The strange, sad, ultimately hopeful tale of Musical Youth, one-hit wonders in '82 with the ebullient "Pass the Dutchie." I love that song.
- Musical Youth's 1982 single Pass the Dutchie sold 5m copies. They broke America. They were the first black artists to be played on MTV - beating Michael Jackson by several months. But their stardom never transcended its era. Seaton's tales are thick with dimly remembered names. They were regulars on Razzmatazz, Tyne Tees's unlamented pop show. They worked on a film with The A Team's Mr T. Irene Cara, singer of Fame and Flashdance, guested onstage. Throw in a commentary by Stuart Maconie and some footage of people wearing deely boppers and you've got yourself a BBC2 nostalgia show.
What started out as a jaunty celebration of multi-cultural British youth ended as a cautionary tale about the perils of naivety in the music industry. Like all tales from rock's dark side, it involved drugs, mental instability, lawlessness, financial wranglings and premature death. In this tale, however, the people who got in trouble, went mad and died had barely hit puberty at the height of their success.
Eating lunch in a gaudy Birmingham leisure complex, keyboard player Michael Grant is aware that Musical Youth has become a byword for child stardom's misery. "Black artists get ripped off, child stars get ripped off," he says. "We were doomed from the start, really."
....Grant was nine years old in 1979, when he and his guitarist brother Kelvin, then seven, joined Musical Youth. They had formed at the behest of a family friend, Freddie Waite, once a singer in Jamaican vocal trio the Techniques. Waite had left the band in 1966, emigrated to England and ended up in Nechells, in inner-city Birmingham. Waite encouraged his sons, Patrick and Junior, to take up bass and drums respectively. When the Grant brothers joined them, they became his backing band.
"We used to do a lot of pubs and clubs with this 35-year-old man when we were between the ages of seven and 12," says Grant. "This old guy next to a bunch of kids! Kelvin's hands were so small they could only just reach around the fretboard of his guitar. It was odd, but we got a favourable reaction. We could play our instruments."
Article comments
1 - Nathan
Like Elton John: "It's sad, so sad, it's a sad sad situation"... But these guys made some incredibly nice music that makes me happy all the time I'm listening to it. Music bizz has really ripped them off, but Michael and Dennis are some of the gretest and most humble guys I know. Everybody should at least have a listen to the "Maximum Volume" album and enjoy some sunny music!!!
Funny how people forget all their other songs and only remember "Pass The Dutchie" though. And sad about what happened to the other three members, really. They did not deserve this, they seemed such good guys.
2 - Chijioke Chiemela
i love musical youht and will always love them.we are humans , we reach the hieth of our ceare and we come down eventually. musical youth are no exception.
3 - Nathan
We recently put the official website online! Check musicalyouth.net for everything you never wanted to know about Musical Youth! :-D
4 - Carlo Khalifa
I was never a musician but the most ideal fairytale moment in my life as a teen would have to hang out with Musical Youth (of course with lots of pictures!). But if I couldn't meet them as a kid, I hoped to as an adult. Unfortunately the dream remained what it was... a dream. They did come close enough, featuring in a mid-80s international music show in Lagos, Nigeria put together by Silver Bird/Faze 2 promotions. However I wasn't living in Lagos then; I was almost 1000 kms away in the North! It's real sad to hear the tragic tale of a once promising youth band. It rankles all the more cos their kid rivals from America New Edition are still making money, while Britain has been really been unkind to its own!