Maverick. Now there’s an overused word, especially in music. Restless Finley Quaye fits the bill perfectly with a multifaceted, multi ethnic catalogue of music that somehow mashes pure pop to the underground. Finley takes sweet sunshine reggae and mixes it up with grubby lo-fi before going on a nu folk excursion or coasting some blissed out grooves. He’s been as adept at cutting top ten hits to explorations of any style that he damn well wants. Having a free spirit makes for great music. And that’s the way it should be. Pop is too often seen as a dull celebrity career - too much playing safe and not enough creating. Finley’s is a maverick music that mirrors his life and his itinerant background soaking up the rainbow flavours. Growing up in bohemian Edinburgh and London, living in the biggest squatted area in Europe at the time in Manchester’s early nineties Hulme before moving to the Rainbow Tribe's squat in Kentish Town Quaye has been everywhere and absorbed everything. Hooked into the modern pulsebeat of the city, the myriad of music that pours from every bed-sit window that he’s felt and recreated as his own. In Manchester he was part of the nucleus of underground musicians like A Guy Called Gerald that flavoured acid house and helped to reinvent British music in the early nineties. In London he became a genuine popstar and he never had to compromise - the music just poured out of him. Quaye was born with music in his blood. 1990 Manchester was the perfect place for the tearaway kid with a headfull of ideas. Multi ethnic mixed up music infused the city and it provided a great education and backdrop for the fertile teenage mind. Finley may have been a wild child who has lived everywhere but somehow Manchester is his musical home - the city where he put his musical roots down. For me Finley was the cherub-faced kid, who used to sit on my doorstep in primetime Hulme in 1990 always with a thirst for knowledge, pumping for facts about punk rock and beyond. He had the wonderlust and he had the knowledge and you can hear it already in his early songs, which were crafted on four track Teacs in the early nineties in Manchester. The perfectionist Quaye spent months honing his craft and the songs. Whilst the city suffered a hangover after Madchester Finley was writing his first album. Somehow combining the Breeders with Bob Marley’s righteous sunshine reggae with a dash of underground noise rock he came up with something which sounds nothing like its influences and sounds like pure Quaye. He played his debut gig at Ronnie Scott's on Frith St. in London’s Soho in 1997. Ronnie Scott had started out in Cab Kaye’s band when he was 15 and the club co-manager Pete King was a dear friend of Finley’s mother and set up the gig. Back up north he laid down some vocals as a rough idea with A Guy called Gerald. Gerald cheekily released the track unbeknown to Finley who by now had drifted down to London. The Gerald track ‘Finley’s Rainbow’, was all over the radio. One afternoon Gerald called Finley and got him to play a gig with him in London where the sweet voiced singer got spotted and scored a solo record deal with Polydor Records. He began working with Epic/Sony when Polydor let him out of contract, and in late 1997 he reached the UK Top 20 twice with "Sunday Shining", and "Even After All" two great singles that twisted a neo-psychedelic sunshine weirdness into bubblegum pop reggae that somehow fitted on primetime radio and made him a star. ‘Sunday Shining’ was classic Finley with its bizarre cross section of influences of Tenor Saw, the Breeders and the Zombies mashed together - a timeless single and a classic piece of pop that hinted at so much more. His debut album Maverick A Strike is a masterpiece capturing the sunshine vibe of primetime Marley but placing it firmly in the concrete of mid nineties bohemian Britain and making it pure pop. It was a companion piece to Britpop - a very British album that did not reference the sixties, an album that shifted in the lad rock era that had none of the macho platitudes of its contemporaries but came from the same location. The album established his reputation as one of the key pop stars of the period and went gold in less than three weeks and won Quaye a BRIT Award. Maverick A Strike is now multi platinum and one of the classic markers of a high water mark period of British music. Swerving from the mainstream Finley’s following two albums are even more musically satisfying and challenging and were released on Epic, Vanguard (2000) and Much More Than Much Love (2004). Now back in action after a couple of years of living in the coolest and hippest city in Europe - Berlin, Quaye is readying several albums. One is 'Pound for Pound' made with Norman Grant of the Twinkle Brothers featuring Sly Dunbar on drums and Lloyd Parkes on bass with many other key faces and was recorded in Jamaica & Brixton. The album is due for release this year. 'The Best Of The Epic Years 1997-2004' is out on Sony/BMG in July. Not content with that the ever-mercurial Quaye has demoed an album of country music, 'Straight From Country', an album that started off as a collection of protest songs, which he has developed into a bigger body of work which may come out later on. There is also, 'Pinnacle', the title is inspired by Leonard Percival Howell, the first ‘Rasta’, which is another contemporary reggae/trip hop album which he has prepared for release in 2009. Always restless and perhaps too talented for his own good Quaye can be a pop star when he wants but prefers to make great music on his own terms which is too rare in these cowardly times. Like I said. Maverick.
JOHN ROBB
