The Times - July 1999 
Interview by David Sinclair

As disappearing tricks go, the strange case of Green Gartside is not quite up there with those of Richey Edwards or blues hero Peter Green, but it is not far off.

The facts are these. At the end of the 1980s, three albums into a career with his group Scritti Politti that had produced international hits of a supremely cool and lustrous quality, including 'The Word Girl', 'Absolute' and the sublime 'Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin)', Gartside abruptly cut himself off from the rest of the world.

He split up with his girlfriend and spoke no further words to the other members of his group. Retiring to a cottage in the Welsh village of Usk, he spent the next nine years walking in the countryside, drifting into local pubs and listening to Jamaican dancehall and American hip hop records.

Looking back on that period of intense isolation, the reluctant star recalls hearing "a small voice on one side of my head which said that one day I would make another record. But there was a chorus on the other side saying 'You won't! You can't! You shouldn't!' There was a music room in the cottage with racks of synths and guitars. Even just opening the door to look in it used to send shivers of anxiety down my spine."

Fortunately the small voice eventually prevailed, and 11 years since his last album, 'Provision', Gartside is bracing himself for the release of a new Scritti Politti album, 'Anomie & Bonhomie', next Monday.

As before, the new album is a work of soulful perfection, steeped in American R&B influences. But the principle attraction remains the tunes, an alluring conflation of words and melodies sung in an effortlessly high, clear voice as sweet and subtle as menthol.

In common with many creative individuals, Gartside is temperamentally unsuited to the rigours of stardom. His problems in the 1980s stemmed from an acute sense of insecurity which made it impossible for him to distinguish between his work and his self-worth.

"If my music got a bad review, it was me that was getting a bad review. If it got a good review, I didn't deserve it," he says ruefully. His difficulties were compounded by a fear of performing live that produced panic attacks.

"I have been an anxious man for a lot of my life," he says, his pollen-afflicted eyes concealed by a giant pair of rap-DJ shades, his fingers encased in a knuckleduster configuration of chunky rings and the beard on the underside of his lip parted by a little glittering face-stud.

Born in Cardiff 43 years ago, Gartside had an unhappy childhood. His father was a merchant seaman who became a travelling salesman. He wore a tattoo of a naked woman on his arm with the legend "Man's Downfall" etched underneath. His mother was a hairdresser and a typist. They divorced when Gartside was 12, and he never again saw his father, who has since died.

Gartside found solace in music and in books about religion and philosophy. He joined the Young Communist Party and studied Fine Art at Leeds Polytechnic. While there, he saw the famous Sex Pistols tour of 1977, and left the hall determined to start his own band.

Having made erratic progress in its early incarnations, Scritti Politti coalesced into the "classic" line-up of Gartside, David Gamson (keyboards) and Fred Maher (drums) in 1983 and proceeded to stamp a discreet but indelible mark on the pop psyche.

Gartside became friends for a while with George Michael, who was said to be an early fan of Scritti Politti. But Green could see his own career was never going to take a similar trajectory, a realisation that first struck him as he was about to go on the TV programme American Bandstand.

"I was looking into Dick Clarke's eyes and thinking 'What am I doing here?' He looks at you with this pancaked face and asks this ridiculous question and I suddenly realised that this was some seriously bogus shit that had got way out of control. From there I went straight back to Hollywood and got completely off my head for as long as I could."

Now tempted back into the fray, Gartside is more aware of the pitfalls and how to avoid them. He is even rehearsing a group with the vague intention of playing live.

Is part of the problem simply that he thinks too much about things, what we might call the Hamlet syndrome?

"If you can keep it balanced, self-reflection is a good thing. But a certain degree of vigilance is needed to stop yourself sliding into the place where the delirious possibilities of meaning simply wipe you out. Basically, you've got to watch it."