Whatever happened to the band Portishead?
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I cite my sources and they may differ than other people's accounts, so I don't guarantee the actual accuracy of my videos.
The history of Portishead began with a ponytailer teenager named Geoff Barrow who originally planned on doing graphic arts, but after seeing he wasn’t a good student decided to give music a try. Taking inspiration from rap records and film soundtracks he began to stitch together musical samples in his bedroom. At the age of 18 wanting to break into the music industry he called a local Bristol producer asking for a job. Bristol would emerge from the 90’s as the home of late-night, hazy and moody music that was dubbed trip-hop.
The producer promised to give him a job provided he would help him build a new studio, which he did. That studio would become the Coach House, which became a hot spot for local Bristol artists, most notably Massive Attack. As Barrow worked his way up the pecking order he was given more responsibilities while at the same time working on his own sonic collages using popular hip-hop techniques of of looping and sampling,
Barrow would lay the groundwork for Portishead which was put together in piecemeal fashion over the coming months. Barrow would meet his partner in crime Beth Gibbons while atending the Enterprise Allowance Course in early 1991. The course was setup by the British government as a way to encourage unemployed youth to become entrepreneurs. Gibbons would be seven years senior to Barrow who told the Guardian “she was grown up in my eyes.”
Gibbons for her part at the time was singing Janis Joplin songs in pubs around Bristol.They would call themselves portishead, which is name of the town where Gibbons grew up, a nondescript suburban village near the city of Bristol. But don’t think they were in love with the village because Barrow would tell Spin “I really don’t like the place. It’s a place where you can go and die” with Gibbons adding ‘and that’s why we named ourselves after it.’
While Barrow had already assembled some recordings by this point he wasn’t happy with what he had produced so far, but things took a turn for the better when Gibbons who became the band’s lyricist and main melody writer wrote a track called Sour Times (which sampled the mission impossible theme song) with Barrow telling the LA Times "[That song] saved it all, really," The pair soon enlisted guitarist Adrian Utley who was also working at Coach House studios. Utley, who was 34 at the time was barely making a living being a jazz guitarist and had just finished another session downstairs. He would tell the Guardian meeting Barrow and Gibbons for the first time “ I remember somebody opening the door upstairs and me hearing It Could Be Sweet [one of the first 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 musicians despite their age differences hit it off and started to learn from one another. Utley was blown by Barrow’s knowledge of sampling, while Utley had an extensive collection of Spy films that gave Barrow access to new sounds he hadn’t heard before.
Barrow and Gibbons’s first 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).. 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. Mental stuff. 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 Portisheadstuff - 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,”
Massive Attack would soon hear about his music and put him on retainer paying him $48 a week as a trainee tape operator on their 1991 album Blue Lines.. Upon hearing about Barrow’s work with massive attack the manager o