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John Gourley, The Man behind Portugal. The Man sits across from me at a deserted table in a back corner of Complex’s Manhattan office. "We just wanted to make something that was The Beatles meets Wu-Tang," he says, and begins laying out the storied past of the band that’s become his life's work. Just off the release of their eighth full-length album, Evil Friends—helmed by super producer Brian Burton a.k.a. Danger Mouse—Gourley seems settled, happy, and even a little proud.
The Alaskan native admits to a shyness so debilitating that at one time he couldn’t even place an order in a restaurant, but now, the 32-year-old fronts a band whose hip-hop minded indie rock anthems are selling out arena-sized venues internationally. He cites his home state, in part, for the spiritual undertones and expansiveness of the band.
"When you grow up in Alaska in the woods, you definitely look up and think, 'What the fuck is this?' It’s the brightest stars you'll ever see," he said. "It may not be a religious thing as much, like tied to any religion or being raised on any of that, it's just you really get a sense of yourself. You really feel like there’s a meaning to things and certain things happen for a reason."
John and his childhood best friend Zach Carothers both grew up in Alaska, or in John’s words "far from everything," and it was this relationship that formed the initial impetus for the band. After moving to Portland, the group has seen an ever-evolving cast of musicians, but Gourley and Carothers remain the heart of the collective.
Living in Portland, the two were part of a band called Anatomy of a Ghost that fell apart, and formed Portugal. The Man soon after. The idea behind the name was to establish the character—Portugal—as a man, not a country. "Portugal" served as an alter ego, something like Ziggy Stardust or Sgt. Pepper, that could work as a representative of the band's persona.
After stints on indie labels, and at one point even their own, Evil Friends is the band’s second release since they signed with the Atlantic in 2010, a sign of success that Gourely still counts as an honor.
"I have to say it's pretty fucking cool to be on the label of Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles," he said. "That shit for me is so massive. Atlantic has been my favorite home for the band—we wouldn't have made this record without them. I wouldn"t have finished the last record if it wasn't for Atlantic. I"m just happy here. I know other people don't need to be on labels and that's fine. But I really like the history of Atlantic and being a part of that is cool."
"I have to say it's pretty fucking cool to be on the label of Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles. That shit for me is so massive."
Historical connections aside, gaining recognition from a heavyweight like Atlantic has created larger-than-life opportunities for the band—not just putting out records on the same label that housed Motown idols—but the ability to contribute to a larger sonic tradition, to add to a sound that erupted in the '60s and has carried into the modern era.
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"I never picked up a guitar because why? Why would I? The Beatles did it. And then I heard Oasis," John said. "My initial thought when I heard Oasis was 'Holy shit you can do the Beatles?' I honestly thought that the best music was made in the 60s—it was The Beatles. They made the best music, or Motown made the best music, and it ended there. It was such a cool thing to hear a band that was so obviously influenced by the Beatles—and other things of that era—make it new."
It was around this time, too, that hearing Zach cover Nirvana incited John to believe that creating compelling music in the vein of Cobain and Lennon was still possible.
"Seeing Zach cover Nirvana and seeing kids do that stuff, for some reason in my brain, I thought 'Well if you can cover that stuff why can’t you write it?' If you can cover it, you should be able to do it."
It sounds unabashedly brazen, and almost too simple, but that's exactly what Gourley and this lineups have done. The most recent iteration of the band includes Carothers on bass, Noah Gersh on guitar, Kyle O'Quin on keyboards, Kane Ritchotte on drums and Gourley’s inimitable rubbery falsetto floating atop it all.
Despite the changes in members, the band has stuck to John’s initial vision—skirting the hyped-up circles of sugary, electro pop, EDM-centric beat drops, or even the folk revival—Portugal. The Man stick to the classic tones of rock and Motown that the ‘60s established. But there’s another undercurrent that influences the group too, a movement that wasn’t around when The Beatles were: the culture of hip-hop.
"We heard Wu-Tang for the first time and there's something so amazing about it—there’s a reason it crosses so many genres. There's nothing fucking cooler than Wu-Tang. It's all over the map. It was like I was hearing the Beatles."
"We heard Wu-Tang for the first time and there's something so amazing about it—there’s a reason it crosses so many genres. There's nothing fucking cooler than Wu-Tang. It's all over the map. It was like I was hearing the Beatles," Gourley said.
With the world’s most infamous Brit rock band and Shaolin's own as touchstones, Gourley determined that the only way to recapture the tone and texture of those eras was to use the same gear that created it.
"That’s really how it felt hearing any Motown, that era that they were sampling," he said. "You don’t have to know the fucking samples, you hear that guitar tone and you hear that piano, you hear that vocal. You’re just sucked in. Everybody connected with it because it was so familiar, yet it was so new, so raw."
For Evil Friends, as the group’s other seven albums, the instruments that Portugal uses are hand-selected not just for their vintage sound, but for specific characteristics that vary from amp to amp.
"All my amps are '64 and '62, that’s what I play. You can get another 1964 Fender Super Reverb, you can get that but it’s not going to sound like the one you had last, and you have to go through so many to find the right one. They're all hand-wired, they're made differently, and again, that's that connecting point. Hearing the right tone, you just immediately know," Gourley explained.
For some though, these instruments create a sound that’s too familiar. A criticism that the band has faced again and again has been that their work sounds too much like the sounds of the group’s predecessors. Regardless of this critique or cursory, dismissive reviews, he stands by the decision to use instruments that evoke the past.
"I fucking read that shit. 'I really like the songs, but it's not groundbreaking,' I see that a lot,” Gourley said. "Those amps and those instruments just really connect on a level you can’t really explain. Because of that, it's kind of a blessing and a curse at the same time, but I fucking love it. It’s the reason I play, it's that era."
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The real thing that John seems to be after in pursuit of that ‘60s sound though, is the spirit behind it, the essence of rebellion. One of the songs on Evil Friends addresses the way this passion has been appropriated for the sake of fashion, specifically by kids without a sense of historical import of these movements.
“Rock and roll, that’s shit’s over,” he said. “It’s over in the sense that it’s not just guitars, that’s not what rock and roll is. You can’t be a punk because you have studs in your fucking leather jacket, you can’t say, ‘Oh, I’m just into hip hop,’ because they’re sampling shit that you’re not even fucking listening to.
"You can’t be a punk because you have studs in your fucking leather jacket, you can’t say, ‘Oh, I’m just into hip hop,’ because they’re sampling shit that you’re not even fucking listening to. There aren’t the same boundaries that there were—and fuck you if you think you’re fucking punk."
“What I was more or less saying in “Hip Hop Kids” is that there aren’t the same boundaries that there were—and fuck you if you think you’re fucking punk. I mean I guess that makes me super punk rock, so fuck you [laughs].”
Despite his infatuation with the sounds of the past, Gourley is still very much looking toward the future—if nothing else, his affiliation with hip-hop reveals that. Recently given the opportunity to have a conversation with RZA, who remixed “All Your Love” off their 2011 release In the Mountain in the Cloud, his enthusiasm brims over recalling the experience.
“That remix he did for us, every time that stuff happens, there’s always something new,” he said. “I had a really unique opportunity and I was hanging out with a friend and he just called RZA. So he calls RZA and I’m like, ‘Motherfucker! Oh shit, I gotta talk to this dude?’ He’s such a cool guy though, when we finally got on the phone, he started telling me about how they made the record and all the musicians they brought in. It sounded like it was more of a project about their love of music. It’s nerdy and, again, that’s what’s cool about Wu-Tang.”
The band’s respect for hip-hop reaches farther than Wu-Tang worship, though. Gourley has even gone so far to suggest that if a rapper needed a backing band, Portugal might be a good fit.
“I have this idea, that if Wu-Tang or A$AP Rocky or Kendrick, anybody, needs a backing band, we’ll fucking do it! The band’s good, we can jam, they don’t have to practice,” he said. “I don’t want any credit or any recognition. Don’t fucking announce it, if you know who it is, you know who it is. I don’t need to take the spotlight for them. I like fucking music, it’s fun for us. I’d love to do more of that sort of thing.”
As for their own work, specifically on their latest album, there’s traces of Danger Mouse in the music, but they appear more as flourishes, not full-on alterations. Friends manages to stay very true to the sound that the group have carved out for themselves—heady, sprawling, arrangements and piano riffs, choruses that build higher and higher to a peak that breaks into horns, brass and wailing solos.
There’s plenty of cultural critique packed into their lyrics as well, though they’re delivered in Gourley’s airy, flexible voice, which may fool some. These are songs that poke and prod at the post-modern experience, but remain couched in sonic signifiers that scan as ‘60s psychedelia and crashing waves of Oasis-sized jams.
“We’ve made all kinds of music, I don’t know where it’s going to go and what’s going to happen, but I feel confident that this band is going to continue,” Gourley said. “It feels fresh and it feels new. This is my project. It’s a new band and it’s a new record and I don’t feel in any way like it’s not hitting all the points we should be right now.”
Evil Friends is out on Atlantic now. Buy it here and check out Portugal. The Man’s tour dates here.
