“To me, pop and the whole notion of pleasure, sex, entertainment and leisure is political,” says SCRITTI POLITTI’s GREEN GARTSIDE. “So Dead Or Alive with their swirling clothes have as much political resonance as Billy Bragg.” Charming as he is, Gartside’s work doesn’t please everyone.
The two singers, a tall fresh-faced welshman and a soft-spoken bleary-eyed Mancunian, felt trapped. try as he might to plot a path out of the complexities of art, language, politics and even music – all abiding concerns of his group scritti Politti – the welshman always ended up fronting an improvised racket. he wanted to break down the ideological barriers, his self-imposed stasis. Joy Division, the Mancunian’s group, had reached a ferocious, inexorable peak and for him further elevation seemed impossible. Long into the night they sat talking on the stage of an empty electric Ballroom, feeling depressed and distanced – unable to offer solace for each other’s problems. no resolutions or solutions came out of their discussion, just a mutual confirmation of boredom and restlessness. the two, ian Curtis and green gartside, never met again. within a week, Curtis was dead.
Soon after, gartside returned to wales to recover from illness and reconsider his strategy, as a post-Marxist agnostic materialist, in the pop marketplace.
Thus encumbered, he naturally found himself with a bit of a reputation.
“I think that’s a lot of bollocks actually, the reputation. I learned a bit too late how you get reputations. For a while i did try to deny my interests, but i can’t deny them, they are as with me as any other formal experiences would inform anyone else’s writing.
“It’s very much part and parcel of how you look at the world. i don’t think you can be impressed by Marx or Freud and then forget the whole concept of class or conscience, never let them impinge on your perspective. it will sometimes surface – for better or worse, i might add.”
This story is from the March 2017 edition of The History of Rock.
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This story is from the March 2017 edition of The History of Rock.
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