Portishead's up - Trip-hop band emerged from
'vicious' scene

By MIKE ROSS -- Edmonton Sun

"Oh, you're joking," exclaims Portishead's Adrian
Utley upon learning that Canadians can get
government grants to make music.

The guitarist is on the phone from his home in
Bristol, England, promoting his band's new album,
Roseland NY Live - the product of nearly four
years of hard-fought-for success. With a certain
amount of pride, Utley describes the British music
scene as "cynical" and "vicious." State funding for
musicians is non-existent. Competition is intense.
And the media are merciless. You can be a critic's
darling one week and as square as Michael
Bolton's jaw the next. Just ask the Spice Girls.

It's survival of the fittest in Britain - which might
help explain why they're so appallingly up to date
on all the latest musical trends, or why they always
appear to be leading the direction of pop music.

Utley doesn't necessarily agree with that, but to be
a musician in England, "You have to be tough," he
says. "Most musicians survive on unemployment
benefits. There's thousands of them desperately
trying not to get caught because they'll take your
money away. It's happened to me. And there's no
way of surviving without it. You can have a day
job, but when you have to drive to Manchester to
play some f---ing s--t gig and get 10 quid for the
whole band, which just about covers the petrol,
and then you get back at 7 in the morning, then you
got to rehearse, write songs ... Unemployment
benefits is the only way to survive.

"If they ever find that you're doing gigs, they think
you're making a fortune. And if you're ever going
for a career, they ask, 'Why haven't you got any
work? Why are you still on unemployment benefit?
Have you been looking for jobs?' and you say,
'Yeah, I want to be a musician.' It's a complete and
utter joke, even though the British music industry
brings a huge revenue into the country ... but I
wouldn't have it any other way."

It all puts a "hard edge" on what's happening in
Britain, he adds - a slightly ironic thing to say
considering how mellow Portishead's music is. It
basically sounds like a rap record played one
speed too slow, topped with a boil of ambient
guitar sounds, Geoff Barrow's turntable scratching
and the melancholy, hypnotic tones of vocalist Beth
Gibbons. Put a 30-piece orchestra behind it, as on
Roseland NY Live, and it's an outworldly musical
experience quite unlike anything you'll hear on pop
radio. The band was labelled as "trip hop," an
unfair term, Utley says.

"It was a flippant term that was created by
somebody in the media. It started out with New
York kind of breaks with weird little ambient digital
watch noises over top. It was a small thing that
happened once, and it kind of got labelled trip hop,
and then everything associated with slow beats got
called trip hop. For us, it's not about that. It's never
been that. We've got songs."

Since the band was initially a studio creation, it
took a 1995 appearance on the Jules Holland
Show (the David Letterman of British music
programs) for the musicians to realize just how truly
alternative they were.

"INXS were on, some soul singer and Edwyn
Collins, just when he did A Girl Like You, and then
there was a woman playing piano," Utley says. "I
just sensed that night that we sounded very different
from anything else that was happening. The people
who worked there, the floor managers and so on,
they wanted lots of flashing lights and people
jumping around, feet on monitors and leather
trousers and stuff. And we're just not like that at all.


"I just felt slightly that they weren't taking us
seriously, and as soon as we started playing, there
was this silence in the room that was absolutely
amazing. I'd never felt it before.

"I just remember that gig, we played Glory Box and
Wandering Star, off of the Dummy album. It just
felt right, somehow. We'd been working for a long
time on it."

Dummy started climbing the charts the day after the
show, Utley says. The band became a darling of
the press (and presumably still is).

Not bad for what turned out to be the Portishead's
second live gig. Unlike Utley, who was a
professional jazz musician for 10 years, Barrow
and Gibbons had no prior live experience at all.

"They were terrified, extremely frightened," Utley
laughs.

"I think that's brilliant. That's how it should be. It
gives you an edge. If you're complacent about stuff,
I don't think that's a good thing. It's good to be
edgy and worried about your life. It means the
blood's still pumping 'round your body and you're
still alive."

Stress enhances creativity? Must be a British thing.