Gartside was born in Cardiff, Wales, to a "Cup-a-soup salesman dad and a hairdresser/secretary/whatever mum". His childhood was not always happy, with the family having to move every 12 months or so because of his father's job. He ended up "living all over , from Bridgend to Newport to Ystrad Mynach". His father died while he was a child, after which his widowed mother married her boss, a solicitor from Newport named Gordon Gartside, from whom he adopted his new surname. Gartside recalls, "The 'Green' bit came about because I didn’t like the fact there were two other Pauls in my class and I wanted something different. So I just chose something random after listening to a Captain Beefheart album where all the musicians were named odd things like Zoot Horn Rollo. I thought having a made-up name was well cool". Gartside attended Croesyceiliog Grammar School in Cwmbran. At 14 he formed a branch of the Young Communist League. He later completed a foundation course in art at Newport Art College and formed a band called Heads of the Valleys. In the mid-1970s, Gartside moved to England to study fine art at Leeds Polytechnic.
Career
While at art school in Leeds in 1977, Gartside formed the post-punk band Scritti Politti with schoolmate and friend Nial Jinks and art school friend Tom Morley. After Gartside and Morley had left Leeds Polytechnic, they moved to London, later securing a recording deal with Rough Trade Records who released the first Scritti Politti album Songs to Remember in 1982. However, subsequent Scritti Politti albums featured Gartside with different personnel, with Gartside being the only constant member of the group. As Scritti Politti, Gartside and New York keyboardist David Gamson and American drummer Fred Maher released the albumCupid & Psyche '85 in June 1985. The album included hits "Wood Beez " ; "Absolute" ; "The Word Girl"; "Perfect Way"; and "Hypnotize". Released on Virgin Records it reached number 5 in the UK and was certified Gold by the BPI for 100,000 copies sold. It was produced by Scritti Politti and Turkish-born Arif Mardin who coincidentally also produced Aretha Franklin, one of Gartside’s musical influences. In 1988 Scritti Politti's album Provision was a UK Top 10 success, though it only produced one UK Top 20hit single, "Oh Patti". After releasing a couple of non-album singles in 1991, as well as a collaboration with B.E.F., Gartside became disillusioned with the music industry and retired to south Wales for more than seven years. Gartside suffered a complete mental breakdown:
We’d been doing months of chat show-type things all around the world and I’d really started hating myself deeply, and everybody around me, for talking so much b*******. Unless you’re some sort of weird egomaniac it’s not healthy to spend that amount of time talking about yourself, and I’d become totally burned out and insane. So to go straight from that into making our next record was a mistake... I just remember hailing a cab one day and in bed surrounded by doctors.
In the early and mid 1990s, Gartside lived alone in a secluded cottage in Usk, Monmouthshire, spending his time listening to hip hop, playing darts and drinking beer at his local pub. He returned to music-making in the late 1990s, releasing a new album, Anomie & Bonhomie, in 1999. In 2006, another new album was released by Gartside, the stripped-down White Bread, Black Beer by Scritti Politti, which returned to the more experimental era of the band's history. He also returned to touring, including his first ever tour of the United States with his band Scritti Politti. In 2012, Gartside, who has suffered from recurring stage fright that prevented Scritti Politti from touring for many years, performed several songs by Sandy Denny as part of a tribute called The Lady in several UK cities. In 2015, Gartside was awarded an Honorary Fellowship from Goldsmiths, University of London. He has been a regular stand-in presenter on BBC 6 Music. Gartside has also worked with Miles Davis, Chaka Khan, Eurythmics, Elvis Costello, Shabba Ranks, Mos Def, Meshell Ndegeocello, Kylie Minogue, Robyn Hitchcock, Manic Street Preachers, Tracey Thorn, and Robert Wyatt. In 2020, Gartside released a solo single on Rough Trade Records, which featured covers of "Tangled Man" and "Wishing Well" by folk singerAnne Briggs.
