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Prologue
Try spending the important years of your life listening exclusively to, on alternating days, Clash, Sex Pistols, Damned, and Stiff Little Fingers; I'm sure you wouldn't come out alive because it takes a beastly constitution, like a Pinhead, to get through it.
I had a problematic adolescence, I admit, but what doesn't kill, strengthens.
And then there's always someone who comes to give me a hand, maybe in an unconscious way.
Take my beloved big brother... One of the few good things he's done in his inconclusive career as a music lover was bringing home Graham Parker's «Live! Alone in America».
How that record managed to pull me out of the tunnel, I can't explain, but it worked, and now I'm here to tell you some stories about my ideal relationship with good old Graham – by the way, did you know that before placing himself in front of a microphone full-time, he allegedly attended to a gas station?
Regardless of urban legends, I have only two steadfast certainties about him: the first, he sports the most terrifying sunglasses ever conceived by a designer; the second, the covers of the first albums are horrible, in order of horribleness, the easy winner is «Squeezing out sparks», followed by «Heat treatment» and «Howlin' wind»; on the other hand, I actually like the cover of «Stick to me» a lot. Of course, on the cover of «Stick to me», Graham doesn’t stand out.
Because our man doesn’t really have the physique du role to play rock’n’roll. And if you think that at the time (late '70s, roughly) the past, present, and future of rock’n’roll is a cool cat like Bruce Springsteen, you see why Graham can't harbor the slightest hope. In my room, I would have hung up a poster with Springsteen’s big face like on «Darkness at the edge of town» or «The river» in no time, and I would have even wallpapered the whole house with them if only mom and dad had allowed me; I don't think there are even posters of Graham, somewhat like with the Undertones.
And this is the first point in favor of Graham, because losers, the downtrodden, the losers, call them what you will, the moral is always the same, they fascinate me terribly. Ten billion flies are dead wrong, no doubt; just like the billions of music lovers who in this valley of tears have never given Graham an opportunity; and if you disagree, prepare to eat crap and mosh to the beat of Billy Joel.
First Act – In loveoooo, more and moreoooo ...
With Graham, it was love at first listen.
My goodness, love didn’t strike so much for the songs as it did for a jest in «Live! Alone in America». At one point, he charmingly and disdainfully exclaims: «Damn, I love this Country, if there are even those who think Billy Joel is rock’n’roll! I love this Country, and God bless you all»; the translation is very loose, but the substance is one hundred percent this. And tell me if this miserable underproletarian, alone on a stage with a guitar slung over his shoulder and in front of a sizable Yankee audience, wouldn’t also have immediately become your personal hero if only you had lent an ear to these memorable ten seconds, ignoramuses that you are. Also because the Clash didn’t promote «I'm so bored with the U.S.A.» much during their American tours, and there were four of them; Graham, alone, goes to play in the U.S.A. and even mocks the audience that comes to listen to him.
This man is a great: Graham The Man, forget Van!
Then, I fell in love with the music, needless to say.
Because try, again, not to collapse listening to Graham The Man's first four works.
It seems it was pub-rock, translated a bit of rock’n’roll and a bit of proto-punk.
If that's the case, Graham was (is) one of the greatest: because if Carl Perkins storms in with «Blue suede shoes», Graham holds firm with «Soul shoes», and there's more for Chuck Berry and his «School day», and anyone who knows Graham knows exactly what I mean and can’t disagree with me, and for everyone else, I hint at «Back to schooldays»; and if Springsteen comes up with a spine-chilling ballad like «Racing in the streets» (the most beautiful ever), he responds with «Watch the moon come down» (the second most beautiful ever); the Pistols shout, rant, and rail in «E.M.I.», while Graham pulls that genuine anthem «Mercury poisoning» out of his hat, a marriage between soul and punk as no one has ever had, nor ever will have, the audacity to celebrate (well, maybe the only ones would be the Redskins); and when, together with the Rumour, they launch into «(Hey Lord) Don't ask me questions» and «Protection», they almost seem to intone to contemporaries like Clash, Stiff Little Fingers, Ruts, and company: «Clear the way because here we come ...» and we'll teach you how to conjugate the reggae verb in our way.
The Rumour, God curse me, I have enclosed them between two miserable commas, but anyone who has Graham Parker in their heart, has surely reserved a little spot for Brinsley Schwarz and, sneakily, also for Nick Lowe, and the more of us there are, the better. I say Brinsley and Nick here and I let them go here and, sooner or later, in another moment of drunkenness, I'll find them again, otherwise may God curse me and strike me down too.
And then there are tons and tons of soul music, but «Something you're goin' thru'» and «The heat in Harlem», one after the other, are a treacherous attack on the coronary arteries of every living being, and no one renders «Cupid» like Graham Parker.
Second Act – And yet, I've forgotten about you ...
Then, after a few years lost wandering without a precise goal among the sounds of those Dream Syndicate and Green On Red, Giant Sand and Thin White Rope, Died Pretty, and Plan 9 (all introduced to the house by my beloved big brother), Cupid truly arrives – because I had no doubt that sooner or later he would come to mess up the few confused ideas that haunt me – and proves to know me well, leaving me with an endless passion for the Ramones brothers, the nickname Pinhead, and a black as pitch electric guitar, which I still harshly mistreat to this day.
More or less in those crowded times, my big brother, not knowing how to squander a sizable heritage, brings home Graham Parker’s anthology «Look back in anger» too: but then, he still thinks that Graham Parker is the soul singer immortalized in «Live! Alone in America» and doesn’t even suspect the existence of pub-rock, I'm busy with other matters, so «Look back in anger» wins the not-so-envied title of “least listened-to record of the discotheque,” and Graham Parker slowly, slowly but surely, fades away from my thoughts.
Not even a little passion for the Dr. Feelgood is enough to bring it back, even if it might have reminded me of Brinsley Schwarz. But no, nothing, completely obfuscated.
English punk did some damage to me, but only because it attacked me from behind when I was an innocent child unable to react; but Cupid and the Ramones were lethal, they confronted me head-on, and although being a big guy, they literally annihilated me and wiped the slate clean, like even Attila wouldn't have been able to do.
Graham Parker, who? Going out to watch the moon come down? Come on! When there's a moon shining in the sky, I go out with my girlfriend to have fun and I rudely invite her to dance, absolutely (do you wanna dance under the moonlight ... do do do do you wanna dance).
Bad story.
Third Act – You come back to my miiiiind ...
I haven't and will never come out of the Ramones' tunnel, simply because I don't want to.
But then there's always someone who comes to show me faint glimmers, even if unconsciously.
About twenty days ago, a random someone (my beloved big brother) comes to the house, casually looks at the cover of a music magazine, bursts into the usual: «You really listen to random crap!», then looks at the back cover and says «Ohhhhh, Graham Parker! But do you still have the live?» He noticed that there’s a newly released best of by Graham and – a sudden flash – he remembers that live album bought over 25 years ago.
For him, it’s a flash, for me, it’s a blow between the head and neck. I haven’t listened to Graham Parker in a quarter of a lifetime!
And you know what? I don't pick up «Howlin' wind» or «Heat treatment» but «Look back in anger» and it's another blow between the head and neck, making what I told you four lines above seem like a caress with a feather from my Moncler duvet, a relic from an unfortunate past as a yuppie.
I tell myself: «I’ll buy this best of and give it to my beloved big brother», maybe it's the right time he falls in love with the full-of-soul-and-grit Graham Parker, the one who goes to get drunk every evening in the pub downstairs and starts one fight after another and then is always late in the morning at the gas station, so the boss gives him an endless dressing-down and he finally breaks and tells him to go to hell and quits but that's not the end but the beginning of the story of Graham The Man who sets himself in front of a microphone full-time and first comes «Between you and me», then «White honey», then «Stick to me», and then and then and then ...
The album arrived a couple of weeks ago, I listen to it and it really is good, but then when «Protection» kicks in, which I've already listened to a hundred times, something happens, a bit like when I first listened to Graham 25 years ago, intent on making fun of Billy Joel.
I’ll give the album to my beloved big brother in a few days, and I hope it goes as it should.
In the meantime, I have fallen madly and again in love with Graham Parker, and it's a feeling even stronger than the first time, or maybe just deeper, because there's a lot of lost time to make up for.
Epilogue
The end of the story, which however has many morals: the first is that Lucio Battisti is a great, not as much as Graham Parker, but he is great; the second is that my beloved big brother brought home a ton of simply amazing records; the third is that this review is one of the most precious fragments of a personal amorous discourse and that I could be the new Roland Barthes, if it’s not me, who else could it be.
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