THE TUESDAY CORRESPONDENT

HIGH ANXIETY.....

I was listening to an interview, this morning on the radio, with former Liverpool and Aston Villa manager Gerard Houllier. He talked of the stress and pressure of the job that caused him to quit his position because of heart trouble.

It got me thinking about the musical artists that I know that have found that stress, anxiety and stage fright that has caused them to stop performing live and touring.

One of the first pieces I wrote for JC told of the problems that XTC’s Andy Partridge had with acute stage fright.

He suffered a breakdown on stage in Paris during a show on the English Settlement tour in 1982.

It was reported that his wife had thrown away his constant supply of Valium that he toured with. He been prescribed the drug as a teenager during his parents’ divorce and over the subsequent years he had become overly dependent on it.

He has never toured since.

The other person that I read about recently who had severe problems with the stress and anxiety of stage fright was Green Gartside of Scritti Politti.

So much so, that he was unable to tour while at the top of his game and riding high in the charts. He went 26 years between playing live gigs.

Green (real name Paul Julian Strohmeyer) was born in Cardiff and moved to Leeds to study art at the local Polytechnic College. He took the surname Gartside after his mother remarried.

The Sex Pistol’s ‘Anarchy Tour’ was launched at Leeds Polytechnic and this inspired Gartside to form his own band.

He has described the origins of Scritti Politti as a DIY squat punk band; he formed the band with school friend Neil Jinks and Tom Morley.

Their early gigs were supporting some of the more established local punk bands in Leeds and their set list consisted of Chelsea cover versions.

They relocated to London and moved into a squat in Camden Town. A single ‘Skank Bloc Bologna’ was self financed and released. It received some airplay from John Peel and this alerted Rough Trade records who signed the band.

At this point they were offered the opportunity to open on tour for The Clash, they declined the offer as they only had three songs.

Over the next year, they continued writing songs and released two EPs on the Rough Trade label that each came with their handmade sleeves, which included their home address for any feedback to be sent.

Now that they had built up a back catalogue of songs they were able to support any band that asked, they toured with The Pop Group, Echo and the Bunnymen, and the Slits.

It was while on tour with the Gang of Four and Joy Division that Green suffered a suspected heart attack while on stage at the age of only 23.

He explained, ‘on the day of a gig I’d wake up shaking, sweating, getting stomach cramps and vomiting. As we started playing more and more gigs, it became almost a permanent state of paralysis. One night, after supporting Gang Of Four, I collapsed and was taken to hospital. I thought it was a heart attack.

That’s when I decided not to play live again.

It was only much later that I realised it was an anxiety problem’.

He moved back to his hometown Cardiff to recover, it was here that he started writing the first album, which used the influences from the music he was listening to, reggae, R&B and soul music.

The first track to see the light of day was The Sweetest Girl and a version was available on a free cassette that was given with the NME called C81.

Scritti Politti’s new track was in good company, as other tracks featured included:

Orange Juice-Blue Boy
Aztec Camera-We Could Send Letters
Josef K-Endless Soul
Wah! Heat-7,000 Names of Wah!

The Sweetest Girl ended the year at No.22 in John Peel’s Festive 50 for 1981 (Joy Division’s Atmosphere was No.1).

When the first album ‘Songs To Remember’ was released, it received some very favourable reviews and sold very well, reaching No.12 in the UK charts, the highest position ever achieved at that point by an artist on Rough Trade records.

The next album ‘Cupid & Psyche 85’ saw Green starting his collaboration with David Gamson.

Gamson had also featured on a NME free cassette Jive Wire with a track called Turn On Red.

Gartside had spent some time in New York and had met Gamson; they started writing together and recorded some sessions with Nile Rodgers producing. From these sessions most of the singles from Cupid were drawn.

A lot of new techniques were used on the album, no other album at that point used sampling and sequencing as much and these were techniques that were only available to them in New York.

The album had a very American sound and feel to it.

Although the album was promoted extensively, there were no live concert appearances.

The album was very successful, reaching No.5 in the UK album charts with 3 top twenty singles.

The track ‘Perfect Way’ was released as a single in the US and reached No.11 and was then covered by jazz legend Miles Davis, this led to Davis featuring on next Scritti album ‘Provision’ on the track ‘Oh Patti’.

Promoting the two albums took their toll on Gartside, he explained, ‘I was in a poor state, physically and psychologically. I was living in various hotels and apartments in America. Cocaine was briefly a problem. After promoting ‘Provision’ that’s when the complete collapse happened’.

He returned to Wales and dropped out of the music scene for a number of years.

Strangely when he returned to recording 11 years later it was the urban sounds of America with hip-hop that he had been listening to, in his rural setting of South Wales that reinvigorated his love for making music.

He worked with Mos Def and others from the hip-hop scene to produce the album ‘Anomie and Bonhomie’, but commercially the album wasn’t very successful. It is best described as a fusion of rap, soul and rock.

For me the highlights are ‘Tinseltown to the Boogiedown’ and ‘Umm’.

A few years passed with only a few musical collaborations with various different acts and then a new album was announced.

In 2006, ‘White Bread Black Beer’ was released to great critical acclaim and with it a tour was announced. The lead single from the album, ‘Boom Boom Bap’ was a one of my favourite singles of that year.

26 years after last playing live, Scritti Politti was going to play live and one of the dates was at the Liquid Room, Edinburgh.

Green explained, ‘You get less anxious with age. What’s the worst that can happen? Even if it all goes tits up – and it has – the pleasure of making music always outweighs the anxiety. My band are all friends from my local pub, the George in Hackney, which is great.

Alyssa, our bass player, was working behind the bar and had never been a bass player before. They'd come into the pub and we'd occasionally talk about music so, when it came to putting the band together I thought why not ask the people there. I had no idea how good they are but I knew they were nice people. And because they were nice people, that is why it finally has became possible to play live’.

The album was nominated for the Mercury prize for 2006, an award that went to the Artic Monkeys.

The gig at the Liquid Room in 2006 was possibly Scritti Politti’s first visit to Scotland.

I went to the gig with JC and Jacques the Kipper, there was a real tingle of anticipation in the air.

The Scotsman newspaper’s review of the gig told of Green Gartside nervy state at the beginning of the gig.

‘Oh Christ!’ exclaimed the singer, after taking to the stage to a rapturous reception from the Capital crowd. ‘What a welcome . . . you've made me really nervous now’.

After that, he settled down to play a set, mostly comprising of songs from their recent album release with a few classics like ‘The Sweetest Girl’ and ended the set with ‘Wood Beez’.

I do remember a man in the audience calling out continually, ‘Play yer hits!!’.....I thought to myself, ‘does a man who has suffered from anxiety and panic attacks, need this prick shouting that!!’.

Earlier this year a new compilation album ‘Absolute’ was released with two Gartside and Gamson new tracks.

mp3 : Scritti Politti - The Sweetest Girl (demo)
mp3 : Scritti Politti - The Boom Boom Bap
mp3 : Scritti Politti - A Day Late and a Dollar Short
mp3 : Scritti Politti - The Sweetest Girl (live)

Mr John Greer, Tuesday 18 October 2011