I’ve had several people request for me to do the band Portishead.
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Sometimes referred as one of the champions of“trip-hop” Portishead brought something
new and exciting to the music world in the mid 90’s with their seminal debut record
Dummy.
Today let’s take a look at the history of the group.
The history of Portishead began with a ponytailer teenager named Geoff Barrow who originally
planned on doing graphic arts, but after seeing he wasn’t a good student decided to give
music a try.
Taking inspiration from rap records and film soundtracks he began to stitch together musical
samples in his bedroom.
At the age of 18 wanting to break into the music industry he called a local Bristol producer
asking for a job.
Bristol would emerge from the 90’s as the home of late-night, hazy and moody music that
was dubbed trip-hop.
The producer promised to give him a job provided he would help him build a new studio, which
he did.
That studio would become the Coach House, which became a hot spot for local Bristol
artists, most notably Massive Attack.
As Barrow worked his way up the pecking order he was given more responsibilities while at
the same time working on his own sonic collages using popular hip-hop techniques of of looping
and sampling, Barrow would lay the groundwork for Portishead
which was put together in piecemeal fashion over the coming months.
Barrow would meet his partner in crime Beth Gibbons while atending the Enterprise Allowance
Course in early 1991.
The course was setup by the British government as a way to encourage unemployed youth to
become entrepreneurs.
Gibbons would be seven years senior to Barrow who told the Guardian “she was grown up
in my eyes.”
Gibbons for her part at the time was singing Janis Joplin songs in pubs around Bristol.They
would call themselves portishead, which is name of the town where Gibbons grew up, a
nondescript suburban village near the city of Bristol.
But don’t think they were in love with the village because Barrow would tell Spin “I
really don’t like the place.
It’s a place where you can go and die” with Gibbons adding ‘and that’s why we
named ourselves after it.’
While Barrow had already assembled some recordings by this point he wasn’t happy with what
he had produced so far, but things took a turn for the better when Gibbons who became
the band’s lyricist and main melody writer wrote a track called Sour Times (which sampled
the mission impossible theme song) with Barrow telling the LA Times "[That song] saved it
all, really," The pair soon enlisted guitarist Adrian Utley who was also working at Coach
House studios.
Utley, who was 34 at the time was barely making a living being a jazz guitarist and had just
finished another session downstairs.
He would tell the Guardian meeting Barrow and Gibbons for the first time “ I remember
somebody opening the door upstairs and me hearing It Could Be Sweet [one of the first
tracks written for Dummy].
I was all, ‘Fuck me, what is that?’
Just hearing the sub-bass and Beth’s voice – it was unbelievable.
Like a whole new world that was really exciting and vital.”
The musicians despite their age differences hit it off and started to learn from one another.
Utley was blown by Barrow’s knowledge of sampling, while Utley had an extensive collection
of Spy films that gave Barrow access to new sounds he hadn’t heard before.
Barrow and Gibbons’s first ideas for songs had been recorded in Neneh Cherry’s kitchen
in London (Barrow had been hired by Cherry’s husband and manager, Cameron McVey, to work
on her second album, Homebrew, on which he co-wrote and co-produced the song Somedays;
McVey spotted Barrow’s talent when he worked as a trainee tape operator on Massive Attack’s
groundbreaking 1991 album Blue Lines)..
Barrow’s mental health had also declined.
“I was in a terrible place.
Through the Gulf war, I was really quite sick, physically and mentally.
Mental stuff.
I thought the war was the end of the world.
I’d never had a breakdown before – I think it was just the pressure of the Portisheadstuff
– I didn’t know I was having it.
And no one ever talked to me about mental health in any way.”
“You’re able to hide mental health issues within the music industry,”
Massive Attack would soon hear about his music and put him on retainer paying him $48 a week
as a trainee tape operator on their 1991 album Blue Lines..
Upon hearing about Barrow’s work with massive attack the manager of popstar Neneh Cherry
who was recording at the Coach House asked him to contribute to a track on her upcoming
Homebrew album, which he did contributing to the song Somedays.
Word of the group’s talent soon caught the attention signed the PolyGram-distributed
Go!
Discs label.
But the group took it’s time crafting their first album writing and recording over a span
of 18 months, possibly leading to Barrow suffering from mental health issues.
He would tell the Guardian “I was in a terrible place.
Through the Gulf war, I was really quite sick, physically and mentally.
Mental stuff.
I thought the war was the end of the world.
I’d never had a breakdown before – I think it was just the pressure of the Portishead
stuff – I didn’t know I was having it.
And no one ever talked to me about mental health in any way.”
“You’re able to hide mental health issues within the music industry,”
Barrow would spend countless hours in record stores looking for inspiration including movie
and film soundtracks and heavily rhythmic albums and was a big fan of john barry who
worked on the soundtracks for the james bond films.
He would tell the Washington post he didn’t want anything past 1976 comparing his inspiration
for samples to a bottle of fine wine.
In a separate interview he would tell Spin I’m not so keen on modern technology that’s
why a lot of our stuff sounds rough.
If you polish up everything too much it sounds stale.
Like plastic music.
While telling the Baltimore Sun I'm more into soundtrack music as music than actually the
films or the images,".
"I've never seen the films for most of the soundtracks I've owned.
I just collect records I like: ones from the late '60s and '70s, Italian, French and American
spy movies and thrillers."
While the band did use samples on the album they also soon realized that other groups
could steal their sources of inspiration so during the recording of Dummy they would also
record their own samples and then transferring them to vinyl records creating crunchy back
beats.
Barrow would tell the washington post "I think there's an art to finding an incredibly good
sample and using it in a good way,” s, but he would add he was tired of the debates over
who found what sample first adding.
"There's no skill at all" in employing a sample someone else has already used,
The sessions soon moved to the Easton district of Bristol.
Perhaps the change of scenery inspired the mood on the album with Barrow telling the
Guardian “That was grim too.
The only place to eat was Iceland or this horrible pub called Granny’s where your
beans and chips would arrive with Granny’s thumb in it.s.
Listen to how New Order made their first records, or whoever, and it’s always going to be
the same story.
You’re in some shithole somewhere that you’ve made into something OK.
Released in 1994 the group’s debut album took many people by surprise.
Dubbed by some as and i quote a ‘soundtrack without movie, or something nostalgic but
with a modern twist, the album was an eclectic mix of James Bond with a spaghetti western
atmosphere coupled with a cabaret and soulful voice.
Dummy would be hailed by some as one of the best and most innovative records of the 90’s.
Acording to Nielsen SoundScan, Portishead’s debut album, “Dummy,” sold 1.1 million
copies going platinum in America.
While the band should have been ecstatic over their success the plan wasn’t to even show
up in America until a few albums into their career with Barrow telling the LA Times “We
thought that maybe this album would sell 30,000 or 50,000 copies and then we would work on
the next one and maybe have two or three albums before coming to America and doing concerts,”
Barrow says.
A lot of the press coverage around Dummy led some in the media to question whether Gibbons
was clinically depressed given her voice and lyrics.
Not helping was her tendancy to not give interviews, but Barrow would push back against those assertions
telling Spin Beth’s not a depressive person at all.
But she put a lot of herself into dummy.
Adding that her lack of press promotion has more to do with her shyness than anything
else.
In regards to her lyrics he would add "I care if it's going to be mentally damaging to her,
but, on the other hand, I'm not a great lyrical person," he said.
"I don't get involved.
I just make sure it works sonically.
The melody lines are what I care about.
Lyrically, I trust her.
She is being honest.
She's not writing a song just to make money or sound distressed."
Chicago Tribune She's as fiery as anyone I know, and can drink us all under the table.
She just uses music to express feelings that we all have at one time or another."
The first single, "Sour Times," would become a staple on alternative rock and adult album
alternative stations stateside.
It was during the promotional cycle for Dummy the band put out a short ten minute political
assassination film titled “To Kill a Dead Man.”, which showed off the members acting
skills.
Some of its footage was used for the “Sour Times” video.
But much to the group’s chagrin the film gave some newcomers to the band a false image
of the group with Barrow telling the LA Times “For some reason the press people in England
gave out pictures of us from the film--so it’s kind of like ‘Hey, here’s Portishead,
and they’re carrying guns and wearing dark shades,’ ” Barrow says.
“And it was like ‘Ah!
No!’
That’s not why we did it!’
Dummy’s success resulted in the band being pushed by their record label to play some
US dates to further help push album sales.
despite Barrow pushing back against it telling the NY Times “I’ve never liked it, and
I never will,” Mr. Barrow said.
“I don’t feel any connection between me and the people listening to it.
I way prefer to release records and have my connection be like that.”
Second album
As the band began to assemble ideas for their sophomore album ion 1996 they went through
a particularly rough time.
Immitators of the band’s styles started to creep up so Barrow put an even bigger emphasis
on coing up with their own backbeats and samples but he did it in a way that made people think
they had been heavily borrowed from old and rare R&B and soul records.
It involved him putting his newly created samples on vinyl with him telling Spin “I’d
spend a week recording my own music purely to sample then i’d get it back on vinyl
and find that it was something i’d never touched in the first place.”
The success of Dummy weighed heavily on the band with the trio spending 14 months coming
up with their own samples.
Sometimes a day in the studio would yield a one second sample with Barrow telling the
chicago tribune "I went through six months of depression, writer's block, and everyone
went through a period where they just weren't feeling it anymore,""We started making some
progress when we stopped worrying about what other people might think and just worked on
what felt right.
After much time and money the end result would appear on the band’s second record giving
it a much bigger band sound.
Despite winning much critical acclaim the album was a modest success moving around 650,000
copies in the US.
The tour to support the album would prove to be too much for the group with Utley telling
the new york time s“It was bigger than it should have been,” “When things get bigger,
you can feel like you’re feeding this beast.
If you’re making a lot of noise, the whole thing starts to work on another level that
I’m not sure we really wanted to be on.
It’s not what we set out to do.”
: “We were all drinking lots to get the adrenaline going, and it all got a bit rock
’n’ roll, really.
Which I am not averse to, but it took its toll in the end on us.
Both Geoff and I, our home lives became messed up.
We were divorced.”
Barrow would add “At the end of that time there was nothing more to say about music
or anything,” “So I just decided that I was going to go and live my life.
The group called it quits in 1999.
Barrow would move to Australia for several years.
He would eventually start his own indie label named Invader that would release jazz and
heavy metal albums.
Utley would become a produce in addition to helping write soundtracks and playing live
gigs while Gibbons collaborated with other artists.
After returning to Bristol after some time in Australia Barrow’s indie label proved
to be a source of musical inspiration after years of writer’s block telling the new
york times their recently signed young acts and i quote gave him a shot in the arm.
It was around the mid 2000’s band had to quietly renegtiate their recording contract
and made their first appearance together in nearly half a decade at a tsunami benefit
show in 2005.
Finally, after he returned to Bristol to open a record label, Invada, with a friend, he
found his much-needed source of inspiration -- the excitedly committed young artists they
signed gave him “a shot in the arm”: Utley would tell the Times: “We’d often spend
hours talking about Iraq, the destruction of our National Health Service, architecture
. . . biscuits!
Anything.
Trivial to massive.”
And the talk drove us into writing,” Barrow adding.
“We felt properly together as a band.
For me, it’s partly because I’m 36 now, and the age gaps between me and Ade [50] and
me and Beth [43] don’t matter so much anymore.”
The band would release their third and latest album appropriately titled Third in 2008.
Barrow would discuss the inspiration behind the album telling the associated press (Barrow)
I think we ought to talk about the veneer of life.
This varnish that everyone’s forced to spend money they haven’t got, everybody’s supposed
to look a certain way, human conditioning, news media, just the way that everything is
supposed to think and look a certain way.
It’s appalling.
I don’t see any truth in any of it.
There’s very few people that I think when they open their mouths, especially on TV or
radio ... personally I don’t think there’s anyone I can rely on to speak any truth.”
The band would take a hiatus in 2016 only to return last year
playing a charity show for war child, benefting the victims of the Ukraine war.
Talking about “Third,” Mr. Barrow and Mr. Utley cited Black Sabbath, Sonic Youth,
Kraftwerk, Ultravox, the hip-hop producer Madlib, the Viking-helmeted proto-Minimalist
composer Moondog and the glacially slow heavy metal band Sunn 0))), among many others.
Mistuned instruments, lopsided mixes, low-fi microphones, expressively imprecise timing:
those are things Portishead prizes from the analog era and brings to its own recordings,
which sound ever more peculiar alongside albums relying on computer-quantized rhythms and
auto-tuned voices.