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September 30, 1997
A long, ferocious road for rock 'n' roller Graham Parker
ORLANDO - Graham Parker has been venting ire, wrath and vexation in song
for more than two decades, to the vicarious pleasure of legions of discerning
and empathetic fans. Although Elvis Costello became Britain's best-known angry
young man after his infamous performance on Saturday Night Live, Parker had
actually prepared the way with his 1976 debut, Howlin' Wind, a seminal
outpouring of rock 'n' roll spleen.
There have been high and low points in Parker's long career, and Parker
himself will gleefully expound on the latter. However, there have never been
any extended lulls. Like many
strong-minded artists, Parker has had a long history of record-company woes,
but despite changing labels more than half a dozen times, he has been more
prolific than most artists of his generation.
Mind you, that doesn't mean Parker finds songwriting easy. Speaking from his
home in upstate New York, he said he is assuredly not the kind of writer who
goes out on the road and comes home with a sheaf of new material. Both writing
and performing are major and very separate undertakings
for Parker, whose first Florida tour in years will bring him to Orlando's
Sapphire Supper Club Sunday.
"Working on the road is just totally draining, I find," he said.
"I have a lot of songs, and although I'm just playing solo, I have to rehearse.
I really do.
I have to sit with the guitar and keep my voice in shape and exercise it. It's
a muscle you have to work on, and for me, anyway, that's the professional
approach. In my opinion, you work at it before you go out on stage and cover
all the bases so you give
people value for money."
Between rehearsing, soundcheck, playing the gig and getting to the next gig,
Parker doesn't have the spare time or energy to sit around his hotel room
writing. However, he does gather ideas continually, he said.
"Being on the road is stimulation in as much as you'll see a
lot of interesting people engaged in a lot of interesting behavior in a very
short space of time," Parker said.
"I generally store that, and it becomes a source of energy that will come out
later in songs, in some respect. I have a
long build-up - like a build-up of steam, really."
Parker's pressure-cooker approach may not have been the best recipe for
commercial success. However, he hasn't been completely ignored by radio, and
many younger writers venerate him for fierce but enormously tuneful songs such
as
"Passion Is
No Ordinary Word,"
"Discovering Japan,"
"Get Started, Start a Fire" and
"Local Girls." Parker's 1979 album, Squeezing Out Sparks, is widely acknowledged as
essential. Some of his most recent efforts have gotten mixed reviews, but he
remains a songwriter to watch.
"Songwriting is something where
I need to say, 'I am now songwriting,' and that's it," Parker said.
"Often, the first few months of songwriting are false starts, going in wrong
directions, or I don't know what direction I'm going. It takes a while for me
to hit a vein. There are
a lot of things you have to scrap before you get down to the real deal. It's a
tortuous, arduous process.
"It's not like sitting on a porch relaxing with a guitar. It's an intense
experience. And the specter of failure is always hovering over me, so it's
not something I go into lightly. I try to avoid it at all costs, in fact! If
somebody comes around and says, 'Do you want to go out for a game of soccer?,'
I don't say, 'No, I'm songwriting.' I'm out the door!"
Writing was
even harder when he was younger, Parker said.
"A lot of people like the second album, Heat Treatment, but what I hear is a lot
of bluffing going on. When Howlin' Wind came out, I felt I had covered all the
bases and said what I had to say, but
my manager said, 'Why not get another album out quickly?' . . . And somehow I
managed to get it out within about six months. But it was not easy. I remember
sitting there with my guitar thinking, 'I've got nothing to say.'
"
Now, at
least, Parker is confident that he has learned his craft and knows where his
strengths lie.
"But lyrics are still very hard because I really want them to be as good as they
can be, and I want them to have a resounding effect. When I write a song like
'Sharpening Axes' on Acid Bubblegum, I'm still very, very pleased I
can do that. I think it's a creditable piece of work. It always amazes me I can
still do that. Although I don't really sort of take credit for it. Saying 'It's
a gift' is kind of corny, but that's what it is. That's what is has got to be
because I'm an idiot. I
feel like I have nothing in my head most of the time. These songs come out, and
admittedly I have to work to get myself into that frame of mind but, still,
it's an amazing process to me."
Acid Bubblegum, released in 1996, is Parker's most recent studio album
for Razor
& Tie, his label since 1995. Razor
& Tie recently released The Last Rock 'N' Roll Tour, a live recording of Parker
backed by young power-pop/punk band the Figgs. Parker doesn't like or listen to
much current music but was
impressed when he heard the Figgs on a 1996 tribute album on New Jersey's Buy
or Die.
Most of the bands on the tribute, Parker said, were obviously chosen just
because they happened to be on that label.
So then, who would Parker pick, if artists were allowed to put together their
own tribute
albums?
Thinking a moment, Parker replied,
"There are people who have expressed their love of my music to my face - Bruce
Springsteen, Bette Midler, Marianne Faithfull. She (Faithfull) told me she
loves Squeezing Out Sparks. I've met people like that over the years, a lot of
people
who are quite famous, but whether they'd do it or not, I don't know. Sometimes
people get a bit touchy about that. Also, I think we've kind of passed the
tribute album era. It's been a little overdone for a while."
Parker's enduring popularity is also
evidenced by the amount of archival material released in recent years. He is
more or less pleased to be personally involved with projects such as Hux
Records' reissue of 1976 BBC Radio recordings of Graham Parker and the Rumour.
"In fact, today I've been listening to some of that stuff in order to write
liner notes for it - and it's pretty much cringe-inducing, especially for me," Parker said.
"Listening to myself is not easy. At the same time, I know the songs hold up.
I'm lucky with that respect anyway. The best thing is making a new album when
I tend to feel like I've reinvented myself. And sometimes I'm totally wrong in
that, but at least it's fresh at the time. Looking back on things, I see awful
blunders. I think my voice is just appalling on the first
four or five albums. I don't think I started to sing well until about Another
Grey Area.
"I'm still a long way from being really good. But some nights I can really hit
it. Live, I'm getting better and better. I've
just got this experience now, and I know how to use my voice, to sing with my
body instead of my throat. Listening back on the albums, I really didn't know
what I was doing. I hadn't paid my dues. I hadn't been playing around in
clubs for years. I was living in the suburbs of England listening to the radio
and writing songs trying to be like Mick Jagger and Bob Dylan and Levi Stubbs
all rolled into one with many other people. And it shows, quite frankly."
Graham Parker
When: 9:30 p.m. Sunday.
Where: Sapphire Supper Club, 54 N. Orange Ave., Orlando.
What it costs: $10.
Where to call: (407) 246-1419.
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