How Prince’s drum machine launched the Fine Young Cannibals: “You can’t help but be inspired”
Prince’s Paisley Park, his Minnesota estate that housed his recording studio, is on par with Elvis Presley’s Graceland in its fabled legacy, blurring the lines between home and creative ground where, truly, anything could happen.
Plenty of artists would be invited into Prince’s “sanctuary”, which initially was a private studio where Paisley Park Records artists, including The Time, Carmen Electra, Jill Jones and Sheila E, would record. A trio named the Fine Young Cannibals would soon find themselves in the Minnesota studio, preparing to record what would become their most well-known song.
The pop-rock band from Birmingham formed from ska-punk band The Beat’s disbandment, when, in 1984, members Andy Cox and David Steele, in pursuit of a singer, sifted through over 500 demo cassettes before choosing Roland Gift as their voice. In just a few years, they had gained international success with a number of singles, settling into the UK and US dance charts with songs like the grooving ‘Johnny Come Home’ and their lively rendition of Presley’s ‘Suspicious Minds‘.
After the release of their eponymous debut album in 1985, the Fine Young Cannibals took a bit of a break, with Gift appearing in the 1987 film Sammy and Rose Get Laid and, with the Fine Young Cannibals that same year, in the film Tin Men, performing as the house band in a nightclub. Gift likened acting to “like being a session musician”, as he described to The Guardian in 2025, “You do your bit, then you’re not really involved.”
Gift, Cox and Steele soon regrouped to record their sophomore album, The Raw & the Cooked and, encouraged by their label London Records, they cycled through various producers and subsequent studios in search of their evolved sound, “a way people say you should never do an album,” Gift notes. Initially, the Fine Young Cannibals refused to work with any producer except Prince, but when told by London Records that the elusive musician was unobtainable, they suggested his engineer, David Z, who they recruited as their co-producer, travelling to Prince’s Paisley Park to record.
They arrived at Studio B with a song initially titled ‘She’s My Baby’ and an experimental energy. When Z heard the early version of the song, as Steele recalls, he said, “This is the song! Come over.” Gift, who hadn’t sung in falsettos before, was looking to push the boundaries of what his vocals could do.
“The way I elongate some of the words… isn’t proper language, but rules are there to be broken,” he asserts. He and Steele finished the song’s lyrics “like William Burroughs cut-ups – pillaging a line from another song of ours and such,” as Steele describes.
Being inside the legendary walls of Paisley Park, the Fine Young Cannibals could not resist being influenced by Prince’s near-palpable aura that remained, even in his absence. “The Purple Rain guitar was in the corner, his lava lamps were everywhere, and the mixing desk had been used by Sly and the Family Stone,” Stelle recalls. “You can’t help but be inspired in that situation.” In turn, the band used Prince’s wah-wah pedals to put their keyboards through, and Cox used Prince’s Rickenbacker guitar during recording.
And the unforgettable “pop” sound of their snare drum on ‘She Drives Me Crazy’? As Steele remembers, they used “the conga preset on Prince’s drum machine.”
‘She Drives Me Crazy’ officially launched the Fine Young Cannibals into the mainstream, becoming their highest-charting single in the UK at number five, topping the US Billboard Hot 100 for a week and reaching number one in several countries, becoming the first number one hit to come out of Paisley Park. The song was infectious, with Gift’s unmistakable voice that, coupled with the combined snare drum/riff beat, encapsulates the tone of the decade. The Fine Young Cannibals certainly possessed immense talent and, when afforded Prince’s equipment, were able to hone their true sound.
“Prince was around, but we were shy and didn’t want to bug him,” Steele admits of their time spent at Paisley Park. The band would never meet Prince properly, but, as Steele says, “Sometimes it’s good to keep some mystery.”
