Tricky's legacy shines in tough times
“ENGLAND’S heavy,” muses trip-hop legend Tricky as he sits down to talk to CityLife from the creative youth project he runs in France.
“It ain’t like Americans see us: drinking Pimms and playing cricket.”
He knows from experience, of course. He grew up in the tough Knowle West area of Bristol – raised by his grandparents after his father left the fold shortly after he was born and his mother committed suicide when he was four-years old.
“If I was a kid in England and I lived on a council estate,” he continues, “I would carry a weapon. You’d have to. Everybody’s got ’em.”
It’s a stark pearl of questionable logic from a man who, these days, dedicates a good deal of time to helping young people find a different outlet for their energy.
At his youth project in Paris, disadvantaged teenagers are invited to record music, paint or, should they wish to, just ‘hang out and nick all of Tricky’s trainers’.
“I don’t advocate carrying a weapon, but imagine being a kid today; people are getting stabbed for nothing.
“It’s harder now than when I was growing up. We used to hang out on the streets, but I think to a certain extent it was safer. I was in Manchester not long ago. In places like that, Bristol and London, you can feel the danger.”
He’s been there, done that, then. But at 41, does Tricky feel he can still speak relevantly to young people? “No,” comes the candid and instant reply. “Firstly, young people don’t wanna listen to you, they don’t give a ****.
“It’s really hard for kids now. I honestly wouldn’t know what to say to them, except for, ‘If you’re into music, try and pursue that’. It’s easy for me to say, ‘Go get a job’, but where are they gonna get jobs from?”
Pensionable
In rock terms, Tricky is positively pensionable; the sort of age that sees stars farmed out for wise and worthy colour spreads in the pages of the less fashionable broadsheets.
But he wasn’t exactly a kid when he got his big break. Emerging 14 years ago from the scene that gave us Massive Attack and Portishead, his debut album – Maxinquaye – earned him a Mercury Prize nomination in 1995 (he lost out to Portishead, which must have stung a little).
Ironically, for a man whose very stage name is synonymous with difficulty, few things have troubled him over the course of his career – including having an album title nicked by the Sugababes.
“The most difficult thing I’ve ever done was the movie, The Fifth Element,” he considers about his role in Luc Besson’s 1997 sci-fi weirdathon, one he took much to the chagrin of serious thesp Gary Oldman, who reportedly resented the Twix-eating trip-hopper’s presence in the cast.
“I was very camera shy and every day I went on set I was scared. Then there was this show called Girlfriends that I did in America. That was proper television. I went to the read-throughs and you don’t just read it – you act it out, and you feel like a right idiot.
“The first day I did it, I pretended to have an asthma attack and left.”
So, does he feel more at home behind the producer’s desk than in front of the camera? “Yeah, ’cos no one is watching me,” he says, speaking, one imagines, more figuratively than modestly.
Movies
“I’m not performing for anybody. You’ve got the band, the lights; you can hide. In the studio I can be myself. But on camera you can’t hide at all. It’s a lot of pressure.
“I’d like to do another movie. But it’s easy to say that. With an album, you’re self-sufficient, you can go and do it. But it’s so hard getting a movie together. You need backers, a script; you’ve got to find a producer. I’m too lazy for all that.”
Despite claims to creative slothfulness, Tricky found time in 2008 to direct Brown Punk – The Movie, a fictionalised account of his eponymous record label’s formation.
In the same year, he returned to music with Knowle West Boy, a varied rattle through the sounds and experiences that shaped his formative years and ears. It earned positive reviews across the board, but saw the south west star stay firmly under the mainstream radar.
But lately, the Bristol scene that nurtured Tricky has undergone something of a revival. Massive Attack are curating establishment festivals and Portishead recently gained widespread acclaim for their chorus-free comeback, Third.
Does Tricky feel left behind by his former Bristol peers? “No,” he concludes with characteristic honesty.
“There was never a sense of community there. There was no real solidarity. People knew each other to say hello, but no one was really friends with each other.
“I remember once when [Bristol producers] Smith and Mighty asked me to do a vocal, the Massive Attack boys were well against it. There wasn’t a, ‘Let’s all get together and jam’ sort of vibe. It wasn’t a collective.”
Scarier
These days, Tricky – who speaks with the sort of cheekily energetic twang that dips and dives in the way you might imagine Dick Van Dyke would play Pa Larkin – divides his time between LA, Paris and London.
He returns to the UK next week for a series of gigs for NME’s annual awards shows, the first of which will see him bring his claustrophobic sound to the cramped confines of Manchester’s Club Academy.
“That’s probably ’cos I can’t sell any more tickets!” jokes the singer bluntly when asked about the reasoning behind playing such a small venue.
“It’s much scarier. You can’t go anywhere, so you’ve got to try that little bit harder. You can’t fake it on a small stage.
“Something happens. A very shamanic energy goes on. It’s like you feel it, there’s a connection between us and the crowd. For that moment, nothing matters.
"You’re not rich, you’re not poor. You don’t need anything.”
There is an element of truth in Tricky’s ticket-shifting jest. His record and gig sales have never quite matched his profile, with the number of people who have heard of him far outweighing those who could hum his tunes.
“I’ve played big shows, but in England it’s harder for me. I could fill Shepherd’s Bush Empire, but anywhere else it’s difficult. I don’t know what it is.
"I’ve got a profile bigger than my record sales – I just did David Letterman! I think because I do things like that, people assume I sell more records than I do.”
Despite never quite hitting the heights of commercial success enjoyed by other transatlantic Brit acts, such as Radiohead or Coldplay (witness the air of Home Counties palatability that binds those two together), Tricky nevertheless feels satisfied.
“You don’t have to sell millions of records to have a good life,” he says. “You can tour, you can travel the world; you can record and make albums and still feed your children. You can have a great life.”
And what next for the artist known to his family as Adrian Thaws? “I’ve got an album that I’ve just finished. It’s me, producing 14 different acts from all over the world.
“I didn’t write any of the lyrics or melodies, just let these kids create their own thing. The album needs to be mixed but it’s going to come out this year.”
As the trip-hop guardian (surely the worst name for a musical genre outside of the baffling nu-metal) watching over a new generation, how does his feel about the genre his releases have come to define?
“Oh I hate that word!” he splutters. “It’s terrible, make up a better name!
“I wouldn’t mind so much if it sounded good! People come up with this stuff,” he spits, “but if you’re going to make up some b******s, at least make it good b******s.”
Published: Sun, 08 February, 2009
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