The Writings Politti was formed in 1977 in Leeds, United Kingdom. Initially they are not even a band: they are a communist collective made up of art students, activists and squatter. The name they choose is inspired by Political writings by Antonio Gramsci. Green Gartside, Welshman and founder of what was turning into a post punk band, invents a name that, while referring to the writings of Gramsci, also remembered Tutti Frutti by Little Richard. In the quirkiness of this name there are all the contradictions and the charm of the Politti Writings: a little organic intellectuals and a little pop star. The first Politti Writings start from punk but their songs are full of references to Marx, Bakunin, Derrida, Deleuze and Lacan. In short, they make a mess, but a conceptual mess. One of their first pieces was called Skank bloc Bologna (1978) and described the Emilian capital as an exotic communist Eden of proletarian awareness and class struggle.
Green’s musical interests (who was actually called Paul, but changed his name in high school because there were too many Paul’s) soon moved elsewhere. While his band gets a deal with the post punk label Rough Trade (the same as the Smiths), Gartside begins to listen to a lot of disco and a lot of funk. And from an organic punk intellectual he begins to transform into an organic intellectual much closer to soul but also to pop and dance. His political and philosophical interests remain intact, but his musical interests change radically. Between 1982 and 1983 the collective fell apart, Green remained the custodian of the name Scritti Politti and joined the New York keyboardist David Gamson. From a collective they become a cell and, like Soft Cell (also from Leeds), Eurythmics and Yazoo, they become a sort of synth pop duo. Very little punk and very eighties.
A world opens up for Green Gartside in New York: through Virgin, his new label, he meets all the people he is interested in. In the United States it is the golden moment for British synth pop bands and African American producers, more traditionally linked to soul and rhythm’n’blues, are also very interested. Among the architects of Tina Turner’s newfound success there were, in addition to David Bowie, also the Heaven 17, which landed in the United States directly from the cold and industrial Sheffield.
Among all Gartside wants to work with the producer of Turkish origin Arif Mardin (1932-2006), a man of trust of people like Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan and Dionne Warwick, but also of Phil Collins, Bee Gees and Queen, a decidedly versatile and open to new musical technologies. Fascinating Gartside is the work Mardin had done with We can work it out by Chaka Khan. The producer had reinvented the Beatles song in an electro funk key with a virtuoso use of an old Moog synthesizer and a Fender Rhodes electric piano. We can work it out it had turned into a spaceship that launched Chaka’s voice into hyperspace and the funk-struck young Welsh Marxist couldn’t help but appreciate.
In 1983 Gartside works with Arif Mardin on three pieces that form the foundations of the second album of Scritti Politti, Cupid & Psyche 85. The three pieces are Wood beez (pray like Aretha Franklin), Absolute e Hypnotize. All three became lucky pop singles and established a sort of production excellence for the radio music of those years. If their sound seems too familiar and a little dated today, it is because it has been copied by everyone. But not all of them are Arif Mardin and Green Gartside, a Turkish megaproducer and a Welsh Marxist.
To try to explain a single seemingly simple pop like Wood beez (pray like Aretha Franklin) Gartside brings out all his philosophical paraphernalia: “It’s a song that tries to ask the fundamental question of what pop is, its relationship with language, power and politics. It is a song that talks about how pop is born from a transgression of the rules of language. In the 1960s Aretha sang apparently empty songs and had abandoned her gospel roots. But he did it with fervor and passion, a word I hate because it’s overused these days. For a convinced materialist like me it is a question of language ”. The transgression of Aretha Franklin, who leaves the church (orthodoxy) to embark on a career in secular music, for Green Gartside becomes a metaphor for everything that no longer works for him in Marxism and in his way of representing the world. The whole album Cupid & Psyche 85 it is an acrobatic exercise in philosophical pop: the songs are very light and very pleasant but all deal with the theme of the deceptive nature of language. The reference to the myth of Cupid and Psyche in the title offers a kind of interpretation: how the mortal Psyche can unite with Cupid, her divine lover, only in the dark and without being able to really know him, so the language of pop music, his rules and its orthodoxy are not as transparent and simple as they seem.
Politti’s writings
Cupid & Psyche 85
Virgin, 1985