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What made you decide to make a film, Game, and can you tell us a little bit about it? Zoe2025
As I’ve grown older, I’ve found myself having more film ideas than musical ones. Having an independent label, Invada Records, I wondered if I could actually make a film. I was at school with [co-writer and actor] Marc Bessant, I’ve worked with [director] John Minton for 20 years and I met [co-writer] Rob Williams – a scriptwriter for Judge Dredd and stuff – when he moved to Portishead [Somerset]. The idea of someone trapped in an upside down car comes from JG Ballard’s Concrete Island. Initially it was gonna be a horror film where the character was attacked by rabid dogs, but instead we set it during the end of rave culture. I immediately thought of Jason Williamson from Sleaford Mods for the role of a poacher and it turned out that his dad had rabbited. He’s brilliant in it.
How easy was it to recreate the sense of the 90s rave scene on film? k4ren123
There are only a couple of sequences, but we wanted to capture the way the rave scene went from free festivals to something more corporate where the drugs were really organised. All my mates in Portishead [the town] were ravers. I wasn’t. I went to a couple, but for the film I looked at lots of old footage and bought most of the clothes for the film on eBay. Nineties rave wasn’t fluorescent outfits. They were ordinary kids in street gear, so I’d think: what kind of trainers were they wearing?
When the three classic Bristol albums Dummy [Portishead, 1994], Maxinquaye [Tricky, 1995] and Protection [Massive Attack, 1994] came out around the same time the analogue/electronic production blew my mind. Did you know how connected and influential those three albums were or were you too busy bickering with each other? bruce66
There was no bickering, because the grand masters like DJ Mushroom from Massive, the Wild Bunch [sound system] and Smith and Mighty were all really supportive. I’d made tea and sandwiches in the studio when Massive made Blue Lines. Tricky worked with Mark Stewart from the Pop Group. So there was a wealth of experience. Everyone had the same punk attitude of “London music industry people are pricks. Don’t try and fuck with us. We’re not desperate for your money.” But we all signed to major labels who had money to promote us, which made a huge difference. We all worked in different studios so didn’t see each other much, and once the records took off we didn’t see anyone. I used to fight against the idea that there was a “Bristol scene”, but before us there’d been people like Rip Rig + Panic or a punk/reggae band called Head, so there was definitely something in the air that moved everyone.
Did you ever imagine that your sonic experiments on Dummy would become the backdrop to so many romantic entanglements – and how do you feel about being the unsung hero of the 90s sex playlist? VerulamiumParkRanger
I’ve heard that people were going out, doing ecstasy, coming back, smoking spliffs and putting Dummy on. If you just listened to the music, you’d think: “That’s really chilled, man.” However, the worst thing that anyone can say about my music is that it’s chilled! That makes me throw up. They’re only listening to Beth [Gibbons]’s voice, not what she’s saying, which makes a huge difference. I’ve had people actually say “My daughter over there was made to your music”, and I’m like, “fuck off”. I can’t think of anything worse to make love to.
Is there a chance of any new Portishead music in the not so distant future? Sebastiaan10
No. Not for me. There’s so much to learn in film and film music, so that’s where my heart is, but we’ve never broken up. We just do different stuff. We did a gig for Ukraine and recorded Roads for Brian Eno’s Together for Palestine concert. Those are the sort of things that get us together to do something.
How did you get Will [Young, no relation to the pop star] into Beak>? I know him from Brighton. He would claim that Beak> needed some eye candy. fizzbombs
Ha. We definitely needed eye candy. Matt [Williams] left and Ben [Power] from Blanck Mass phoned me and said, “I know someone who can do it.” Will came to Bristol and he’s been amazing and a lot of fun. What I loved about Beak> was that it didn’t matter if we were crap. We toured in a car and played King Tut’s in Glasgow to six people – the six people were the Horrors, who were playing the night after – and that was just after I’d headlined Latitude or whatever [with Portishead]. I’ve had to leave the band now because after a tour in Europe I started getting properly sick with exhaustion, which I took as a sign from my body telling me to slow down.
A friend of mine once played in a football team alongside you. Were you any good? Johntaylor
I’ve never been any good. I’m probably a bit better now than I was. There’s an over 50s team in the Bristol casual league called Bryan Munich and I always threaten that if I play twice a week I’ll get fit enough to play for them again. I never do, because I wake up on a Sunday morning, it’s pissing down and I think “Nah”. Film and music is a drier pastime.
Do you remember the first time you were taken to the cinema and is that cinema still there? Wifeofbath
It was a cinema called the Clevedon Curzon close to Portishead and it’s still there, one of the oldest cinemas in the UK. I was taken on a Sunday school trip to see Bambi. Later, when I was 16 my dad took me to see Blue Thunder, a kind of cheaper Airwolf. It was an 18 so my dad went: “Sorry, lad, you can’t get in.” He was too honest. The cinema has an amazing history. My gran and my auntie Kay were inside when it was bombed during the second world war. We’re going to screen our film there, which will be really special.
I could listen to the opening 50 seconds of Roads on a loop for hours. Is there any song intro that makes you feel the same? DeJongandtherestless
Contract on the World Love Jam, a Terminator X instrumental track on Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet. It starts with church bells and when the beat kicks in it doesn’t matter how many times I’ve heard it, it still gives me goose bumps. A few Low tracks do that to me as well, especially Plastic Cup.
I loved the Quakers album with the vocalists found on Myspace. Do you know which of them went on to have a career in music? Joette
When I set up Invada Records with Ashley Anderson AKA DJ Katalyst, Myspace was thriving and it was a great way to discover music. We had loads of hip-hop beats, so as well as approaching professional MCs we put instrumentals on Myspace and asked people to rap over them. All these kids ended up on a record next to someone they really respected. There was a guy called Jonwayne [who] now does beat tutorials; a hardcore Texas Christian rap crew who rapped about God and then broke up. Guilty Simpson does lots of stuff. Tone Tank is an Italian guy from New York who’s an extra in CSI and stuff. I recently saw a video of him driving a Cadillac alongside a guy dressed as a fish.
Are you still grumpy on social media? figgross
I’m not grumpy. I just get very let down by the music industry. I come across so many amazing musicians and they’re not being raved about because they aren’t the ones with a marketing budget. When you get inside the industry you realise there are some pretty nasty people out there, but I’ve never lost that feeling of “this music is shit”, which is probably not a good look for a white guy in his 50s.
My uncle John played keys for Portishead back in the day, so they were the first band I ever saw live. What was the first gig you ever went to? SamuelStockley
My first proper gig was Cameo in Bristol – amazing superhero alien funk guys from the States, with codpieces and massive hair. However, the first band I saw were a three-piece playing the hits at a caravan park in the mid-70s. The drummer, Roy, let me play his drums when they had a break. I was about nine and still learning drums when I did my first public performance, at Pontins in Torbay. There was a camp comedian who dressed as a nazi who would go around with a broken air gun, telling anyone he saw kissing: “We don’t have smut in this camp!” One night he ordered the band to stop, pointed his rifle and made the drummer disappear. The organist asked: “Does anyone know how to play the drums?” So I got up and played.
