ROBERT PALMER : Music & Style

Vinegar Joe made three albums – a self-titled debut (1972), Rock ’n Roll Gypsies (also 1972) and Six Star General (1973). They were an electrifying live act and quickly became a staple of the UK’s then-thriving university circuit. But they struggled to capture their supercharged performance energy on vinyl. “It wasn’t good enough on record, was it?” agrees Brooks. “We did very well on tour, but we just weren’t pushed enough in the studio.”

“We all had a lot of studio experience and we might have been too inclined to polish everything,” opines York.

“Our efforts in the studio were fine but the production should have had more commitment,” claims Gage. “Vic Coppersmith-Heaven (aka Vic Smith, producer of The Jam) was given the job for our first two most crucial albums. I remember him getting me to smoke raw opium through a Coca-Cola can before attempting a mandolin solo – an experience I would never choose to repeat.

“We recorded the second album at Richard Branson’s Manor Studios. Mike Oldfield was sleeping under the stairs doing a low-budget LP called Tubular Bells during the down-time between our sessions. One of my chores was to give Mike a shout on my way to bed. I was horrified when I heard the final mixes of Rock ’n Roll Gypsies. Vic had been smoking a lot of dope and listening to Oldfield’s tracks on the side.”

On a more positive note, “Elkie was being really acclaimed and we were constantly gigging,” says Gage.

“We were a full-on rock’n’roll band,” adds Brooks. “There were very few ballads in Vinegar Joe. We just used to go out and boogie for an hour.”

“Pete Gage was a good band leader,” says keyboard player Mike Deacon. “Robert had a quiet, laid-back charm… He was probably overshadowed by Elkie’s aggressive stage presence, but it seemed to work. I didn’t know what was going on behind the scenes. I never met Chris Blackwell and I wasn’t involved in the business side of the band.”

To quote a music-press review of the time: “If Elkie Brooks is on stage and the audience aren’t giving enough of a response she’ll tell them to get off their fucking arses and start boogying.”

“I underwent a personality change in Vinegar Joe,” Brooks grins. “Deep down I was a shy girl from Manchester, I know that’s hard to believe. Vinegar Joe was the start of me getting less inhibited as a person. In Dada I had a gypsy image: big skirts, big earrings, long, flowing, wavy hair. Vinegar Joe transformed me into a rock chick. A couple of brandies and a line of coke certainly helped as well.”

“Elkie always liked a brandy, Robert smoked weed and the other players enjoyed liberal use of various substances,” recounts Gage. “But compared to many other bands on the circuit in the 70s, we were actually quite clean.”

Sometimes the simmering rivalry between Brooks and Palmer threatened to boil over.

“Robert was a competitive bugger, especially on stage, and so was I,” says Brooks. “So occasionally we clashed. Having said that, we’d often go out to a nice bistro and drink a bottle of wine together while the rest of the band were having fish and chips.”

Many fans were convinced Brooks and Palmer were an item, a smouldering photo session of the pair by Gered Mankowitz adding fuel to that particular fire.

Says Gage: “Not many people knew that I was together with Elkie. We were very professional and agreed that marriage could alienate fans.”

In December 1972, the front page of the Melody Maker carried the banner headline: ‘Jeans and sweat band Vinegar Joe – the face of ’73 is Elkie Brooks.’

“Robert was pissed off, to be perfectly blunt,” the singer, now age 70, recalls. “He would make a point of saying: ‘I don’t wear jeans’, or walk into the dressing room and say to me sarcastically: ‘How’s your jeans and sweat tonight?’”

But Palmer might have had a point, as Brooks makes mention of an earlier live review by “a creep from the Melody Maker” that referenced the sorry state of her armpits during a typically steamy on-stage performance.

“No, it was worse than that,” insists Gage. “The review talked about Elkie being right upfront on stage, and if you were looking to see if she had knickers on you’d be able to see her understains. I was on the phone within minutes to Ray Coleman, the Melody Maker editor, threatening legal action unless there was an apology – and I said I wanted a front page of Elkie. Ray, gentleman that he was, agreed immediately and provided the ‘face of ’73’ cover. Island’s publicity department would never have done anything like that for us.”

Elkie Brooks believes Robert Palmer “had his whole solo thing mapped out a good year before he told us he was going to leave. It absolutely broke my heart when Vinegar Joe disbanded.”

Steve York recalls: “We recorded a couple of songs – cover versions of Rescue Me and Sweet Nothin's – and my understanding was that they were to be released as a double-sided single, and we were going to continue under the name Electric Elk. I had an offer to join Bad Company, but I turned it down because I thought we were carrying on. I was distraught when I was told the plug was being pulled. Pete Gage told me Chris Blackwell wasn’t interested in Elkie and the rest of us. I was devastated, financially and spiritually. Forty years later, it’s one of the best bands I’ve ever played in, if not the best.”

“People thought the split was my fault,” says Brooks. “They thought I’d gotten delusions of grandeur, that I wanted to go out on my own and become a big star. But that wasn’t the case at all. I was a team player; I still am. If I was face to face with Chris Blackwell now, I’d say to him: ‘You only ever thought of Vinegar Joe as Robert Palmer’s backing band.’ Some might say that sounds like sour grapes, but that’s what I feel. Pete Gage, my old man, was adamant it wouldn’t be the same without Robert. So that was the end of Vinegar Joe.”

Says Gage: “I pleaded with Robert not to leave. But he told me with a big smile: ‘Well, Chris Blackwell has bought me a house in the Bahamas, so I can’t really tell him no, he’d be so upset with me.’”

How far could Vinegar Joe have progressed if Palmer had stayed?

“The final line-up with Mike Deacon and (drummer) Pete Gavin was musically very solid,” says Gage. “The contractual complications with Island and Atlantic made it messy for a good manager to intervene. With a new record deal, Vinegar Joe could have paralleled Fleetwood Mac; in fact, Mick (Fleetwood) said we influenced them to some extent. Muff Winwood was taking an interest in writing for us, too. It could have gone huge, especially in the US, with good management, production and a more commercial direction.”

Palmer released his debut album, Sneakin' Sally Through The Alley, in September 1974, kicking off a hugely successful solo career. Ten years later – despite his reputation for not being a ‘band person’ – he joined supergroup the Power Station, made up of members of Duran Duran and Chic.

“Robert was a predator and Duran Duran were hot,” says Gage. “Working with them had advantages for him. Plus he got to work with his New York buddies, Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers (of Chic).

“Robert was anybody you wanted him to be if it helped him further. He was the perfect Capricorn – aloof, posed on the hillside, looking down from a distance, sometimes coming close, but always a step or two away, with sharp goat horns as defence.”

If Palmer had lived – he died of a heart attack in September 2003, aged just 54 – could there ever have been a Vinegar Joe reunion?

“No way,” says Gage bluntly.

“I would think the chance of Vinegar Joe re-forming if Robert was alive would be nil, considering Elkie has carved out a career in a completely different genre,” says Deacon.

But Brooks reveals: “My son, Jay, who’s also my manager, wanted to do it. I remember him saying, ‘I’m going to get in touch with Robert, mum. I think you guys have got to do an album together again.’ But Robert died shortly afterward. We all lived our lives to the full in our twenties and thirties, but Robert was still burning the candle at both ends in his fifties, you know what I mean? We taught him a lot of bad habits.”

Geoff Barton (Classic Rock Magazine - 2019)