Portishead

Fri 11th Nov, 2011 in Features

Tomorrow evening trip-hop pioneers Portishead will take to the stage at Harvest Festival in Melbourne, marking their first live appearance in Australia since 1998.

In the leadup to their long-awaited return to our shores FL talked to Geoff Barrow about his time living in Australia, the band’s new found desire to play live, and why we may be waiting some time for the next Portishead record: “…the reason we don’t is because the process sometimes is so agonizing that we just have large lay-offs”

Hi Geoff, My name’s Elmo. How are you?
I’m very well. Can you hang on one second? I’ve got the fire brigade outside my door.

Oh, of course, of course.
Hang on one second.

Silence

Sorry about that. I live next to a care home and the alarm was going off. The guy who lives there, he’s not very good at dealing with people. Basically he saw the fire brigade coming up the road, coming up the pathway and he got a bit scared. I just had to deal with it a bit. I’m here now.

Does that happen often?
Well, yeah, basically, technically because of the cuts to health care in the UK. It’s gone down from being a 24 hour kind of support health for people with learning disabilities to literally them being on their own. You end up getting a lot more involved, basically, because they can’t really care for themselves.

Oh, yeah. So where do you live? What part of England are you in?
I’m in Bristol.

So you’ve been there since you were young… Is that right?
Yeah, yeah. I grew up in Portishead which is the town 15 miles away from Bristol, then I moved to Bristol when I was 18. It’s kind of like if you… Where are you at the moment?

I’m in Sydney. I live right in the city of Sydney, right in the middle of the city.
It’s kind of like if you lived out in Hornsby, you know what I mean. I grew up there, but you want to move to the city eventually, that kind of thing.

So you were never tempted to move to London, though, to live up there?
No, no. Not with them wankers.

I wanted to ask you how the [charity] soccer game turned out that you guys played a couple of weekends ago?
Yeah, it was really good. We raised a lot of money for the childrens’ hospice and stuff, and Daddy G, Roni Size played and a few proper football legends were there, and the weirdest thing: Kelsey Grammer was there.

No way. Frazier was there?!
Frazier was there.

Did he score a goal?
No, he didn’t play. He was just there. I mean, he’s married to a Bristol City player’s daughter. And she grew up in Portishead and she’s become a n air hostess and that’s how they met.

How amazingly strange!
It’s a very strange affair. I kept on looking over to see what my mate’s mum chatting to him.

I must say, I do love Frazier. I think it’s a fantastic show.
Yeah, it’s an amazing show. He’s a really nice dude as well, he’s really cool.

Fantastic! Did you score or do you play defence?
No, I was supposed to score. I won a penalty but I gave it to someone else to take and they fluffed it. We lost 2-1, so it wasn’t too bad and we had a penalty saved it was pretty good compared to the team we were playing… They were all very kind of good quality. I play a couple of times a week, just try to keep fit, really.

I guess we’ve gotta talk about Portishead, though, I would like to talk more about soccer later, maybe. I wanted to know if you guys are enjoying playing together now, and how is it different from the last time that you were playing live?
It’s a really weird one. You kind of think it feels easier, right? It feels nicer, and it feels more relaxed. It feels like it’s kind of more fun, but at the same time, we’re constantly shitting ourselves.

How come?
Well because we… If we have to put together a 5,000 piece jigsaw puzzle every night. When we play live it’s definitely not going through the motions, if you see what I mean.
Beth obviously is incredibly talented, is a singer and performer, but remembering stuff doesn’t come particularly naturally to her. Once she’s done something, it’s usually very difficult for her to… She can’t do it naturally. She doesn’t have a natural ability to recreate. She has to count stuff, like we all do, really. Some weird time signatures and stuff. We are very… There’s a really intense kind of level that goes through the gig.