Palmer: His Videos Don't Embarrass Him
It's 4.30pm and Robert Palmer, on his eighth interview for the day, wears a face that has seen it all before. You empathise. Since the middle of last year he's been on the treadmill of concerts, planes, hotel rooms and interviews. In America he did 120 shows in 130 days.
Now he's in Sydney and being hassled by the press about his videos. They're the ones that have models being showered with water or looking red-lipped and provocative in a way that makes Madonna's old videos look like clips from Young Talent Time.
"The intrigue is exaggerated here in Australia, mostly because of the relative air time that is given to videos in this country," says Palmer in his blunt Yorkshire accent.
He's sitting back comfortably on the sofa wearing black tailored trousers, braces and a stripped cotton shirt. A drink is in one hand and he drags constantly on a cigarette from the other.
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"I've been surprised by it today. I don't feel awkward, embarrassed or ashamed by them... I think they're camp, humorous, attractive and entertaining." They weren't even his idea and anyway, as a final gesture to his critics, one of his next videos is going to be a self parody.
Maybe it's the odd drink during interviews, the constant media barrage or the grind of months on the road, but Palmer was in a philosophical mood when he talked to the press this week.
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At 40, the son of a Yorkshire naval officer has finally found huge international fame with his current album Heavy Nova after more than 20 years in the business (Clues in 1980 was his only other major album that produced the hits Looking For Clues and Johnny And Mary).
He gives a rare insight into his raison d'être after all the years by saying: "I... I think it's an eccentric craft." Pause. "Um, you're drawn to being a novelist, an actor or a singer. If you can possibly avoid doing it you ought to. You are either committed to doing it and you have to, or you aren't, otherwise the slings and arrows, so to speak, will be more horrible than the thing itself. And it will just be a dreadful life."
Palmer's childhood conditioned him for the slings and arrows of his eccentric craft. He spent most of it going from one country to the next as his father's career took the family around the Mediterranean. It made him something of a loner, a trait that's often mistaken for arrogance.
"I don't know. I may have nurtured this thing of being an outsider, since I didn't have a choice. I'd go somewhere for three years and my habits and manners didn't fit."
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In the early years, as a member of Vinegar Joe with Elkie Brooks, he says he understood the camaraderie of a group was necessary. "But I gave that up a long time ago."
So is solace found in the family? "Not so much that anymore. Just my own spirit - if you'll pardon the expression." A restplace for Palmer's spirit is his new home in Switzerland, a converted mill in a forest overlooking the lakes of Ticino near the Italian border.
He moved there two years ago mainly for his children's education. He tells almost proudly how his daughter "the girl", aged 11, and son "the boy", aged 9, can both speak Italian fluently.
The mill is where Palmer, the Yorkshire man, puts his feet up, stares into the fire and reads a lot - "often the same book over and over again."
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"I'm not interested in fishing, golf, football, or cars or anything like that." There he spends months on end till he gets the writing urge, the musical inspiration and he goes off again, with his family "glad to see the back of me." Is he happy? "Yes, unfashionable though it may be, I am."
Palmer already has 10 tracks in the pipeline for his next album, as well as at least two other projects on the boil, including a 1940s film musical called Don't Explain.
Yet the brash rock songs and the jazz/soul/R&B/reggae versatility of his music seem to belie the image of the unfazed stockbroker. Underneath the silk ties and tailored shirts is Robert Palmer. Is he still the vile brat he says he was at 20 or has age mellowed him?
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His songs, the likes of Simply Irresistible and Addicted To Love, speak the truth because he admits the brat is still there. "But at least now I'm better at dissembling and disguising it."
Robert Palmer's Heavy Nova tour begins in Melbourne with performances on February 13, 14 and 15, heads to Sydney for concerts on the 17th, 18th and 19th, Brisbane for the 21st, Adelaide for the 24th and finishes in Perth on the 27th.
AAP (1989)