Graham Parker-Turns It Into Hate
Updated 9/18/97
GRAHAM PARKER - TURNS IT INTO HATE (& Then He Don't Feel So Bad)
-by Ed Woltil
It's 1976 and all the hippies' little brothers and sisters don't know what's
hit them. The skinny, sweaty man in the suitcoat and dark shades spewing
angry lyrics with a snotty, soul swagger is trampling their expectations of
the standard, mock-rock grandiose spectacle. This is no benignly
self-absorbed, self-appointed tour guide of psychedelic field trips.
Instead, he and his bandmates are whipping up a godawful din. The overall
effect is something like helplessly staring at an oncoming train;
half-fascinated, half-terrified as it threatens to plow you under.
It's thrilling.
It's 1976, and it's just how Graham Parker and The Rumor have planned it.
For Parker, who, at 26, was already a latecomer to a scene (and business)
that traditionally worships (and panders to) youth, his rock 'n' roll calling
was simultaneously a way out of his gas station job, and a mission to
resurrect a musical force that was sorely lacking at the time: the spirit of
'60's soul and R&B. These combined forces fused into the snarling desperation
that fueled the fearsome, pre-punk juggernaut sound of Graham Parker and The
Rumor.
"Our whole idea was to blow away the psychedelic miasma - the flotsam and
jetsam of the psychedelic era," says Parker. "We were state-of-the-art for
one year, 1976, and then punk came along, and we were already in danger of
becoming old-fashioned."
This earned Parker the famous "Grandfather of Punk" label in the English
Press - a dubious honor, perhaps, but one that Parker feels boosted their
career at a critical juncture. After all, according to Parker, "some writers
were already saying things like, 'G.P. and The Rumor aren't that exciting,
but they're the best that the Old Wave has to offer.' When we saw that, we
were livid. Because, live, The Rumor made The Clash sound tame. We were very
aggressive. So, being called 'The Grandfather of Punk' was actually much more
to our benefit; it actually increased our audience. After that, we had kids
coming in pogoing and spitting at us, which was great - it was preferable to
the kids sitting cross-legged on the floor wondering what we were all about."
Fast-forward a few decades. The Grandfather of Punk is married w/children,
living in Woodstock, puttering around in the garden, recording and releasing
albums when and how he wishes on the small independent Razor & Tie label and
doing solo acoustic gigs here and there. How did he get here from there?
Through a perpetually revolving door from record company to record company,
it seems.
Parker and The Rumor banged out three albums of hard-edged, punkish Brit
soul in quick succession, none of which broke through commercially, all
marked by Parker's acid wit and uncanny, snaky vocal outpourings. Parker's
critical standing was solid, but Mercury was not giving his records the push
that they deserved. His parting shot to the label surfaced on a promo single
released by his new record company, Arista, the scathing 'Mercury Poisoning',
in which he sneered, "I'm the best kept secret in the West."
His tenure with Arista yielded '79's classic Squeezing Out Sparks, which
still stands as Parker's artistic and commercial high-water mark. Bursting
with vivid sonic energy and unflinching observations - some disturbing, some
disturbingly funny - Sparks is still a potent listen, and a perennial
critics' favorite.
After 1980's uneven The Up Escalator, Parker and The Rumor parted ways. This
began a long, restless period as Parker groped for commercial success. It was
a search that led him, in turn, from Arista to Elektra to RCA and Capitol.
Somewhere in between, he wound up on Atlantic Records, revered home of such
soul greats of the past as Aretha Franklin, The Drifters and Joe Turner.
Ironically, he wouldn't stay long enough to release a single record.
"Here I was (on Atlantic) with Ahmet Ertegun - the Ahmet Ertegun - the man
who introduced soul music to the world! When I presented him with songs for
my new album, they were very much in a soul vein, and as he listened to this
he said, 'Well, what do you mean by "soul"... you mean '60's soul?' And I
said, 'What other kind of soul is there, what are you talking about?' I was
talking to Ahmet Ertegun, and he didn't know what I meant by 'soul.' That's
one of the reasons I got off Atlantic Records, I pissed him off so much."
By 1988, Parker had had enough of playing tug-of-war with producers, and
began to produce his own albums. The RCA years gave us The Mona Lisa's Sister
and Struck By Lightning, marked by a scaled-back, more acoustic guitar-driven
sound, as well as Live Alone In America, capturing Parker's first forays into
solo performance.
But if his output for RCA hinted at a kinder, gentler Parker, 12 Haunted
Episodes - announced as his "minor-label debut" on the small independent
label, Razor & Tie - was, amazingly, the real thing. Borne on a gentle,
neo-folk lilt, and resonating with a disarming charm and a touching openness,
Episodes found Parker's surgical wit wielded both more playfully and more
contemplatively on newfound themes of domestic bliss.
"It was the album I've always wanted to make," says Parker. "It's the purest
record I've made, and it really is my favorite. I was going for something
along the lines of Blood On The Tracks or Astral Weeks, which, to me, are
probably the two best albums ever made. So that's sort of what I was aspiring
to."
Through all the record companies, stylistic and personnel changes, career
strategies - or lack thereof - the one constant has been Parker's songwriting
craftsmanship. He offers some sage words of advice on the process.
"Before I ever actually pick up a guitar, it's like a lot of bees buzzing
'round in my head, really, but I'm usually saying to myself, 'OK, do
something different than the last album.' I'll sometimes jot down a few
notes, you know, things that strike me, and I think they're good, that they
might mean something. And I guess that's the difference between a decent
songwriter and a crappy songwriter - that the crappy songwriter will end up
using those notes...whereas the decent songwriter will look at them and say,
'Well, that's a lot of crap, fuck that' and start writing songs.
"But it's always the same, I find it excruciatingly difficult. It's like, if
someone says, 'Hey, do you want to go out for a drink?' I don't say, 'Oh no,
I'm writing songs,' I say, 'Sure,'(laughs) you know, 'cause I'll do anything,
I'll go years without touching a guitar if I can possibly avoid it. Because
it's confronting your mortality...it's confronting the fact that you're not
quite a genius - you thought you were, but you're not really. And it's a pain
in the ass to write garbage, you know, but I have to plow through it until I
get to a state which is almost like a drug-induced state where the lyrics
come out, and I look at the page and there's a song there and I don't know
where it came from. But to get to that state, I've written, probably, three
pages, and I'm thinking, 'I'm no good, I'm washed up, I'm finished.' But then
I get on a flow, and 'bang,' I've got all these songs, and it's like, 'How
the hell did that happen?'
"It's like that every time, and it hasn't let me down yet, though it
probably will any minute."
But with so many great songs to his credit, why hasn't he struck gold with
cover versions, a la John Hiatt?
"Actually, Jamie Walters of Beverly Hills 9-0-whatever recorded my song
'Release Me', and due to this, luckily for me, a large part of the Swedish
National Profit has come my way. He sold a few hundred thousand in America,
in a quiet kind of way, but there's all this Scandinavian money coming
in...But what I need is a Michael Bolton - that's what I'm angling for
(laughs). But it ain't gonna happen, baby, my stuff is too quirky."
For any Parker fans who found Episodes to be dismaying evidence that the
sniper in him has gone soft, remember that he doesn't stay in any artistic
place too long. Exhibit A: Acid Bubblegum, his latest slab of scathing
tirades on Razor & Tie. Titles like 'Turn It Into Hate', 'Sharpening Axes'
and 'Bubblegum Cancer' say it all, but hilarious lines like "Celebrities
removed my teeth/ and made me clean their homes" crop up everywhere to
balance the bile. Bubblegum contains some of Parker's best rockers since his
Sparks days.
All of which sort of brings us up to date; the sleepy little community of
Woodstock, the wife, the kids - and the solo gigs, a number of which Parker
has planned for areas in which he hasn't toured much in the past, including
Florida (he'll appear in St. Petersburg at The State Theater, September 26th.
Attendance is mandatory). And his venture into Florida marks another career
first. This time when he says "solo," he really means solo. He's flying in to
Tampa, renting a car, and driving himself to his gigs in St. Pete,
Jacksonville and Orlando - just Parker, his guitar, a bag with "some stuff,"
and the road.
"This is the first time I've gotten on a plane, flown somewhere and then
tried to figure out the rest. It's a bit like parachuting into enemy lands
and then trying to fight your way out. But I just don't want to throw money
away on a tour manager. I'm it, pal (laughs). So, you may or may not see me
there - my sense of direction is challenged."
"I've spent so much of my career following tour managers around, and you
sort of get to the point where you can't even buy a ticket for yourself or
book yourself into a hotel; you become a kind of helpless amoeba. At this
point, a tour manager is such an indulgence for me. It's like, let's be manly
about this (laughs)."
Artistically, as well as logistically, Parker seems primed for the solo
shows.
"To me, being onstage is an alien experience. It's a frightening place to
be. It's not natural. But, solo is the best way to deal with that experience,
because you have to josh around with the audience and have some fun and push
yourself all the way to make every minute count. And musically, it's been the
best thing I ever did. I mean, my voice has improved, I've done different
versions of songs...solo is a much freer experience."
"Touring with The Figgs (an upstate New York band that does occasional shows
with Parker) is one of the greatest things, though, because they're a young
band and I don't have to pay them what I've had to pay session musicians.
They've got their own truck with bunks, so we don't have to stay in a hotel
every night. We actually made money doing gigs, which was the first time ever
for me with a band. But I don't know when I'll ever tour with a band again, I
can't justify it. That's why I called it The Last Rock 'N' Roll Tour (a new
live disc of Parker with The Figgs on Razor & Tie). Things have changed.
People in my age group aren't going to gigs. The market is changed. Agents
are jumping off cliffs wondering why it's not so easy to make money anymore.
The concert business is disastrous."
In closing, though he sings, in the wonderful 'Pollinate', "People think I'm
filled with hate/ They've got it wrong, that's out of date," I still have to
ask him: Why so angry?
"Hate is to me a very positive emotion. It's as positive as love. If you
hate something enough, you might be propelled to talk...think...act...write a
song...work - hate makes you do these things, you know? I've discovered that
it can be a very powerful, positive emotion.
"But, uh, in the wrong hands it's not so good..."
From http://www.eatmag.com
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