ROBERT PALMER : Music & Style

Is Robert Palmer a creep? Do you believe him when he says he's not interested in music? Mike Gardner refused to commit himself.

"What is my image this week?" asks Robert Palmer with a large dollop of humour that contains the merest rasp of bitterness.

"I don't know, it's up to you," responds the non-committal journalist.

"Apparently, it isn't. I'd be interested to know. What names are they calling me this year?" the question seems intent on getting answered.

"I don't know, what have you been called?" asks the journalist, still remaining non-committal.

"I'm not going to be specific, but anything horrid, you name it, the English press have called me it. Very personal, very nasty. So I'm always interested to look in the papers to see what style of creep I am this week."

Much as it's hard to believe that Robert Palmer sits in his home in the Bahamas and gives a hoot about anything more than releasing his one album a year and mixing the next cocktail before sliding into the Caribbean, the situation is true. The Batley-born singer has a network of friends who send him cassettes and newspaper clippings that have interested them from all over the world which he recieves every fortnight.

He mentions that his mother sends him clippings about his former Vinegar Joe vocal sparring partner, Elkie Brooks, which prompts the question has he seen her?

"No... I don't know why. I've invited her to all my shows but I guess she's got a full schedule."

I tell him about the Old Grey Whistle Test 350th episode which featured the pair failing dismally to whip up a storm in a shoebox studio with three cameramen and a production assistant. Robert looking particularly messy in leather trousers, floral shirt and a poison ivy haircut.

"A fat lot of good that did me, eh? Vinegar Joe... Yeuck!"

What was wrong with it?

"What was right with it? It was horrible. It was nothing to do with anything. People trying to be rich and famous and stars and stuff and I couldn't understand it at all. All the motivations were confused. The music wasn't the criteria. Everybody was manoeuvred, everybody bitched, nobody agreed. Everything that could go wrong, went wrong.

"But it was great training. At least you learn all that stuff when it doesn't matter. I've been having a great time for the last five years.

"There are more interesting things happening these days. Things like menopause and celibacy. There's all sorts of fascinating topics. None of which include music or me.

"Everybody talks about music, schmusic... I'm not really interested in music, you know. When I go into the studio to make a record, music is the last thing on my mind. I'm trying to make a record. Like, as soon as somebody gets musical, you know, notes academic, playing, I say 'Get out of here, go take a rest, go swim in the sea.'

"When you get players that are versatile they first of all develop a pride, the first deadly sin. If over a period they fall on difficult times they turn to session work which is totally unentertaining. They maybe break through it and they are going to be players and be entertaining or you end up with Steve Gadd," he spits out the words while making vomiting motions as he exposes his contempt for the symbol of technically perfect but antiseptic drumming.

"In the main there's always a balance between the musicality of something, it's proficiency versus entertainment and fortunately it's been breaking down over the past few years. I doubt if anybody's particularly interested in the musicality of UB40, but they are a swinging band, real good.

"Take the Police single, Don't Stand So Close To Me, it's very unified. All the people in the group contributing to an end result and none of them in the group make up the effect, they do it together. yet, when you hear it it's a neat pop song.

"What about the recession? Boy! What about Paul Simon? He comes out with a movie. It's the first thing he's done in five years and he's having trouble selling out his home town, New York, it's incredible.

"There are so many gigs being cancelled or tours losing money with bands who last year were playing 20,000 seaters down to my size of venue. Did you know that a Top 10 album in the States now sells 75 per cent less than it did two years ago?"

But Robert Palmer seems healthy enough playing five nights in London.

"They are not my interests. I'm not worried about the amount of people I pull in. I saw all that with all the groups I was with. How are we going to fill it out? How are we going to advertise? What are we going to pretend to be to pull 'em in? So it's of no consequence at all. It's very nice. We're going to do 10,000 people in London but they're going to call me all sorts of pig names and my record won't sell."

So how does Robert Palmer negotiate the music business?

"I delegate it all. I do it by proxy. I know a lot about the biz. Now I know what decisions to make. I know the options. I can understand the language. I understand the people. It's very healthy but it's still a joke."

Robert Palmer's flippancy over the music business is also taken into his music. The band are perfectly able to hear songs on the radio one afternoon and have it polished and slotted into the set by the next performance. On his last tour he surprised everybody by playing the Pretenders' Kid and Gary Numan's Cars, the latter sparking off a friendship which has spawned the appearance of Numan's I Dream Of Wires and collaboration on Found You Now, both of which appear on his Clues album and the excellent but unreleased Palmer/Numan composition Style Kills.

The band also attempts to throw one another with musical jokes and the usual capers that bands on the road use to combat the tedium of churning out the same set over three months.

"Before I used to concentrate on whether the band are playing properly but now we have a system where the guitars have no speakers and so there is no volume on stage and all the sound is out in the audience.

"I always look at people's silhouettes at the back and if they're dancing then I know it's getting over. The people in the front row are usually a tease or they're from the press so I don't pay much attention to them."

Mike Gardner (Record Mirror - Nov. 1980)