Eddy Grant and Sir Lenny Henry at last week’s Music Walk of Fame stone unveiling

GAZING down Camden High Street, Eddy Grant recalled how one day, 60-odd years ago, he walked these very pavements with a melody stuck in his head.

He went back to his Kentish Town home, and hummed the tune to a neighbour, who worked for Decca Records.

The neighbour said it sounded rather nice and he didn’t think it came from anyone else.

Eddy picked up his guitar and the global smash hit Baby Come Back was born.

Last week, the singer returned to Camden Town from his home in Barbados to unveil a Music Walk of Fame stone, honouring his extraordinary contribution.

And speaking to Review, he recalled a life that saw him leave Guyana aged 11 to settle in NW5.

Born in the town of Plaisance, his father Patrick played the trumpet in a band in his spare time, and as a small child Eddy was left with family while his parents travelled to London to work.

When his parents were settled enough with a house in Kentish Town, they brought him over.

Eddy recalled: “From Guyana to Kentish Town – talk about a big culture shock!

“Guyana was exceedingly poor – the second poorest country in the world when I was born and I was born in the very poorest bit.

“When I first came to London I thought my father had struck it rich. He brought me to his home and I saw this terraced road with so many front doors I said ‘Wow, dad, you have really made it.’ I did not know which front door to walk in through.

“I said ‘Dad, which one is ours?’ And he replied ‘I’ll show you, boy.’ He took me round the side and down into a basement. I had never heard the word basement before, and boy – was it cold. I had never experienced anything like it.”

His home was full of music, and he recalls how seeing Chuck Berry at the Rainbow in Finsbury Park inspired him.

He joined Acland Burghley School in Tufnell Park and it was while at the school he met drummer John Hall, Pat Lloyd and Derv and Lincoln Gordon. The friends started playing instruments together and formed the band The Equals.

Eddy and the rest of The Equals in 1968

They were not only popular due to Eddy’s songwriting abilities and musicianship – The Equals were seen as trailblazers as they were the first UK group to have both black and white band members.

In 1968. they found global fame with the song Baby Come Back.

Eddy said: “I was enrolled in to Acland Burghley school, which was fortunate as it proved to be the greatest school in the world.

I went in and there I was met by real human beings. It was important because at the time all sorts of things were going on in the street, but inside the doors of that institution, there were real human beings, people who did not just see me as a black person, which of course I was, but they saw a person and where they saw promise, they also saw opportunity.

“One thing that was important that I learned there is when you join opportunity with capacity it creates success. It is the same in whatever you do – science, music – if you join these two things together it creates success. I am so pleased, so fortunate, to have had the benefit of that as a young person here.”

His fellow Equal Pat Lloyd, who came to see Eddy unveil a stone in his honour last week on the Camden Music Walk of Fame, met Eddy in 1964 at the school and they became close.

Eddy said: “Pat really helped me, always had my interests in mind, always looked out for me, like a real friend. I feel such love to The Equals. They were my brothers.

“For me,there is nothing that personifies the good of England than The Equals.”

As a youngster, Eddy said Camden Town provided an interesting playground, a mix of cultures and sense of a place where things happened.

“I have come back this week to renew my long relationship with these streets,” he said.

“I made so many friends who lived in Camden Town and Kentish Town – and this was where we would go.

“I never had any money so I’d come up to the old Camden Market and browse, looking at things for hours. They sold lots of cheap stuff and you could buy anything at all there. I once bought an old camera and I remember being so thrilled with it as I carried it home.”

As he progressed, Eddy’s range of talents meant when he grew fed up with session musicians mucking him about, he could play the instruments himself. He decided life would be easier if instead of writing and arranging songs for a session musician to learn, practice and then record for him, he could save time and money by doing it all himself. Eddy set up his own record label too, so he could have complete artistic and financial control. In 1979, his album Walking On Sunshine was a massive seller, and included the hit Living On The Frontline.

He said writing music was always done because he felt the need to and never with one eye on awards and praise.

“I did not write music for accolades – I did it for nothing, and I played for nothing – and invariably sometimes did!” he said.

“But it was a path I followed and I met a lot of beautiful people on the way. I never bothered with those who were against me, or did not like me, or like my music. There is no point in doing that – instead, I responded to the people who were there for me and like my music. I met beautiful guys who really could teach the world something. They helped make England the place it could be.”

There has always been a strong element of political consciousness in his work, and that burning thirst for social justice and global peace is as strong as ever, he says. has never been far from politics. He sued Donald Trump for using Electric Avenue in an advert, and has banned his music from streaming services in protest of the low royalties musicians receive.

“I know what it is to live on the front line,” he said.

“I wrote Joanna to confront issues over race and apartheid but I did not write it in that mind frame of anger. I wanted to send a message in a way that was like giving a patient castor oil with some sugar to help it go down.”

Coming back to London – his first visit for four years due to Covid – he remembers how alien it felt in the late 1950s.

“I have spent a lot of time in this place, this part of London, and it is my home. But when I came here for the first time I realised I was different – the first time I had ever been aware of something like this. I had never seen a white person before. I came to a place the likes of which I had never seen before.”

But the challenges of moving to a new country, of the everyday racism he faced, steeled him.

“England showed me that you, as an Englishman would say, have to have the bollocks to get things done,” he said.

“If you have them, nothing will stop you.”

And as he watched his name be preserved on the Camden Music Walk of Fame, he remembered a conversation he had with his father.

“My father said to me when I told him I wanted to be a musician, not go to university and become a surgeon, he said ‘Do not fool yourself. England does not have a place for the likes of you,” says Eddy.

“I said to my father ‘Well, they had better make one, then. It is as simple as that.’”