There's Nothing Like A Hit Record
Robert Palmer used to get upset with media attempts to classify him and his music. But he makes it very difficult to assign him to a pigeon-hole because of his diversity. "I might as well dig a ditch if I'm going to do the same all the time," he says.
"There's nothing like a hit record," says Robert Palmer to get the "pigeon-hole" fraternity off your back.
In the early years of his solo career, Palmer found his music playing second-fiddle to such things as album covers and his looks.
"I tended to analyze why I was getting what I thought was a strange kind of attention from the media, and I took, I must say, a negative attitude towards it," said Palmer.
"I got the idea that because I wasn't coming up with anything that was easily pigeon-holed, that it was easier for someone to comment on the record cover or my hair style. I felt they were taking an easy way out, and it tended to irritate me."
Palmer shook off much of that irritation last year with a chart-busting single Bad Case Of Loving You that showcased his Secrets album.
"It's been a lot more healthy since then," Palmer admitted. "It's dissolved a great deal of the talk about the thousand-and-one categories I was put in. It gave me validity, broke me out the cult thing. I'm waiting for the next one!"
Palmer remains more a candidate for 1,001 pigeon-holes than a resident of one, because his endless quest for musical diversity. In five previous albums, he tampered with variations and combinations of Rock, Pop, Rhythm and Blues, Reggae and any other musical outletthat grabbed his fancy. His latest effort, the recently released Clues is more of the same experimentation.
"Not only is it (Clues) different to what I've done, it's different, as far as I can tell, from most anything on the market," said the 31-year-old British-born singer, who now calls the Bahamas home.
"All my stuff is totally different. I don't want to be some hack. I'm vitally interested in music and I want to keep the presentation of it contemporary. I might as well dig a ditch if I'm going to do the same all the time. If it's exciting for me, then I assume that's the only thing that can be exciting for an audience."
Palmer, who limits his listening to "all commercial modern pop music in the western world," finds most of it rather depressing.
"What I'm entertained by is folk music from all around the world," he said. "Once I get over the shock of, say, Balinese temple music or whatever it is, to me the sounds are really pure, whereas when I listen to a lot of contemporary music, it sounds like a product. So, most of the time, I'm not too fond of contemporary music.
"Then, the other night, I went out to see James Brown at a club. Unbelievable! The Godfather of Soul! Just a funky powerhouse. It isn't the form of it, it's the character, the force behind it, that makes it appealing."
Palmer grew up in Malta listening to his father's tapes of Frank Sinatra, Lena Horne and Nat King Cole, joined his first band when he was 15 and went out on his own in 1974 after 18 months with Vinegar Joe, a band that enjoyed a considerable cult following in England and Europe.
"Eventually I got to the point where the group was no fun," he said. "I used to be a graphic designer, and I came to the same conclusion - what had originally been fun became formalized. There was no expression in it at all.
"A tune, to me, is just a vehicle for an atmosphere I want to create. But by the time the group had gotten through with it, a song had lost all its focus as far as the writing was concerned."
It is something of a low boredom threshold that keeps Palmer and his music out of that pigeon hole.
Mark Clark - AP Writer (Kingman Daily - 1980)