Scritti Politti

Scritti Politti are a British band formed in 1977 in Leeds by singer-songwriter Green Gartside, who is the sole remaining member of the original band.
Initially formed as a punk-aligned underground act influenced by leftist politics, they transitioned into a commercial pop music project in the early 1980s, achieving success on the record charts in the UK. The group's most successful album, 1985's Cupid & Psyche 85, spawned three UK Top 20 hits with "Wood Beez ", "Absolute", and "The Word Girl", and one US Top 20 hit with "Perfect Way". The band's 1988 album Provision peaked in the UK Top 10 and produced a UK Top 20 hit single, "Oh Patti". After releasing two non-album singles in 1991, as well as a collaboration with B.E.F., the band returned in the late 1990s after a seven-year break.

History

Origins

In the mid-1970s, Green Gartside studied fine art at Leeds Polytechnic. The punk rock group Sex Pistols 'Anarchy' tour, which included the Damned and the Heartbreakers, was launched at the Polytechnic on 6 December 1976. It inspired Gartside to form a band with his childhood friend Nial Jinks and fellow student Tom Morley.
Scritti Politti originally consisted of Gartside as the lead vocalist, Jinks as bass player, and Morley as drummer, with Matthew Kay as their manager who sometimes played the keyboard. Gartside and Jinks knew each other since being students at Croesyceiliog Grammar School in Cwmbran, South Wales. Gartside met Morley at Leeds Polytechnic. For their first public performance in 1976, supporting local Leeds punk group SOS, the group went under the name 'The Against'.
Upon finishing their studies, the group relocated to London's Camden Town around 1977, where they lived in a squat. The name Scritti Politti was chosen as a homage to the Italian Marxist writer and political theorist Antonio Gramsci. The correct spelling in Italian to refer to "Political Writings" would have produced Scritti Politici. Gartside changed it to Scritti Politti as he thought it sounded more rock and roll, like the Little Richard song "Tutti Frutti". Alongside other groups of what has been termed the DIY ethic or movement, Scritti Politti released a DIY record titled "Skank Bloc Bologna" on their own St. Pancras label in 1978. Scritti Politti commonly added allusions to intellectual figures such as Karl Marx, Mikhail Bakunin, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and Jacques Lacan in their songs.
"Skank Bloc Bologna" gained airplay on John Peel's BBC Radio 1 show, and the band were signed to Rough Trade under Geoff Travis in 1979, making them labelmates with the other Cardiff avant-garde band, Young Marble Giants. Scritti Politti released two EPs in 1979 with singles "Bibbly-O-Tek", "Doubt Beat", "OPEC/Immac" and "Hegemony". "Hegemony"—which Gartside eventually cited as being based on the old English folk song "Lemady"—led to more melodic songs such as "Confidence", which in turn hinted at the direction the band would take in the 1980s.
Gartside reduced the band to three pieces. It exhibited an explicit do-it-yourself attitude, which manifested itself in their hand-made record sleeves with detailed breakdowns of production costs, including addresses and phone numbers of record pressing plants, and their own Camden squat address for feedback. They produced a booklet called "How To Make A Record", which was given the catalogue number SCRIT 3, and aimed to be a guide to recording and releasing a record for aspiring indie artists, based on Scritti Politti's personal experience of putting out their first three singles independently.

1980s

Scritti Politti began planning their debut album in 1979, but the recording had to be delayed when Gartside collapsed after a gig supporting Gang of Four in Brighton in early 1980. Originally believed to be a heart attack, the cause of his collapse was eventually diagnosed as a panic attack, brought on by his chronic stage fright and his unhealthy lifestyle. Returning home to south Wales at his parents' insistence for a nine-month convalescence period, Gartside had plenty of time to think about the direction the band and where their music was going. During 1979, he had already become less interested in the independent music and punk scene and had started listening to and buying American funk and disco like Chic and the Jacksons, American soul like Aretha Franklin, and 1960s British beat music such as the Beatles' early records. Gartside came to the conclusion that making pop music did not require selling out punk's principles or dumbing down. He explained his reasons for abandoning the band's original "do-it-yourself" philosophy to Smash Hits in November 1981:
As well as his musical change of heart, Gartside had also abandoned the strict Marxist philosophy of the early Scritti Politti ideas and recordings, saying that "a lot of the very oppositional politics that we'd been involved in lost their appeal and credibility for me. I rejected the principles of that, what was monolithical Marxism. I no longer supported the mechanism which held that up, and carried over to the music. Plus I was bored shitless with the noise we were making."
Before his collapse Gartside had already broached the concept of taking the group in a more commercial pop direction with his bandmates. His ideas did not go down well with them, as he recounted in an interview for Jamming! fanzine in June 1982:
Gartside recorded a demo of one of his new songs, "The 'Sweetest Girl'", in January 1981, and the song was included on the C81 cassette compilation obtained with tokens from the March issues of NME. The song – which features Robert Wyatt on keyboards – received strong reviews. It was cited by The New York Times as one of the ten best singles of the year, but the track did not get a wide release for ten months, by which time momentum was lost, and it only achieved a minor placing on the UK Singles Chart at No. 64. The single was later covered by pop band Madness, with their version reaching No. 35 on the UK Singles Chart in 1986. Drummer Tom Morley departed Scritti Politti in November 1982.
"The 'Sweetest Girl'" prompted many major labels to offer Gartside record contracts, but he decided to stay with Rough Trade Records. "The 'Sweetest Girl'" marked a stylistic change toward the more melodic, and was followed by minor hits "Faithless" and double A-side "Asylums in Jerusalem" / "Jacques Derrida". The song "Jacques Derrida" was influenced by Gartside's reading of deconstruction and the work of semiotic analysis from the French philosopher Derrida.
The debut album, Songs to Remember, was released on Rough Trade in August 1982. Displaying Gartside's previously hidden reggae influence, it was a critical and commercial success, reaching No. 12 in the UK Albums Chart. One of Rough Trade's most unlikely success stories, the album became their biggest selling release to date. Also during this period, Gartside recorded a duet with Annie Lennox on the Eurythmics track "Wrap It Up", for their Sweet Dreams album released in early 1983.
Around this time Gartside returned to his home in South Wales:

I became sick. I went back to Caerleon... and I started listening to my sister's music for the first time. She had a lot of black music. Around that time my parents moved to Florida, and it was visiting there I first heard black radio – that's where I first heard 'the funk'. The System, Zapp... artists like that. There was a rapid change of influences combined with a disgust at big-I 'Indie' being born. It didn't take long to say, 'Fuck that, let's do this instead.'

Gartside became influenced by the new sounds coming out of New York City, especially hip hop. He signed with Virgin Records in 1983 The original line-up was disbanded and Gartside moved to New York.
Collaborating with veteran producer Arif Mardin, David Gamson and Fred Maher, the first recording to emerge from these sessions was the single: "Wood Beez ". Released in February 1984, "Wood Beez" was an immediate UK hit, peaking at No. 10, and was also successful in Australia, charting at No. 25, and in New Zealand where it reached No. 26. A series of intricately programmed dance/soul-style hits followed, including "Absolute", "Hypnotize" and the reggae-styled "The Word Girl", which became Scritti Politti's biggest UK hit single, climbing to No. 6 in May 1985.
In June 1985, Scritti Politti released their second album, Cupid & Psyche 85, with songs produced by Arif Mardin and performances by numerous session musicians. The LP was a top 5 hit in the UK and sold well in the US. In addition to the four already released singles, the album included the song, "Perfect Way". It was only a minor hit when released in the UK but it became the band's biggest US single, peaking at No. 11.
The personnel for Cupid and Psyche 85 differed from that of their first album, and featured keyboardist David Gamson and ex-Material drummer Fred Maher, both of whom would collaborate with Gartside on songwriting and production duties. Arif Mardin would also produce three songs for the album. Stylistically, the songs on the album feature dense timbral counterpoint, using synthesizer chords and effects, programmed largely by David Gamson, creating a style that they would refine in their next album. In the US, "Wood Beez" was re-released as the follow-up single to "Perfect Way", but it only managed to hit No. 91.
In 1986, Gartside and Gamson wrote and produced "Love of a Lifetime" for Chaka Khan, which appeared on her Destiny album. The same year they also collaborated to write the title track for Al Jarreau's album, L is For Lover.
In 1987, Scritti Politti appeared on the Who's That Girl soundtrack with the song "Best Thing Ever". This track also appeared on the next Scritti Politti album, 1988's Provision, which continued Gartside's development into synth-funk as well as reggae and other styles. The roster of session players became even more notable, including contributions from Roger Troutman, Marcus Miller and Miles Davis, who performed on the single "Oh Patti ", a UK No. 13 hit. Although the album charted in the top 10 in the UK, it did not match the commercial success of Cupid and Psyche 85 in the US, stalling at No. 113.