August 23, 2000

Graham Parker squeezes out short stories

A musical star swaps media to turn out a volume of stories.

Well, now meet Graham Parker, the author. Parker has just released his first collection of short stories, "Carp Fishing on Valium" (St. Martin's Press), a set of smart short fictions that reflect the wit, insight, skepticism and mordant humor you have come to expect from Parker's music. The stories follow Brian Porker from his randy youth growing up in England through his development into a rock performer and into mid-life crisis and stability. Parker has a strong voice and while some of the stories don't completely satisfy - some endings are not fully realized - the book is still a heady piece of work that is finely observed.

"Around 1992, I found myself with a week off in Stockholm and I got to hang out in a hotel. I hadn't much to do, so I started writing feverishly," says the gregarious Parker from his home in upstate New York. "I finished a lot of pieces and I thought that I might have a book because they were these shorts sketches-sort of in the vein of Monty Python humor. I wrote a lot of this stuff and one developed into a short story. After a while, I let a friend read it and he suggested that I turn it into a novel and foolishly I did and I wrote a novel.

"After I finished that, I kept on writing and somewhere around 1995, I began writing these short stories but I wanted to see if I could get the novel published. It was a little too out there for some of the literary agents and publishers - one told me that he liked the story and thought it was funny but he couldn't publish it. It was a conservative time and I ran into brick walls. ... So I concentrated on short stories and between 1995 up until 1998, I knocked these out and, ultimately, someone at St. Martin's suggested that I place them in chronological order - start with Brian as a 13-year-old and watch him progress and I thought that was a great idea because the stories were never conceived like that. It was much more scattershot. But that's why I'm a songwriter and they are editors. And that's how 'Carp Fishing' came together as a whole and once we put the stories together - which I thought were widely disparate pieces - it seemed novelistic."

Literary work from Parker should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed his career. From his first record in 1976, "Howlin' Wind," with his backing band the Rumour, through a slew of fine records through the '80s and '90s, he has always written songs that are carefully crafted and keenly intelligent.

His music has taken a scalpel to the human dilemma and probed the dark passages of our collective psyche. When he broke onto the pop scene, he was one of Britain's angry young men and throughout the rest of his career he has continued to rail against hypocrisy, greed, insensitivity and despair. Like Elvis Costello, who he was often compared to because they emerged in the same era, he has maintained a deep skepticism of what we call "normality." And so it is with his fictions, although a lot of them are leavened by a blithe sense of whimsy that doesn't always show up in his music.

"My agent told me how she liked the first story ("The Shell-Duck of the Basingstoke Canal") and she said to me 'of course, it is a moral tale' and I wondered, 'me writing a moral tale?'," the 50-year-old Parker says with mock incredulity. "Here I thought I was writing silly stories. I was just trying to make people laugh and then I looked at it and it was poignant and touching and that's something I never thought I could do. It's amazing what the subconscious reveals when you write, because things come out that you never expect."

One of the stories that will no doubt get most attention in the book is "Me and the Stones." In it, Mick Jagger dies when he falls in front of a double-decker bus. Brian, now an established rocker, gets a call from Keith Richards, who asks him to tryout as Mick's replacement on the Stones' next tour. Brian's account of meeting the Stones and playing with them is genuinely funny - we'll see how much Ronnie Wood appreciates it - and the saga ends with Brian understanding that, to be a rock superstar, you need, shall we say, the necessary "equipment."

"Oh, God," Parker says laughing. "You know that it is all in good fun and while some people may wonder 'is he taking a shot at the Stones?' there is no way. I mean the story actually sees Brian thinking of the band in a kind of a reverent way. I see them that way. They are the world's greatest rock 'n' roll band after all. I'm just poking a little fun at them and all of the whole rock star thing.

"Somehow, we started and it was all about the music and now, I mean all this stuff is about business. Not only the Stones, but every young band seems to think about how much money can they make instead of how much good music they can write. But with 'Me and the Stones,' I think as the title implies, there are musicians and then there are the Stones. There's a big difference."

Parker says that he has not given up his first calling, songwriting and performing. Actually, he claims to have over two albums worth of songs ready and that he will begin seriously recording right after he finishes the promotion of "Carp Fishing." He's actually decided to write songs that augment the book. Right now, Parker's in the process of putting a show together in which he will sings these songs based on the stories in "Carp Fishing" as well read passages and tell tales about the writing or genesis of the pieces.

And yes, he says that he pays particular attention to the music being made these days, but he doesn't like very much that he hears. "You know when I came out and Elvis Costello and the others that were ceremoniously grouped together with us, we were dubbed 'the angry young men of rock.' And they were right because we were angry. But the difference between what we did and what I hear now is that we were channeling the anger into real songs and there was a lot of emphasis on melodies and the foundation of the music was soul. It's called soul for a reason.

"But with what I hear now, it's all a lot of cathartic screaming and the music lacks the groove. We weren't making the aural equivalent of a therapy session, you know. I can't win here because if I criticize these younger guys, everyone will say, 'jeez, what do you know you're an old geezer, mate.' But let's be real here. A lot of that angry stuff today isn't very good. It sure is angry, but that doesn't make it rock 'n' roll."