That shitty four-piece you’ve been in with your mates since Year 8 eventually managed to get some daft industry type to hand over a blank cheque and to tell you you were going to be famous. Very famous. You wouldn’t have to talk to your former classmates at school. You wouldn’t have to get up early. The only thing they didn’t tell you was that music was more than just writing songs and shaking your ass on stage. Was that the way it was for Green Gartside of Scritti Politti? Not quite. For Gartside you formed a quirky British DIY post-punk band at Leeds Polytechnic, play one show in 1976 and then disillusioned and bored with college you moved into a squat at 1 Carol Street in Camden, London. You taught your best mate since primary school how to play the bass in six weeks, hear a Clash album, come up with a name based around an underground Marxist critic (Antonio Gramsci), get groovy on Saussurean semiotics and Jacques Derrida, borrow £500 for your first record, get signed to Rough Trade, succumb to a physical and mental breakdown and reinvent yourself as a studio savvy master of electronic R n’ B in New York before crafting the mighty multi-platinum-selling ‘Cupid & Psyche’ in 1985.

Then to all intents and purposes you disappear.

Scritti Politti. One line of investigation leads you to arrive at ‘perfect pop’, whilst another blows cold and goes nowhere in an instant. Deeply surface bubble-gum on the one hand, deeply subversive on the other. Not even the boy-meets-girl songs were ever that simple; boy meets girl, boy loves girl, boy loses girl in the casual interplay between signified and signifier, dissolved in the ether of semiotics and in the long, tender sighs that accompanied them.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Green Gartside, recently re-signed to Rough Trade Records after a hi-fidelity romance with Warner Bros/Virgin.

How did you get signed?
Hmm. Back in the day you didn’t get ‘signed’ to Rough Trade as such. With them I put out an album called ‘Song To Remember’ which featured ‘The Sweetest Girl’ . That album got the attention of the major labels. I was feted and courted (inc. free Christmas in Jamaica) a lot and them signed for the most money with a separate major deal for North America. Very shrewd of my then manager, Matthew Kay.

Did you did it the gigging or the vinyl way?
I did it the vinyl way. Pressed up a few of my own songs. We were living in a squat in Camden and with a £500 loan from a brother of one of the band, we booked some studio time and came up with a 7″ called ‘Skank Bloc Bologna’.

Did you have any other names for the band kicking around at this time?
When I first formed the band we were briefly called ‘AGAINST’. Yeah. Punk Rock!! In the end we chose ‘Scritti Politti’ – a name that came from a book called ‘Scritti Politici’, which was written by someone called Gramsci in prison — a clever Marxist writer. It was a play on of the Italian phrase ‘political writings’. It also sounded like the kind of sound we wanted to create with the band.

How did you celebrate?
I don’t precisely remember. A number of days of eating, drinking to excess and general partying . . . goes without saying. When I signed to Virgin I gave away too much of my first advance to management, then ‘blew it’ on expensive New York studios and the Manhattan high-life. I think I got a $500,000 advance for three songs. I’d heard Chaka Khan’s ‘We Can Work It Out’, which was produced by Arif Mardin, and liked it so much I asked Arif to produce the next record.

Did Virgin and Rough Trade just let you get on with it?
I always have ‘complete artistic control’ but being asked to do morning children’s television is the pits. In Japan in we did 40 interviews and 40 photo sessions in just 6 days. We did TV shows like ‘Funky Tomato’ and ‘Telegio 7’.

Was there ever any pressure to conform to what was fashionable?
We started a scene I think. Pressure to conform? Well, when I didn’t like what was around me – the beginnings of institutionalized-indie – I moved to New York and got into R n B. Boredom and distaste were the only pressures. We didn’t do the whole Rock n’ Roll thing. One label did want to hook me up with some tabloid-friendly women at certain fashionable venues. Unbelievable. There was never any discouragement to rock n’ roll behaviour – just a little discretion. I’ve done some bad, bad things. I’ve been a very wicked man. The one crazy thing that sticks in my mind was this promotional thing in America. It was in Portland, Oregon with a man in a head to toe fish-suit called the Jammin’ Salmon. I had to spend a day touring the town with him — he never spoke. I never saw his face.

What’s the biggest myth about success?
That it makes you happy.

Biggest commercial mistake?
Disappearing for years on end.

Your most triumphant fluke?
I’m still waiting for a triumphant fluke – is it a big fish? A giant parasite?

How closely does the finished product, ‘White Bread, Black Beer’, match its original intent?
Well the album is the demo really so its exactly like it started out. I have a little studio at home in Hackney – in a room about 12 feet square and I would sit in my living room with just a guitar and play around. When I found some chords and a melody I liked, I’d go right next door to the next room and record it straight into my computer. On the new album I play all the instruments for better or worse! I’m fine with guitar and bass, but Keyboards and stuff I struggle with so those parts are pretty simple. I’m certainly not trying to impress anyone with my musical skills on this album. My greatest asset is probably listening well. Or maybe my singing.

Sum up the new release:
A joy. A triumph. The cherry on the ice-cream cake. A little too long at 14 songs.

Alan Sargeant

Originally published in Crud Magazine, June 2006.