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Scritti Politti are a British band formed in 1977 in Leeds by the Welsh singer-songwriter Green Gartside, who is the sole remaining member of the original band.

Initially formed as a punk-aligned underground act influenced by leftist politics, they transitioned into a commercial pop music project in the early 1980s, achieving success on the record charts in the UK. The group's most successful album, 1985's Cupid & Psyche 85, spawned three UK Top 20 hits with "Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin)", "Absolute", and "The Word Girl", and one US Top 20 hit with "Perfect Way". The band's 1988 album Provision peaked in the UK Top 10 and produced a UK Top 20 hit single, "Oh Patti". After releasing two non-album singles in 1991, as well as a collaboration with B.E.F., the band returned in the late 1990s after a seven-year break.

History

Origins

In the mid-1970s, Green Gartside studied fine art at Leeds Polytechnic. The punk rock group Sex Pistols 'Anarchy' tour, which included the Damned and the Heartbreakers, was launched at the Polytechnic on 6 December 1976. It inspired Gartside to form a band with his childhood friend Nial Jinks and fellow student Tom Morley.

Scritti Politti originally consisted of Gartside as the lead vocalist, Jinks as bass player, and Morley as drummer, with Matthew Kay as their manager who sometimes played the keyboard. Gartside and Jinks knew each other since being students at Croesyceiliog Grammar School in Cwmbran, South Wales. Gartside met Morley at Leeds Polytechnic. For their first public performance in 1976, supporting local Leeds punk group SOS, the group went under the name 'The Against'.

Upon finishing their studies, the group relocated to London's Camden Town around 1977, where they lived in a squat. The name Scritti Politti was chosen as a homage to the Italian Marxist writer and political theorist Antonio Gramsci. The correct spelling in Italian to refer to "Political Writings" would have produced Scritti Politici. Gartside changed it to Scritti Politti as he thought it sounded more rock and roll, like the Little Richard song "Tutti Frutti". Alongside other groups of what has been termed the DIY ethic or movement (notably The Desperate Bicycles and Steve Treatment, the latter being associated with Swell Maps), Scritti Politti released a DIY record titled "Skank Bloc Bologna" (a sort of ode to the traditionally leftist Italian city of Bologna) on their own St. Pancras label in 1978. Scritti Politti commonly added allusions to intellectual figures such as Karl Marx, Mikhail Bakunin, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and Jacques Lacan in their songs.

"Skank Bloc Bologna" gained airplay on John Peel's BBC Radio 1 show, and the band were signed to Rough Trade under Geoff Travis in 1979, making them labelmates with the other Cardiff avant-garde band, Young Marble Giants. Scritti Politti released two EPs in 1979 with singles "Bibbly-O-Tek", "Doubt Beat", "OPEC/Immac" and "Hegemony". "Hegemony"—which Gartside eventually cited as being based on the old English folk song "Lemady"—led to more melodic songs such as "Confidence", which in turn hinted at the direction the band would take in the 1980s.

Gartside reduced the band to three pieces. It exhibited an explicit do-it-yourself attitude, which manifested itself in their hand-made record sleeves with detailed breakdowns of production costs, including addresses and phone numbers of record pressing plants, and their own Camden squat address for feedback. They produced a booklet called "How To Make A Record", which was given the catalogue number SCRIT 3, and aimed to be a guide to recording and releasing a record for aspiring indie artists, based on Scritti Politti's personal experience of putting out their first three singles independently.

1980s

Scritti Politti began planning their debut album in 1979, but the recording had to be delayed when Gartside collapsed after a gig supporting Gang of Four in Brighton in early 1980. Originally believed to be a heart attack, the cause of his collapse was eventually diagnosed as a panic attack, brought on by his chronic stage fright and his unhealthy lifestyle. Returning home to south Wales at his parents' insistence for a nine-month convalescence period, Gartside had plenty of time to think about the direction the band and where their music was going. During 1979, he had already become less interested in the independent music and punk scene and had started listening to and buying American funk and disco like Chic and the Jacksons, American soul like Aretha Franklin, and 1960s British beat music such as the Beatles' early records. Gartside came to the conclusion that making pop music did not require selling out punk's principles or dumbing down. He explained his reasons for abandoning the band's original "do-it-yourself" philosophy to Smash Hits in November 1981: