Graham Parker

Graham Thomas Parker (born 18 November 1950) is an English singer-songwriter, who is best known as the lead singer of the British band Graham Parker & the Rumour.

Life and career Early career (1960s–1976) Parker was born in Hackney, East London, in 1950. He was a pupil at Chobham Secondary Modern School in Surrey. After the success of the Beatles, Parker and some other 12/13-year-olds formed the Deepcut Three, soon renamed the Black Rockers. None of the members actually learned to play their instruments, however, and were merely dress-up bands, adopting Beatle haircuts, black jeans and polo neck sweaters. By the time Parker was 15 he was a fan of soul music, especially Otis Redding, and would go to dance clubs in the nearby towns of Woking and Camberley where there was a thriving appreciation of soul music, Motown and ska.

Parker left school at 16 and went to work at the Animal Virus Research Institute in Pirbright, Surrey, where he bred animals for foot-and-mouth disease research. At 18 he left the job and moved to Guernsey in the Channel Islands where he took a variety of jobs, picking tomatoes, digging ditches, collecting money from pinball machines, and working in a bakery. In Guernsey he bought an acoustic guitar and began to learn fingerpicking style and began writing songs with lyrics heavily influenced by the psychedelic music of the time.

Parker returned to England for a year, living in Chichester in Sussex where he worked at the Chichester Rubber Glove Factory. By 1971, he had left England again and spent time in Paris. From France, Parker hitchhiked through Spain to Morocco, where he travelled around for a year before moving to Gibraltar. In Gibraltar he worked on the docks unloading frozen foods, which he then helped deliver to supermarkets. His guitar playing and writing skills were improving, and after playing songs to a few locals in a bar, he found himself on an afternoon show on Gibraltar television where he performed two or three of his own songs. At that time, a strongly psychedelic-influenced band named Pegasus often played in the same bar and asked Parker to join them. With Parker in the band playing a borrowed electric guitar, Pegasus played one show in Gibraltar before going to Tangier, Morocco, where they briefly performed in a nightclub. Parker, however, was growing out of the hippie trappings and decided the band needed to learn a few songs that involved major keys (all the songs they played were in A minor) and so taught the members some of the soul numbers he had loved as a youth, including Wilson Pickett's "In the Midnight Hour". He also tired of the band's hippie name and renamed them Terry Burbot's Magic Mud.

In late 1972, Parker returned to England and lived with his parents, working at a petrol station around the corner from his childhood home in Deepcut. By now he was determined to pursue a career in music and worked steadily on improving his guitar playing and song writing. In late 1974 he placed an ad in Melody Maker seeking like-minded backing musicians. One of the musicians who answered the ad was Noel Brown, a guitarist who lived in south London. Brown introduced him to Paul "Bassman" Riley who had recently been a member of Chilli Willi and the Red Hot Peppers. (Brown also found Parker a gig at Southern Comfort, a tiny hamburger café on Seven Sisters Road in Finsbury Park, London where he played solo, performing a mixture of original songs and covers.) Riley thought Parker should meet Dave Robinson, the manager of the by now defunct Brinsley Schwarz band. Robinson had a small studio above the Hope & Anchor pub in Islington and began to record Parker, sometimes solo and sometimes with a few musicians behind him.

One of the songs Parker recorded was "Between You and Me." This demo version ended up on Parker's first album, Howlin' Wind, after the Rumour tried to record it but failed to achieve the natural feel of the demo. Another song, "Nothin's Gonna Pull Us Apart" was played, in demo form, on the Charlie Gillett show "Honky Tonk" on BBC London 94.9.

New direction (1977)

Graham Parker and the Rumour appeared on BBC television's Top of the Pops in 1977, performing their version of The Trammps' "Hold Back the Night" from The Pink Parker EP, a top 30 hit in the UK Singles Chart in March 1977. The group made a second Australian tour in late 1979, when Parker appeared on Countdown as a guest presenter.

Squeezing Out Sparks (1978–1979) An official Graham Parker and the Rumour live album, The Parkerilla, issued in 1978, had nothing new: on its List of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. In an early 1987 Rolling Stone list of their top 100 albums from 1967 to 1987, Squeezing Out Sparks was ranked at No. 45, while Howlin' Wind came in at No. 54. The album features several of Parker's most famous songs, including "Passion Is No Ordinary Word", "You Can't Be Too Strong", and the singles "Local Girls", "Protection", and "Discovering Japan". The companion live album Live Sparks, was sent to US radio stations as part of a concerted promotional campaign.

The jettisoned brass section continued to play on other people's records, credited as The Irish Horns (on the album London Calling by The Clash) or The Rumour Brass, most notably on Katrina and the Waves' 1985 hit "Walking On Sunshine".

The end of The Rumour (1980) Bob Andrews left The Rumour in early 1980, and was not officially replaced. However, in studio sessions for the next album, Nicky Hopkins and Danny Federici (of The E Street Band) played keyboards.

1980's The Up Escalator was Parker's highest-charting album in the UK,

The Up Escalator would prove to be Parker's last album with the Rumour until a reunion decades later. Meanwhile, the Judd Apatow film This Is 40, in which Parker and Rumour play themselves, was released a month later, in December 2012.

The Parker/Rumour reunion continued into 2015, when their new album Mystery Glue was issued. It was followed by a short international tour, after which the reunion ended.

In April 2018, Parker signed with 100% Records, and released a brand new single titled "Dreamin'". Later, in July 2018, Parker announced Cloud Symbols, his brand new studio album to be released on 21 September 2018. The album features Parker's brand new backing band The Goldtops, which consists of Martin Belmont on guitar, Geraint Watkins on keyboards, Simon Edwards on bass, and Roy Dodds on drums. The album also features the Rumour Brass, making this their first appearance on a Graham Parker album since Stick to Me in 1977 and their first time working with Parker since the Squeezing Out Sparks tour in 1979. The album was initially to be produced by Neil Brockbank, but he died during the recording of the album and production duties for the rest of the album were passed onto Tuck Nelson and Parker himself.

He announced a solo, acoustic 40th Anniversary version of Squeezing Out Sparks, for an 13 April 2019 release. It also contains the non-album single, "Mercury Poisoning".

In September 2023, Graham Parker & the Goldtops released a new studio album titled Last Chance to Learn the Twist. The Goldtops lineup now included drummer Jim Russell in place of Roy Dodds.

Discography Albums

EPs Graham Parker & The Rumour The Pink Parker EP (1977) – UK Singles Chart No. 24

Graham Parker Graham Parker's Christmas Cracker EP, 1994 Five Loose Screws EP, 2007

Outtakes, demos, rarities, etc. Loose Monkeys (outtakes), 1999 That's When You Know (1976 demos + Live at Marble Arch), 2001 The Official Art Vandelay Tapes (b-sides, rare tracks, outtakes, etc.), 2003 The Official Art Vandelay Tapes, Vol. 2 (b-sides, rare tracks, outtakes, etc.), 2005 The Middlesex Demos (1973-75 demos), 2022

Live albums Graham Parker & the Rumour Live at Marble Arch, 1976 At the Palladium, New York, NY, 1977 The Parkerilla (1978) UK No. 14, US No. 149, AUS No. 22 Live Sparks, 1979 Live in San Francisco 1979, 2009 Live Alone at the Freight & Salvage, 2012 Official Bootleg Box, 2014

Graham Parker Live! Alone in America, 1989 (Recorded live in Philadelphia, October 1988) Live Alone! Discovering Japan, 1993 Live from New York, 1996 BBC Live in Concert (compilation 1977–91), 1996 The Last Rock and Roll Tour, 1997 (with the Figgs) Not If It Pleases Me (BBC sessions 1976–77), 1998 King Biscuit Flower Hour Presents Graham Parker (live 1983), 2003 Live Cuts from Somewhere, 2003 (with the Figgs) Blue Highway, 2003 (Recorded live in Grant Park, Chicago, Illinois, on 4 July 1988) Live Alone: The Bastard of Belgium, 2005 Yer Cowboy Boot, 2005 103 Degrees in June, 2006 (with the Figgs) Platinum Bastard, 2007 Live Alone at the Freight & Salvage, 2011 Five Old Souls: Live in Southampton, 2021 (with the Gold Tops and the Rumour Brass)

Compilation albums The Best of Graham Parker and the Rumour 1980 Look Back in Anger: Classic Performances, 1982 Historia de la musica rock: Graham Parker and the Rumour, 1982 It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing, 1984 Pourin' It All Out: The Mercury Years, 1986 The Best of Graham Parker 1988–1991, 1992 Passion Is No Ordinary Word: The Graham Parker Anthology 1993 No Holding Back, 1996 Vertigo Compilation Temporary Beauty, 1997 Stiffs & Demons Master Hits, 1999 The Ultimate Collection You Can't Be Too Strong: An Introduction to Graham Parker and the Rumour, 2001 Don't Ask Me Questions: The Best of Graham Parker & the Rumour (1976–1979), 2014

Tribute album appearances Beat The Retreat - Songs By Richard Thompson, 1995 (song: "The Madness Of Love") A Fair Forgery of Pink Floyd, 2003 (song: Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb") Lost Songs Of Lennon & McCartney - From A Window, 2003 (Parker sings lead on five tracks) The Beautiful Old, 2013 (song: "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze")

Singles