Adrian Utley

Beth Gibbons

Dave Mc Donnald

Geoff Barrow

Others

Interview with Beth Gibbons

(In French)

(Translated from French)

Thanks to Steve for translating this.

Until now, you've refused to speak to journalists. Why?

I don't take anything seriously; not the press nor the group. I analyze all that has come to us with a certain of air of coldness. I know that in a year or two, the public won't care about Portishead anymore. Journalists are whimsical, interested only in the pursuit of the hottest band of a transient moment. With this going on, I want to be able to be regarded as if I was (frozen in ice??), to be able to say to myself that I was honest, frank, sincere. The last thing I want is to find myself miserable and alone, playing the role of the poor little fallen star…the reason I accepted to do this interview is solely in order to help Geoff (Barrows, the other musician in the group), (jeez, that's a little harsh, eh?-steve) who's landed himself a job over these last few months. From the beginning, we have been in agreement: he woul give the interviews and I would pose for the photos. When the first set of journalists came to meet us in Bristol, I would burst out laughing whenever anyone would ask me a question. I would turn all red, and I eventually had to leave the room. There's a huge gap between how journalists think of bands and how they are in reality. I was under the impression that everything was going to escape us, that they were going to make Portishead into a monster, an amalgamation of inventions and deformities. For me, not talking wasn't therefore an attitude, a blow, or a plan, but rather a means of protecting myself. I know tons of authors who never say a word, and that doesn't shock anyone. Personally, I never thought of Dummy as a particularly exciting(?) album, contrary to what so many people were saying. I still wonder why anyone would want to meet me.

In the beginning, how did you feel when you saw your face on the cover of magazines

I always got the impression that there were two Beth Gibbons : the first, the public one, that you would see in the magazines. And the other, that no one would notice in the street, the little country girl who grew up in the midst of cows. I consider myself to be more like the women of my region, not like Madonna… I was raised far away from it all, on a farm. My parents divorced when I was really young, so there was never a man of the house : We had always lived with just us girls - with my mum and my three sisters, Anna, Kathreen et Lydia. At 61 years old, my mother, has to manage alone with her livestock, about twenty heads of cattle. She's incredibly courageous… the closest town, Exeter, is about twenty miles from our house. At the most, we would visit there about once a month. Yet, I was rather happy with this : we all had an enormous amount of work to do on the farm, everyone had to roll up there sleeves - it wasn't really the time for moods. At seventeen years old, I had several friends leave to go to the town. But me, I prefered to stay at the farm and help my mum. Being way too lazy/poor(??), I never had the desire/means to go to university…I left the farm briefly for the first time to be with a boy, but a couple of months later, I was back at my mum's house. I ended up staying there until my twenty-second birthday.

How did you discover singing?

We only had a few records : a few mildly uninteresting old compilations, two or three albums of winners of the Eurovision competition. Music didn't interest me all that much, I was content just to sing while listening along with the radio. I've always thought that my voice wasn't anything special... I was the little one in the family and I spent most of my time following my sisters in an attempt to gain acceptance from them. Like them - and like all the kids in the region -, I went to school because I had to : I would have much more preffered to be back home with my animals, in the open air of nature. Learning history or literature seemed useless to me, I knew enough already to live peacefully. When I was 18 years old I entered myself in a school of tourism and then went abroad for two weeks ; there, I realized that I couldn't handle the idea of being that far away from home. So, I thought I'd become a wet nurse instead.

What do your parents say of your new life?

My dad doesn't have an opinion - I hardly ever see him anymore. My mum, for about a year now, has been telling me to drop everything, find a reliable husband, and start having children. In Dorsey, so many people still think that any other possibly way of life exists… having lived alone with my mother left me very independent. I can live without a man. If my car breaks down, I know how to repair it - I know enough about mechanics to repair a tractor. Spiritually, I really don't know that much, I question myself… In my past experiences, I've never been able to succed at fully destroying the wall that separates me from men in general.