you consider what he would later become known for.

Also adding to its reggae credentials was the enlisting of Don Letts as the director of the music video. Letts had ran the London clothing store Acme Attractions, which was frequented by Bob Marley, Debbie Harry, the Sex Pistols, Chrissie Hynde and The Clash. He went on to DJ at The Roxy in Covent Garden, and helped introduce punks to dub and reggae.

Letts’ video features Musical Youth performing on the south bank of the River Thames in London, by Lambeth Bridge. All too aware of racial tensions in the UK, he does a great job of keeping things light, portraying the band as fun-loving kids just wanting to have fun. A school official appears to arrest them, but he falls and hurts himself. The video is interspersed with Musical Youth standing trial, but they’re cleared and the video ends with everyone having a great time in the courtroom, like a scene from a bad musical.

This video not only helped Musical Youth appeal to the masses – it made them the first black artists to be played on the fledgling MTV. This was months before Billie Jean – despite what the new Michael Jackson biopic Michael (2026) would have you believe.

After

Within a month of its release, Musical Youth were a fledgling sensation. Pass the Dutchie rocketed to number 1 in the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands and Australia. Thanks to MTV airplay, it also soared to 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US. They hung out with Jackson and met Bubbles.

Debut LP The Youth of Today swiftly followed and also performed well, as did two singles it spawned – Youth of Today peaked at 13 and Never Gonna Give You Up (not the Rick Astley song) climbed to six in 1983. Follow-up Heartbreaker couldn’t break the top 40.

However, it began to look like Musical Youth may be a flash in the pan when their second album Different Style! performed noticeably less well. A cover of John Holt’s Tell Me Why only went to 33, 007 climbed to 26 and She’s Trouble failed to chart. Although business had briefly picked up when they featured on Donna Summer’s Unconditional Love, which was a number 14 hit, the end was already in sight. Sixteen, featuring Jody Watley, was their last charting single, reaching 23 in 1984. Maybe the public saw them as a novelty, after all.

Tragically, this group of schoolchildren then found themselves old before their time due to financial troubles, legal issues and personal problems. Seaton left the band in 1985, releasing a solo album, Imagine That…, which sank without trace in 1989. A reunion was planned in 1993, but was cut short when Patrick, who was awaiting a court appearance after a robbery, died suddenly after collapsing due to a hereditary heart condition, aged only 24. Remixes of Pass the Dutchie were released in 1994, but failed to chart.

Michael and Seaton tried to stay in the music business, setting up a production company and a band respectively, but didn’t make much of a mark. In 2001 they announced they were reforming Musical Youth as a duo – Junior, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, would not be taking part. They toured the nostalgia circuit, and featured on Pato Banton’s 2004 single, Pretty Woman. The duo also released a new version of Pass the Dutchie in 2008. Michael’s brother Kelvin began a solo career but failed to get noticed. Junior died in a mental health unit in 2022, aged 55.

The Outro

That same year, Pass the Dutchie gained a new lease of life after appearing in the Netflix series Stranger Things.

The Info

Written by

Jackie Mittoo, Fitzroy “Bunny” Simpson & Lloyd ‘Judge’ Ferguson

Producers

Toney Owens, Pete Waterman & Peter Collins

Weeks at number 1

3 (2-22 October)

Trivia

Births

4 October: Jazz saxophonist YolanDa Brown
7 October: Footballer Jermain Defoe
10 October: Actor Dan Stevens

Deaths

3 October: Actress Vivien Merchant
6 October: Composer Philip Green
8 October: Labour MP Philip Noel-Baker/Musician Erik Routley
16 October: Artist Rory McEwen
18 October: Conductor Leslie Jones
20 October: Scottish footballer Jimmy McGrory

Meanwhile…

11 October: The Mary Rose, which sank in 1545, was raised from the Solent.

12 October: The London Victory Parade of 1982 was held to mark the end of the Falkands War.

15 October : The Ford Sierra was launched as the replacement for the Cortina.

21 October: Sinn Féin won their first seats on the Northern Ireland Assembly. Gerry Adams won the Belfast West seat.