THE MIDDLESEX DEMOS

The sequence of events, the years, the dates, and even how I came to find myself in a studio in Hayes, Middlesex, a rather suburban part of London I’d never been to before, is hazy, but I do know that a small-time music publishing company was involved and Stuart Johnson, the man with the recording studio in Hayes, had invited me to record there for free, and something almost professional was now in motion.  1972/73 seems about right, with maybe a bit of early 1974, a time of songwriting transition for me.  The lighter, sweeter vocal style I was using (a remnant of the burst of 70’s songwriters, James Taylor and Jackson Browne being two of my most prominent influences) is still present, but the growling, gruffer sound is showcased, too.  You can hear it creeping in on “Time Bomb Blues” and “I've Got My Soul.”

Noel Brown, a guitarist I’d met after placing an ad in the Melody Maker appears on some tracks here, as well as some musicians provided by Stuart on a few other tracks, including “Watching All The Rainbows Run,” a tune I’d had since 1970, if not before.  I don’t recall the names of those musicians but knew well at the time that they were not going to be backing my songs any further - they really didn’t have what I needed.

In the early 70’s, I would read the ads in MM now and again and wonder if anything came of it: did people ever find the kind of accompaniment they were looking for?  Judging by the ads, I thought it unlikely.  Lots of mentions of “must have own gear and transport,” and “no bread heads” seemed de rigueur in the 70’s, and I expected a motley bunch of no-hopers to respond, if anyone.  I was right.  There was the guy from Crowthorne, Surrey who allegedly played bass and arranged to meet me in a pub near his home called “The Houda Thodit,” at least that’s what it sounded like on the phone at the petrol station in Surrey where I was working part time between weekends in London squats with a loose circle of freaks, which sometimes included a few friends I’d made when I was living and working in Gibraltar.  When I got to the pub, which was actually named “The Who’da Thot it,” I met the scruffy fellow but nothing he said seemed encouraging, so I continued my quest which included a girl from somewhere further out in the wilds who only played about two riffs, both of which were poor impersonations of Paul Kossof, the guitarist from the band Free.  She was followed by a number of phone conversations which didn’t even amount to as much as a meeting in a pub.  The suburbs/country scenario was turning out to be infertile ground for anything more than a dour mix of blues/prog rock played by longhairs in drab denim bell bottom suits, and other non starters.  My work was now a long way away from all that, and I had the shorter hair and tight black jeans to prove it and had left the musical meanderings of the loon pants period in the dust.

OK, then, up to London I went to check out this character Noel Brown, who on the phone at least, sounded vaguely promising.  This is where things changed for the better.  Noel, who sadly passed away recently, was enthused by the tunes I played on our meeting at his London flat where his wife Val kindly brought in a cuppa and a salad for us.  Noel joined in on “Let It Rain,” “Time Bomb Blues” and “I've Got My Soul” as if he already knew them, using dobro or Fender slide guitar.  Very soon after this “Soul Shoes,” “Back To Schooldays” and “Not If It Pleases Me” came along and Noel was in his element on those numbers.  It wasn’t long before he introduced me to some musicians of the calibre of Paul “Bassman” Riley and Paul “Diceman” Bailey who had played in a band I’d actually seen in February 1975 - the Red Hot Chilli Peppers who had appeared at Guildford Civic Hall in my home county of Surrey, a band who were billed with Kokomo and Dr Feelgood on the “Naughty Rhythms” tour, my first exposure to an alleged genre called “pub rock.”  What I saw that night was three bands of varying influences from the past, none of which had anything to do with the still ruling aforementioned long haired denim suit crowd who were still stuck in styles that I considered over and done with.  In further meetings with Noel and the two Paul’s a drummer would join in and we would play around in someone’s back room with some of my tunes like “Time Bomb Blues” and ”Sunny Side Down,” two songs that would not quite cut it with me by the time I got a record deal and recorded “Howlin’ Wind,” but were nevertheless pointing in the right direction.

At some point Paul Riley gave me an introduction to Dave Robinson, an Irish fellow who had a small eight track studio above a pub I’d seen mentioned in the Melody Maker, the Hope & Anchor.  Paul thought I needed to get this thing moving, and I’m eternally grateful for that.  “Robbo” jump started my career at a spectacularly quick clip, and two tunes from our demo sessions were aired on the Charlie Gillett radio show on London Radio, a channel previously unknown to me.  Nigel Grange from Phonogram made immediate contact and I was signed to a major record deal, just like that.

The rest has been well documented, history, as it were, so I’ll let you research that if you don’t know the details from then on.  I’ll leave you here to enjoy a peek at a slice of my formative years, all captured in a studio, in a garden, in Hayes, Middlesex.

GP

Note: the long haired cover photos of me were taken in 1971 before the time these songs were recorded.  Taken at a youth club near Chichester by Tony the Cortina.

For more information, go here

 PRETEND IT’S A BUSINESS: how touring works and why I’m not playing in “your town.”

The title of this piece is a paraphrase of the title of the Netflix documentary series about Fran Lebowitz, “Pretend It’s A City.”  In case you haven’t seen it, this first class Martin Scorsese production refers to Lebowitz’s marvellously irritated attitude towards almost everything, including the behaviour of some visitors to New York City who act…well, just like tourists - which means they can be quite annoying to the locals.  Watch it, it’s very good.

Therefore, think of the touring business in the same way as the title of this documentary, hence: “Pretend It’s A Business.”  This pretty much explains touring for most professional musicians, because it is a business, but I’ll throw a few basic parts out there below anyway.  Why not?  I mean, I don’t know how business works for an astrophysicist, or a plumber, come to that.

From the beginning of my career I have almost never chosen the venues or locations I’ve  played in.  Those very early shows with the Rumour, for instance, were most probably booked by my manager, Dave Robinson, who had plenty of contacts in suitable small venues after his years of managing the band Brinsley Schwarz, among other acts.  At some point after that when we quickly moved up from playing a small scattershot variety of pubs and clubs with the occasional college gig thrown in, some booking agency or other would have been involved regarding our work as the headliner in theatres and universities, etc.  Booking agents negotiate with the promoters/owners/managers of various venues and haggle out the prices, trying to get the act they represent the most money for each gig.  I don’t do this work and have very little input.  

There are a few exceptions to the rule.  When my agent is sending out the memo to various venues showing he’s looking for bookings in order to scope out who’s interested, we may have a discussion about the choices of venue and what they’re offering in certain towns, but only in territories where I receive interest from more than one venue, places where I have a good fan base, in other words.  Also, something else of importance should be added here: the “avails.”  This is not the 70’s anymore and there are now massive amount of acts constantly touring now that record sales are not a thing.  The agents of all those acts are feverishly vying for the same venues, often six months or more before a proposed tour is due to start.  This means from small clubs up to stadiums, the competition is hot.  Tours are better if they make sense logistically.  It’s very hard to do this with all that traffic on the road which is why you’ll see an act playing somewhere one night, then heading back towards the territory they played two nights ago, only to play somewhere in the middle.  From the outside of this industry, you'd think that whoever booked the tour must have a rather weak grip on geography, but it’s because of venue availability, or rather lack of it, that this happens.  Trust me, the artists don’t like it, but it occurs frequently.

And when I find an unfamiliar venue fronted on a proposed itinerary that I don’t know a thing about but the routing and the guarantee make sense, I often won’t even look it up to see what it looks like, or what kind of joint it is, or what their sound system consists of.  If the guarantee is in the right area and the routing works, I’ll just walk in door on the date and hope for the best, at least when I’m using a tour manager.  I don’t choose this stuff, it chooses me.  (This isn’t the same for everybody.  Some acts don’t have an agent, but they’d probably rather they did.  Agents don’t just take any act on.)

  

To add to the “avails” problems, on any given tour schedule of mine long before we actually get the gigs confirmed, there could be as much as, or sometimes more than two “holds” on some of those venues before they have cleared for me.  Other agents had their acts pencilled in but didn’t pull the trigger on them and they may or may not drop out of the equation, and after a certain amount of time the promoters will go back to the other agents to see if their act still want the booking.  Hence the squiggly nature you might see on any given tour schedule.  A real pain, but this is normal.  You sometimes have to wait, which can really mess with your routing. 

Furthermore, I have a certain worth in the marketplace, like any other act that acquires a cachet of some sort based on their level of international recognition, record sales and in the case of touring, the volume of ticket sales they are likely to achieve in certain markets at certain times.  This holds true to this day.  (Pretend It’s A Business!)  With social media now prevalent in the promotion (more like letting people know than promotion) of my tour schedules, it’s come to my attention that some fans - well meaning I’m sure - appear to express an attitude of mild accusation (OK, sometimes real annoyance!) when a tour schedule doesn’t include their state, or their town, and hasn’t done for some while.  In fact I see more “why aren’t you playing here"s to “Looking forward to seeing you"s!  (Keep reading that, it’ll make sense eventually.)  Venue availability, market value in different territories in different times - there’s a whole mess of vagaries involved.

If I am unpopular in an area, a promoter may want to book me anyway, often because they like my work, but the offer will probably be well below my usual worth (and rightly so), and too far out of my way to make it any more than a break-even situation, or near as damn to it.  It might be good to realise I’m just slightly older than I used to be; I’ve done masses of one-off solo gigs throughout my career, often in places where I might have had to go through the rigours of travel, the menagerie of airports and all rest of it, just for one show.  We all do, no biggie, but it might help to remember I’m not in my twenties now, and I now feel the need to be selective (yes, like Spinal Tap!) and to pace myself and play places where I not only get paid what I’m worth, but also have a good chance of pulling a fairly busy, maybe even sellout, crowd.  There’s no doubt that a good house feels like an event.  It all works better.  It might also be good to take into account that when I’ve got twelve shows on my itinerary, as I have on this latest American solo outing (October 2021), it feels like quite enough to me.  I’ve done my work in the trenches, and as you can see here, I have not been idle: 

https://homepages.uni-regensburg.de/~dej09534/gparker/gig-list.htm

A few people mention the recent lack of shows in Los Angeles and other places in that area of California.  If my agent had received any offers that made sense in that part of the state he would have put them in front of me. But they’ve just not been coming in now for a few years whereas shows in the more northern areas have.  I’m not the only artist whose worth goes up and down in various territories.  It happens.  It’s not because either my agent or me “don’t like” the southern part of the state.  “When are you coming back to Nashville?” I’ve been asked lately.  Here’s a clear picture of why it may not be for a very long time: I played in the small room (just a 100 seater) at the City Winery there on both of the last solo tours I did (2018 & 2019).  The first one sold out, so they repeated the offer for the following year.  It stiffed.  The exact same thing happened in Atlanta, which I also did on both tours.  That was packed in 2018 but thin on the ground the next year.  Neither of these towns are a stronghold for me, never have been, but if they are left alone for long enough (I’m thinking five years at least is realistic) I might be able to pull a respectable crowd.  I knew this would probably happen going into the 2019 tour but hoped for the best anyway, glad to be shown the confidence by the promoters to have me back so soon.  But promoters can’t keep throwing money away on an act who has a limited audience, like myself (Pretend It’s A Business!), they can’t keep losing money backing a losing horse.  The same fans won’t keep coming back in the same numbers.  Seeing anyone lose money on my behalf does not feel good.  Most promoters/venue owners are not sharks and a hell of a lot of them really like my work and know that I’m a class act and always put on a good show.  They’re just running a business, just like me.

I’ll never be able to write enough explanations of how this thing works and be able to convince some people that I’m not bullshitting here, I get it.  There’s just not enough words to make it clear enough.  And I’m betting that I’m still going to get a few “But why don’t you…?” - in other words, someone might kindly be offering ideas as to how I can play “in their town.”  I understand and am flattered, always, that people really do want to see me play, and I’m thankful for that, but maybe it would be less frustrating to just accept my description here, and that I’m not playing somewhere because I don’t like where you live.  And if you think I’m not playing a particular state because of political reasons, you’re wrong.  That never enters my head.

Whatever the system is, I still feel strongly that the part of this business that cannot be beat is the show - that part that isn’t a business.  The satisfaction - even transcendence - and all the other complicated emotions that live work brings, is the end result.  These are the real rewards - It’s the show and the response that brings the delight.  And It usually helps when it’s a well-attended house.  I often wish I could see a string of dates in other areas, but I’m a pragmatist and I fully understand that in the Northwest of America, for yet another example, is an area that I’ve had mixed success in throughout my career but that has now waned to not really enough to make a viable run of it.  Times change, it happens.  I’m just not going to get the bookings from some areas anymore.  Same with Texas.  I love going to Texas!  I’m not ignoring anywhere deliberately, but that particular state has always been a bit up and down and right now, a small venue in Austin is probably all that is realistic.  It would be nice to be popular in Florida (including Jacksonville!), but I’m not.  Hell, I’d like to see a string of dates in Arkansas!  But I flew in for a one-off gig in Little Rock once and it died a death.  I don’t think that particular state is going to pop up on my itinerary any time soon. 

Yes, yes, I can hear it: why not be an opening act on tours that play these other places?  Do you know what being an opening act usually pays?  Usually not much.  Even without that little matter, it’s all working uphill, being an opener, and it’s gotta be exactly right to make sense and it can be dispiriting for someone who isn’t young and trying to get somewhere to slog through against the wind of an audience that looks up at you on the stage like you came from another planet, singing in an incomprehensible language.  Been there.  It doesn’t kill ya, but…

I hope you can take this explanation at face value.  It is what it is.

(The above statement is not a complaint.  It is a description of reality. 

Or maybe a public service announcement.)

NIXON’S RULES - A SINGLE

About four years ago, I emailed a local Labour MP in London asking what the current stance of the party was regarding the “war on drugs.”  Now that anyone with half a brain in their head can see that the policy is a demonstrable and disastrous failure, surely, the political party whose central beliefs revolve around caring about, and seeking to help, the very people the policy deliberately targets - the lower classes, the most vulnerable, and now in keeping with the American model, almost entirely young black males with a few other inconvenient skin shades thrown in - it seemed a no brainer that Britain’s Labour Party would be at the forefront of supporting drug law reform.  Not so much, it turned out.

We met in the canteen in the Houses of Parliament, surrounded by security cops having tea.  The Labour MP turned out to be woefully clueless on the subject, even quoting the current Prime Minister David Cameron, a Tory, who I’d noticed had recently said on TV, “Our policy is working, drug taking is down this year.”  He’d said this after a petition to legalise cannabis had been handed in that had attracted at least 100,000 signatures, which meant that some form of Parliamentary debate might be in order.  My Labour MP appeared to take Cameron’s comment as a victory and that the “problem” of drugs was well on the way to being addressed and beaten.  (Of cannabis, she also said: “but it gives you psychosis, doesn’t it?”  Ah, I thought, that’s why me and practically everyone I’ve known for about 50 years is completely bonkers.  Well, that explains a lot.)

Continuing to support ruining lives whilst criminalising people whom their Party allegedly represents seemed all well and good to this MP.  What else would you?  It seemed to be the settled idea of both major parties, even though all the evidence shows that this has zero impact on reducing the sheer amount of gear floating around the nation (and now, in the intervening years since our conversation, Britain is number one in Europe for drug deaths).  This failed policy of social injustice was treated as normal behaviour by a Labour Party MP.  But what really left me with my jaw hanging was that after about 40 minutes of conversation, the MP suddenly came out with what some drug law reform organisation members - as I’ve heard since - hear privately from MP’s from both sides: “Well, we can’t say anything anyway, we’ll get killed in the press.  The Daily Mail?  Cuh!”  This is what a government representative I voted for and is paid by the British tax payer said.  I honestly didn’t know how to respond to this.  (And this particular MP really does work tirelessly helping some of the most challenged people in the area.)

My Labour representative had actually uttered those words, expressing concern of pissing off a right wing organ of the gutter press tabloids in which every woman is described as having “An ample cleavage and a pert bottom!”  Oh my god, how terrifying they are, run away, run away, tiny English brains can’t take it!  

Yes, the people we vote for are hamstrung, in mortal fear of trash right wing tabloids.  “We can’t possibly annoy them,” was clearly the MP’s main worry regarding a failed and worldwide disastrous policy!  A policy that has made Gt. Britain the number one drug death capital of Europe, and our government have made it clear that well documented harm reduction programmes used in other countries such as safe injection facilities will not be tolerated.  The punishment addicted Home Office have zero interest in public safety, and the chances of getting something of indeterminate strength and purity regarding heroin/opioid products and many other drugs in the black market is high.  It shocked me that the tabloids are still wielding so much power in Britain, no less than they were when I was a kid.  (Talking to some old friends after the Brexit vote, I realised the right wing tabloids’ power was not only limited to affecting the decisions of MP’s, but also the working classes.  But that’s another jaw dropping phenomenon - don’t get me started.)

After this illuminating conversation with a British MP I decided I needed to investigate the matter, and if possible become as weaponised with knowledge as the word “drugs” has been weaponised by propaganda, so I attended an event held by  LEAP UK (http://ukleap.org/about/), an organisation consisting of people working diligently against the continued U.K. government support of what are, essentially, Nixon’s Rules.

Comprising of plenty of ex and current police officials, including former drug squad members like Neil Woods (help, I’m sleeping with the enemy!) and the odd ex MI5 agent.  I chatted with a few LEAP members after hearing them talk passionately about the inhumanity of the policy and its catastrophic results.  After the talks, one of the LEAP UK members, director Jason Reed, vaguely suggested - in what was more of a loose aside that anything else - “A song would be good.”  Well, wave a red flag at a bull...

Which brings us to the song itself - Nixon’s Rules.

The Nixon administrations hugely emblematic War On Drugs announcement and the follow up tactics cannot be minimised in the sense that, although it was well after the modern architect of the War On Drugs, Harry Anslinger, codified it in the ‘30’s, the Nixon administration further enlarged upon the basic methods of its execution: demonise the arbitrary list of inconvenient illegal psychoactive substances with blunt force and classifying them, as Nixon exclaimed, “America’s number one enemy: drugs.”  Then you get the public in a state of moral panic, using both right wing press and the often gullible left wing press to back up this claim with the usual exaggerations and hugely inflated dangers that date back to the ‘30’s Reefer Madness propaganda film, then coerce the United Nations into brutally prosecuting the policy throughout the world in an act of imperialism that the Americans learned only too well from us.  As we speak, Nixon’s Rules are alive and thriving in British Government policy.

Now, I’ll hand it over to Nixon aide at the time, John Ehrlichman to explain how this warlike model works in simple terms: 

JOHN EHRLICHMAN

“But in 2016, when former Nixon aide and domestic policy advisor, John Ehrlichman was quoted in an interview given 22 years ago, he claimed that the War on Drugs had nothing to do with preventing addiction and that the administration knowingly used drug enforcement policy to actively target anti-war leftists and the black community. 

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people,” said Ehrlichman. “You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalising both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

“Of course we did.”  If this doesn’t clarify the matter for you, you might want to call a brain surgeon and ask if they have a better one lying around somewhere that they can insert into your thick head. The above statement nails the entire essence of arguably the most crushing policy of social injustice in modern history.  A policy that is to this day largely adhered to in the United Kingdom and many other parts of the world.  In the case of the U.K., it is still used for nothing much more now than political expediency.  Saying “We’re the ‘Tough On Drugs’ Party when decades of being “tough” have created a Britain where a 14-year-old kid can get illegal drugs easier than the legal ones is finally, not quite cutting it anymore.  If you’ve walked past a corner store and an underage kid asks you if you could go in and buy something for them then you know that the store sells drugs - alcohol and nicotine - and your response would be the same as any decent person, and unless you were a sexual predator, that would be a resounding No.  Scoring illegal gear for that kid, however, is much easier, with no inconvenient ID checks.

As Nixon liked to say, “When you think of marijuana it’s all Jews and niggers.”  But he also felt the need to add heroin as the latter’s main choice of immoral behaviour, just to make sure.  This kind of comment was on the White House tapes, but in the ‘30’s; however, our aforementioned unhinged prohibitionist warrior Harry Anslinger did not need to hide his racism so much and he told it like it is:

“There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.”

Oh yes, a real doozie was Harry!  This quote is one of many from this lovely fella, but the basic terms of it, although less harshly expressed now, are still applied by our very own British Home Office; essentially Anslinger’s manifesto is still adhered to in its basic principles of classism and racism but dressed up in slightly more opaque terms as presented on a daily basis to the fearful and ignorant British public.  Worse still, the Home Office (largely comprised of Old Etonians) employs only one real policy, which is simply: We can’t send the “wrong message,” or: We must send the “right message.”  Have you noticed that?  They seem awfully keen on repeating those phrases. That’s because their idea of the “right message” is basically: “If you take the drugs we consider immoral, then die already.”  There’s not a lot else they do, except shout the occasional “Crackdown!”  (They love that one, too.) That’s basically it, that’s the sum of the Home Office/UK government’s sterling attempts to make sense of the subject of the arbitrarily illegal drugs that flood the U.K. 

Despite this paucity of honesty and intelligence and their wilful ignorance, things are changing.  Lately, largely due to the decades of work from reform groups going back decades via the early champs RELEASE (https://www.release.org.uk), this fakery has not been holding up too well, even to your average Joe.  The British Government know they’re holding up a flimsy mishmash of desperate excuses - they know it’s all gone tits up on them - and it’s good to see at last a Labour Party drug law reform group out and about the country discussing the now clearly monstrous failure, even if top-down the party has been complicit in this travesty all along: https://www.labourdrugpolicy.com/about 

And even the conservatives are having a little stab at it: https://www.cdprg.co.uk/blog

In one of the LEAP events I attended two members of the bravest reform organisations of them all spoke - https://anyoneschild.org

To hear people who have lost kids to overdoses due to prohibition who now rightfully consider that only legal regulation and education is the safest way to deal with this matter in order to minimise the damage was not easy.  Any parent is going to empathise with someone who has lost a kid or loved one due to the continued irresponsibility of  backwards, moralising, and often hypocritical government, many of whom jokingly admit their illegal drug use in the hallowed halls of Eton and other lofty educational establishments when they were younger, knowing full well that their elite status and surroundings gave them complete immunity where law enforcement is concerned.  The very idea of what would more accurately be described as “the war on people thinly disguised as a war on drugs” relies on arresting and criminalising people who cannot adequately defend themselves and who more often than not, are absolutely fucked once they have been stigmatised for life in the form of a criminal record that will stay on the PNC (Police National Computer) for their entire lives.  And, if you read the aforementioned drug squad expert Neil Woods’ books, Good Cop, Bad War and Drug Wars you will also clearly see how arresting a cell of really nasty dealers, real violent criminals that the flow of illegal drugs in the particular area that they’ve been operating in is interrupted by not much more than two hours.  Those gang members will by then be replaced by another team, often by definition more nasty than the last lot; this appears to be an endless stream and will continue that way if the police are continually given the pointless job of dealing with this issue.  And your tax money is funding this.

The public’s lack of cohesive thought on this subject is not surprising.  Decades of systemic propaganda, deliberate misinformation and outright lies have weaponised the word “drugs” so thoroughly that whenever I have a conversation about the drugs policy with those rather rare old friends who have never and wouldn’t even consider taking an illegal substance, it’s obvious to me that every word and thought that comes out of them has been implanted by propaganda.  This is not an accident.  They don’t have a thought in their heads that is actually their own.  In any other country, on any other subject, we’d call this brainwashing, plain and simple.  But in 2019 it is still the weapon of choice for governments all over the world.

There’s scads of information about the power of propaganda on the human mind that is worth a look at. Here’s just one example: https://www.philosophytalk.org/blog/propaganda-and-human-mind

“The wonder is less that we bought the initial tale, but that for many the belief in the tale persisted even as the evidence spoke decisively against it.  Once the comforting falsehoods had taken  hold, they had vice-grip on our beliefs.  This vice grip is the result of what social psychologists call confirmation bias -- the tendency to notice and seek out what confirms one's beliefs, and to ignore, avoid, or undervalue the relevance of what contradicts one's beliefs.  Confirmation bias often leads us to subject putatively disconfirming evidence to very severe criticism or outright dismissal.”

And here’s something worth examining.  For people who have enthusiasm for the arbitrarily illegal drugs, Great Britain is a giant funhouse, and practically a tourist attraction. The incredible amount of variety in the UK of available cannabis strains alone, much of which equals the high quality gear available in America’s medical and recreational pot, is something that folks who discovered this plant in the 60’s could not have begun to imagine back then.  Cocaine is half the price it was in the late 70’s and through the 80’s and so common as to be labelled “pub dust.”  

Thank you, war on drugs!  You’re welcome!

I can assure you that a large amount of lovers of illicit gear of many kinds do not want the laws to change.  Why hand it to the government, they’ll ask?, they’ll only fuck everything up.  They’ve got a point: of course they will.  And high end international criminal organisations would of course agree: billions in tax free money to be made - supply and demand rules.  They’d rather that not go away. And I’m not directly arguing for legal regulation in this song.  The lyrics certainly don’t suggest it in any concrete terms.  Reform orgs such as https://transformdrugs.org do that much better than a song can.

I haven’t lost a kid to a dose of ecstasy that was knocked up by Chinese chemists on the orders of international criminal groups and died because it was something else entirely or was a dose many times stronger than is safe.  Legal regulation would obviously be better, but when just cannabis alone is finally legalised in this fuddy duddy backwards nation it will be with as much deliberate contempt as the fake “legalisation” the Home Office has managed with the recent “legalisation” of cannabis for medical use: only the British government could make the drug legal for medical purposes in the sure knowledge that it will still be impossible for anyone who isn’t filthy rich to get hold of it, unless of course they stick with the black market.  Get it straight - there are no accidents in the war on people pretending to be a war on drugs.

As for the writing of Nixon’s Rules I didn’t have any trouble finding the perfect target.  After all, a song called The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, and Harry Anslinger Was a Right Twat seemed similarly unwieldy.

The Misuse of Drugs act 1971 (1971? Where have I seen that year mentioned before) also seemed inappropriately dry.

The football chant of “England” worked perfectly although “Britain” is more appropriate, but comes over as clunky when performed, and seeing as the Home Office/Government is centred in London yelling “England” did the trick for me.

The aforementioned LEAP man Jason Reed, after hearing the recording, asked if I could change the “England” chorus to something more appropriate for the entire world because LEAP actually began in the USA and is a worldwide organisation, but when I recently went back to the studio where the song was recorded, Seth Powell the engineer asked me if I had taken the master tracks away on an outboard unit, but I had not.  He asked this because he can’t find them on his computer anywhere!  So there - I was stuck with the England-centric nature of the beast.  That’s that.  

And in any case, when you’ve visited a state-legal pot shop in America, although it might feel ironic that the country that enforced this prohibition junk all over the world is now streets ahead of us, it still felt like entering a sensible, adult world, and to see people walking out of that dispensary swinging sealed paper bags of fine dank right past an on duty cop (the easiest cop job in the world - there ain’t no trouble from legal pot smokers!), you tend to think that the glass ceiling in that country is not far off from receiving a good punching. 

I’ll clarify here that this song was recorded in August 2017 but put on the back burner when I began to write the songs on the “Cloud Symbols” album, which obviously could not possibly include a song like this, the stylistic disparity negates that option.  The reason I went back to the studio last July, 2019, was to edit the mix, creating in a short pop single style A side and letting the B side go on until the band fall apart after a ton of ripping harmony guitar work from the great Mike Gent of the Figgs.  The other musicians were the Figgs’ Pete Hayes on drums and Jon Powhida on bass.  Everyone contributes backing vocals.

I needed a video done in July before I returned to the UK and these guys proved difficult to schedule for the job so I thought it would be a bit of fun bringing in video “actors.” Hence, Catskill Mountains local Wreckless Eric on guitar, Natalie Parker on bass, and her fella Zack Kerr on drums.  Jimmy Parker worked the camera and editing.

I’ve edited this blog to novella size from novel size because quite frankly, I could go on...and on. 

But don’t get it from me, get it from the experts.

Books:

Chasing The Scream - Johann Hari

There’s a lot to learn in this book, including Harry Anslinger’s contribution, something I’d previously missed altogether.

The New Jim Crow - Michelle Alexander

The subtitle of this book 2010 book: Mass Incarceration in the Age of  Colorblindness says it all.  Find out how segregation is alive and thriving in modern America due entirely to the war on drugs. It’s a simple equation, but a very disturbing read.

Good Cop, Bad War

Drug wars - Neil Woods with J.S. Rafaeli 

If there’s one expert on the subject of on-the-ground drug activity in the U.K, it’s this guy.

https://filtermag.org/drug-policy-reform-movement/

The above is a must read article and fully exposes the deliberate human rights violations of the war on drugs.

And follow the links to the drug law reform groups mentioned above and the many other interested parties.  There’s plenty of them...

GP 

Twitter: @ItsGrahamParker

https://store.100-percent.co.uk/collections/graham-parker

https://youtu.be/THDumXOWP_o

By request, here are the lyrics:

NIXON'S RULES

SUMMER 1971 NIXON MADE HIS FATAL SPEECH

INSISTING ON A GLOBAL WAR ON DRUGS

WITH THE FURTHEST REACH

AMERICA AND THE UNITED NATIONS

PUSHED THIS ALL OVER THE EARTH

HIT THE POOR HIT THE BLACKS HIT THE FREAKS

HIT THEM FOR ALL YOU'RE WORTH

CHORUS

AND WE'RE LIVING UNDER NIXON'S RULES 

LIVING UNDER NIXONS RULES

YOU'RE ALL STILL LIVING UNDER NIXONS RULES

LIVING UNDER NIXON'S RULES

ENGLAND! ARE YOU OK WITH THAT

I GUESS YOU ARE

ENGLAND! ARE YOU OK WITH THAT

WELL GO BACK TO SLEEP 

WHY DON’T YOU GO BACK TO SLEEP

CHORUS

THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT STILL LYING THRU THEIR TEETH

PROTECTING THEIR FAILED POLICY

THERE'S MORE DAMAGE MORE DRUGS MORE DANGER

THAN THERE HAS EVER BEEN

ENGLAND!  ARE YOU OK WITH THAT

DON’T SAY YOU ARE

ENGLAND!  ARE YOU OK WITH THAT

DON’T GO BACK TO SLEEP

NO DON’T GO BACK TO SLEEP

CHORUS x 2

IN THE SUBURBS, IN THE CITIES

AND IN THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT 

STILL FLOGGING THIS DEAD HORSE

CHORUS

SQUEEZING OUT SPARKS

Solo Acoustic 40th Anniversary 

 

After producing the excellent book, “The Songs Of Three Chords Good” and “Mystery Glue,” the complete acoustic, lead and rhythm guitar charts of both of those albums, Martin Belmont has now turned his highly skilled attentions to “Squeezing Out Sparks.” Brinsley was brought in to go over his parts on this album as well, which was released in March 1979. Yes, there was much head scratching going on as both guitarists tried to figure out just what the hell they’d been playing all those years ago. It’s typical that musicians who make an album, then go out on tour where they will play some of those songs, will change what they play very quickly, and often from night to night, to make the songs more suitable in a live setting. The parts they play are constantly morphing, so it’s often baffling to revisit the original form of any particular album. My job was easy - I played very little guitar on Sparks and mostly just had to proof read the lyrics.

On one of our regular get togethers over an Indian meal, Martin mentioned that “Squeezing Out Sparks” will be 40 years old in 2019. Well, with a glass of cheap wine inside me (from the extensive wine list - “Red wine, White wine”) and some dopamine producing madras heat rifling through my bloodstream, I foolishly blurted out that I should record the entire album solo acoustic, to go along with Martin’s book. D’Oh! What was I saying? What have I put my foot into? Over the years I’ve played a good few Sparks songs live, both with bands and solo, but this is not an acoustic guitar album; there is no easy swing involved - it’s almost all big guitar rock, a gruelling challenge to play alone. Still, I wrote the songs on an acoustic guitar, so “impossible” is not a word that was going to get me out of this jam. I had to pull it off now that I’d opened my big mouth, and that’s what I’ve attempted here, with varying degrees of success. “Don’t Get Excited” for instance was a real pig to get across on just an acoustic guitar when I wrote it, and that has not changed to this day. It won’t work well slowed down, turned into reggae, a waltz or salsa, and I can’t see a madrigal gambit paying off, either. I was pretty much stuck with it as is and slogged through it accordingly.

Here it needs to be mentioned that I’ve taken some liberties when it comes to certain passages of some songs. No one wants to hear a lonely acoustic guitar droning on forever on the “Passion Is No Ordinary Word” guitar solo without the actual lead guitar playing it, so that is truncated in the same way I employ when performing the number onstage. Not being one who enjoys listening to my own old material and slavishly copying what I did 40 years ago, “Don’t Get Excited” needed a similar pairing down and quite harshly, too, and I must confess, I bluffed the solo part all the way to the actual chords themselves and came up with something almost on the spot that gets me out of trouble and on to the third verse as quickly as possible. It also needs to be mentioned to anyone who wants to learn the correct arrangements that they should read Martin’s painstakingly accurate work in his book and not confuse my solo recording with accuracy. Martin is representing what actually happened, I decidedly am not! I didn’t even study the lyrics on some of the tunes, so there might be a few bits that just popped out of my mouth in the wrong order when that dread, red light that indicates recording is in progress on the virtual tape machine flashed on.

“Mercury Poisoning” did get a real reinvention, however, and I have in fact played it a few times live in 3/4 time, a sort of evil waltz, and that works quite decently here. This song was written almost to order, after my manager Dave Robinson insisted I write an entire album of hate songs directed at Mercury Records. I wrote this one tune on the subject and then made it clear the rest of the “I Hate Mercury” album would not be forthcoming. When an artist starts whining about their record label, fans should wonder whether that artist has lost the plot. It’s not a good look. And to be honest, Mercury or not, I was having a blast when we were out on the road in America in 1976 promoting “Howlin’ Wind.” Dave was the one who had to bear the brunt of Mercury’s obvious lack of interest. It was all new to me and the most exciting and unexpected time of my life, and I had an idea that more records would be forthcoming and that things would grow in their own way, Mercury Records notwithstanding.

(“Mercury Poisoning” was not on the original album and appears here as a spare track because it was recorded at the same time as the album but not considered good enough by me to make the cut. Martin has also added “I Want You Back (Alive),” a tune recorded in a mobile studio a short time before we did the album and something I’m unlikely to ever mess with on an acoustic guitar.)

 

Going back to lyrical accuracy, do not believe what you see on these lyric sites! There’s some odd stuff out there. “Grandfather’s money” in “Nobody Hurts You,” for instance. What? Or, “You know all my favourite bitches” in “Don’t Get Excited”. I would have been well ahead of the rappers if I’d used the word bitches in a song in 1979! Then there’s the chord charts. I’ve rarely seen one that’s anywhere near accurate. Anyone who wants accuracy must check out Martin’s work.

 

When it comes to the actual recording of these solo versions, Simon Edwards, the bass player on “Cloud Symbols,” has a nice home studio that worked perfectly. He put a couple of mics in front of the acoustic and I’d brought in a small Ibanez acoustic amp I picked up for £25 in a junk store near Hastings, and we put a mic on that for some heft. I had a feeling that odd little brown amp would earn its money one day! We did this because - as described above - this is not an album that lends itself to light acoustic versions and I’d decided somewhere in the run-up to recording that I wouldn’t be bringing an electric guitar into this.Therefore, a bit of experimentation was needed to beef up my Gibson J200 acoustic and I think it worked pretty well, to the point where you’d be forgiven for thinking that there is more than one guitar playing. This entire album took two four hour sessions to record and one four-hour session to mix. Most of my takes were first takes. Now that’s how it’s done!

 

GP

ODD BEGINNINGS, LOGICAL FUTURES
CLOUD SYMBOLS
By Graham Parker and the Goldtops

WHILST ON A U.K. duo tour with Brinsley Schwarz in 2016, I got an email from Judd Apatow asking if I had any spare songs that might be considered for “one of” his new TV shows, as he put it.  I presumed that meant something previously recorded with a band but not released, so I said I didn’t.  But Brinsley and I had three days off and I returned to London where it occurred to me that of a bunch of tunes I’d been working on, one song, “Love Comes,” might be of interest, and I thought it was finished enough to send him.  I stuck the iPhone on the counter up against the kitchen tiles (which produced a nice kitchen tile slapback effect) and recorded it, voice and acoustic guitar only.  Judd loved it and asked how I would record it.  I bluffed some kind of vague answer then promptly forgot about it!  

A month or so later, Judd emailed me asking “Where’s my song?!”  Oops, I better get busy quick.  “Love Comes” screamed Martin Belmont on electric guitar to me, backed by brushes, bass, keyboards and maybe a clarinet solo (which turned out to be a melodica solo by Geraint Watkins).  After describing the treatment I wanted to Martin, I asked him to recommended the right people for the job.  He came up with Simon Edwards on bass and Roy Dodds on drums.  He also mentioned Neil Brockbank, an engineer/producer I’d met a few times and who has worked on many recent Nick Lowe records.  His studio was now located in fabulous Tooting Bec, south London.  Not exactly the upscale neighbourhood of RAK’s St John’s Wood, a convenient walk up the road from me, where we did the last Rumour album, “Mystery Glue,” but suitably cheaper.  I’d been thinking of Neil for a while and thought he’d be perfect to coproduce the kind of tunes I was now working on, and Martin’s recommendation sealed it for me.

We did a day in the studio and came out with one of the sweetest tracks I’ve ever cut, and by the time Neil had mixed it, I knew I’d got exactly the sound I needed for more recordings.  “Love Comes” appeared on Judd Apatow’s HBO show “Crashing” and by the time I was back into the studio with the same band, I’d become very inspired by the next four songs I had ready to go (soon after recording, one of those songs, “Dreamin’ was used by Judd on his show “Love” on Netflix).  After we’d recorded those tunes I listened to the rough mixes and continued writing songs that I thought would hang together as a conceptually consistent album, and then left it at that, to be continued after a four month spell in America.  It was there that I got a terrible email from Martin telling me the sad news that Neil Brockbank had died suddenly of cancer.

I had not known Neil for long but he was not hard to like being with, from both a working relationship point of view and a damn good bloke to hang out with.  It was such a great loss and hit me hard, and those people who had known and worked with him for much longer than our brief association must have been devastated.  I was so looking forward to getting back in the studio with Neil and the same personnel.  One of those personnel was his assistant, a young American fellow named Tuck Nelson, who lives in London.  He was in the USA working not long after Neil’s death, and I made it a point to get together and have a chat with him.  Luckily, Tuck felt the same as I did: let’s get back into Goldtop studio as soon as possible and finish what we’d started, in Neil’s honour as much as anything.  CLOUD SYMBOLS is dedicated to Neil.  It’s no accident that we continued to try to create what Neil had such a big hand in.  The first track finished was “Love Comes” and I thought it fitting to end the album with it, as the sound of that track is what Tuck and I did our best to echo throughout the record, even though we both agreed we couldn’t quite match Neil’s brilliant touch at capturing this kind of singer/songwriter music, of which Neil was specialist, but we gave it our all anyway.

The end result captures exactly the kind of music I should be making today.  There’s a few heavyweight emotional tracks it’s true, both “Maida Hill” and “Is The Sun Out Anywhere” being prime examples, and “Every Saturday Nite” is only thinly disguised as a jolly pop song by dint of its uplifting chorus groove, but the main thrust of the album is concerned with my signature swing and lyrical playfulness that goes all the way back to “White Honey” and “Lady Doctor,” from “Howlin’ Wind.”  And there’s six songs with the Rumour Brass on!  As stated earlier, Martin Belmont was the musical lynchpin and his suggestion of the basic rhythm section - Simon Edwards on bass and Roy Dodds on drums, was perfect.  Roy’s drum kit seems to grow out of my acoustic guitar, Simon’s bass is endlessly inventive and Martin’s guitar work is tone perfect within every song.  And with Geraint Watkins on keyboards we have a delightful mix of quirkiness and sweet country/soul riffs caressing every track.  What a unique musician he is!  

And in keeping with my current recording style that goes back to “The Mona Lisa’s Sister,” the vocals you hear are all live, played along with the acoustic guitar, not one single vocal drop-in took place.

I’m very proud of this record, no question.  And if your hips aren’t swinging two bars into “Girl In Need,” you might want to seek medical advice.

Enjoy!

The album will be released on CD and hot pink vinyl LP. Signed copies of both are available for pre-order from the 100% Store (Link: http://found.ee/CloudSymbols_Store) . There is a money-saving discount for those who purchase both.

THE BOX SET

I can't claim to have listened to all this stuff.  Very little of it, to be honest.

In fact, there are a few discs here that I haven't bothered to listen to at all.

I, perhaps pretentiously, consider myself to be a current artist involved with current songs, some of which my delicate artistic, yet dangerously gnarly, hands were strumming through a few hours ago in an effort to remember what the bugger I was thinking about when I wrote some of them, which was even before I mixed the last album, "Three Chords Good."

Yes, I like to be ahead of the game.

What does surprise me though - whenever I do actually bother to listen to an old live recording - is that even though my memory of those past brutal tours tells me that my voice was always as shredded as Parmesan cheese, it actually wasn't as bad as I think it was.  Perhaps because of my complete lack of experience as a singer in the early days of GP & the Rumour, I could barely talk before many gigs, let alone sing, having done all the things you should not do with human vocal chords the night before.            But with the audience in front of me and the fear of looking like a complete prat, I'd somehow find at least a little something in the vocal chords when I hit the stage.  Judging from what I've heard here, I obviously found more than a little something.  Sometimes, there's even a touch of nuance and soul in there, those elements, as Bruce Springsteen kindly pointed out on the documentary, "Don't Ask Me Questions," of all the things that "made the music so great," - that "soul and emotion" behind the "caustic" yell that took it above the level of some mindless rabble-rousing "a-pub a-pub a-rocka/pub-a pub-a rocka!" nonsense that some critics might think sums up my worth.

As for the Rumour, well, I never doubted that even on a night we considered to be pretty flat, they were always good, and often superb.  We might be playing the songs at a pace that flatlines any hint of subtlety and swing, two of the prime ingredients of the band, but they still had alarmingly creative musicianship and made up for the amphetamine-on-steroids approach with some blinding coordination that defies logic.  What a band!  They should really be backing someone who can sing properly!

Luckily, here in this collection, we do have a modern performance that satisfies my "current" sensibilities in the two discs that make up our recent appearance at the lovely Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, MN.

New stuff, old stuff, it doesn't really matter.  It was the last show on our second modern day tour of the US, so we're pretty hot, and I'm thankful that we were able to use the in-house recording gear to capture a real stonker of a night.  Thanks to all at the Fitz to their help.

And finally, thanks so much to all the contributors who made this set possible, and of course to John Howells for wanting to do it and pulling it off with great conviction, determination and skill.  And look at that brilliantly mad artwork!

Enjoy!

GP

Buy the Graham Parker and The Rumour Official Bootleg Box here

"THIS IS LIVE"

"THIS IS LIVE"
GP & the Rumour on the set of "This Is 40."
USA release August 2013 (hopefully in the UK/Europe around then, too).

(Being a blurb about the upcoming live DVD/Blu Ray featuring me and the Rumour's complete performances on the set of "This Is 40."
If you don't feel like reading my ramblings below, just go directly to Shout!Factory and make your order:  https://www.shoutfactory.com/node/217652
It's very good.)

  "Three Chords Good" had been recorded in July 2011, but the full band had still not been onstage together since the very end of 1979.  The possibility of touring was no more than that: a possibility, but perhaps one with a certain inevitability behind it.  But there was one gig that by now had become an intriguing certainty.
  We could tell that Judd Apatow was deadly serious about a shoot with the Rumour for his in-progress movie "This Is 40" when the cameras, manned by the Gramaglia crew, who were in the process of producing the documentary "Don't Ask Me Questions," turned up at the studio.  This was Judd's idea, and so by now there was no reason to doubt that we would indeed all meet again for a two-day shoot in Los Angeles scheduled for the last day of August and the first day of September, 2011.  As previously stated, this was going to be our first time onstage together since 1979, and compared with turning up at the Nag's Head in transit vans unloading our own gear in a thunderstorm in some depressed town somewhere, it seemed about as likely as us being booked in the Enormodome to an audience of thousands, but even cooler.
  I was vacationing on the coast way down in the south of North Carolina but had to vacate two days early because of Hurricane Irene.  I got back to New York state in time to be greeted by Hurricane Irene, a monster storm that did less damage to North Carolina than it did to Vermont!  The thing was getting worse as it moved north, and even had the classic eye going for it, which I walked out into in the eerie silence before the back end of it came through with winds hammering outside at an alarming clip.
As the power went out and the garage under the house filled with water and trees bent double, I was never more pleased to know that I was going to be getting on an airplane bound for the West Coast, but whether I'd actually get to the airport was becoming more questionable with every hour.
  The day after the storm, as people were assessing the damage, I called the driver who was sent up from the city to collect me, and told him to wait by the downed tree in the road about 500 yards away.
  "I'll bring my stuff and climb over it," I told the driver.
  It took two and a half hours longer than usual, due to I-87 closing down in at least one section, but I got there, and with the certainty that power would be out for a good eight days, I put the chaos out of my mind and enjoyed the flight, even though Jason Segal was sitting behind me and talked - I kid you not - for the entire 5 hours of the flight!  (When the plane landed, the guy next to me said: "I cant believe that guy behind us talked for the entire flight!"  I agreed, equally incredulous.)  But I had put the headphones on to block out the racket and watched "Arthur," trying not to pick up too many of Russell Brand's mannerisms, because at some point in this upcoming two-day shoot, I was also going to be doing a little acting, my second attempt after having already been on-set for a couple of weeks previously when they shot the backyard party scene of Pete and Debbie's birthday celebrations (my bit with Charlene Yi in that session didn't make the cut, but there might be some of it as an extra on the Blu Ray; I don't know, because I haven't got a Blu Ray player) and I did not want to go all Russell Brand on its ass.
  So, I arrived in LA and checked into the Sunset Marquis, an old stomping ground for me, until the modern world - which favors only people of great wealth - made its prices beyond that of most people who aren't Hedge Fund managers, or Sting.  I found my way to this whole new area of recent development on its now vast grounds, walking into my "room," which was big enough to house a small nation, where I studied the bathroom fixtures, wondering what had gone wrong with my life that a hotel room (more a cottage, really) like this was now something I would have to take a out a mortgage to stay in.  "I thought I was doing alright!" I was thinking.    "Oh, right, I am," my feverish brain reminded me.  "I'm a principal actor in a Judd Apatow movie." (Jet lag...what can I tell you?)
  Once I finally got over my almost erotic fixation on the finer points of bathroom design, I put on some trunks and strolled down to the pool, where I found three Rumour members, two in the water looking svelte, one at full stretch on a couch about the size of the hotel rooms I usually crash in.
  The band members who had arrived from the UK recounted their pampered 1st class Virgin Airways flights, describing their onboard seats/beds as being about the same size as the hotel rooms they usually stayed in, and a jolly time was had by all as the rest of the band members drifted around, and there we were, GP and Rumour, in somebody else's element.
  After a day or two of rehearsal, we were picked up outside the hotel at the usual amusing movie-making time of around 6AM and were driven (in a behemoth Mercedes van) to the Belasco Theater, about 50 minutes downtown in the already miserable Los Angeles traffic.  The parking lot had been taken over by the trailers, and I found my one (my name on the door, natch) and stepped inside into the air conditioned arctic temperature, did some vocal warm-ups, had a breakfast fit for a king followed by make-up and dress, followed by the call and a walk next door to the Belasco itself.
  It was probably about 9AM when we stepped inside the theater to be greeted by a large melee of crew members and extras milling about, all swathed in a cloud of dry ice, making it feel unsettlingly like it was actually about 10PM and the show was about to start.  What a joint!  This place had apparently been closed down since about the same time as me and the Rumour had called it quits and had only recently been reopened after an excellent refurbishment with many art deco details preserved.
  Judd and I had agreed on a set list of about 12 songs, which I knew we would have to perform over and over again in various configurations with a multitude of camera angles each time.  Two long days.  Singing "Protection" at 10 in the morning may not be ideal, but I'll take it, and we had a great time onstage hitting that natural musical symbiosis that we always had.  And we looked pretty good, too, as good as you can make a bunch of blokes who can get bus and tube passes in London for free can look at any rate.  Even extras, in the breaks, were asking me: "Are you on iTunes?  You guys are great!"
  Well, a new fan is a new fan.

  There was talk right off the bat of the possibility of the footage at some point being edited together and sold as a stand-alone DVD.  The generosity of Judd and music supervisor Jonathan Karp did indeed come through, as it did with everything else they proposed, and some of the "This Is 40" folks who put in the time for this are noted in the credits, but I'd also like to thank all the producers and technicians who worked on the film and got behind us, some in big ways, some in small, and all of it important.  And it's nice to have your show introduced by Paul Rudd.

  The sound and visuals are really something to behold.  This will not happen again...

Enjoy,

GP