Sunday with Eddy Grant: ‘I’m surrounded by the best cooks in the world’

The muscian, 76, on life in Barbados, spending time in the studio and why he has never drunk or smoked

Sunday funday? I’m quite a boring person on Sundays. I invariably spend most of my time in the studio, else I’m out walking or cycling.

Where will you go? I live at Bayley’s Plantation, the most historic plantation in Barbados. I walk for miles through the sugarcane field to the beach, which is sublime.

What’s for lunch? Whatever takes my wife’s fancy. Lots of vegetables – ground provisions – greens and what I suppose people might call exotic food, like breadfruit. We have a breadfruit tree growing in our yard.

Do you cook? No, sir. I’m surrounded by the best cooks in the world – my wife and daughters and my wife’s mother. When it’s a cookout at the Grant household, it’s a cookout, brother. Don’t come at Christmas – it goes crazy.

Sundays growing up? By the time I was eight, I was a full man. Physically we were stronger, because we were climbing trees, swimming in trenches and canals, chasing birds for miles in the savannah. When I came to England when I was 12, I had to learn how to be a child again.

Sunday church? The first 10 years of my life I would have been churchgoing, then I started hanging out in the dance halls. I’d go out with this guy called Hungry and stand around as the big men drank and chanted and put their glasses on the jukebox as it went boom, boom, boom.

Do you drink or smoke? I’ve never drunk and have never smoked anything. In this business, it can drive a person to insanity

Last thing before bed? I’m not a TV square eyes, but I’ll engage my wife in a little bit of Netflix or anything that she wants to watch.

Like or hate Mondays? Sometimes I can’t tell the difference between the days. This is why it’s great in the studio, because you’re just in there until you get absolutely knackered, and you may just drop to sleep or come into the house. I told you, my Sundays are boring!

Eddy Grant’s Killer on the Rampage is now available to stream for the first time in over 40 years

Contributor

Rich Pelley

The GuardianTramp

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