Twenty Nine Years And Counting: Scritti Politti

Before we go any further, Gigwise would like to point out for those younger readers out there that Scritti Politti is not a new funny sounding up-and-coming band, but a living piece of musical history. Green Gartside has been involved with music since 1977, “The impetus to start a band came from listening to The Clash…and all that music around 1977/78…seeing the Sex Pistols at Leeds University in 1977 blew my mind,” he explains. Like much of Britain’s youth at the time, Green decided to “have a go at starting a band…we were called Against.” The name of the band mirrored the attitude of Britain’s new musical revolution at the time. Punk was against the establishment, not only politically but psychologically and musically. However, although punk knew it what it was against, it had problems with understanding what it was for.

Scritti Politti was a part of the post-punk generation of musicians who intended to use the punk revolution to look beyond the orthodoxy of guitars and rock’n’roll. While living with like minded souls in Camden, North London, Scritti Politti were a popular post-punk band with a successful debut album released on indie record label pioneers Rough Trade: ‘Skank Bloc  Bologna’. The original Scritti line-up was a loose coalition of punk musicians, but soon after the 1979 release of ‘4 A Sides’, Scritti began to focus on becoming a pop star. Rough Trade did not have the budget for Green’s imagination, so he signed to Virgin and went to find fame and fortune in America.  He moved to New York and not only became part of the burgeoning hip-hop scene there in the 1980s, but helped pioneer hip-hop as we know it today; earning the respect of US hip-hop producers such as Timbaland, and group Mos Def.

Scritti Politti had success with the 1985 album ‘Cupid And Psyche 85’, but with it he came to reap what he had sown, as the crass commercialism of American pop culture began to push Green nearer to the edge of sanity. “The whole career drove me nuts…I didn’t like failure, but success was bullshit…the insincerity…I hated it…so I gave it up and went away for a while.” says Green. After a brief exile in his childhood home of Wales, Scritti returned to make more music with the 1999 album ‘Anomie And Bonhomie’. The album was not a success but a troubled blend of hip hop, soul and pop. Getting bored with the calm of the Welsh valleys, Green decided to head back to where it and all properly started, London.

Moving into hackney, Green embraced the community-feel of the place and feeling happier, he decided to put more effort into making music. Gigwise asks him what he had been doing since the 1999 album. “Seven years, seven years…has it been that long?” After convincing him that it was, Scritti explains, “well Geoff Travis of Rough Trade got back in touch with me saying that my album wouldn’t sell and that I needed his help…I wanted it.” In Hackney, Green had been making hip-hop beats in his studio and “going to the pub a lot,” but Travis recommended that Green should make an album not just of beats but with him singing as well, “so I sat at home, wrote songs, recorded them and had a good time…I have no regrets.”