ROBERT PALMER : Music & Style

If video killed the radio star, as the Buggles' song goes, it did wonders for Robert Palmer.

With the help of a video band populated by identical leggy, strinkingly glamorous women, the rock singer went from respectable 1970s star to a pop-culture symbol of the 1980s MTV generation with the hits Addicted To Love and Simply Irresistible.

Those songs were on the midday playlist Friday on classic-rock station WHTQ-FM in Orlando, Florida, following news that Palmer had died of a heart attack in Paris at 54.

In addition to the MTV hits, WHTQ regularly plays the music that Palmer recorded before his stylish suits and cool demeanor transformed his image.

His first hit, 1979's Bad Case Of Loving You (Doctor, Doctor), is a station favorite, says music director and midday host Chris Rhoads.

"This guy had such a great voice," Rhoads said. "Everyone knows him now as the snappiest dresser in rock 'n' roll and as the guy with all those women in the videos, but before that he had his own thing going."

Born in Batley, England, on Jan. 19, 1949, Robert Alan Palmer spent his teenage years on the island of Malta. He joined several British bands in his 20s, including the 12-piece band Dada, a primary influence on the smooth singing style that would make him famous.

In 1974, he released a solo album, Sneakin' Sally Through The Alley, that featured members of idiosyncratic rock band Little Feat and legendary New Orleans funk outfit the Meters.

Two years later, he dipped into reggae on Pressure Drop, then returned to mainstream rock with 1979's Secrets, which powered him onto radio with Bad Case Of Loving You.

In 1980, he collaborated with New Wave singer Gary Numan and Chris Frantz of the Talking Heads for Clues, which spawned a low-budget video for Looking For Clues on MTV.

Palmer expanded on his new-wave funk formula formula with Power Station, the 1980s band he formed with Duran Duran's John Taylor and Andy Taylor. The group had Top 10 hits with Some Like It Hot and a new version of T. Rex's Bang A Gong (Get It On).

By 1985, Palmer again was a solo act, riding the album Riptide to a wave of MTV popularity. His distinctive videos, in which he donned a suit to sing with a band of instrument-toting models, turned Addicted To Love, I Didn't Mean To Turn You On and Simply Irresistible into images that still define the 1980s.

"In that first decade of music videos, a number of things immediately come to mind," said Robert Thompson, founder and director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University. "There's Billie Jean by Michael Jackson, Boy George, Duran Duran's Hungry Like The Wolf.

"Robert Palmer's Simply Irresistible has to be on that list. He was one of the guys that really made the transition from popular music as aural phenomenon to a visual phenomenon. He showed that pop music was now going to become a visual event."

Though Palmer's popularity waned in the past decade, he kept making albums, ranging from a collection of nostalgic standards (1992's Ridin' High) to the blues-flavored Drive earlier this year.

His legacy, however, is for ever in the '80s.

"People talk about how music has been ruined by the videos, but there is some music that wouldn't be nearly as enjoyable without those images," Thompson said. "Robert Palmer's songs were a lot more fun because he supplied those images.

"Whenever I hear one now, that video is playing in my head." 

Jim Abbott (The Orlando Sentinel - Sept. 2003)