Last updated: 18 November 2008
Green Gartside and Scritti Politii were a post-punk success in the 1980s.
Born in Cardiff in 1956, Gartside attended Leeds Polytechnic and experienced The Sex Pistols' Anarchy tour in 1977. Like so many others who saw this musical and cultural car crash, he was inspired to make music; and like so many others, he swiftly became disillusioned with punk's parameters.
I was... investigating being a pop star, but I wanted to get away from it as soon as it happened!
Green Gartside
Fuelled by Marxist writings and theories, and living in a Camden squat, Gartside's approach to pop music was deconstructivist, pulling it apart and putting it back together. The sound was fresh - a lo-fi funk-reggae that fitted in with a world of John Peel-supported new wave. Indeed, Peel was a strong supporter of the band's work.
The golden period wasn't to last though; supporting Gang Of Four in Brighton in 1980, Gartside suffered a severe panic attack, resulting in hospitalisation. He would not return to the stage for 26 years.
Returning to the fray, he went pop, investigating soul and vocally moving to a sweet soul falsetto style. Songs To Remember (1982) hit number 12 in the UK charts but he then left Rough Trade, signed to Virgin, shed his band members and moved to New York. This proved a purple patch for Gartside as he tinkered with soul and the dawn of modern R'n'B.
It's accepted that his recordings and methods from this period were one of the few white influences on black pop music in the last 30 years, as he used the new technology of sequencers on Cupid And Psyche 85 (1985). Wood Beez (Play Like Aretha Franklin) was the first UK top 10 single for Gartside while the American hit Perfect Way was covered by jazz legend Miles Davis. The Word Girl was another UK top 10 single.
Scritti Politti singles were regularly featured on the burgeoning MTV network, and success once more had its downside. "I was... investigating being a pop star," he says, "But I wanted to get away from it as soon as it happened!
"I guess it froze me, with indecision and fear. It certainly culminated in me not wanting to do it anymore. It was completely the 'wrong line of work' for me ever to have begun, as it didn't suit my character or temperament or delicate sensibility to be on children's television or whatever it was."
Gartside's discomfort with fame meant another three year wait for another album. Provision was released in 1988. "[It] was an uncomfortable and tortuously long album to make, and somewhere along the way, the pleasure had started to go out of it. And although I've never listened to that record since it was finished, I imagine that you could hear that in it."
Because he didn't tour, he was expected to spend his time on the promotional treadmill. But again his mental health suffered and he returned to a self-imposed exile back in Wales.
In 1992 he returned to the charts with Jamaican reggae star Shabba Ranks for a cover of the Beatles' She's A Woman, then seven years later his final album for Virgin was released. Anomie And Bonhomie featured a then-underground Mos Def, but its leftfield mix of soul, pop and hip hop merely flummoxed his label.
A return to Hackney now appears to have reinvigorated Gartside. He's signed once more to Rough Trade, for the new album White Bread Black Beer, and has returned to playing live. His co-musicians are complete unknowns, people he's met in Hackney's pubs, quite often.
"The first time back on stage, I felt a mixture of anxiety and elation at having managed to get there. Sharing in a group's enthusiasm, some of whom haven't even played their instruments before, it's like all the good parts of the old days."
