Tempo magazine (German) - June 1988 
Interview by David Joop 
Translated and supplied by Dirk Shultz

A full ashtray and much ado about nothing. The tape recorder's been running for an hour now. Green Gartside's lighting one cigarette after another, talks about Gaultier and Katharine Hamnett, lectures about the "ultimate undecidedness of meanings" and there's only one thing he doesn't have in mind: to talk about music. A strange situation for the interviewer because Gartside is a pop star.

No common one though: Green Gartside is the main ideologist and spiritus rector of the British pop group Scritti Politti. Scritti are perceived as the wittiest band in the United Kingdom. And England's media reckons and celebrates Gartside as thinker, poet and composer. Three years ago, the row about Green Gartside reached its peak, when 'Cupid & Psyche 85' was released.

Now, the new LP 'Provision' is out and the consequences are already foreseeable: The critics will praise the thought-over arrangements, will be excited about those clever lyrics, will take up the grooves as a revelation and pray to Green Gartside as the messiah of pop. Then they're going to ask the master what new things he has to say about the condition of the world in general and the future of pop music in particular.

It's already started. And Gartside has only one chance to withdraw from stardom-mania: He's got to hover up into the highest spheres, where all the prayers and praising hymns cannot reach him. If there is a way to get him right down onto the ground, then it's got to be provocation: "Why", I ask him, "is it that 'Provision' sounds like a doubling of 'Cupid and Psyche 85'?" And why didn't he, back then, release a double-album right away?

The pop star strokes through his thin hair and starts rubbing his nose nervously: "There's two years of hard work on 'Provision' ", he informs me. "With each technological progress, the recordings had to be delayed longer because the way of production had to be adjusted to the new possibilities. The sounds and arrangements of the new album wouldn't have been possible back in 1985. If you don't hear that, you don't know anything about music." Right!... I think we池e finally getting there...

In the early 80s, when Punk was dying of fatigue, Scritti Politti played sweet, reggae-influenced pop music: 'Songs To Remember' was the title of the first album, which was quite good, but no sensation. A few years later, Scritti found their niche: The fusion of Disco and Avantgarde, the ironic mixture of glamour, commerciality and marketing. The finished product was called 'Cupid & Psyche 85'. That was the other mainstream dance-music: As accessible as Kim Wilde, but 100 times more intelligent.

'Provision' takes this idea even further. The grooves became harder, inspired by the House-music and Go-Go of 1988. The tunes are the most elegant condensation of kitsch and pathos.

At the end of the new LP, there is a song called 'Philosophy Now'. It's a title with a shuffling Go-Go groove, packed with witty wordplays. In between those irresistible, seductive chorusses, traces of philosophy are shining through. "Those lyrics", Green says, "are a summary of my theoretical positions. You can't omit Marx and Freud, Darwin or Derrida. They're part of this world: We've got to occupy ourselves with them."

Gartside clears his throat and grasps at something imaginary in the air. "Somebody suggested lately, that perhaps my reason for making music is that it's something one can do with a clear conscience - in a world where one would rather like to undo everything. I find it hard to live in this all-surrounding instability and ambiguity."

Who is this Green Gartside? A pretentious pop star, who should rather have become a professor instead? Or a pop star genius, who could also have become an even more impressive boaster instead? Why should we want an answer to those questions at all? We should simply let him rattle on about Marx and the wide whole. This intellectual attitude seems to be a challenge in that shallow everyday-ness of a musician. Especially for Green Gartside. This workaholic who's spending ten hours a day puzzling over his drumcomputer and synthesizer. This obsessed musician who wants and achieves the absolute perfection of sound.

No, a mastermind like that has got the right to be extravagant. It would be his death otherwise. He's got to hide up in higher spheres, because they would crush him down here. But is he really enjoying it up there?