ROBERT PALMER : Music & Style

I probably have a lot more sympathy with Robert Palmer than you expect me to have. We think along very similar lines at the moment, having reached similar conclusions about similar things from different directions. I have exactly the same attitude as him, for instance, towards songs and their singers. That was why and how I came to talk to him in the first place.

We've also got similar political ideas. I too am more interested in banning anti-Nuke discussions than Nuclear bombs. That sounds flippant but I haven't the space to explain. You'll have to read between the lines. Crack the code.

Later on during my stay in New York I bought the paperback edition of Joan Didion's book The White Album, and came across this passage in a piece called In The Islands: "Quite often during the past several years I have felt myself a sleepwalker, moving through the world unconscious of the moment's high issues, oblivious to its data, alert only to the stuff of bad dreams..."

A good bookmark to keep that passage handy would be a scrap of paper with two lines from Looking For Clues: "I have to make an effort now just to be serious / Nobody's going to give you the benefit of the doubt."

Sympathy for a lazy devil? Almost envy for the ease of it all? Well, not only am I pretty certain I'd do the same things - in Palmer's position - I can't deny the fact that I do a lot of them already. Figuratively and actually.

No point in pretending to be the morally prim and proper observer when I'm not, and would in fact hate to be. That's one of the nastier disguises rock journalists wear.

We all like to enjoy ourselves. Especially these days. Palmer doesn't hurt anyone - symbolically or actually. He's not a harmful rock myth or even "in the way". If he pursues his own ideas he may even get me interested again. That's not to be scoffed at. Hear the Looking For Clues album and get puzzled.

Sure, he's no Sinatra. I'm not Sartre. Nevertheless, he's sold out the Dominion for three nights in November, and two dates at the Rainbow have been added because of the demand for tickets. I mean, just for the record.

Before the interview, when we were waiting for Robert to confirm things, Joe and I took a stroll along a 100 metres hurdles length of "Guest" tables, lined around the balcony. Each table had a little placard with the individual guest's name written on it. Half the show seemed to have been sold out in advance, as it were. The Ritz is a little bit Venuey.

Around about midnight when we get back to the Ritz (translator's note: when I am dragged away from the television set in Joe's apartment) there is a long queue of people waiting to get in. It turns out that, like us, they are all on the guest list. A doorman yells in desperation, "Has anyone here got tickets? Anyone?"

We get in. The show is already under way. The show is lousy and I can't even get a beer. I put on my best cute English smile to the New York representative of Island Records, but I think she had a heavy head cold. I take in the audience - who, unlike any other I encounter in New York, are going through a very set '60s set of motions they've convinced themselves constitute a Good Night Out.

Robert has indeed changed his outfit. He is now wearing a baggy red T-shirt and very casual trousers oh-so casually tucked into yeughy knee-high boots. He struts about and works quite hard. Good voice, shame about the gig. The band sound like typewriters, very stock rocky.

I suddenly think I'm in California and fear fainting. I search for Joe but can't find him. The next day I discover he had a crick of intestinal instability and was forced to depart.

Just before I leave I get a glimpse of a big floppy hat under which I suspect lurks Grace Jones. Another long term Island aristocrat ("Let them eat camp"). Like Robert Palmer, she's come good this year, with an irresistible studio sound and well chosen cover versions. Personally, I love them.

Leaving the Ritz I snap. I run screaming into the street: "Take me to a nightclub! Take me to a bar! Take me in a bright cab or take me in a car! Give me an intimate atmosphere and an anonymous torch singer. Give me the night..."

I am initially placated by the yellow cab I easily hail on Broadway. Two o' clock in the morning in New York: the noises, the steam rising up from underneath the manholes in the road and other signs all conspire to lead me someplece different. Memory and mythology: I remember and replay Taxi Driver scenes and grin broadly. I don't say anything to the cabbie about 44 magnum pistols.

By the time I'm back in the hotel room the difference has worn off and I still feel doomy. I attempt a cathartic postcard to someone far away. The mock serious title at the top of the message is "The reality of my dreams".

When I look at this the next morning I can see two ways in which it might be interpreted. I decide there's absolutely nothing wrong with contradictions and rip it to shreds, saving only the "Wish you were here. XX."

I start to soak up the city that never sleeps.

Ian Penman (New Musical Express - November 1980)