Full Interview with Graham Parker
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Full Interview with Graham Parker Full interview with Graham Parker (see introduction/overview). Graham Parker: Helloooo, John, how are you doing? Graham here! John Fuzek (Motif): Great, how are you? GP: I’m alright, how is it there? Where are you, in Rhode Island? JF: Yes I am, miserable Rhode Island, it’s been raining for like two weeks! GP: I’m sorry to hear that! JF: Are you in England? GP: Yes, I am in London. I just went to see the David Hockney exhibition at the Tate which was absolutely faaaan-tastic! JF: What part of London are you in? GP: I am in an area called Maida Vale, “Little Venice” it’s known as because it’s got lots of beautiful canal walks … it’s North London … I could walk to Hyde Park, Regents Park is very near … I have been here since the late 70’s … this is my beat. JF: So, I read that you used to empty pinball machines as a kid… GP: Yeah, i was probably 18 and that’s just one of my many jobs. It’s probably the most idyllic job in the world … It was on the Island of Guernsey in the channel islands, a tiny part time job and I was also a baker there at an industrial bakery — laborer really. I did get bumped up to being a dough maker, and some days I would pick up extra work driving to obscure pubs around the island to collect the money … Now there’s a lot of jobs and we could be here all night! JF: The reason i brought that job up is because i actually used to empty money from pinball machines, too. GP: Aw, come on, really? Fantastic! Recently, I was in New Jersey in Asbury Park and I had my son with me and … we went to the Pinball Museum. I think it’s called the Silver Ball — look it up, I hope it’s still there. It’s incredible, believe me. JF: Cool! How old is your son? GP: Well, he’s 21 now, this was a couple of years ago, actually. JF: So, i remember seeing you in the movie This is 40 by Judd Apatow. How was your experience with that? GP: It was as exciting as when i first got a record deal in 1975. It was pretty much on the same level — me and The Rumour did six tours and the basis was that we had just gotten together again to do a new album. Being in a movie that went into the charts at number three on the first weekend in America and was around for ages was a really serious good bump. It was an excellent experience and all of the actors and people that i worked with and hung out with are really serious working people. They were like me — they were about getting the job done and getting it done right. You tend to think of Hollywood people as swarming around and full of crap but that wasn’t my experience. All of these people were up before dawn most of the time and on the set until ten o’clock and everybody just gets on with it — that’s all it’s about. And Judd was fantastic … as a matter of fact, there’s a show on HBO now called “Crashing.” It’s written by Pete Holmes, a comedian, and it’s about a version of him as a comedian, and Judd asked me about any new songs that haven’t made it to the light of day. I sent him one on my iPhone — this is last September — and he loved it and asked me to record it. So that’s going to be on episode nine of the first season. Judd is a producer and directs some of the shows. JF: How did that movie reflect your personal experiences? Things didn’t turn out that great with the record deal in the film. GP: Well, it’s all about an Indie label trying to sign acts from the 70’s and 80’s, which is not an uncommon thing … and that’s a hard thing to make work especially when you overspend on your record company with giant neon signs that you put inside the record store and cost $30,000.00. It’s going to be tough, let’s put it that way. This is a niche. It’s likely that anyone from the 70’s and 80’s will be a niche sales wise, so I saw that potential and I thought, well I’m going to play a complete fucking loser here! It’s the only way to do it man. I played it to the hilt and it was a great deal of fun. It was a version of myself that was largely based on my dad, really, when I walk out and say, ‘I have a bit of a problem, I have a touch of gout,’ and look around the room, my dad would say that and my mom would say, ‘Tom, shut up, you haven’t got bloody gout!’ He’d say, ‘Yeah, yeah a touch of gout.’ So I played it like my dad and it was great fun … really great fun. JF: I read that you’re often compared to Elvis Costello but you came before Elvis Costello. How do you feel about that? GP: It’s extremely annoying. I would rather that you compare me to fucking Whitesnake for God’s sake. it’s basically just annoying and lazy journalism — that’s all it has ever been. I mean I’ve met the guy twice … his first record deal was with a label called Stiff, which is a label I funded for my manager. But he’s an original and I am, up to a point. We all got it from other forms of music. And I made two albums before he had a record deal. I mean, if you listen to us back to back there’s a certain way that we deliver a song, but there are differences that don’t make this whole thing add up. It’s like — well, Springsteen came before me, definitely came before me, but the comparisons are very thin. The first record I heard by Bruce was the same record everybody heard — unless you were a critic and got free copies of his first two albums — and that album was, of course, Born To Run. That’s the first record I heard, and that’s the first record most people heard, and, in England especially, his first two albums were unknown — completely unknown. When I heard Born To Run I already had gotten my first record deal and had already written the songs that became Howling Wind, my first album. I heard Born To Run and my jaw dropped. My friend had it — I said, ‘What is this? To me it was like the Ronettes doing Rock and Roll in the subway. It’s a staggering record. But then listen to my first record, Howling Wind — these things are like chalk and cheese: They’re not very similar, apart from the fact that he delivers in a certain way that comes from a tradition … and I do as well. It’s a delivery thing. All these comparisons are tired and old. I would love to see a piece written that doesn’t have these things in them along with me. At the same time, I understand it. I mean, when someone asks me what an artist is like that they’ve never heard, I am probably going to pull out a name of an artist that is more popular and has sold more records and then they get some understanding … but it’s not what artists want. JF: I was really asking you how you FELT about it. I really wasn’t comparing you. GP: Yes, yes, but the comparisons don’t really help. It would be better it you just listened to me and forgot the other names. And you MAY see some similarities — absolutely fine. That’s anybody’s call. No problem. JF: I saw that you worked with Jack Nitzche. I Know that Neil Young had worked with him. How was that? GP: I vaguely knew his name from Harvest and a few other things. I didn’t know the full history. He was an arranger for Phil Spectre. He was a very clever guy — I think he wrote “Needles and Pins” by The Searchers. I used him because when I was starting there wasn’t a thing called New Wave or Punk. There was the rumblings of something called Punk happening at CBGBs, and there were certain English critics who really wanted this concept to happen in England. But when I started, it wasn’t happening. There were bands that got wind of it — you know, kids who were forming bands: The Sex Pistols, the Whatever, and The Stranglers were out the gate pretty quickly. To me they were more of a pop band in a way, with an English accent. This thing was coming on the horizon and suddenly my career in England in ’77, by the time I made my first album, Punk and New Wave were suddenly hitting the street and that’s a very different thing than being in the back pages of the music press where you don’t whether this thing will go. Anyway, I didn’t think it would go anywhere. I was wrong. The next thing you know, the Sex Pistols released their first album.