The Observer
25.08.19 13restaurant, and it refl ecting one of
her songs (they don’t mention the
song, adding they don’t discuss her
lyrics in detail). Barrow also recalls
sexist record company A&Rs from
their early days. “This real meat and
veg vibe. Men going: ‘What’s this
moaning bird on about?’”
By winter 1994, Dummy was
everywhere. And in January it went
to No 3 in the charts, behind Celine
Dion and the Beautiful South. Sour
Times and Glory Box became top
15 singles. Then came the Mercury
win, at which Barrow ranted about
prizes being preposterous (“I still
agree with that”). He also recalls
chatting amiably to Noel Gallagher.
“I remember thinking, Oh, most
musicians are dead normal. Or at
least as mad as you.”
Barrow and Utley’s main beef
is that Dummy is remembered as
a sexy, chillout record in the UK.
“When people say that, I fi nd it
bizarre.” He says Portishead had
far more in common with Nirvana
than any dance or chillout acts. “I
know that sounds ridiculous – but
they also had these visceral chord
changes, never being harmonically
correct.” Portishead are just seen as
a vocal-led band elsewhere, he adds,
with Gibbons as a Polly Harvey or
Hope Sandoval fi gure. They’re huge
in France, Switzerland and the US,
where Third entered the charts at
No 7, and in Latin America: they
played to 80,000 in Mexico City.
Despite their recent silence, every
Portishead musician remains busy.
Barrow makes fi lm scores with
composer Ben Salisbury (his latest
for the Octavia Spencer and Naomi
Watts fi lm Luce, is released in the UK
this November) and “really loves”
playing live with his Krautrock-
infl uenced band Beak. Utley has
made a soundtrack with artist
Gillian Wearing for a George Eliot
documentary recently, worked on
Anna Calvi’s latest LP, and with the
Paraorchestra of Great Britain.
They’re still passionate about new
music. Both fathers, they like “that
great gothy woman the kids like who
makes stuff on her laptop” (we work
out it’s Billie Eilish), James Holden,
Idles, Hildur Guðnadóttir and Sharon
Van Etten (Barrow), Kate Tempest,
Thurston Moore and Perfume Genius
(Utley). Things they don’t like include
composer Nils Frahm , about whom
they rant for fi ve hilarious minutes.
Barrow: “He’ll change his scarf half
way through to prove how important
he is.” Utley: “He’s grade 3 piano. He’s
fucking Richard Clayderman.”
That joyous railing against
everyone else, that sticking to one’s
guns, makes you wish for Portishead
to return as a musical entity even
sooner. Utley confi rms he was the
last to see Gibbons: “The other week
for lunch. It was great. We slagged
everything off!” Will we see them
back together soon? The men look
at each other for a moment too
long – moments later, as I start
to leave, they ’re talking about the
photographs again. “It’s all up in the
air, really,” Utley says. “If the wind
blows hard enough, you never know.”
As I leave, a gale outside roars.
Darker, stranger things keep on
happening.scores, to present what Dummy
really was. There are also hints that
the Portishead story isn’t quite
fi nished yet. As we’re settling down,
they talk about needing to speak
to Beth to get photos together “for
something”, but my nosy inquiries
are quickly brushed aside.
When the two men met, Barrow
was a ponytailed 19-year-old making
demos with the 26-year-old Gibbons
at the city’s Coach House Studios
(Barrow and Gibbons had met at an
Enterprise Allowance training day
at the dole offi ce in 1990: “She was
a grown-up in my eyes,” he says).
Utley was 34, a bored jazz session
guitarist fi nishing yet another job in
a room downstairs. “And I remember
somebody opening the door upstairs
and me hearing It Could Be Sweet
[one of the fi rst 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 three bonded quickly. Utley
mined Barrow for his knowledge of
sampling ( “Tell me everything! How
are they making that Queen track go
on and off?”), while Utley’s collection
of TV-recorded spy fi lms introduced
his bandmates to unusual
chips in. “It’s completely acceptable
to be a little bit crazy, drink too
much or take too many drugs. It’s
like: ‘Yeah, man, he was fucked last
night’. No one asks, ‘why was he
fucked?’ I think that ignorance has
been going on for ever.”
Dummy motored on after
Portishead, now a trio, moved to the
Bristol district of Easton to record.
“That was grim too,” Barrow laughs.
“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.”
The lush soundscapes of Dummy
rose from that bleakness. “But the
process is never romantic, is it?”
Barrow continues. “Listen to how
New Order made their fi rst 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.”B
ristol has changed
since then, but not in
a good way, the men
say. Homelessness
and drugs problems
are even bigger issues.
“Plus you go somewhere like St Paul s- which was very much a community
of Caribbean people – and there’s
some posh student in a onesie,” Utley
says. “Really privileged kids that have
taken that area over.” In 2017, Bristol
was named the most desirable
British city to live in by one survey,
but also the most racially segregated
by another. Its past has always been
unpleasantly divided, says Barrow,
citing a book called A Darker History
of Bristol , which recounts its history
with slavery. “But there’s been an
anti-establishment arts scene here
too, for years, with a massive tongue
in its cheek. It was there in the Pop
Group, Smith and Mighty, the Wild
Bunch, and Banksy [Barrow was
music supervisor for Banksy’s 2010
exhibition, Exit Through the Gift
Shop]. It’s always found itself.” A note
of hope, then? He shrugs, still unsure.
Portishead have always been a
political band on their own terms.
A quote from Jo Cox (“ We have far
more in common than that which
divides us”) was featured in their
2016 video for SOS; it still sits on
their website’s landing page. Barrow
and Utley also rant about Brexit,
Trump and the Tories on Twitter
feeds ; we meet four days after the
new PM arrives, which Barrow calls
“an absolute fucking disaster”.
Utley also mentions Gibbons’s
lyrics being “very visceral and
political” about gender and
the politics of relationships,
despite their abstract nature.
He recalls Gibbons pointed out
a “mansplaining” incident in a
It was an
amalgamation
of ideas and
a lifetime
of separate
discovery.
It was like a
new love
sounds from instruments such as
cimbaloms and theremins. “It was
a really exciting time, because there
was this amalgamation of ideas
and a lifetime of separate discovery
with all of us. And the fact that we
brought it to each other...” Utley
beams. “It was like a new love.”
Barrow and Gibbons’s fi rst 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). That working relationship
had fallen apart. 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. 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,” UtleyLEFT Geoff Barrow and
Beth Gibbons in their home
town, early 90s; Gibbons
performing in Germany,
2014; Portishead perform
Glory Box on Later... With
Jools Holland, 1994. Mark
McNulty/Retna Pictures,
Geisler-Fotopre/DPA/Press
Association Images, BBC