| WALSH'S WEEKEND |
If Neil Young is the godfather of grunge, Graham Parker is its cranky but lovable British uncle.
In 1976, Parker had a mission. He'd gotten fed up with the state of pop music, which had grown bombastic and pretentious in the hands of chart-topping art-rockers and singer-songwriters. Along with his band the Rumour, Parker fashioned a prepunk sound that became known as pub rock in England, and set out on a crusade to strip rock back down to its barest essentials.
``I knew that I could change it by reintroducing 3 1/2-minute songs in the same way that David Bowie had done a few years earlier,'' Parker said the other day from Pittsburgh, where he and his band, the Episodes, are in the middle of a U.S. tour promoting his newest album, ``12 Haunted Episodes.''
``And it worked, as well: A year later, every band had short hair and straight trousers and sang 3 1/2-minute songs, or they were screaming them in Cockney accents, or pulling (inspiration) from soul music. And it's continued to work to this day, even though American radio has tried to sabotage it through the classic rock format.''
Classic rock notwithstanding, the fruits of Parker's and others' labors now can be heard all over alternative rock radio, the reigning format of the mid-'90s. For the most part, Parker's goal has been realized. Is there another mission on the horizon?
``No,'' he said. ``Not in the slightest. I just make records.''
In the late '70s, Parker produced some of the best, and angriest, records of the day, including ``Howlin' Wind'' and ``Heat Treatment'' (1976), ``Stick To Me'' (1977), and his classic, ``Squeezing Out Sparks'' (1979). But when he wrote his exquisite pop paean to adult love, ``Life Gets Better,'' in 1983, longtime fans concluded that their angry young man had finally gone soft. But the fact was, Parker had been soft for quite a while already.
``In 1976, I remember doing my first interviews, and I'd always say that `Blood On The Tracks' (by Bob Dylan) was my favorite record,'' he observed. ``And it still is, and that's not hard, aggressive punky stuff; it's groove-oriented acoustic music. That's what I liked the most then, and that's what I like most now. And you know, anyone listening could tell that from songs like `Between You and Me' (on `Howlin' Wind').''
To put it mildly, Parker has developed a healthy disdain for the past, or anything that would peg him as merely a survivor of the skinny-tie wars. But with little prompting, he's still willing to talk about the Rumour, one of the greatest bands Britain ever produced.
``The egos involved were huge, but on a good night there was nobody better on the planet,'' he said. ``And there were a lot of good nights in '79, when we did the `Squeezing Out Sparks' tour. We were just really steaming. But that's generally not the kind of music I'm interested in now. I'm much more into nuance and trying to get a shiver down people's spines than bludgeoning them.''
Spine shivers is what ``Episodes'' more often than not succeeds at producing. Recorded as a demo in five days (with Parker playing all the instruments), and released by the up-and-coming New York-based independent label Razor & Tie, ``12 Haunted Episodes'' is a collection of personal ruminations that sound dangerously close to - gasp - a singer-songwriter record. It's a beautiful thing, but how would the guy who made ``Howlin' Wind'' have reacted to it?
``That's a good question,'' he said. ``I think the guy who made `Howlin' Wind' would have liked this record, because it's a `Blood On The Tracks' type of record. Or an `Astral Weeks' (by Van Morrison). They haven't gone out of fashion, those records. It's impossible. You can't beat them. You can't get anywhere near them. There's nobody alive, not even Dylan or Van Morrison, who can get near them.''
Dylan and Morrison are two songwriters who have had a difficult time trying to climb out from under the gargantuan shadows of their legends, and now Parker can officially be added to the list. When Rhino Records released the 39-track retrospective ``Passion Is No Ordinary Word'' in 1993, he played a six-date promotional tour with La Bamba and the Hubcaps (aka the Miami Horns). For the occasion, he dusted off plenty of old hits, such as ``White Honey'' and ``Heat Treatment.''
``I did the whole soul man thing and put my guitar down and danced around and everything,'' he said. ``And it was fun, and I'd like to do that again sometime. But it costs a lot of money to put a band with a horn section on the road.''
For this tour, Parker has been trotting out such oldies as ``Protection,'' ``Get Started, Start A Fire,'' ``Fool's Gold,'' and ``Watch The Moon Come Down,'' as well as a healthy dose of new material. But for those fans who prefer hearing, say, ``Squeezing Out Sparks'' played in its entirety, the angry old man has one final thought.
``What I say to that is, if you want an oldies show, wait for Herman's Hermits and the Dave Clark Five to come around. Wait for them to do a package tour, pal. If you listen to (Parker's most recent work) `Struck By Lightning,' `Burning Questions,' and this record, you'll know that I'm trying to push the medium further still. I'm still exploring it, and still writing stuff that I think is strong. If people are into my music, they should be open to being pushed a little bit.''