ROBERT PALMER : Music & Style

Island Records is not your ordinary record company for many reasons. Situated in a high class residential area of Hammersmith, you'd expect to see oil sheiks coming and going rather than a procession of rastas which makes it seem like an outpost of Jamaica.

Once inside, you find more smiling faces and laughter than you would find in a week at most other record companies. Everybody is essential to the smooth running of the business, there are no turkeys (well, maybe one or two, gobble gobble). And they all talk about Island as if their lives depend on it, which makes for an incredibly healthy atmosphere.

Dark Star was there in May to talk to Robert Palmer who, after being away from England for son long, was back for the second time in nine months; not gigging this time, but doing something equally as important to him - keeping a very close eye on the packaging and marketing of his new album, Secrets. Why he's so concerned becomes apparent later on. I fully understand Robert's excitement over the album and his willingness to see the whole project right through. I would like to express my gratitude to him for finding the time to have this conversation, to Rob Partridge (the most genuine press officer in the business) for letting it happen and to Neil Storey (the hardest worker in the business) for making it happen.

Could you tell us just a little about your early career with Alan Bown and Dada?

RP: Alan Bown was my first professional gig, I replaced Jess Roden in that band, I was in there for a year. Jess had just finished recording the Alan Bown album and their manager asked me to clone him which I wasn't keen on and I couldn't do anyway. Then I made an album with them and when I left they brought in somebody else who got the same treatment. From there I joined Dada, which had horns, synthesisers and all kinds of stuff, an experimental baby really. They made their album before I joined and the singer on the album was a guy called Paul Korda, who's just made an album in LA with Spencer Davis, so he's still on the go one way or another."

Why or how did Dada become Vinegar Joe?

RP: Dada did a tour of America and just from the audience reactions it was obvious that it was too much of an indulgent way to present the ideas that we were presenting. It was too confuse and intricate, too many ideas at once, so we just kept the same central theme and pruned it down. We lasted as Vinegar Joe for about two and a half years and three albums including a live album.

You left Vinegar Joe... (to go solo)

RP: Yes, I'd been wanting to do it for a while, but I had a certain amount of commitments to Vinegar Joe and their management so I stayed there for a while until I could do it, but I had the material ready and everything.

Why was America so appealing at that moment?

RP: The kind of musicians and attitude in the studio appealed to me. There's never been a very strong studio scene in England, the main thing was gigs up and down the M1 and the attitude was to make a record if the band gets popular through doing shows, and the material that I was writing, I could hear with a hole different approach, like a real sparse four-piece group really, really into the rhythm section that were used to getting down in the studio. And all the musicians I thought of were Americans and rhythm sections I knew existed or players I wanted to put together were all over there. Also, I enjoyed that style of music at the time in my listening habits. I thought that if I could realise the album that was in my head in those circumstances, get there, sing it and be happy with it, then I was a singer. There seemed to be nothing else to do, so I thought I should do it.

Did you arrange before you left England who you wanted to use?

RP: Yeah, The Meters and a few New York session musicians.

What was the line-up on 'Sneakin' Sally', the English copies have no credits?

RP: Half of it is The Meters and the other half is what was then called The Encyclopaedias Of Soul. I think they are now called Stuff, but the drummer then was Bernard Purdie and of course we had Lowell George as the lead instrument. I just wanted one lead instrument that was some sort of focus. I wanted either a harmonica or a slide guitar and I couldn't find a harmonica player so I called Lowell and asked him if he fancied a trip to New Orleans. Then when he came down we got on well and he suggested that I work with the rest of Little Feat, which became 'Pressure Drop'.

You obviously had a great respect for Allen Toussaint as a songwriter. Did you know him before going over to New Orleans to his studio?

RP: No, I only knew him as a writer.

Did you decide to do his two compositions, 'Sneakin' Sally' and 'Whisper To A Scream', before you went over there?

RP: No, it didn't even occur to me.

There was a lot of fuss made over the cover of 'Sneakin' Sally'...

RP: It was just a graphic idea that I wanted to put across because it was my record. Most of the alternatives I could think of would have a picture of me on it one way or another, so I thought it would be best to make it look like a movie steal or something that told a story and made it a bit more entertaining.

All your covers have always covered a theme...

RP: Yeah, although the new one has broken right away from that. In the last year I've tended to have been backed into a corner by a lot of the side effects from doing those things, I've always put those covers together with an idea for them to be humourous entertainment, but because of the intellectualising that goes in some quarters, I got accused of all kinds of strange things like sexism. The women's lib came down on me, I was a playboy, I was selling my image, all these things, and that took me by surprise (...) Like my last album, 'Double Fun', was supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek take on myself, like the toothpaste ad picture on the bag was just a fantasy, and on the front for the first time there were no girls, but you could see where they had been. But again the humour got missed and it was taken seriously. People were saying, 'Wow, he's really gone overboard, he really means it now', so unless I'm around you get all these re-interpretations. This time I'm trying to carry the whole thing through and almost start again with the press, as it were.

It's a shame, because they are all great covers if they could be taken right.

RP: Yeah, but I'm just not destructive and I don't want to defeat myself and I don't want to repeat myself either, and it's time for a change anyway. When I first started doing all those things... like when I first went out on tour I had to decide what to wear and I like to wear suits - I look all right in a suit. So I bought one and then I got all this flak about ripping off Boz Scaggs when he became a hit and it sort of bores me and yet I don't want to be extreme and all of a sudden go out in jeans and a T-shirt just to be awkward when I'm really not interested in competing. All these things kind of aggravate me. But on the other hand, I'm in it, I've got to do something about it, so now I'm trying to make sure that it doesn't happen again because it kind of defeats the object when I go and make a record and the main fuss people make is what the style of it is. That's strange to me.

'Pressure Drop' is a lot breezier than the first album.

RP: Yeah, Little Feat are a pretty breezy band.

The songs are slightly more commercial than 'Sally'.

RP: Well, I wouldn't know how to contrive that, to write a song for that purpose. I know most about what I was doing through having done live shows. Like if I do a song that isn't commercial, it won't go down as well as one that is, but the difference between them to me is nothing. I can only make that distinction as to how it works live (...) I don't have any end product in mind when I do an album, it's just trying to keep up to date with myself, trying to find out the new things that give enthusiasm.

How did you get Gene Page to do the string section on 'Pressure Drop'?

RP: Well, I was working with Ed Greene and James Jamerson, the Tamla Motown rhythm section, and Ed is the drummer who does all the Barry White stuff and I'd done 'Give Me An Inch' and 'Back In My Arms' and I wanted strings on them, but I hadn't said anything about it because I'd never worked with strings before and I didn't know anything about it. And after we'd cut the tunes, Eddie said, 'Hey, listen, Gene would do a great job on those tunes', and I said, 'Yeah, I bet he would', so he said, 'Just wait a minute', and he went to the phone in the room, called him up and said, 'Look', and he sent Gene the cassette over in a cab. When I got back to the hotel there was a note there saying I should be in the studio the day after tomorrow. He's fantastic the way he works.

But you haven't used him since, though.

RP: No. Well, I haven't written any material that warrants that and as well as that, I'm more interested these days in being able to carry my sound through on stage, so I don't have to have a huge production sound in the studio that I can't reproduce live.

You mentioned being into harp players earlier and you used a guy called David Snell on 'Pressure Drop'. Who is he?

RP: Well, I'm into Mexican music and they build that a lot around harp and acoustic guitar and I wanted a harpist. I asked around and he was the guy who turned up and he really liked it. He was into the style but he was an orchestral player. He said he enjoyed it because it was parts. He said to be able to come in and jam and it not be jazz was a real delight for him.

When you first cut the song 'Pressure Drop', there was hardly any reggae going down in the States at all.

RP: No, not at all, they don't seem to know what Jamaicans are, even the black Americans don't. In fact, the black Americans that do know them seem to dislike them intensely, but look at the way it's coming through now.

So you were pretty much ahead of them all?

RP: Not really, I never had a hit.

(...)

(Dark Star Magazine - July 1979)