After 20 Years, Graham Parker Does It His Way
Still ready to cause trouble.
Addicted To Noise's Scott Richard Warden reports:
Twenty years, and 19 releases down the road, Graham Parker seems to be throwing
his musical roadster into reverse with his latest release, Acid
Bubblegum. This new album finds Parker recapturing the spunk, spirit and
edge of his early work, which arguably peeked with around 1979's epic
Squeezing Out Sparks. "The synapses have been firing a bit more often
since (1988's) The Mona Lisa's Sister," says Parker from his home in
upstate New York. "In the '80s I stepped out a bit, maybe sideways at times.
But ever since Mona Lisa I've been back on the ball. Of course there's
this song ("Impenetrable") on the new record where I sing something like,
"She's got Axl Rose tattooed on her ass," which makes me sound like a complete
moron. So how can I say I'm back on the ball? Who cares, I'm just fucking
around..."
The original angry young man.
Fucking around? Well, that's one way to describe a career
that has seen Parker recording for eight different record companies. One
label, Atlantic, signed him then let him go after a year without even releasing
an album. Another, Arista, home to none other than Whitney Houston, says Parker
owes them something in the neighborhood of 800,000 dollars. How the hell did
that happen? "Well, because at one point I was something of a hot property and
they threw lots of money at me and then the records didn't sell enough to
compensate what they spent on me," says Parker who seems rather amused by the
situation. "I never get any royalties because I don't sell enough records. It's
a good thing I write my own songs because they can't touch the publishing
rights. I can't make a penny apart from them."
Has all the label hopping
undermined his confidence in his ability to write good songs and record solid
albums? "There's one truth I've come to about the record industry," he says.
"When you're selling lots of records things are good, when you're not it's
absolute crap."
With his current deal at the cool little indie label Razor
& Tie, Parker is far from major label pressures and, once again, able to make
albums on his own terms. "When people step on my toes artistically things get
ugly pretty quick," he says of previous encounters with majors. "I'm gonna do
what I'm gonna do and you're gonna put it out. That's pretty much how my
contracts read these days.
"Every time I put out a new record it's like
starting a new day. You know there's going to be some sort of reaction to it,"
he says. "It's pretty shallow, I suppose, wanting to know what people think of
me. But I'm just like anyone. People like to feel like they're having an effect
on other people. Of course, you think people's jaws are going to drop and in
reality their eyes will probably just haze over."
To be continued...
Copyright © 1996 Addicted To Noise.
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