I'm not selling molasses
I'm not pushin' tea
I don't appeal to the masses
And they don't appeal to me
-- GP, "Sharpening Axes"
He is responsible for no less than a half-dozen of the greatest rock & roll songs of all time. Only a curmudgeon of the royal order would dispute the classic status of his first two albums, Howlin' Wind and Heat Treatment (both released on Mercury in remarkably the same year, 1976), or Squeezing Out Sparks (Arista, 1979). A handful of his other fifteen albums are close contenders. And his latest, the dreadfully mistitled Acid Bubblegum (Razor & Tie), marks a return to form and fury for an artist who, in the course of his sometimes spotty career, has earned unwelcome comparisons with no less than Elvis Costello, Bruce Springsteen, and Bob Dylan.
The 46-year-old Parker launched his music career in England while moonlighting as a frustrated gas station attendant and part-time breeder of rodents for scientific research. Accompanied by the Rumour, a band of seasoned pub- rockers that included guitarist Brinsley Schwarz, for the next four years Parker pioneered his own fiery brand of rock & roll that, depending on which side of the Atlantic you were on, either propelled him to stardom or fell upon deaf- by-Seventies-music ears. (Guess which side we Americans were on?) While seldom uninteresting, Parker's work in the Eighties, after he parted ways with the Rumour, suffered from occasional lacks of inspiration and plastic-sounding productions. His move to the independent Razor & Tie label in 1995 provided for a change of pace for both the artist and his audience: 12 Haunted Episodes belied its name and found the singer/songwriter happily ensconced with his family at his Woodstock home.
People think I'm filled with hate
They've got it wrong
That's out of date
As fine as 12 Haunted Episodes was,
however, Parker's eloquent performance was
reminiscent of Kathy Bates's character in Robert
Altman's Come Back to the 5 and Dime, Jimmy
Dean, Jimmy Dean, who at one point screeches,
"I'm happy, goddammit!" Parker, too,
was unconvincing.
The out-and-out rockers ("Milk Train," "Beancounter") are relentless; "Character Assassination" manages to be sinewy and sexy while nagging like a guilty conscience. "Impenetrable" is an instant classic that bursts with details straight out of a Harry Crews essay ("I'm in a trailer with some white trash/They're drinkin' beer and smokin' grass/There's a dumb chick with peroxide hair/She got Axl Rose tattooed on her ass"). Parker's jabbing guitar lines prod the song's Twilight Zone-ish plot forward like electric shocks, and its conclusion is reminiscent of Neil Young's "Mideast Vacation," with Parker feeling "the flames lick round [his] ankles" as he is burned in effigy. Truly terrific. * * * The interview that follows was conducted over the telephone on 1 March 1995 with Parker speaking from his home in Woodstock, where he still resides with his wife of seventeen years, Jolie, and their two children, twelve-year-old Natalie and James, a one-year-old new addition. Although the interview is almost two years old (much of it appearing here for the first time) a great deal of what Parker had to say remains pertinent today, especially in light of Acid Bubblegum's release and the restoration of his more infamous persona. Despite your age, you'll forever be known as one of rock's "angry young men." Obviously, there were a lot more songs of intense aggression in some of my other albums. It's unfortunate that, to sum things up, to sum up an artist for the sake of a synopsis in an article or in the press, one tends to have to find something about them. I think usually with me it's been the angry thing. It's easier to make something of that and turn it into perhaps more exciting press. Squeezing Out Sparks is a critic's favorite. It was just so intense, it kind of overshadows things a bit. So you get this angry sort of persona, which is only part of the whole story. It's easy for me to write songs that complain about something -- it's much harder to write songs which are more poetic and poignant. Your music with the Rumour was more "in your face" than your later work. I think that what I did with the Rumour was good for three and four albums, and that's it. It would be great to write something that might be suitable for them as a backing band. That would be nice. But it's basically not my type of music now. I just don't want to hear that kind of aggressive sound. It doesn't appeal to me. Your first album, Howlin' Wind, was released on the eve of the punk rock movement. That certainly had some bearing on how you and your work have been perceived ever since. That wasn't a bad thing because GP and the Rumour were a year ahead of what was called punk and new wave. It was kind of lonely out there, a year ahead. We were playing to people who were sitting cross-legged and not many of them understanding why I was being so aggressive, why the songs were only three-and-a-half minutes long. That was what we were trying to pioneer: three-and-a-half minute, multi-influenced songs with real aggression. The problem with being a trailblazer is you're remembered for what you pioneered. I feel the same about music. I think I bought one John Prine album, and that's his first one. I've got his collection, but I got it for free. I didn't follow his career, even though he's one of the greatest writers around. I've got Sparks' first album, but I didn't buy Kimono My House because I thought, Oh, it sounds too commercial to me. I've seen James Taylor on TV lately and I think he's one of the best acts in the world; but I only bought one of his albums, Sweet Baby James. And that's how I think of him. An old friend of mine, I gave him the Rhino compilation that came out, the Passion Is No Ordinary Word [Rhino, 1993] anthology, and he was just amazed. He couldn't believe that I'd written songs like "Kid with a Butterfly Net" from Struck by Lightning [RCA, 1991]. He just didn't think that I had that in me. He thought I was somebody who made it in the Seventies and now I'm sitting back on my fortune. He didn't know that this was a year-by-year experience for me. That's sort of understandable because there are bands and acts out there -- I see their names and I think, Jesus, is he still doing it? Whose music are you influenced by? My influences have been so varied and my style has always been from finger-picking to Keith Richards chords. I always thought that's what pop music should be, and that's what I tried to reintroduce from my very first album: the fact that you could do a delicate song like "Gypsy Blood" and then do "Soul Shoes" and then do a swing number like "White Honey." I think all the varieties of what I do were right there on that very first LP. That should tip anybody off that I'm not a stylist and I'm not going to narrow myself into one groove. It's not going to happen to me for as long as I can keeping coming up with interesting twists. That's what it's about. It's like plot twists really. In every record there's got to be a new sort of twist in the plot that takes it somewhere else. That makes it difficult for those critics who tend to pigeonhole artists. They expect that dense, really angry vocal sound. To me, I just couldn't sing on my first three LPs. I was just starting to learn to sing by the time I got to Squeezing Out Sparks. The first stuff is all from the throat. It's just bad singing to me. But I know what it is: it's because I'm the real thing, I'm not a pretender. So even though I couldn't sing, it was still good and it was still deep. It's just that I sing well now. Like, come on, guys! I'm singing good now, that's all. Is that putting you off? The English definitely have a way of saying, "Okay, that's it. You're finished. Thank you." It doesn't matter what you're producing, however good, whatever it is. Somebody like Sting is sort of hated in England. He sells a lot of records still, I'm sure, but the guy can't do much right really because he went out into the rain forests. It's like, "Where's the lovable punk?" Throughout your career you've been compared to Elvis Costello. Even today there remains a similarity between your sounds. It's very frustrating seeing as I made two LPs before he had a record deal. Somebody the other day saw me play somewhere live -- a girl who's actually in Pete Droge's band, singing -- and she came up to me and said, "You know, a lot of people say you're like Elvis Costello, but it's more like Dylan." Well, I didn't have much to say. Obviously, it's more like Dylan because I came after Dylan. It's a drag to be compared with anybody who you preceded by two albums and who was originally thought of as being like you. It's just ridiculous. And the press knows better. But he sells more records, so the media, to make it all neat -- a neat little story with no loose ends to fit in a very short space -- writes about "Graham Parker, who is like..." Obviously, there's nothing to be pleased about with that. It's a bore, really. Are you ever surprised by what you come up with in your songs? Constantly. Because good writing, to me, is going into the subconscious a bit. It's not the surface of the brain. Because on the surface we tell lies all day. We walk around with a sort of a mask. There's that scene of OJ Simpson coming out of his house, and the defense attorneys are saying, "Look at him. Does this look like a guy who's in agony or about to kill his wife? Look at him. He's obviously in a good mood." No one's going to come out looking like they really, really feel most of the time. You're gong to be joshing with the guys, aren't you? You're not going to look like a murderer. I think that's definitely a part of the songwriting: that there are different masks that you wear in your life, and you wear them when you're writing, as well, to a certain extent. Have you ever written and recorded something that, upon listening to it later, struck you as too personal? Constantly. It's a balance between exposing something and a work of fiction, as well. A lot of people, it's really hard to tell where the person ends and the fiction begins, and vice versa. I think that's the whole interesting part about it: that nobody's quite sure. Even the writer isn't all that sure. So is the process different when you're writing about yourself versus when you're making something up? You've got to be careful that you're not talking about yourself in flat terms, in depressed terms, or in extremely happy terms. You can't do that, either, because that's just bad writing. You've got to bounce off the metaphors. Poetic license has a lot to do with it. You've just go to take a mood and go with it. It's theme association to me. That's the whole thing with songwriting. Despite big-label backing by more than half-a-dozen different record companies -- including Mercury, Arista, Elektra, RCA, and Capitol -- why do you think rock & roll stardom has eluded you? I think it's more the failure of the public to buy my records by the bucket-load, to be blunt about it. Because record companies, they're all the same, the major companies. They throw something at the wall -- and if it doesn't stick, they've got to move on. With my stuff, it just hasn't stuck with enough people. They don't get it and probably never will get it. I have fans of mine that come backstage -- and they've looked around the audience and seen people who are just coming to see me because I was on Letterman or something -- and they come back and say, "You know, these people don't get it." And I say, "Yeah, I know what you mean." Because I look out at the audience and see some really gormless faces. They're the people who don't understand how it really is. They think it's just a show, it's all a confection. They're just not going to get what I do. Is radio to blame for not playing your songs more? I think I got a fair shake on radio. But radio is all a business. Everything in America or in England is driven by finance, and if the product is not selling they have to drop it like a hot potato. All these radio stations are underwritten by somebody. It's all about ratings, it's all about how many adverts they're selling. They can see that when my stuff gets played, it doesn't sell by the bucket-load in that particular town where it's getting played. It's all about sales. It's got to be sales in the market that they're aiming for. You have to have sales in that market. Big sales. That's what it's judged on. That's the whole rating system of America. The problem with popular culture is that it isn't always all that popular.
Hey, there's not just me, there's tons of people who do pretty good stuff. It's almost impossible to overcome once you're stuck with this prejudice: the prejudice of not selling millions. I don't like to talk about this too much because people tend to talk to me for an hour and then the whole article becomes this thing about Graham Parker not selling millions of records, which I think is off-putting to the public. So I don't want you to turn your article into this. It's even a psychological thing by people who know better. In pop music, people get picked up on a wave. You have to have positive reinforcement all the time to get people who aren't in their twenties perhaps, people who have better things to spend their money on, to go out and spend money on a record. So I understand it. But I always think that the media has to really go out on a limb and try to do its best to put forward the best music. You're very critical of some of your own work -- sometimes hilariously so -- in the liner notes to Passion Is No Ordinary Word. Can you ever just sit back and enjoy any of your albums? I know they're good. I know they hold up and I know they're going to hold up for a long time. Not all of them, but the best ones: Howlin' Wind, Squeezing Out Sparks, I think Mona Lisa's Sister [RCA, 1988], Struck by Lightning. And even the ones in between are still pretty damn good. I know that; there's no question. But it's just that it makes me wince to listen to them. It's just painful. I just wish I was somebody else [laughs]. I'm listening now to "Love Gets You Twisted" from Squeezing Out Sparks because I want to do it on my tour. I haven't done it since 1979, I don't think. I'm thinking, Jesus, this is intense, this is really something. But at the same time, God, I could've done it better. Or, Why did I do that break that? Do I need that break? Why did it stop then after the first verse? That's weird. Why were we trying so hard to be above the public with our musicianship? There are all those kind of things going to your head. Ouch! I'm singing off-key. But I know that the depth of the material is pretty damn good. I wouldn't listen to my old songs and say, "Oh, I wish I could rewrite that." There's no way. It's gone, that is it, and I think it was as good as it could get, for whatever it was. What is your opinion of MTV? Well, not very high, obviously. I never watch it. I can't. I find it excruciating. I've always thought video was the easiest aspect of pop music. It's the easiest thing to do, to come up with an idea. The technical side, there are skilled people doing the camera angles and stuff -- but so what? It's the lowest form of pop life. But I'm not against video per se because I'm not against marketing tools. I was doing videos in `79, convincing people that we should do videos. I said, "This is going to be the new thing. This is going to be what it's like. People are going to want to visually see songs acted out." Now I wish it would go away. It think it's a monster. I did a record for Capitol, the Burning Questions [1992] record. That's a major label that relies on MTV with a great deal of their product. I needed a video. MTV basically said to them, "Don't bother wasting your money. We'd never play it, whatever it's like." That was the attitude. I made my own video for $5,000 because I was so angry that somebody should say to me, "No, don't be creative in that sense. Don't do it. Don't bother." I'm not going to take that, you know? So I made a video -- and out of spite. I got my wife to be the camera person and I wrote the plot, and it's pretty damn good for something that cost 5,000 bucks. It's as good as anything on 120 Minutes, the alternative show, which is the only thing I would've wanted to be on, anyway. Three showings on that proves that you have a record out. You get people interested -- it's stimulating -- and for MTV to cut that avenue off from me is despicable and shows a great deal of disrespect for somebody who has reinvented the three-and-a-half minute pop song. When other people were doing drum solos and guitar solos, it's people like me that made it possible for them to have bands that do three-and-a-half minute songs that are perfect for MTV. So it's a real kick in the teeth to have a corporation do that to you, and I'll always be angry at them. I will. But there you go, it's part of the business. It doesn't affect the music, obviously. It's just there's business and there's music. All things considered, has rock & roll ultimately let you down? [surprised] No, never. Since I signed my first record deal, I've been well off, for one thing, and had an incredible life. It's because I communicate something to people and they respond. There's no letdown in that, you know. |
