
Killer On The Rampage, Eddy Grant’s iconic 1982 album featuring the international hit singles ‘Electric Avenue’ and ‘I Don’t Wanna Dance,’ is reissued digitally for the first time. Its reissue coinciding with Grant’s 76th birthday, the album’s revival marks the first step in the re-launch of the Guyana-born singer/songwriter’s fifteen-album back catalogue in download and streaming formats, making his music available to a new generation of listeners.
With its amalgam of reggae, pop, rock, funk, and disco flavours, Killer On The Rampage proved a landmark release, its unique sound cementing Grant’s status as a bona fide music pioneer. Born in Plaisance, Guyana, Eddy Grant moved to London in 1960 at the age of 12. Five years later, he co-founded pop group The Equals in 1965, the first multi-racial band to achieve international acclaim with hits like UK No. 1 ‘Baby, Come Back’, ‘Police On My Back,’ and ‘Black Skinned Blue Eyed Boys’. In 1970, Grant founded his Torpedo label and five years later issued his solo debut Hello Africa. 1979 saw the release of Walking On Sunshine, one of the most pivotal yet overlooked albums of that decade, which included the dancefloor classic ‘Living On The Frontline’. ‘Walking On Sunshine’ was later covered by Arthur Baker’s Rockers Revenge and got to No.1 in the US and No.4 in the UK in 1982. Grant’s single ‘Do You Feel My Love’, from Can’t Get Enough, reached No.3 in the UK, giving the singer his first UK Top 10 single.
The digital release of Killer On The Rampage, Grant’s sixth and most commercially successful album, represents a milestone in an epic career. When it was released at the end of 1982, Killer On The Rampage hit the Top 10 in the US and the UK, its success fuelled by the hit singles ‘Electric Avenue’, a No.2 hit in the UK and US, and ‘I Don’t Wanna Dance’, which reached No.1 in Britain, firmly establishing Grant as a transatlantic pop star.
Recalling the circumstances that birthed Killer On The Rampage, Eddy Grant says: “Following the worldwide success of the single ‘Do You Feel My Love’ and album Can’t Get Enough, I made the decision to leave the UK. That one decision sparked a chain of events that lead to the creation of the album we know today as ‘Killer On The Rampage’. In the 8 hours it took to travel from London to Barbados, my luggage containing songs for my next album were lost and never to be found. So not only did we have to build a recording studio, and renovate a historic house, but I had to also create a whole new album, as the record company was losing patience. Who knows what the lost songs would have ended up being called, or what fruit they would have borne. The fact that ‘Killer On The Rampage’ was grown under such harsh conditions, like the grapes grown in tough terrain, it’s said they make the finest wine, 42 years later I am forced to agree. With every remix, cover version, commercial, film, TV show, stage play, video game, and now digital outlet that uses the songs, new life is breathed into my creations. I give thanks.”