Robert Palmer: Sally's Alley Cat

Robert Palmer, the mystery man with the Little Feat beat, talks about his next cosmic collaboration.

The English winter drizzled sad, grey rain and Robert Palmer, sitting in his basement appartment with his glowing fish tanks and his drum machine, heard songs in his head. He lay in bed picking out lean bass tunes, imagining that only the greatest R&B musicians in the world were playing with him. One month later, some of them were.

Robert Palmer knows exactly what he wants. He is soft-spoken and articulate, looks more like the Duke of Windsor than a soul singer. He is dressed expensively in shades of blue, waiting for the St. Moritz room service to bring his porridge. His first album, Sneakin' Sally Thru' The Alley, has been released in America to wide acclaim and his second is being mixed. He is, he says, "delighted to be alive."

The key to Palmer's first album is clear-sighted direction and maturity. Since he first heard Otis Redding at fifteen, Palmer has been infatuated with rhythm and blues. "When I was seventeen I stole money from my parents so I could follow the Stax tour around England. It was beautiful," he laughs. "That's always been where my enthusiasm lay." Palmer played with his father's tape recorder as a child but "wasn't musically inclined until I reached puberty." He later found himself in a succession of bands; the last two, Dada and Vinegar Joe, were fairly well-known in Europe but Palmer felt musically suffocated and physically exhausted because of constant touring.

In February of '74 he left Vinegar Joe and retreated to his basement nest to recover and play the music that had been collecting in his head. "I'd set the drum machine and play a bass riff for hours, gone, meditating on James Brown." He'd create an atmosphere and then, using a spare bass line and tight driving drum, write his songs. They reflected his state of mind. "I try to make sure the relationship between the way I write and the way I live is honest but not self-indulgent."

Armed with detailed demos of his songs, Palmer approached Chris Blackwell of Island Records with a solo album. A few days later, Blackwell gave him carte blanche to get whomever he wanted for the session. With calculated precision, Palmer began to pursue every sound he had heard when he wrote the music. Like a logical scientist he selected the ingredients for his dream album, a bit of the Meters from New Orleans, some soul from the Motown rhythm section and a little crazed perfection from Little Feat. Sneakin' Sally Thru'h The Alley turned out to be a synthesis of all of this music, but molded to palmer's own identity.

There is a definite similarity to Little Feat in the funky, loose layers of sound, the spontaneity and restraint, and in Palmer's vocals themselves. Robert is a little defensive. "Listen, one of the tunes on the new album is a Little Feat tune, and they're even playing on it, but it's far from the way they present themselves. It's no good for me to join something, to switch places with someone. That's a joke. I want the fire and enthusiasm I hear in certain musicians, not to be them." Palmer doesn't do a perfect imitation - "emotionless techno-funk" - as he calls it. "I've got to be involved in the music. I dance around when I sing. If I can write music that makes me feel that way, and the other musicians and listeners can get off on it, then I'm flyin'."

All derivatives aside, Sneakin' Sally Thru' The Alley is an impressive album. It begins with a cover of Little Feat's Sailin' Shoes that has even more surprises and chunky layers than the original. The Meters put down an incredible dense, machine-like rhythm, Lowell George's guitar plays through it like oil, and Palmer's voice is husky and pushing. Sailin' Shoes blends into Hey Julia, a teasing piece with strange cooing background vocals. "That was recorded in a mobile studio in a graveyard in Sussex," Palmer explains.

The title cut, an Allen Toussaint song originally done by Lee Dorsey, was recorded appropriately enough, in New Orleans. It's an up tune, screeching with the Meter engine in high gear. Palmer's vocals are loud and gutsy, making for a perfect dance song.

The second side is dominated by Through It All There's You. "This song is really an abstract, complicated statement - a diary for me," Palmer explains. "It's an addictive song built on a repetitious bass line and title phrase; a series of waves. The tension builds on this song and you expect horns or fuzz guitars or some such shit. But it never happens - just a series of anti-climaxes." The song, all twelve minutes of it, was done in one take - Palmer, along with Stevie Winwood, Cornell Dupree, Bernard Purdie and others, just taking off. Jack Vance, Palmer's favourite science fiction writer, is given credit for the strings.

Palmer sits in his hotel room talking excitedly about the future. "On the new album I used gene Page's strings - you know, Barry White's arranger - and it came out beautifully. I'm crazy about the whole Love Unlimited concept. It's a powerful disco way of being slushy." Barry White jamming with Little Feat? "There's a lotta things that have gotta be said that you can't afford to be cold about. This is my way of doin' it."

As I left, Robert Palmer was standing on the balcony, 23 floors above Central Park. "Last night, when the breeze was right, I could hear Tony Bennett singing down there..." Maybe Tony'll be doing back-up on the third album?

Mitchell Glazer (Crawdaddy - Sept. 1975)