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-Thanks, mate. -You going down to Bristol again, are you? | 0:00:02 | 0:00:04 | |
-That's right. -What's it like? | 0:00:04 | 0:00:06 | |
Bristol, what's it like? | 0:00:06 | 0:00:08 | |
MUSIC: Unfinished Sympathy by Massive Attack | 0:00:08 | 0:00:13 | |
This programme contains some strong language. | 0:00:13 | 0:00:16 | |
I think Blue Lines is one of the great albums of all time. | 0:00:30 | 0:00:33 | |
As a young black man, it was the first record I could identify | 0:00:36 | 0:00:40 | |
as something that came out of Bristol. | 0:00:40 | 0:00:42 | |
# I know that I've been mad in love before | 0:00:42 | 0:00:47 | |
# And how it could be with you... # | 0:00:47 | 0:00:49 | |
I remember hearing Unfinished Sympathy and I just went, | 0:00:49 | 0:00:52 | |
"Fuck, that is amazing." | 0:00:52 | 0:00:53 | |
You know that's exactly what I've been trying to do all of this time. | 0:00:53 | 0:00:57 | |
25 years ago, the music scene in Bristol exploded with the release | 0:00:58 | 0:01:03 | |
of Blue Lines, the pioneering debut album from Massive Attack. | 0:01:03 | 0:01:07 | |
A little kid can hear it in an estate, in France, | 0:01:09 | 0:01:12 | |
or in Germany or in Portugal or whatever. | 0:01:12 | 0:01:15 | |
They think if Grant can get up there and do something, | 0:01:15 | 0:01:17 | |
if Tricks can get up there and do something, | 0:01:17 | 0:01:19 | |
3D can get up there and do it, we can fucking have a go. | 0:01:19 | 0:01:22 | |
In February 1991, | 0:01:24 | 0:01:26 | |
the second single from the album, Unfinished Sympathy, | 0:01:26 | 0:01:29 | |
and the cutting-edge video that accompanied it, | 0:01:29 | 0:01:32 | |
thrust Bristol's music scene into the global spotlight. | 0:01:32 | 0:01:36 | |
But its genesis was in the decades that led up to the 1990s, | 0:01:36 | 0:01:40 | |
and the fusion of musical styles that emerged from the diverse | 0:01:40 | 0:01:44 | |
suburbs of this historic city. | 0:01:44 | 0:01:46 | |
Modern Bristol is a cultural melting pot. | 0:02:03 | 0:02:06 | |
Home to a large Caribbean community after post-war immigration, | 0:02:06 | 0:02:11 | |
it's stereotyped by outsiders as laid-back, even sleepy, | 0:02:11 | 0:02:14 | |
in comparison to the Northern powerhouses | 0:02:14 | 0:02:17 | |
of Liverpool and Manchester. | 0:02:17 | 0:02:18 | |
They have a saying in Jamaica... | 0:02:18 | 0:02:21 | |
"Soon come. Soon come." | 0:02:21 | 0:02:22 | |
"What time are you going to be here?" "Soon come. Soon come." | 0:02:22 | 0:02:25 | |
And in Bristol, we've kind of got that mentality. | 0:02:25 | 0:02:28 | |
The Jamaican community settled largely in the inner-city suburb | 0:02:28 | 0:02:31 | |
of St Pauls during the post-war years of relative prosperity. | 0:02:31 | 0:02:34 | |
But in 1980, less than a year into Margaret Thatcher's premiership, | 0:02:36 | 0:02:40 | |
rising youth unemployment and disaffection resulted in a backlash. | 0:02:40 | 0:02:44 | |
SHOUTING AND SCREAMING | 0:02:44 | 0:02:48 | |
On April 2nd, the Black And White Cafe was raided by police, | 0:02:52 | 0:02:57 | |
sparking a full-scale riot in which 130 people were arrested. | 0:02:57 | 0:03:02 | |
The reason why it went wrong yesterday, right, is because the | 0:03:02 | 0:03:05 | |
policeman came down in too much of a force to raid one small cafe, right? | 0:03:05 | 0:03:09 | |
We know how it is round here, right? | 0:03:09 | 0:03:11 | |
It's been like this for years, right? And the tension is so tight, | 0:03:11 | 0:03:14 | |
you can cut it with a scissor. | 0:03:14 | 0:03:15 | |
From what I remember, | 0:03:19 | 0:03:20 | |
the police were trying to arrest somebody in the Black And White. | 0:03:20 | 0:03:26 | |
It just escalated from there, I think. | 0:03:26 | 0:03:28 | |
You know, I think a lot of what was happening politically in the country | 0:03:28 | 0:03:32 | |
kind of exacerbated the situation to what it became, you know. | 0:03:32 | 0:03:36 | |
Just kind of like a world event. | 0:03:36 | 0:03:39 | |
It's cooled for a while, towards the late afternoon, | 0:03:39 | 0:03:42 | |
but then the police processed up the road with dogs and 50 police behind | 0:03:42 | 0:03:46 | |
them and I think the police, if they thought through that, | 0:03:46 | 0:03:48 | |
maybe they would've handled it differently. | 0:03:48 | 0:03:51 | |
That was a major reaction against something that young people | 0:03:51 | 0:03:56 | |
felt very strongly about and I don't believe it was a racial divide, | 0:03:56 | 0:04:01 | |
I think it was a youth and authority divide. | 0:04:01 | 0:04:04 | |
It was the first of its type in the country. | 0:04:04 | 0:04:08 | |
In the aftermath of the riots, the police gave St Pauls | 0:04:08 | 0:04:11 | |
a wider berth which gave the creative people who lived there | 0:04:11 | 0:04:14 | |
greater freedom to express themselves. | 0:04:14 | 0:04:17 | |
Late-night parties and unlicensed venues, | 0:04:18 | 0:04:21 | |
more freedom with drugs | 0:04:21 | 0:04:23 | |
and the liberated approach to the famous St Pauls Carnival. | 0:04:23 | 0:04:26 | |
Used to set-up our rig at 11am and we used to close, probably | 0:04:30 | 0:04:35 | |
around 6am, the next morning. | 0:04:35 | 0:04:37 | |
Cops used to come along and see 500 to 700 people in the streets | 0:04:37 | 0:04:43 | |
dancing and try to shut us down and nobody was having it, really. | 0:04:43 | 0:04:48 | |
They just shook their heads and left. | 0:04:48 | 0:04:50 | |
I think the riots kind of like gave us that freedom. | 0:04:50 | 0:04:53 | |
I think the police were wary about causing further problems. | 0:04:55 | 0:05:02 | |
Anything too clumsy would've caused big problems. | 0:05:02 | 0:05:05 | |
Jamaican immigrants had brought with them their sound-system culture. | 0:05:07 | 0:05:11 | |
Loud impromptu street parties with huge, often custom-built, | 0:05:11 | 0:05:15 | |
speaker stacks where communities would come together | 0:05:15 | 0:05:18 | |
to listen to music. | 0:05:18 | 0:05:20 | |
Sound-system culture was all about DIY. | 0:05:20 | 0:05:23 | |
It was about learning how to string up amps, how to cut the wood, | 0:05:23 | 0:05:27 | |
how to load speakers onto the van properly, | 0:05:27 | 0:05:30 | |
even how to learn to drive a big HGV lorry | 0:05:30 | 0:05:33 | |
down the thinnest roads in St Pauls. | 0:05:33 | 0:05:36 | |
Sound systems provided the musical backdrop to inner-city Bristol | 0:05:36 | 0:05:40 | |
and unified young people, regardless of their skin colour. | 0:05:40 | 0:05:44 | |
There was never an issue with the colour. | 0:05:44 | 0:05:47 | |
I don't think, you know, it really matters to the extent, | 0:05:47 | 0:05:52 | |
as long as what you do, you do it from the heart. | 0:05:52 | 0:05:55 | |
And the Wild Bunch sound system exemplified this racial unity. | 0:05:55 | 0:05:59 | |
Miles "DJ Milo" Johnson, Grant "Daddy G" Marshall, | 0:05:59 | 0:06:03 | |
Paul Nellee Hooper, | 0:06:03 | 0:06:04 | |
Claude "Willie Wee" Williams and Robert "3D" Del Naja all came from | 0:06:04 | 0:06:09 | |
different backgrounds but shared a love of music. | 0:06:09 | 0:06:12 | |
They were a multiracial group themselves influenced by the | 0:06:13 | 0:06:16 | |
coming together of those cultures. | 0:06:16 | 0:06:18 | |
And if you think, The Clash always had that combination of white rock | 0:06:18 | 0:06:23 | |
and reggae and so there was plenty of tradition to make that work. | 0:06:23 | 0:06:28 | |
Nellee was regarded like anybody else in the crew, really. | 0:06:28 | 0:06:32 | |
I think they saw him as somebody who respected the culture | 0:06:32 | 0:06:36 | |
and the music and that was all that mattered. | 0:06:36 | 0:06:38 | |
MUSIC PLAYS | 0:06:38 | 0:06:40 | |
Milo and Nellee had met in 1979 and formed a new wave band. | 0:06:45 | 0:06:50 | |
They'd regular regularly hang out at Paradise Garage near the bus | 0:06:50 | 0:06:53 | |
station in Bristol, the hippest clothes shop in the West Country. | 0:06:53 | 0:06:58 | |
It was here they met Grant Marshall. | 0:06:58 | 0:07:00 | |
There were three of us for a long while | 0:07:01 | 0:07:04 | |
which was G, Nellee and myself. | 0:07:04 | 0:07:07 | |
We used to go to G's house and listen to records that we bought | 0:07:07 | 0:07:12 | |
in say Virgin, some punk records, some new wave, some disco, | 0:07:12 | 0:07:16 | |
some reggae, some early hip-hop maybe | 0:07:16 | 0:07:18 | |
and it was like sitting down as friends | 0:07:18 | 0:07:20 | |
just listening to this new music that we were getting introduced to. | 0:07:20 | 0:07:24 | |
These informal gatherings soon attracted more people and | 0:07:26 | 0:07:29 | |
a bigger space was required for the fledgling unit to share their music. | 0:07:29 | 0:07:33 | |
We played in one of these places | 0:07:33 | 0:07:35 | |
after we ran out of space at G's place. | 0:07:35 | 0:07:38 | |
It wasn't really planned to be anything to do with dance | 0:07:38 | 0:07:40 | |
or anything like that. | 0:07:40 | 0:07:42 | |
It was just to give us a bit more space and a bit more volume. | 0:07:42 | 0:07:45 | |
We just put our records together and just played what we bought | 0:07:45 | 0:07:48 | |
that weekend. | 0:07:48 | 0:07:50 | |
It was our first gig outside of the crib. | 0:07:50 | 0:07:53 | |
MUSIC PLAYS | 0:07:53 | 0:07:58 | |
Unlike the industrial cities of the North, Bristol had never had | 0:08:00 | 0:08:04 | |
a musical identity it could claim as its own, | 0:08:04 | 0:08:07 | |
but as the '80s became the '90s, | 0:08:07 | 0:08:09 | |
things were changing and the creative city we know today | 0:08:09 | 0:08:12 | |
was emerging, albeit with typical West Country languor. | 0:08:12 | 0:08:16 | |
MUSIC PLAYS | 0:08:16 | 0:08:19 | |
It was a very laid-back scene. | 0:08:19 | 0:08:21 | |
There was a lot of smoking of dope, I believe, | 0:08:21 | 0:08:23 | |
and that shows in the music. | 0:08:23 | 0:08:26 | |
You know, very contemplative, very sort of inward-looking, | 0:08:26 | 0:08:31 | |
I guess, but in a really lovely way. | 0:08:31 | 0:08:33 | |
When you go to London, everything is a million miles an hour but when | 0:08:33 | 0:08:37 | |
you come back to Bristol, it's like everything just slows right down. | 0:08:37 | 0:08:41 | |
I grew up in Birmingham and, you know, as a teenager, | 0:08:42 | 0:08:45 | |
the only place to go then if you wanted to drink | 0:08:45 | 0:08:48 | |
after 10.30 at night, was at Sound System. | 0:08:48 | 0:08:51 | |
So, you know, it was kind of part of my partying growing up | 0:08:51 | 0:08:55 | |
so Dub and MC Culture and all that was very familiar to me | 0:08:55 | 0:08:59 | |
and also very familiar to any white teenager who's going | 0:08:59 | 0:09:02 | |
out around that time. | 0:09:02 | 0:09:04 | |
Birmingham was very like Bristol in that it was a small scene, | 0:09:04 | 0:09:07 | |
so you all knew each other very well. | 0:09:07 | 0:09:10 | |
It was the same faces every night, different place. | 0:09:10 | 0:09:12 | |
Anywhere that we were having a party, everybody would come. | 0:09:12 | 0:09:15 | |
If Grant was DJing, we'd all go to his party. | 0:09:15 | 0:09:17 | |
We'd all meet in the Red Lion on a Friday night | 0:09:17 | 0:09:19 | |
and just chat to each other. | 0:09:19 | 0:09:21 | |
Oh, there's something going on there, there's a gig down there, | 0:09:21 | 0:09:24 | |
there's something going on... Just rush across town or whatever. | 0:09:24 | 0:09:27 | |
One of the party venues was Nellee's flat in Clifton Village. | 0:09:27 | 0:09:31 | |
Nellee lived in one of these apartments here so, yeah, | 0:09:31 | 0:09:35 | |
we used to practise here and did a few really good house parties | 0:09:35 | 0:09:39 | |
here and guys used to come up from St Pauls and it was basically | 0:09:39 | 0:09:44 | |
them who gave us the name, The Wild Bunch. | 0:09:44 | 0:09:47 | |
MUSIC PLAYS | 0:09:47 | 0:09:50 | |
And the event where The Wild Bunch name really drew crowds was | 0:09:50 | 0:09:53 | |
the St Pauls Carnival. | 0:09:53 | 0:09:55 | |
I'd never heard bass like you hear through a sound system cabinet | 0:09:55 | 0:09:59 | |
and you can immediately understand the attraction, | 0:09:59 | 0:10:03 | |
because it was a much more sort of visceral experience | 0:10:03 | 0:10:07 | |
than a band could create in even the smallest pub. | 0:10:07 | 0:10:10 | |
Ronnie Size, at the time a young teenager called Ryan Williams, | 0:10:10 | 0:10:15 | |
had grown up with sound systems. | 0:10:15 | 0:10:17 | |
You'd be able to hear the music travel all the way up the hill. | 0:10:17 | 0:10:21 | |
As soon as you heard the sound systems | 0:10:21 | 0:10:23 | |
being set up in St Pauls, like the Pied Piper, me and my friends, | 0:10:23 | 0:10:28 | |
we'd all go down to St Pauls and join in all the celebrations. | 0:10:28 | 0:10:32 | |
MUSIC PLAYS | 0:10:32 | 0:10:38 | |
The DIY ethos of sound systems was something shared with the | 0:10:38 | 0:10:41 | |
punk culture that already existed in Bristol and the political | 0:10:41 | 0:10:45 | |
ideology of the city's youth found common ground in both genres. | 0:10:45 | 0:10:50 | |
Punk kind of blew the doors open, | 0:10:50 | 0:10:51 | |
it was a completely enabling political act. | 0:10:51 | 0:10:54 | |
Seeing Paul from The Clash with little stickers on his bass showing | 0:10:54 | 0:10:57 | |
him where to put his fingers, | 0:10:57 | 0:10:58 | |
suddenly we thought we can have a go at doing that, | 0:10:58 | 0:11:01 | |
otherwise we would've ended up working in a factory. | 0:11:01 | 0:11:03 | |
I mean he wasn't that far away from that front cover of the fanzine. | 0:11:03 | 0:11:08 | |
Here are three chords, now go and form a band. | 0:11:08 | 0:11:11 | |
Coming back from a gig at The Roxy with the Cortinas, | 0:11:12 | 0:11:15 | |
we decided to make a punk band. | 0:11:15 | 0:11:17 | |
We said we'd called it The Pop Group to be anti-punk, | 0:11:17 | 0:11:19 | |
anti-star. | 0:11:19 | 0:11:20 | |
So we started putting on concerts at Barton Hill Youth Centre. | 0:11:20 | 0:11:23 | |
Grant was down the front, Miles was down the front, Delta was there. | 0:11:23 | 0:11:27 | |
In the late '70s and early '80s, | 0:11:27 | 0:11:28 | |
The Pop Group pioneered the post-punk scene | 0:11:28 | 0:11:31 | |
which embraced elements of jazz, funk and dub, | 0:11:31 | 0:11:34 | |
familiar sounds on the streets of Bristol. | 0:11:34 | 0:11:37 | |
MUSIC PLAYS | 0:11:37 | 0:11:43 | |
We wanted to be mixing the stuff we were hearing in the clubs and | 0:11:43 | 0:11:47 | |
streets and the sound systems and the blues dances of Bristol, | 0:11:47 | 0:11:50 | |
which was baseline. | 0:11:50 | 0:11:52 | |
We were crashing and smashing and careering all the influences | 0:11:52 | 0:11:55 | |
we heard on the streets of St Pauls and Bristol in | 0:11:55 | 0:11:58 | |
a punk manner into what we were doing. | 0:11:58 | 0:12:01 | |
Because we thought it wouldn't be punk to do something | 0:12:01 | 0:12:04 | |
that was already happening. | 0:12:04 | 0:12:05 | |
Mark was also instrumental in introducing hip-hop to Britain. | 0:12:09 | 0:12:13 | |
And when The Wild Bunch added it to their repertoire, | 0:12:13 | 0:12:16 | |
the embryonic Bristol sound began to take shape. | 0:12:16 | 0:12:19 | |
He really did put us onto a lot of good music. | 0:12:19 | 0:12:24 | |
Punk had the attitude of you don't have to learn your instruments, | 0:12:24 | 0:12:27 | |
but hip-hop gave the means of putting music together | 0:12:27 | 0:12:30 | |
without needing to be particularly great musicians. | 0:12:30 | 0:12:33 | |
You know, it was all about the ideas. | 0:12:33 | 0:12:35 | |
You could sample the stuff, you could play with the stuff | 0:12:35 | 0:12:38 | |
without a huge amount of sort of musical talent. | 0:12:38 | 0:12:41 | |
# Party people, party people | 0:12:41 | 0:12:45 | |
# Can y'all get funky? # | 0:12:45 | 0:12:48 | |
We were virtually living in New York. Suddenly, somebody says, | 0:12:48 | 0:12:52 | |
"There's a really cool radio show on this thing called Kiss-FM and WBLS." | 0:12:52 | 0:12:56 | |
We used to have big ghetto blasters, double cassette machines, | 0:12:56 | 0:12:59 | |
back in the day. We copied these tapes, brought them back to Bristol. | 0:12:59 | 0:13:01 | |
Copied, copied, copied. | 0:13:01 | 0:13:03 | |
3D would draw on them. Suddenly, | 0:13:03 | 0:13:04 | |
everybody was getting into hip-hop in Bristol. | 0:13:04 | 0:13:07 | |
Coming up to London, London was not even aware of it. | 0:13:07 | 0:13:11 | |
# It's time to chase your dreams | 0:13:11 | 0:13:13 | |
# Up out your seats Make your body sway | 0:13:13 | 0:13:16 | |
# Socialise, get down let your soul lead the way | 0:13:16 | 0:13:19 | |
# Shake it now, go, ladies, | 0:13:19 | 0:13:21 | |
# It's a livin' dream | 0:13:21 | 0:13:22 | |
# Love, life, live Come play the game... # | 0:13:22 | 0:13:25 | |
They were getting all these exclusive tracks that no-one | 0:13:25 | 0:13:29 | |
could get a hold of unless you heard them on maybe WBLS | 0:13:29 | 0:13:33 | |
and that is when Wild Bunch really started to come into their own. | 0:13:33 | 0:13:38 | |
We were offering a different genre of music to a community that | 0:13:44 | 0:13:49 | |
probably had never heard that stuff before, you know? | 0:13:49 | 0:13:52 | |
And for us, that was just like...just the best. | 0:13:52 | 0:13:56 | |
Being able to play things like, | 0:13:56 | 0:13:58 | |
some really underground Chicago house music in like 1985 | 0:13:58 | 0:14:03 | |
or whatever to a bunch of, like, West Indian people who had never | 0:14:03 | 0:14:08 | |
heard that and then staying for the duration of a record | 0:14:08 | 0:14:12 | |
that they had never heard like that. It's... I mean, that's job done. | 0:14:12 | 0:14:15 | |
One of the clubs where these new sounds were shaking the foundations | 0:14:20 | 0:14:23 | |
was The Dug Out on Park Row. | 0:14:23 | 0:14:26 | |
The Wild Bunch DJ crew was given a residency, | 0:14:26 | 0:14:29 | |
which gave them further exposure to the public eye. | 0:14:29 | 0:14:32 | |
I was made an honorary member of The Dug Out club, which I considered | 0:14:32 | 0:14:36 | |
to be one of the highest accolades I've ever received. | 0:14:36 | 0:14:39 | |
Oh, man, The Dug Out... | 0:14:39 | 0:14:40 | |
Sticky carpets. | 0:14:40 | 0:14:42 | |
Pretty grim. | 0:14:42 | 0:14:44 | |
Even its best friends, even its mother would say it was | 0:14:44 | 0:14:48 | |
a horrible little place, actually, in many ways. | 0:14:48 | 0:14:51 | |
But the vibe was really good. | 0:14:51 | 0:14:52 | |
I just remember it feeling quite claustrophobic as a club. | 0:14:52 | 0:14:55 | |
It was just like one of those ones where it almost felt like it | 0:14:55 | 0:14:58 | |
was a glorified someone's house. | 0:14:58 | 0:15:00 | |
Lots of little rooms, you know. | 0:15:00 | 0:15:02 | |
And the DJ is over there, but you've kind of got to squeeze past them. | 0:15:02 | 0:15:05 | |
It had a rather wonderful atmosphere of decadence, I suppose. | 0:15:05 | 0:15:11 | |
It was quite an eclectic mix. | 0:15:11 | 0:15:14 | |
It felt extraordinarily Bristol. | 0:15:14 | 0:15:16 | |
Unfortunately, I was too young to get into The Dug Out, | 0:15:16 | 0:15:20 | |
but the amount of times I tried to sneak in | 0:15:20 | 0:15:24 | |
and got caught was a crazy amount. | 0:15:24 | 0:15:26 | |
Miles would find the tunes, Nellee would be the selector. | 0:15:27 | 0:15:30 | |
It goes back to old Jamaican sound systems. | 0:15:30 | 0:15:32 | |
Somebody was selecting the songs, then there was the MC, | 0:15:32 | 0:15:34 | |
or the toaster like U-Roy back in Jamaica. | 0:15:34 | 0:15:37 | |
Grant would toast a bit. | 0:15:37 | 0:15:38 | |
Round that time, I think we kind of, like, | 0:15:38 | 0:15:40 | |
established ourselves as a DJ unit. | 0:15:40 | 0:15:42 | |
Later on, we would get a couple of guys to do some emceeing, | 0:15:42 | 0:15:47 | |
which would be Willy and 3D. | 0:15:47 | 0:15:50 | |
Some occasions, Tricky. | 0:15:50 | 0:15:51 | |
I was working at The Face at the time and so we got sent, | 0:15:51 | 0:15:55 | |
kind of white labels of the early sort of Smith & Mighty | 0:15:55 | 0:15:57 | |
stuff and The Wild Bunch stuff and really, really liked it. | 0:15:57 | 0:16:01 | |
I guess it was like a natural progression | 0:16:01 | 0:16:03 | |
that we would want to record our own tunes at some point. | 0:16:03 | 0:16:08 | |
So, yeah, I think that timing of The Dug Out enabled us to do that. | 0:16:08 | 0:16:13 | |
# Scooby-Doo, get down with the crew | 0:16:18 | 0:16:20 | |
# On the mic singing one, two | 0:16:20 | 0:16:21 | |
# Where to drink your Tennent's where to drink your brew | 0:16:21 | 0:16:23 | |
# Get down with The Wild Bunch crew. # | 0:16:23 | 0:16:26 | |
In 1985, the graffiti art exhibition at the Arnolfini | 0:16:26 | 0:16:30 | |
gave young creatives the opportunity to legitimately flex their muscles. | 0:16:30 | 0:16:34 | |
3D and his fellow artists painted the walls of the gallery. | 0:16:34 | 0:16:37 | |
And The Wild Bunch perform to an audience that included | 0:16:37 | 0:16:40 | |
a 13-year-old boy named Geoff Barrow | 0:16:40 | 0:16:42 | |
who would go on to engineer Blue Lines | 0:16:42 | 0:16:45 | |
and later still, form the band Portishead. | 0:16:45 | 0:16:47 | |
This previously unbroadcast footage illustrates the emergence of a scene | 0:16:55 | 0:16:59 | |
which drew heavily on the New York culture, | 0:16:59 | 0:17:02 | |
which the likes of The Wild Bunch found so fascinating. | 0:17:02 | 0:17:05 | |
HIP-HOP MUSIC PLAYS | 0:17:05 | 0:17:07 | |
The whole hip-hop attitude in Bristol, | 0:17:10 | 0:17:13 | |
you could express yourself all kinds of ways. | 0:17:13 | 0:17:15 | |
You know, you could be a DJ, you could be a rapper, | 0:17:15 | 0:17:17 | |
you could make music, you could make art, | 0:17:17 | 0:17:20 | |
you could make record sleeves, you could make little films | 0:17:20 | 0:17:22 | |
and all of those things intertwined and mixed with each other. | 0:17:22 | 0:17:26 | |
And it was very acceptable to be a videomaker one day, | 0:17:26 | 0:17:30 | |
a rapper another, a DJ the next. | 0:17:30 | 0:17:31 | |
And as a result, you got that fluidity. | 0:17:31 | 0:17:35 | |
# No moneyman can win my love... # | 0:17:36 | 0:17:40 | |
The next step on The Wild Bunch journey was a trip to Japan in 1987. | 0:17:40 | 0:17:45 | |
Milo had been there the previous year deejaying during fashion shows, | 0:17:45 | 0:17:49 | |
arranged by The Face magazine and Neneh Cherry, a singer who had | 0:17:49 | 0:17:53 | |
previously been in the Bristol post-punk group Rip Rig + Panic. | 0:17:53 | 0:17:57 | |
# Looking good hanging with The Wild Bunch | 0:17:57 | 0:17:59 | |
# Looking good in the Buffalo Stance... # | 0:17:59 | 0:18:02 | |
But now the group were to tour Japan, | 0:18:02 | 0:18:05 | |
another step on the ladder to wider success. | 0:18:05 | 0:18:07 | |
Me and Nellee went out there the following year and hooked up | 0:18:07 | 0:18:11 | |
the tour and brought the rest of the guys out there. | 0:18:11 | 0:18:14 | |
But when the rest of the crew arrived, | 0:18:14 | 0:18:16 | |
things quickly deteriorated. | 0:18:16 | 0:18:18 | |
I don't want to put anybody on the spot here or anything like that, | 0:18:18 | 0:18:21 | |
but it's just like... | 0:18:21 | 0:18:24 | |
a member of the crew had an issue, | 0:18:24 | 0:18:27 | |
problems he had back home at the time | 0:18:27 | 0:18:30 | |
and he needed to get back. | 0:18:30 | 0:18:33 | |
And we were like, | 0:18:33 | 0:18:34 | |
"Dude, we just got this tour together and you want to bail | 0:18:34 | 0:18:38 | |
"on us right when we're going to start this tour?" | 0:18:38 | 0:18:41 | |
And that kind of like...really pissed us off. | 0:18:42 | 0:18:45 | |
And with tensions running high, the tour that should have been | 0:18:48 | 0:18:51 | |
the making of the group put an extra strain on their relationships. | 0:18:51 | 0:18:54 | |
When we came back from the tour and we came back to the UK, | 0:18:54 | 0:18:57 | |
it was hard work trying to work with that dude again. | 0:18:57 | 0:19:00 | |
In spite of the disagreements within the group, | 0:19:07 | 0:19:10 | |
on returning to UK, The Wild Bunch secured a record deal. | 0:19:10 | 0:19:14 | |
Got signed to... | 0:19:14 | 0:19:16 | |
Island - 4th and Broadway, | 0:19:16 | 0:19:19 | |
and recorded a couple of... | 0:19:19 | 0:19:22 | |
..things for them. | 0:19:23 | 0:19:24 | |
# Born and raised in the ghetto | 0:19:24 | 0:19:26 | |
# An age-old story | 0:19:26 | 0:19:27 | |
# And this is how we go | 0:19:27 | 0:19:29 | |
# They call me black my skin is brown... # | 0:19:29 | 0:19:31 | |
The deal with Island led Nellee to believe that the logical | 0:19:31 | 0:19:34 | |
next step was for the group to relocate to London. | 0:19:34 | 0:19:37 | |
Nellee was the one who was basically the ambitious one, | 0:19:37 | 0:19:40 | |
so I was just tagging along. | 0:19:40 | 0:19:42 | |
He just said, "Do you fancy moving to London?" | 0:19:42 | 0:19:45 | |
I thought, you know, "Sure." | 0:19:45 | 0:19:47 | |
Nellee had previously tasted the limelight, | 0:19:49 | 0:19:51 | |
appearing on Top Of The Pops with Cheltenham band Pigbag. | 0:19:51 | 0:19:55 | |
He was like the leader, | 0:19:59 | 0:20:01 | |
in that sense, in terms of pushing us forward, | 0:20:01 | 0:20:03 | |
not so much creative steps forward, but steps forward as a crew. | 0:20:03 | 0:20:09 | |
But Daddy G and 3D were reluctant to swap the laid-back lifestyle | 0:20:14 | 0:20:17 | |
of the west for the fast pace of the capital. | 0:20:17 | 0:20:20 | |
We had asked them, but they just weren't comfortable with it. | 0:20:20 | 0:20:23 | |
They did come up to do some recording. | 0:20:23 | 0:20:27 | |
And whatever press things that we needed to do. | 0:20:27 | 0:20:31 | |
The geographical spread of the crew wasn't the only issue. | 0:20:32 | 0:20:36 | |
As pioneers of a new sound to British audiences, | 0:20:36 | 0:20:39 | |
their record label struggled to know what to do with them. | 0:20:39 | 0:20:42 | |
We were like their first, basically, | 0:20:42 | 0:20:43 | |
hip-hop, say, group to sign to a major. | 0:20:43 | 0:20:46 | |
How are they going to promote us and stuff? | 0:20:46 | 0:20:48 | |
It's much easier to sell a female singer than | 0:20:48 | 0:20:52 | |
a hip-hop band or the genre | 0:20:52 | 0:20:55 | |
that people just were not familiar with yet. | 0:20:55 | 0:20:57 | |
And that really was...the trouble that we had. | 0:20:57 | 0:21:01 | |
Their relationship with Island was short-lived and the crew fragmented. | 0:21:01 | 0:21:05 | |
Milo set up home in New York | 0:21:05 | 0:21:06 | |
while Nellee joined Jazzie B and Soul II Soul, | 0:21:06 | 0:21:10 | |
co-producing their multimillion selling debut album | 0:21:10 | 0:21:13 | |
Club Classics, Volume One. | 0:21:13 | 0:21:15 | |
Back in Bristol, | 0:21:15 | 0:21:16 | |
the collective that would become Massive Attack was taking shape - | 0:21:16 | 0:21:20 | |
3D, Daddy G and Andrew "Mushroom" Vowles. | 0:21:20 | 0:21:23 | |
There wasn't one Bristol sound and that gave Massive Attack the | 0:21:25 | 0:21:29 | |
opportunity of saying, "Well, look, there is room for something big." | 0:21:29 | 0:21:34 | |
# Massive. # | 0:21:34 | 0:21:35 | |
One of the things that made Massive Attack into the phenomenon | 0:21:37 | 0:21:40 | |
they were was meeting and knowing Neneh Cherry | 0:21:40 | 0:21:43 | |
and Cameron McVey, you know, | 0:21:43 | 0:21:45 | |
who supported them financially and gave them lots of resources | 0:21:45 | 0:21:48 | |
and really encouraged and nurtured their talent. | 0:21:48 | 0:21:52 | |
# In my space... # | 0:21:52 | 0:21:54 | |
I think it was Daydreaming that I first heard. | 0:21:55 | 0:21:58 | |
I loved the juxtaposition in that piece, | 0:21:58 | 0:22:02 | |
the fact that it was a really strong but simple driving groove | 0:22:02 | 0:22:05 | |
and this really ethereal, softly, sort of rapped vocal. | 0:22:05 | 0:22:10 | |
-# Daydreaming -Way that we say 'em in style | 0:22:12 | 0:22:15 | |
# That we write 'em in Massive Attack, | 0:22:15 | 0:22:17 | |
# We keep it strong just like a vitamin | 0:22:17 | 0:22:19 | |
# Going for the positive wiping out the negative songs | 0:22:19 | 0:22:22 | |
# Cos, brother, it's relative | 0:22:22 | 0:22:23 | |
# The pass is picking up all the lyrics on the dance floor | 0:22:23 | 0:22:26 | |
# That raise your spirit level cos it demands for | 0:22:26 | 0:22:28 | |
# Attitude is cool degrees below zero | 0:22:28 | 0:22:30 | |
# Up against the wall behaving like De Niro | 0:22:30 | 0:22:33 | |
# Tricky's performing taking his phono | 0:22:33 | 0:22:35 | |
# Making a stand with a tan touch it like cocoa... # | 0:22:35 | 0:22:38 | |
If you hear Blue Lines, it's like walking around City Road, | 0:22:38 | 0:22:41 | |
a little bit out of it after Carnival or something | 0:22:41 | 0:22:43 | |
and just hearing all these things, | 0:22:43 | 0:22:45 | |
just like washing over you and they didn't polish it, they didn't... | 0:22:45 | 0:22:48 | |
It's real, it's fucking real. | 0:22:48 | 0:22:51 | |
Bang, there you go. You've got these huge, huge hits. | 0:22:51 | 0:22:55 | |
Massive records played on daytime radio. | 0:22:56 | 0:22:59 | |
And in a pre-Internet age, | 0:23:00 | 0:23:02 | |
Milo Johnson, who Mark Stewart referred to as the king in exile, | 0:23:02 | 0:23:06 | |
stumbled upon the band's phenomenal success in a New York bookstore. | 0:23:06 | 0:23:11 | |
I saw them on a quite big magazine cover in New York. | 0:23:11 | 0:23:15 | |
And I was like, "Wow, shit! Guys, fucking brilliant!" | 0:23:15 | 0:23:18 | |
Do you know what I mean? It put a smile on my face. | 0:23:18 | 0:23:21 | |
Blue Lines kind of had this impact | 0:23:21 | 0:23:24 | |
where they recognise Bristol having a sound. | 0:23:24 | 0:23:28 | |
It was that underlining sub-bass from the dub, | 0:23:28 | 0:23:31 | |
it was the breaks from hip-hop | 0:23:31 | 0:23:33 | |
and the two gelled together and it just summed up the culture. | 0:23:33 | 0:23:39 | |
And I think Massive Attack really tapped into that. | 0:23:39 | 0:23:42 | |
Outside of the core members, | 0:23:42 | 0:23:44 | |
Tricky was also bringing his unique talent to the group. | 0:23:44 | 0:23:48 | |
# Weebles, wobble, occasional squabble | 0:23:48 | 0:23:50 | |
# But what happen when the bomb drops down... # | 0:23:50 | 0:23:53 | |
I met Tricky before everybody, basically. | 0:23:53 | 0:23:56 | |
He was like around about seven years old. | 0:23:56 | 0:23:59 | |
He looked at music differently from most kids at that age. | 0:23:59 | 0:24:02 | |
I mean, he was, like, really focused on everything, | 0:24:02 | 0:24:07 | |
every detail of what we were playing him. | 0:24:07 | 0:24:10 | |
I had this, like, big house down...by the Feeder Road and | 0:24:10 | 0:24:14 | |
Tricky used to... On his way home from school, | 0:24:14 | 0:24:16 | |
he used to just pop into the house, right? | 0:24:16 | 0:24:18 | |
The guy was an obvious...nutter. | 0:24:19 | 0:24:23 | |
He brought his, you know, original style of laid-back, smoked-up, | 0:24:23 | 0:24:28 | |
doped-up lyrical flair to the table. | 0:24:28 | 0:24:32 | |
After Blue Lines, Tricky went on to have | 0:24:32 | 0:24:34 | |
solo success with his debut Maxinquaye. | 0:24:34 | 0:24:37 | |
Tricky's first album is a seminal album. | 0:24:37 | 0:24:40 | |
You know, it was the darker side of the whole trip-hop thing, | 0:24:40 | 0:24:43 | |
I think. I hate that word trip-hop, actually, | 0:24:43 | 0:24:45 | |
but of the music that was coming out of Bristol, you know, | 0:24:45 | 0:24:48 | |
his was the more kind of paranoid, | 0:24:48 | 0:24:51 | |
"been smoking dope for a week and | 0:24:51 | 0:24:53 | |
"I'm not quite sure where I am any more" kind of side of it. | 0:24:53 | 0:24:56 | |
But it also had a kind of really beautiful intimacy that drew | 0:24:56 | 0:24:59 | |
you in and a great warmth about it. | 0:24:59 | 0:25:01 | |
MUSIC: Safe From Harm by Massive Attack | 0:25:01 | 0:25:05 | |
Massive Attack's willingness to collaborate was | 0:25:05 | 0:25:07 | |
a key element of the success of Blue Lines. | 0:25:07 | 0:25:09 | |
This is something they carried forward throughout their | 0:25:09 | 0:25:12 | |
musical career. | 0:25:12 | 0:25:13 | |
They are great collaborators with each other, | 0:25:18 | 0:25:20 | |
but also with other people and they brought the best out of | 0:25:20 | 0:25:22 | |
everyone they worked with, I think, including each other. | 0:25:22 | 0:25:26 | |
# But if you hurt what's mine | 0:25:26 | 0:25:31 | |
# I'll sure as hell retaliate | 0:25:31 | 0:25:32 | |
# Infectious and danger... | 0:25:32 | 0:25:35 | |
# Infectious and dangerous. # | 0:25:35 | 0:25:39 | |
A quarter of a century has passed since Blue Lines was released | 0:25:39 | 0:25:43 | |
and Massive Attack have gone on to have huge success with their | 0:25:43 | 0:25:46 | |
subsequent work. | 0:25:46 | 0:25:48 | |
After Mushroom's departure in 1998, | 0:25:48 | 0:25:51 | |
the duo of Daddy G and 3D | 0:25:51 | 0:25:53 | |
remain as creative and relevant today as ever. | 0:25:53 | 0:25:56 | |
Their legacy to the musicians who came out of the city in their | 0:25:56 | 0:25:59 | |
wake is immeasurable. | 0:25:59 | 0:26:01 | |
We took the hip-hop breaks, sped them up, | 0:26:02 | 0:26:06 | |
we took the sub-basses from sound system, tuned them up. | 0:26:06 | 0:26:10 | |
You know, our whole thing was about energy. | 0:26:10 | 0:26:13 | |
It was about creating some atmosphere vibes in your head | 0:26:13 | 0:26:17 | |
and then we were trying to get that from here out to those people. | 0:26:17 | 0:26:20 | |
I think most people who came out of the Bristol scene, | 0:26:20 | 0:26:22 | |
none of them wanted to be celebrities, | 0:26:22 | 0:26:24 | |
and that enabled them to be more creative rather than less. | 0:26:24 | 0:26:27 | |
I think the ambition was to do something really exciting musically. | 0:26:27 | 0:26:32 | |
But the ambition was never to be world-famous | 0:26:32 | 0:26:35 | |
and chased down the street by paparazzi. | 0:26:35 | 0:26:37 | |
They are punk. Nobody tells them what to fucking do. | 0:26:37 | 0:26:40 | |
They won't talk on camera. | 0:26:40 | 0:26:41 | |
I end up talking about them or for them all the fucking time, | 0:26:41 | 0:26:44 | |
which I don't want to. I'm trying to have my tea. | 0:26:44 | 0:26:46 | |
Do you know what I mean? But they are proper punk. | 0:26:46 | 0:26:50 | |
But Bristol punk. | 0:26:50 | 0:26:51 | |
I think the whole crew owes a lot to Mark. | 0:26:51 | 0:26:54 | |
I don't think without him, | 0:26:54 | 0:26:56 | |
they would be where they are, pretty much. | 0:26:56 | 0:26:59 | |
And without me, I don't think they would be where they are. | 0:26:59 | 0:27:04 | |
That's kind of like... | 0:27:04 | 0:27:05 | |
..that's pretty much a fact that I can feel comfortable saying. | 0:27:09 | 0:27:14 | |
When you saw these guys on Top Of The Pops, it was fantastic. | 0:27:17 | 0:27:21 | |
You looked up and said, "You know what? | 0:27:21 | 0:27:23 | |
"If they can do it, I can do it." | 0:27:23 | 0:27:25 | |
There is something in the water down there. | 0:27:25 | 0:27:27 | |
Where the hell does all this amazing music come from? | 0:27:27 | 0:27:31 | |
# Big wheel keeps on turning | 0:27:31 | 0:27:36 | |
# On a simple line day by day | 0:27:36 | 0:27:41 | |
# The earth spins on its axis... # | 0:27:41 | 0:27:46 | |
I think it just made a lot of the people who were already making music | 0:27:46 | 0:27:51 | |
in Bristol kind of go, "Yeah, of course." | 0:27:51 | 0:27:55 | |
# Seems like the world is out together just by gravity... # | 0:27:55 | 0:28:00 | |
The impact that Massive had on the city is just undeniable. | 0:28:00 | 0:28:05 | |
# Look, my son, the weather is changing... # | 0:28:05 | 0:28:09 | |
Your shoulders got slightly wider, you know, | 0:28:09 | 0:28:11 | |
you just stood a little taller. | 0:28:11 | 0:28:15 | |
# And so the green come tumbling down... # | 0:28:15 | 0:28:19 | |
The sense of pride to be written across your face, | 0:28:19 | 0:28:23 | |
"I'm from Bristol." | 0:28:23 | 0:28:25 | |
# And I'll show you sunset | 0:28:25 | 0:28:29 | |
# Sometime again | 0:28:29 | 0:28:31 | |
# The big wheel keeps on turning | 0:28:31 | 0:28:35 | |
# On a simple line day by day | 0:28:36 | 0:28:40 | |
# The earth spins on its axis | 0:28:41 | 0:28:45 | |
# One man struggle while another relaxes. # | 0:28:46 | 0:28:50 |