Q&A
Durban musical icon Roderick “Ricky” Stewart Gass has a passion for poetry, music and charity.
His long and chequered career has taken him from a Durban orphanage into the police service of Rhodesia; from chart success and stadium fame back to Durban, where he now runs an animal welfare charity shop and plays music for hospitals, orphanages and old-age homes – a calling he finds more rewarding than riches and renown.
You were a policeman in Rhodesia when you started your musical career. How did it happen?
Well, I’ve always written my own musical compositions, and I figure them out in my head by whistling. They used to call me “The whistling policeman”. One of my colleagues, Sergeant Erasmus Chawatama, was impressed by one of my compositions and set up an audition with producer Cris Mutema. Together with some brilliant black studio musicians we recorded my first single, Road to Memphis.
Was that a tribute to Elvis Presley?
Yes, I wrote it for his daughter Lisa- Marie three days after he died. I’ll never forget hearing that announcement, it shocked me so much. August 16 1977 it was. At the time I was bringing up my daughter myself – she was six months old then – and something hit me: “Gosh, how did that kid feel when she came downstairs that night and found her father dead?” and the song just came – bang! It got played on all the juke boxes and it was on the hit parade, but I don’t make a big deal about that.
After that you made another record.
I wrote and recorded the song Zimbabwe in the Sun as a tribute to the first anniversary of Zimbabwe’s independence. My daughter Irene sang Shona counterpoint on the record – she was 11 then – and the two of us played to about 50 000 people at Rufaro Stadium in Harare on Independence Day.
Are you still composing and playing?
Oh yes. You know I’m standing here now like a dead fish but when I get out, in front of a crowd or even just in my flat practising, I just can’t keep still. I can’t just stand there like a blinking robot, because the people want to see some life. That’s what Elvis did – he put the body into music, and all those years the people got it wrong. They said, “That’s evil, that’s the devil’s music!” but the guy had natural rhythm!
The music and the words come to me all the time. It must be in my genes, because I don’t know how many times I’ve said to myself: “Where’s it all coming from? How can you compose something new when there’s millions and millions of compositions out there already?”
But there are stars being born all the time and there’s stuff coming out all the time like a new car or a new cigarette packet or a new bottle. It’s all in our imagination. And you know, if your imagination wants to go – just let it go.
Ricky Gass spoke to Alex Sudheim