The beating of a rock 'n' roll heart

"The Up Escalator" is Graham Parker's latest attempt to win the nation's ears. If you don't listen now, you may never have another chance. He explains his current strategy to PAULO HEWITT.

No-one understands that line better than Graham Parker. For five years Graham Parker has been struggling against the, rock machinery, producing a body of music that's grown from strength to strength. From the "clever, clever drug songs" (as he calls them) of "White Honey" and "Lady Doctor", to the spine-chilling impact of "Empty Lives" on his new album, GP has been quietly shaping his craft; moving away from the early delicious yet transparent Stax/Dylan influences towards his own territory, his own stake in the beleagured world of rock music.

The transformation from a tough ex-petrol pump attendant with a clutch of infectious melodies and a grudge to bear, to a mature, perceptive individuality has been, to put it mildly, exciting.

Even when I was caught up in the exhilaration of punk, there was still I no other artist whose next move I awaited with such anticipation. And with each step Parker just got better and better, progressing from the hard, soulful danceability of "Heat Treatment", to the brash turbulent world of "Stick To Me" and onwards, to the overwhelming emotional and insightful power of "Squeezing Out Sparks", an album that finally established him as a major creative force.

But, because Parker lacked the mystique of a Costello or the drama and glory of a Springsteen - and in fact patently lacked an image save for the angry young man in shades stance - he was still commercially overshadowed; overlooked both by an audience that savoured rebellion and an audience that wanted to join in on all the fun and buzz but couldn't handle the extremes of it all. Shot by Both sides, so to speak.

This bewildering predicament was compounded even further by the inescapable fact that this shy, honest musician qualified with flying colours for the new credentials and qualities demanded by, and laid down by, the New Brave Age.

He was no unapproachable, ego-mad rock star with a stadium to fill, a style to maintain and a bunch of irrelevancies to hand down. Rather, he was an incisive talent who wanted to elevate music and all its potentials into something bearing quality and pride; a force that actually said something of value to people, which would enter their lives and hopefully enhance them.

TUCKED away in an overflowing taxi-cab rank, Stiff Records' offices are hidden in a grey, anonymous building completely at odds with the clever, modern image they've so carefully nurtured since their inception.

Graham Parker has now moved his music there after five albums' worth of trouble with Phonogram, and it suits him well, with its derelict surroundings and busy atmosphere.

We're here to talk about his new album, "The Up Escalator". His finest album to date, it's also an acutely American LP; written mostly in Los Angeles, and recorded in New York. Why the blatant Americanisation of his music?

"I was staying in America quite a lot," Parker informs me. "My fiancee, is living over there and I was in LA most of the time. l wrote most of the songs over there.

"I lived in this apartment in the middle of the Mexican quarter. There's all Mexicans everywhere and ... poverty. People think of LA as 'Yeah, far out', but I tell you, go off Sunset Strip and you can forget it. Mexicans are the new underprivileged. It wasn't the height of luxury. I found that the myths about LA being plastic aren't all true ... there are real people there."

What were his general feelings towards America?

"Previously, there was something I hated about America, because I'm English. You go over there with a righteous attitude about being English 'cos you know that they can't rock 'n' roll anymore. The Americans haven't quite got it, they really haven't; there's not much there. So you have this righteous attitude and you look around and you see, 'Have a nice day' everywhere and people smiling when the place is falling to bits. Really, there's poverty and stuff, not so much physical poverty but some kind of mental poverty in some ways, 'cos the kids are really into some dumb music which has nothing to do with youth in America.

"So you get this kind of attitude that it's really f-- and everybody is a w-- there. But when you stay there for quite a time you actually get into American people and your attitude changes."

For the new album Parker specifically employed two Americans, Jimmy Iovine and Shelley Yakus, to mix and engineer the sound because he wanted someone who was "concerned with the charts in America and what sounds good on American radio." If you consider the success that Iovine has brought to people like Tom Petty and Patti Smith you'll understand Parker's strategy. "Iovine is aware of the charts," states Parker, "and wants to make a classic record every time. He wants success, and he likes to use people that he's really into and he's always wanted to do me 'cos he's into my stuff, but he thought it wasn't produced well enough. He thought it could have been done better."

So why the sudden bid for American success? What brought about this new direction?

"I was disappointed with 'Sparks'. After playing Blackbushe in front of 250.000 people, playing, like, 'Passion Is No Ordinary Word' and the other new songs, I just thought that there's got to be a few thousand people there I've made new fans of. And then the record came out and sold less than 'Parkerilla'.

"And then we toured England and we were up in Leeds or somewhere and the place was half empty and we'd filled those places before. And the Apollo in Glasgow was like ... I was so disappointed. To me not to fill a place in Glasgow where the kids are tough and should understand what I'm doing, to me that's a bringdown. And then we went to America and we suddenly had a new audience. It had opened out for us and the record did better than any of the others and to me that was an up, whereas England wasn't."

Pushed and encouraged by this success, Parker then went on to Europe, Japan and Australia only to find himself at the end of it all shrivelling up.

"Quite honestly," he says, "looking back now I didn't know why I was on stage. It's like people who make records because they have to, not because they need to. If I don't need to, if I don't feel inspired, if I don't want to go out and show people what I'm made of, then it's not worth it.

"You need the ego, you need the drive, and I didn't have it. In Australia I was running on automatic and I did well. I can bluff it," he confides. "Superficially, I was on great form but really in the back of my head I wasn't spiritually. It didn't move me to be on the stage. I was glad when it was over. So that was the last straw. I said, 'I'm not touring this year. I don't heed it. I'm cheating.

" 'I'd be cheating the fans if I went out on tour straight again. I really would be'."

So Parker headed for LA and started writing the follow up to 'Sparks', though as he admitted: "It's a shot in the dark. Every time I've done a record and I've had to write songs, I don't really know what I'm going to come up with."

EVENTUALLY, he came up with an album that's at least the equal, in terms of lyrical honesty and incisiveness, of "Sparks".

"With 'Sparks'," he says, "I think I was just facing up to a lot of things that were hitting me in a way that I'd never thought of before. I didn't really know whether it was better than 'Heat Treatment' or anything like that, I just knew that for some reason it was more lyrical, more to the point. It wasn't so much dance music or that kind of playing around with words with not much meaning to them."

This time around, though, he was re-defining this stance into something more solid and more acute, building on the foundations he'd laid down and the album is so good! There's so much going on! The gritty determination of "No Holding Back", the muttering despair of "Devil's Sidewalk", the thrill and challenge of "Endless Nights", charged even further by Springsteen's presence on backing vocals, the spooky aura of "Empty Lives", and the epic "Beating Of Another Heart" - all carry in Parker's passionate soul vocals compassion and understanding to both their personal targets and the outside world.

Because Parker is exposing his soul he's exposing yours.

"I just hope that people like it," he opines when I question him on the difficulty of opening up in public and exposing the wounds. "I never know, I do it and there it is and usually I find that even though I'm worried about a song - whether it's the right thing to say or whether I'm going a bit too far - I usually find that people say 'Oh! That's great.'

"They're just pleased that somebody's written that. Same with 'You Can't Be Too Strong'. People were really pleased that somebody had written that song. It just so happened to me. Its no big deal. I think in a way it puts people off, some of those lyrics. That's why we don't have hit records very easily, you know. Probably the way I sing is a bit tough and people want to hear nice cheerful songs most of the time, especially in England. Like the heavy metal stuff," he spits out. "However much you say 'It's good fun! It's great! There's nothing wrong with it,' to me it's crap. Forget it, it just has nothing. So what I'm doing is facing things that have really happened."

It's this new determination to face up to things that has brought out in Graham a new self respect for what he's creating. An awareness of his own power.

"I'm not going to go out and play places that aren't full when I think I deserve more," he states. "I think that if the public want to go out and see Siouxsie and the Banshees more than me, well f-- them."

He leans towards the tape: "F -- you, people. Really, I've got that attitude now. You're manipulated a lot," he continues with venom.

"I'm not knocking the public who come and see me - the fans and stuff - but I want to gain, you know. I want more people. I think I make records that are really great. They're better than the average record."

Indeed they are and there's a story behind each one.

"Devil's Sidewalk" was inspired by a sci-fi novel written by Damon Knight called "Hell's Pavement" and was originally written along with "Endless Night" for Jack Nitzsche to use on the soundtrack of the film "Cruising" though a legal problem put an end to that.

"I kept playing those songs and I kept thinking they were alright you know," Parker says. "So I'm glad I got them back."

THE mating of Parker and Springsteen occurred through Iovine's mutual interest in both artists, though Parker didn't see it as any kind of commercial boost.

"He's been on Southside Johnny albums and it hasn't exactly made Southside a senior star. It's not that big a deal to me, although a lot of people think it is because people will buy it because of Bruce. They must be mad! He only sings on that one . . . Actually, he sings on 'Paralysed' as well."

The jaunty "No Holding Back" was inspired by his manager's insistence that he return to England, while the wickedly delightful "Manoeuvres" sprang from Parker's increasingly depressing experience with the rock machinery.

"That was like the American tour we did. Just sort of clicked to me how all these people would suddenly bring someone round and say 'Graham, you must meet . . .' or 'Hi Graham, I really like your records. The production; it's so . . . emotional.' And there's me going, 'Hah! Hah! Very funny, yeah.'

"You have to meet all these people and be with them in the USA and it's all f-- manoeuvres. It's crap really. It's like with The Up Escalator', there's so much excitement within the music business about it. In America everybody wants to hear it. The radio jumped on it, they played it a lot and everybody thinks it's a smash, it's gigantic but," he pauses, incredulous. "it's up to the people. Nobody thinks about the people. It's such a machine that they've forgotten that the people don't have to go out and buy it, even if they hear it every day. It might not fit in with their idea of what's good rock 'n' roll. 'Manouevres' takes in that kind of thing."

The one song above all these, though, is "Beating Of Another Heart", one of the most sincere songs he's ever committed to vinyl and one that has all the class and grandeur we've come to expect. The title alone evokes pure quality.

"That's one of my favourite songs," he claims proudly. "It's the best vocal I've ever done. I was really pleased with that. It's a very personal song really, and it's definitely about someone."

In fact, the song is so intense in ist structure and vocal quality that Jimmy Iovine couldn't even begin to mix it.

"Jimmy just could not handle it. He didn't know what to do with it, because he couldn't do his usual treatment. He has a certain style and he couldn't do it with that one. We had to strip it down and make it very acoustic, and it worked. I'm just glad to be able to write a song like that after 'Passion Is No Ordinary Word'. I didn't think that I could follow that without a big battle. I just thought, 'What am I going to do next?' "

GIVEN his increasing self-confidence, how far would he go for that elusive hit record?

"I'm not going to try and write for Radio One," he says. "There's no way I can do that. If they can't take me for what I am, then it's hard luck. I'm not going to any extremes to get commercial success. I won't do it. I know that I could do say 'Reach Out' by the Four Tops and have a hit record, because there's a new bunch of kids out there who haven't heard it. It's a familiar song, it would get played because the radio love that. They love familiarity.

"I just heard some girl who sounds exactly like Chrissie Hynde doing 'Go Now.' I don't ever want to hear 'Go Now' ever again," he says contemptuously. "To me it's finished. It's turning on Radio One and having to hear 'Nights In White Satin'. What is that??? It's just bankrupt imagination. To me it's just stupefaction. It hasn't changed at all."

Graham Parker has, though. He's finished battling against record companies that "wouldn't get behind us," the reason for his recent move to Stiff where he feels he can walk in any time and get things moving. He's finished relying on others, even the Rumour, to guide and shape his songs and destiny.

"We have a loose situation where they're not relying on me," he says. "If they're available and I want them and they want to do it then we'll do something. Like, we're doing the 'Fun Factory' kids' show on Saturday, and I have to 'phone up and say 'Are you available? Do you want to do it?' If not, then it's hard luck on me. That's the situation."

Even the flak he's bound to attract for putting America ahead of England doesn't worry him.

"Yeah, well, fair enough. I can be honest about it or lie about it. I'm being honest and that's it."

So how much does he really want? How determined is he?

"I don't want the world," he muses. "But I really do think that I'd like to put in the nail, once and for all, so people know what I'm doing and what I'm worth. There's no doubt about it."

Reproduced with kind permission from Paolo Hewitt.

Back to GP article bibliography