Do The Gart, Man

-- New Musical Express, 16 March 1991

After a critical and commercial drubbing was dealt out to the last SCRITTI POLITTI album, GREEN GARTSIDE ran to the hills to lick his wounds. Back with a ragga version of a Beatles song, he's bracing himself for another savaging, but at least he's got a hit, he tells TERRY STAUNTON. On the facing page, IAN McCANN profiles the true star of Scritti's single, ragga superstar SHABBA RANKS.

The dancehall foundations are shaking and there's outrage in the ragga ranks. A white pop star has plundered their culture with the aid of Lennon & McCartney -- but what's worse is that one of dancehall's finest footsoldiers is a co-conspirator.

Scritti Politti have been conspicuous by their absence over the last three years, with Green Gartside hiding in the hills of South Wales after the poor critical and commercial response to the last album 'Provision'.

Now he's back with a furiously reworked ragga version of the Beatles B-side 'She's A Woman', heading straight for the Top 40 as we speak and featuring top toasting from ragga megastar Shabba Ranks.

It's head and shoulders above the glut of uninspired Fab Four and Stones covers of the last 18 months or so, but Shabba fans and the ragga fraternity in general are almost universal in their condemnation of the record.

Green Gartside sighs and lights another cigarette, bracing himself for the inevitable criticism.

"I expected to curry quite a lot of disfavour from almost everybody," he says. "Some people will see it as any number of cardinal sins, y'know, the diluting of dancehall at the hands of a wimpy white boy. Unimaginative people, I think, won't like it.

"The brief as far as I was concerned was not to imitates a dancehall record, not to try and pretend it came from Gussie's Music Works or it was a Firehouse Crew production or something. To be honest, that would have been very easy to do, because in terms of production they're very simple records."

Simple or not, the dancehall posse are proud of their music and have not taken kindly to Green's intrusion. Shabba Ranks and his enigmatic manager 'The Specialist' seem to be in a minority with their enthusiasm for the record.

"Essentially they didn't know me from a hole in the ground when I first approached them and were willing to give me the benefit of the doubt.

"The whole thing might not have ever got off the ground if Maxi Priest hadn't been in the same room as them when I called up. He put in a good word for me and it went on from there.

"When Shabba and his posse were listening to the final tune they were nodding sagely. He leaned over to me and said 'Yeah, big hit -- this could get you an album deal'. I didn't want to be smarmy and say 'Well, I've already got an album deal, actually'.

"He genuinely had no idea whatsoever as to who I was, and nor should he be expected to know or care about me. His is a very different world to mine."

SHABBA AND 'The Specialist' may not be the only ones to respond with a terse 'Who he?' when confronted by Scritti Politti, Green having kept such a low profile over the last three years.

It took Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh of Heaven 17 to woo Green away from his idyllic semi-retirement with an invitation to contribute a song to their second volume of wild and wacky cover versions 'Music of Quality And Distinction', to be released later in the year.

Green has a go at Stevie Wonder's 'I Don't Know Why I Love You' ("not as hysterical as the original") and he used the spare studio time at the end of the session to knock off a couple of singles for himself.

A version of Gladys Knight's 'Take Me In Your Arms And Love Me', another ragga collaboration, this time featuring the vocal talents of Sweetie Irie, should see the light of day in the summer. In the meantime, 'She's A Woman' looks set to give Green his biggest hit for six years.

"Mercifully I don't get to hear many of the other Stones and Beatles cover that have come around, but I suppose there is some validity to reworking songs. It's a time-honoured tradition, and 'She's A Woman' has always been one of my favourite songs. I invariably choose it when I'm on the Radio 1 My Top Ten sort of things.

"It's the first time I've ever done a cover and it was a lot of fun. I definitely wouldn't have done it if I hadn't already released a heap of my own songs. I weighed up the pros and cons of doing it, and there were no other pros other than that it might be fun."

Fun was indeed the key element, and the single also provided a welcome break from working on homegrown material, Green still smarting over the tepid reaction to the 'Provision' album of 1988. Having hit pop paydirt with the much loved 'Cupid & Psyche' album in 1985, Green's next record was a major disappointment.

"I'm not really inclined to do a post-mortem on 'Provision', other than to say that I acknowledge that it was less successful and less fun than the previous album," he says in a most matter-of-fact voice.

"The last album just ran out of fun along the way. I still think some of the things on it were OK, but it generally fell between any number of stools."

To restore his sanity, Green disappeared to a small village in South Wales, giving only a handful of trusted friends a forwarding address. He made sure that his record company, Virgin, didn't know where he was.

"I was consciously hiding from everybody. It was a good thing to do, everyone should try it once in a while. I was screwed up over everything, really, I'd had enough and I just needed to escape.

"It was exactly semi-retirement because I took all my gear down and demoed a good album's worth of material. It's pretty much ready to go but I'm quite keen to extend this playtime period I've given myself. I don't want to ring the bell on myself and go back into the classroom just yet."

Green's playtime involved getting pissed with the locals during leisurely lock-ins in the village pub, and intentionally losing touch with the big bad world of the music business.

"It's difficult to keep up with thing in Wales, you leave three-quarter of the world behind when you cross the Severn Bridge. You can just about cling on to the periphery of things if you're in Bristol, but once you're past there forget it.

"I used to hate even visiting South Wales, because the idea of going back always seemed like an admission of defeat to me. It's as if you'd gone out into the bigger world and found out that it's frightening or that it hurts, so you go home.

"I don't want to make a big thing about holing myself up in the middle of nowhere, but people are asking me where I've been and I can't really say I've been touring the Far East or helping Bob (we think he means Dylan -- Ed) with his album.

"I would imagine Bob may need help with his album, but I'm having far too much fun in the playground and getting pissed. He ought to try it himself sometime."