A 'Snakebit' Robert Palmer Reinvents Himself Once More

At a party some months back, Robert Palmer's song Johnny And Mary was on the turntable. "Wow," raved a dancing coed, "that's great stuff. But I haven't heard it on the radio."

"That's because it's three years old," her partner replied.

"You're kidding," she responded. "Whoever that guy is, he must be ahead of his time."

When this story is related to Robert Palmer, the artist takes it in stride: he stretches his legs across the coffee table and has a good laugh at his own expense. After nearly two decades as a professional musician, the 34-year-old singer-songwriter-producer seems to have learned how to live with the idea of never being a pop star. It is suggested that when it comes to timing, his career is "snakebit."

"Snakebit," Palmer muses, rolling the idea around his head. "Now how did you know that's one of my favorite expressions? Actually, I'd have to agree. America has always been foreign territory for me. But you must be realistic: unless your music happens to tie into the current scheme of major radio and its advertisers, you aren't going to be successful. Yet it's nice to know that several years later people are still listening to me."

Here to promote his new, self-produced LP, Pride, recorded in England and at Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas, Palmer says that despite the frustrations of awaiting a U.S. breakthrough, he's quite comfortable in his life and work. Six months a year, he lives in the Bahamas, writing and recording at Compass Point. During the other six months, he's travelling and touring in Europe. "I'm balling my way across the continent," he points out, before quickly clarifying his statement: "That is, in the Little Richard sense of 'balling'."

As a musician, producer and arranger, Palmer has evolved a working method that satisfies both his need to have it his way as well as his responsability to get along with other musicians. He's come to view himself as something of a survivor in a business he continues to distrust.

"It's a circus out there," Palmer states in no uncertain terms. "For groups, I'm sure it hasn't improved since the '60s, when I was part of it all. (Palmer was a member of Vinegar Joe, among other bands). How bad does it get? How bad do you want it? I was in one band back then that had a press agent. After a concert, when you were so tired you couldn't see straight, she'd have you signing stacks of papers. Buried in there would be a management contract she was trying to slip by you. Unbelievable!"

Palmer also recalls a night at an upstate New York motel when the band he was with ran out of money. Someone wanted to roll a joint, but the only papers to be had were some green ones of indeterminate origin. But when you're desperate you'll try anything. Only problem was that when the band members looked in the mirror afterwards, they found that the papers had left a green film all over their faces. Which was fine, except that several nuns, attending a convention taking place in this very same motel, spotted the band and, horrified at the sight, beseeched the management to toss the rockers out of the place.

In retrospect, Palmer says he wouldn't have missed a minute of it. "During those 10 years, I found out something about myself - that I could take it, that I could be a singer. I got all the worst stuff out of the way in the beginning."

Robert Palmer: "It's nice to know that several years later people are still listening to me"

Palmer's nine-year career as a solo artist, beginning with the 1974 LP Sneakin' Sally Through The Alley (on which he was backed by Lowell George, Bill Payne and the Meters) and maturing with 1979's Secrets (his first Bahamas record), has been dedicated to "finding a vehicle that'll produce more than esoteric exercises to stick on the wallpaper. Something that's experimental and accessible, at the same time."

Something, say, on the order of Pride. Working in a digital electronic world has allowed Palmer to construct personal music, in the sense of capturing the intended sound: "Instead of demanding from a rhythm section, for example, that it play a certain thing and then being content with the energy level, what I do is record a whole album myself and bring in players to replace my parts. It's fun to create that way, and it comes out organically correct for me. It's no longer a matter of crossing your fingers and praying. When I started this, the guys in the band thought I was crazy. I don't think the drummer was used to coming in starting with a bass line and guide vocal, playing with 12 sequenced bass lines and going home content with that."

Nevertheless, Palmer says he's worried that large sections of Pride may yet prove inaccessible, notably The Silver Gun. "It's an (East) Indian song," he explains. "It may be a little too much. You know, on most rock, say you're singing 8ths on bass and pushing 4ths on guitar, hitting a tenor and whacking it out. On an Indian song, forget that, your eyes would roll up into your head. You learn to sing within yourself. I don't know how this one will fly, but I tried to make the song a little more mainstream by writing the lyrics in English."

At press time, Palmer was planning a three-week U.S. tour in June, after a few weeks in Europe. Here too, he's concerned with finding the right commercial approach.

"Everything's so categorized in performance now. You're either theatrical, like Bowie, or a rock star like Pat Benatar, or a video star. People like me have to reinvent ourselves as we go along."

"But you know," he observes, "for somebody who's snakebit, I've been pretty lucky."

Robert Palmer: "People like me have to reinvent ourselves as we go along"

Mark Mehler (Record Magazine - July 1983)