Geoff Barrow | Sampling,
programming, mixing, producing, turntables,
drums, piano, rhodes.
Musical
influences: hip hop, old
soundtracks, John Barry, Ennio Morricone,
Laurie Johnson, Can, Gong, Lalo Schifrin,
Isaac Hayes, A Tribe Called Quest, Busta
Rhymes, Ultramagnetic MCs.
General info:
Being born on December 9, 1971 makes Geoff
the youngest one in the band. Generally
considered as the hip hop factor of the band,
Geoff is known to be a perfectionist when it
comes to copleting new material. Geoff and
his mother moved to the town Portishead when
he was thirteen, after his parents divorced.
His mom never left but Geoff moved fifteen
miles to Bristol and picked up some work in
"a dodgy rock band" playing drums.
Barrow got his first
job at the Coach House Studios soon after the
it opened in 1989, as a tape operator. In
1991, while he was assisting on Massive
Attack's breakthrough "Blue Lines"
album, the band allowed him spare studio time
to get his own ideas on tape. A few years
later, when the Portishead project had been
assembled, the group came back to record
"Sour Times" in that very same
studio.
At the dawn of the
'90s, Barrow was making a name for himself as
a remixer, working with such artists as
Primal Scream, Paul Weller, Gabrielle and
Depeche Mode. In addition, Barrow had
produced a track for Tricky and written songs
for Neneh Cherry.
Beth Gibbons on
Geoff: "That's the difference
between Geoff and me: I am a very sensitive
person, very impulsive and emotional. He's
objective, pragmatic and more aloof. He
absolutely has got no idea what I'm singing
about. He's not interested and he admits
that. He's more concerned with the general
impression: the lyrics and the music, it has
to fit together. And he is right in
that."
"Geoff's a bit of
a... contradiction. On one hand, he's a
rather staid
meat-and-two-veg-and-I-don't-like-garlic
Englishman and on the other he's the sort of
bloke who'll almost go out of his way to
break the rules. He was alright
personality-wise but what really made me
click with him is that I thought he was
incredibly talented. We don't socialise much
because our taste in friends is different but
we do get on in a brotherly/sisterly way and
although he keeps saying, 'I don't understand
you Beth', he's got a better idea of what
makes me tick than he thinks."
Quotes:
"There's nothing else I could have done.
I was pretty useless at school. I wanted to
be a graphic designer except I'm color blind.
Then I couldn't have done an office job,
because when it comes down to it, I'm
absolutely useless when it comes to dealing
with either reading or writing."
"We all like and
listen to music and we all talk about music,
but we're very rarely inspired by music that
is actually out now."
"Yeah, when I get
goose pimples, I know it's good. If you can
rate that kind of thing, you know you're onto
a good thing . You don't know whether it's
just going to give you goose pimples, or
whether it will give anyone else goose
pimples. But you hope that it does. That's
what I go for. That's why I hate bland
music."
"I can't stand
being in a photo studio for five hours with a
stylist. It's not what I'm about. I'm a
musician. So I don't do that either. So in
the sense of whatever it means... lack of
record sales or whatever, it doesn't matter
to us. As long as we can carry on writing
music. We sell enough records so people are
happy with it and enough people hear it and
kind of like it, that's the most important
thing. We can continue writing music. We're
not out to be the biggest band in the world
or any of that nonsense. From all the hype
that you hear about anything, Portishead
should be just purely music. If we could get
rid of all the bullshit that goes along with
it, then we would. Even though that bullshit
is what sells it. That's the trouble. The
music industry is such a weird beast -- all
the hype. You hear the hype and then someone
might hear your name and think, "Oh,
I'll go out and buy that record," or
"I'm interested in listening to
Portishead." So it works really well in
that sense. But if it could be purely about
music instead it would be so much
nicer."
