Sounds magazine - March 1984 
Interview by Chris Burkham

Since 1976 And All That Green has always been the later. From covering Chelsea songs, of all things, in Leeds Art College band The Against to the first phase of Scritti Politti - "all that peculiar stuff, which is as weird as hell and makes for very difficult listening."

On to the second phase and the dream of creating a perfect pop music, packaged with consumate style and on an independent label which ended with the 'Songs To Remember' LP and a relatively disappointing commercial reception.

To his first single on a major record label, 'Wood Beez', which captures his soft vocals at their most touchingly femine and the music in a dreamingly urgent flight of pop-dance - all the while Green has been an astute observer of the hows, whys and wherefores of pop music.

His articulacy, his ability to cope with the theory and practice of pop music, coupled with this intent to avoid the monolithic side of the music industry, led to his unenviable position of being considered a nebulous 'spokesperson' for the, at the time fashionable, notion of a New Pop.

There was a time when he felt he couldn't have an ordinary conversation about music, yet looking back he feels that the most interesting points that could have been made at the time never came out.

"Since then I've realised that interviews aren't the best place to get them across, really I should perservere with the book."

Where most theorists made lousy pop records, and the creators of the best pop records espoused lousy theories, Green was an exception in that the four singles and one LP he made for Rough Trade, with varing band members, did more than match his claims for a new pop perfection - particularly the sublime 'Faithless'. The only surprise was that they just didn't sell that well.

Packing his bags with the notes that had originally been written to explain to the other members of Scritti why it was that he wanted to make pure pop music - and which developed into the basis of a book on "the politics of rhythm" and his dismissal of the elitist nonsense that a music form such as jazz is thought to contain more truth than pop music - he left for New York.

Eighteen months later, after having secured a record deal with Virgin and new management as well as working with various musical luminaries in New York, a calmer Green has returned to "the self-aggrandising, self-pitying, white, middle-of-the-road rock orthodoxy which is establishing itself in this country."

"I should like to have at least one singularly successful record, to at least prove to myself that all the effort I've put into this was of some worth and that I wasn't completely wide of the mark in thinking that the interests I had, and the aesthetics I pursued, weren't completely mistaken."

"Also I would very much like to finish this book - which I think may be as important as any record that I make - about the state and politics of popular music."

To take any line of thought about pop music, which in its basest form is a consumer item and in its most perfect an object of joy as far as Green has is to invite both praise and damnation.

Clinical probing of the motifs and motive of pop, but more a curiosity fuelled by a lively intellect and carried out by an able enough practioneer of pop.

'Songs To Remember' surprisingly lives up to its name, released at a time when every British pop hopeful had struck up a mild firtation with black music. Scritti dictated their own style instead of letting their influence do the same.

What emerged was an idiosyncratic British pop music which certainly benefited from certain black music, but was far from being a half-hearted copy - to be forgotten with the arrival of the next season's flavour.

The idea, though definitely not the execution in most cases, of a new pop music could have been as revolutionary as, and closer to the spirit of, Punk than many realised. More so than "the rhetorical posturing of The Clash" at least.

Green's preference still lies with popular rather than marginal music, and 'Wood Beez' is a continuation of his fascination with its possibilities - this time though with a few more distinctly contemporary references, especially those he had picked up from the New York hip-hop musics.

This persistent interest in what goes to form pop music, and to understand the mechanics of both the lyrical and musical languages, spills over into the creating of his own music, and his imagination is forever fed by the possibilities inherent in pop.

In this way he once attempted to involve Gregory Isaacs and Kraftwerk together on a record, a plan which unforunately never came to fruition, but remains as an example of his will to blend disparate styles that obviously could form something special.

"I think people inevitably do. It is the purists who tend to be the least intersting and most dull, then those who very self-consciously mix things together tend to cock it up - and I speak from personal experience! - and people who leave all the idiosyncracies just to nature are the people who are most successful in fusing things together. You think about it a little bit, but mainly deal in what you like the sound of."

That is the most important part of Green's understanding of pop. He may be able to argue his case clearly, he may be able to differentiate between the good and the bad but without an instinct for what sounds right he'd be lost.

Hardly the material for a teen idol, Green's fort・has to be his music, although it doesn't fit in too comfortably with a pop music which generally considers itself to be another tame branch of the show business tree.

"This idea that music has somehow run its formal course and that there's no way to innovate beyond it, that it has been taken to the limit and trashed and that there's nothing left, is crap. That's patent and arrant nonsense. You and I would be kidding ourselves if we didn't think that in five years time some way of using and abusing music weren't to come along that would catch the imagination of the teenager and be as revolutionary and as innovative as Punk was."

"It's not like a painting in a gallery because it doesn't have a formally expirable history; you go on and fuck it over, and do it up, and rehash it, and dress it up differently again and do and say different things with it forever. That's the great, great thing about pop music and it will always have that power."