VERTIGO, Vertigo double CD 534 100-2, 10/14/1996, UK
Graham Parker wasn't a punk/rocker,
and he wasn't out to exterminate the so-called boring old farts,
he was more interested in competing with them, getting a recording
contract and launching himself as a singer/songwriter fronting
his own R&B band. In 1975, he placed an ad in Melody Maker
looking for a band who sounded like The Rolling Stones backing
Bob Dylan... This led Parker, then in his mid-twenties and living
in Camberley, south-west of London, to meet Dave Robinson, erstwhile
manager of Brinsley Schwarz, one of the best of the pub/rock bands,
who had recently disbanded. Robinson was connected with the Hope
& Anchor pub in Islington, where he had launched a recording
studio; Parker, who had played in small-time bands who mainly
played cover versions, felt that it was time to expose his own
original material to the world, and thought Robinson might be
helpful...
Impressed by the quality of Parker's
songs, Robinson introduced him to lead guitarist Brinsley Schwarz
and to Bob Andrews, the keyboard player in the Brinsley Schwarz
band. Another well-regarded pub/rock band, Ducks DeLuxe, had
also decided to call it a day, and that group's guitarist, Martin
Belmont, was recruited to join Schwarz and Andrews, along with
Andrew Bodnar (bass) and Steve Goulding (drums), the rhythm section
of a third extinct pub/rock band, Bon Temps Roulez. This quintet
became The Rumour, a nicely enigmatic name. No-one doubted that
this band was potentially hot stuff, but it lacked a vocalist
and songwriter; Brinsley Schwarz, the group, had featured Nick
Lowe as lead singer and main songwriter, but Lowe was unlikely
to reunite with Schwarz and Andrews - what would be the point?
The obvious solution was to combine Parker, the singer/songwriter
looking for a band, with The Rumour, a band looking for precisely
what Parker could offer. Graham Parker & The Rumour. - it
sounded good...
A popular radio show in London at
the time was 'Honky Tonk', hosted by Charlie Gillett, a rock historian
with excellent musical taste. Gillett enjoyed finding unknown
bands with potential, and he was sufficiently impressed by a tape
sent in by GP & The Rumour to invite them to record a live
session for 'Honky Tonk' - he later gave a then unknown Dire Straits
a similar boost. Gillett's audience included a number of A&R
men, talent scouts for the major labels. One such was Nigel Grainge,
a man with a reputation for his 'good ears', who called Gillett
for information after hearing 'Between You And Me', the first
track on this Graham Parker retrospective, and during the spring
of 1976, 'Howlin' Wind', the debut LP by Graham Parker & The
Rumour, was released on Vertigo Records, Phonogram's 'street credible'
label, to which Grainge had signed them.
The LP followed 'Silly Thing' (a
track excerpted from the album), the band's first single. Its
B-side, 'I'm Gonna Use lt Now', never appeared on an original
LP by the group; however, it's included here. As well as the
great title track and 'You've Got To Be Kidding', the LP included
an early Parker classic, 'Back To Schooldays', to which the famous
Dave Edmunds added 'rockabilly guitar'. 'Howlin'Wind', which
was produced by Nick Lowe, was and is a notable debut album, and
although it didn't top the chart, it was a huge critical favourite,
to the point where Phonogram decided to capitalise on the media
buzz by organising a live showcase for the sextet at Phonogram
studios near Marble Arch in London.
'Live At Marble Arch' has never before
appeared in its original form on CD. Released as a limited edition
LP in a white sleeve with the title rubber-stamped in red ink,
and probably designed to look like a bootleg, it was never sold
in record shops, but given to journalists and broadcasters to
encourage continued support for this potentially huge new talent.
Five of the ten tracks on the live LP were versions of songs
from 'Howlin' Wind', two more would appear on 'Heat Treatment',
the group's second studio album, and the other three were excellent
cover versions of American soul classics: Aretha Franklin's 'Chain
Of Fools', the familiar hit by The Supremes, 'You Can't Hurry
Love', and 'Kansas City', the R&B standard. Like the 'Howlin'
Wind' LP, 'Live At Marble Arch' was produced by Nick Lowe, but
Lowe's self-confessed and oft-quoted production technique ('bash
it down and tart it up') was felt to be inappropriate for the
vital 'Heat Treatment' sessions.
By the end of 1976, Lowe was busy
with other projects anyway, including his own solo career and
producing for the newly-launched Stiff Records label. It was felt
that a producer who could also arrange the songs might be appropriate,
and the choice was South African Robert John 'Mutt' Lange, who
later achieved huge success with heavy metal acts like Def Leppard
and AC/DC, among many others. Lange brought out one of Parker's
major influences, 1960s soul music as exemplified by such labels
as Atlantic, Stax & Motown, and with a brass section more
prominent than on 'Howlin' Wind', 'Heat Treatment' was the first
chart album by Graham Parker & The Rumour, peaking just outside
the UK Top 50. Among its highlights were 'Hotel Chambermaid'
(also released as a single), 'Black Honey', 'Fools' Gold' and
the title track. Reviews were again ecstatic, but with the LP
charting for only two weeks, and with no singles chart action,
the band remained cult figures rather than mainstream heroes.
A hit single was finally achieved
with 'The Pink Parker', an EP produced by Lange and released in
early 1977. Its lead track was a cover version of 'Hold Back
The Night', which had been a US Top 40 hit in 1976 for The Trammps,
a black disco act from Philadelphia, who also featured on the
'Saturday Night Fever' soundtrack album. 'The Pink Parker', which
also included '(Let Me Get) Sweet On You', was pressed on pink
vinyl, and when it became a UK Top 30 hit, the required commercial
breakthrough had been made. Everything was looking good as 'Heat
Treatment' had also made the 'Billboard' album chart in the US
for nearly two months, and 'Hold Back The Night' was the sextet's
first US hit single.
Then a year which had started well
became problematic - the next LP, 'Stick To Me', nearly wasn't
released at all. Initially recorded with Bob Potter, whose work
on a Grease Band album had impressed Parker, it was discovered
after recording was completed that the master tape had deteriorated
and was unusable, and because the band's touring commitments could
not be delayed, it was decided that the only solution was to re-record
it at high speed using Nick Lowe as producer again, and that was
the version released in the autumn of 1977, when it became Parker's
first UK Top 20 album, and also made a substantial dent in the
US chart. Included here from that album are 'New York Shuffle'
(also released as a single in Britain, but largely ignored by
the media, whose fascination with The Sex Pistols consigned virtually
everything else to oblivion), 'Watch The Moon Come Down' and 'The
Raid'. However, because Parker had pre-dated the punks, his band
were ex-pub/rockers, and he was not seeking headlines for anything
other than the quality of his music, he was of little interest
to a general public keener to hear about Sid Vicious behaving
like a dingbat than about a genuinely talented group of fine musicians
fronted by a top class singer/songwriter. As Parker and the group
always attracted great reviews for their live shows - they were
constantly touring, which made them into a world-class unit -
it was decided that a double live album would showcase their strengths
most effectively. Quite why it was given the title of 'The Parkerilla',
with GP himself on the sleeve doing a creditable impersonation
of a werewolf, is probably something which should not be investigated,
but the result was a UK Top 20 album but with a short chart-life,
and a distinctly disappointing showing in the US, where the album
disappeared from the chart after three weeks. One saving grace
was that a new version of 'Hey Lord Don't Ask Me Questions' was
a UK hit single, nearly making the Top 30. Lange remixed the
album, also producing a disco version of 'Hey Lord...', but maybe,
being wise after the event, it just wasn't such a good idea; 'The
Parkerilla' was, after all, the group's fifth album in two years.
The three tracks from it included here provide a flavour of how
it sounded...
Graham Parker was unhappy with his
American record label, Mercury Records, and so incensed that his
albums were, in his view, being promoted ineffectually, that he
wrote and recorded 'Mercury Poisoning', an allegorical stab at
the object of his resentment. Parker stayed with Vertigo/Phonogram
Records in the UK, but released his next (and arguably best yet)
album on another label in the US; 'Squeezing Out Sparks', which
was produced by the legendary Jack Nitzsche (a Phil Spector associate)
is included here in its entirety, both because it was successful
(US Top 40/UK Top 20), and because it has not dated, despite the
passage of time. 'Protection' was a single from the album with
a live Jackson Five cover, 'l Want You Back (Alive)', as its flip
side, but it did not make the UK chart, and 'Squeezing Out Sparks'
was the last original album Graham Parker made for Vertigo. He
has continued to record for a variety of labels ever since.
Thanks to GP, whose 14th original
album was released in 1996, for his sleeve note and his music.
John Tobler, 1996
In 1973/74, deep in the suburbs of
Surrey, a soap opera mentality held 90% of the populace in its
'Stepford Wives'-like grip; a triteness, an utter banality of
human interaction pervaded evincing robotic behaviour set against
a backdrop of semi-detached houses, each one replete with dullard
humanoids, out on the curb shampooing their Vauxhalls and Ford
Escorts and conversing pleasantly in pure 'Crossroads' motelspeak.
I was up in my room, stoned, reading
'Melody Maker' for my weekly dose of culture, and from time to
time, the name Brinsley Schwarz would pop out of the gig lists
at the back of the paper - jagged and slightly off-putting with
its odd juxtaposition of drippy middle class Christian name and
alien Germanic surname. I was convinced that with a name like
that, Brinsley Schwarz must be a German heavy metal band, and
an unsuccessful one, judging by the gigs they were playing. I
wasn't hearing them on Tony Blackburn and even the ultra-hip Johnny
Walker never seemed to give them a spin.
Around this time, I had rediscovered
soul music and (a strange lapse) immersed myself in Dylan and
Van, and was the only person in the entire county to own Bob Marley's
'Catch A Fire'. The other drug takers not afflicted with 'Crossroads'
syndrome were still firmly in a post-'Woodstock' world, a limp
universe where annoying little jazz/rock nerks ruled and Southern
boogie bands were regarded as the absolute pinnacle of guitar
playing.
Within this Kafka-esque scenario
and pulling from the coolest influences, I endeavoured to re-invent
the wheel and demonstrate to a world that had to be ready for
the new incarnation of the most perfect, the most striking and
emotively manipulative medium known to man: the 3 1/2 minute pop
song. With Sixties soul in the back seat, the swing of a Busby
Berkeley musical, an undercurrent of acoustic grassiness and lyrics
that poked fingers into everyone's glazed and cataracted eyeballs,
this very idea, here in the lost suburbs of Surrey enmeshed in
the perpetual twilight zone of either the dual guitar bands or
of Blackburn rattling on about how great some sickening tune from
'Hair' was, seemed both outrageous and normal at the same time;
I was the one person on the planet with the nerve, grasp and cosmic
overview to pull it off. Anyway, that's how it seemed to me.
However, one of two snags blocked my impending domination of
the nation's consciousness: a) I knew no-one affiliated, privy
to, or even remotely connected with the music business. b) I had
no band, knew no musicians who could empathise with my musical
direction (and was unlikely to bump into any on a Friday night
at 'The Wheatsheaf' in Frimley). And c) I had not the slightest
idea of how to procure the desirable items in a) and b). Then,
a brainwave! I would place an ad in the culturally enlightening
pages of 'Melody Maker', begging for like-minded backing musicians
who would surely be hunched over instruments in their bed-sits
all over the country clandestinely digging Gladys Knight, Dylan,
Marley and ABBA, just like I was.
The 'musicians' who answered the
ad were as varied and unsuitable as you can imagine: the trombone
player who seemed to have a permanent ad in the paper himself;
a plump, wan girl whose sole repertoire consisted of very poor
imitations of Paul Kossoff's licks played on an unidentifiable
vomit-coloured guitar, a complete Wally from nearby who arranged
to meet me in his office, a pub called the 'Who'd a Thot It',
who claimed to have played on at least one BBC session, and who,
the next time I went to meet him at his parents' house to jam,
wasn't in, and his slovenly mother slammed the door in my face.
On and on I slogged, driving around the countryside in my clapped-out
Wolseley, weeding my way through the slew of mental cripples without
a clue, and definitely without a future in music.
Finally, I drove to London at the
end of my long list of useless applicants and met Noel Brown,
an august, Dickensian slide guitarist, who introduced me to Paul
Riley, bass player with Chilli Willi & The Red Hot Peppers
(a Name, a Name, my kingdom for a Name !), who then handed me
over to one Dave Robinson, a bi-lingual (Blarney and English spoken
here) entrepreneur, down at heel, manning a ratty board above
a pub in Islington, the 'Hope & Anchor'. In the summer of
'75, I found myself in the 'Newlands Tavern' in Peckham on a hot
afternoon rehearsing with two members of the aforementioned Brinsley
Schwarz, a Ducks DeLuxer, and the Bon Temps Roulez rhythm section,
with a third member of the Brinsleys - a bird-nosed fellow named
Nick Lowe - looking on in his role (thrust upon him by Robbo)
as producer.
When I finally succumbed to checking
out a Brinsleys record about a year into my career, I was astonished
to discover that they weren't a heavy metal band but a soft-rock
country outfit who had transformed themselves, in my presence,
into veritable wild men of pop, playing as if their very trousers
were on fire. We should have been called Graham Parker &
The Questions. Unfortunately, I agreed to the democratic method
of name selection suggested, I think, by Brinsley and Bob, which
consisted of each person writing their idea on a piece of paper
and everyone voting for their favourite. The bland and obscure
(from a song by The Band, I believe) Rumour squeaked by vote-wise
over the much more suitable, spiky and aggressive Questions, and
since then, I have given all democratic endeavours a wide berth,
much preferring a strict (and far more sensible) dictatorship.
Although our combined multi-influences
are apparent on this collection, often tugging in six directions
simultaneously within each song, I believe that GP & The R
were, in a way, a one-of-a-kind outfit creating a brand of music
I would now term 'soul/punk', examples of which are scattered
liberally here from 'Silly Thing' to 'You Can't Hurry Love', and
from 'Soul Shoes' to 'l Want You Back (Alive)'. Even the absence
of horns on 'Sparks' does not derail us from this aim, and the
punky soul root can be felt thundering along beneath the pop chimera
of 'Local Girls' and 'Love Gets Twisted' in a violent stew of
English snottiness and Stax heart.
Of course, people who weren't listening
to the lyrics and the advanced subtleties of the chord structures
confused us, and still do, with some kind of R&B revivalists,
and people who weren't dancing and zeroed in on the wordplay may
well have missed the whole picture too. I can't listen too closely
to this stuff myself - as with most writer/singers, anything I
did beyond six months ago tends to make me cringe. But I do recall
getting off a plane in San Francisco on a humid night in the summer
of '79, stepping on a tour bus and turning on the radio and having
'Local Girls' blast out at me and thinking: "This is one
hell of a band !"
GP, 1996
Special Thanks to: Graham Parker, John Tobler and David Lascelles
Compiled by John Tobler with assistance from Graham Parker.
Compilation produced by Mike Gill at C-Dreams.
Digitally re-mastered by Roger Wake at Bourbery-Wake.
Graphics: Jean-Luke Epstein (GRAPHYK).
Photography: Simon Fowler / LFI, GEMS / Redferns, Bob King /
Redferns, Ross Marino / Retna, Rex Features.
Back to GP album discography