Jan. 19, 1949— Robert Palmer, a British rocker whose suave style—embodied in notorious MTV videos
of the 1980s—coexisted with eclectic musical tastes and a powerful, soulful
delivery, was born in Batley, Yorkshire, England.
Until the end of the ‘80s, I did not have cable TV,
not alone MTV. For the longest time, then, I didn’t know what the fuss was
about over the video “Addicted to Love,” in which Palmer, decked out in a slick
suit, was backed by guitar-strumming, vacant-gazed, miniskirted models—like a GQ fashion icon cavorting with rock ‘n’
roll fembots.
It’s hard to think that in the current MeToo
environment, fashion photographer Terence Donovan could have shot such a video,
and even in 1985 the tune was fodder for feminist protests over its obvious
objectification of women.
But Palmer dismissed the whole matter airily. For
him, eight albums into a career with its share of up-and-downs, the controversy
was probably worth it for creating a #1 hit, thrusting itself enough into the
music community’s consciousness that the singer-songwriter finally won a Grammy
for best male rock vocal performance.
The visual gyrations on this and his other songs in
heavy MTV rotation at the time obscure the fact that no slinky, tightly dressed
women were needed to accentuate the song’s inherent swagger and sexuality. If
you don’t believe me, then check out this YouTube clip of Palmer performing the song live in 1997, with the Mighty
Max Weinberg on drums and a pounding horn section.
His mid-1980s commercial success represented only
one point in Palmer’s long creative journey. Amazingly, over the course of his
all-too-short 54 years alive, he may have traversed even more musical than geographic distance.
The Yorkshire native spent most of his childhood and
youth on Malta, where his father served as a naval intelligence officer.
The
youngster’s interest in multiple musical genres began on that island, because the
American Forces Network, an English–language radio service for U.S. troops
stationed in Europe, broadcast soul, rhythm and blues, and jazz.
When he returned to Yorkshire in his early teens,
Palmer began playing in bands.
"I joined a band because I didn't like
school and there's nothing else I'd rather have done,” he later explained to The Face Magazine. In 1968, restless, he
quit his graphic arts job to go to London and pursue music for good.
While playing at one point or another the guitar,
keyboards, bass and even drums, Palmer’s ultimate instrument was his voice. In
the live footage I have seen of him, he is, simply, the front man, always impeccably
dressed as he wields the microphone.
Although Palmer released his first LP, Sneakin' Sally Through the Alley, in
1974, I did not start to follow him in earnest until 1978, when he released the
marvelously upbeat, Caribbean-flavored single “Every Kinda People.”
His
follow-up a year later, the LP Secrets,
scored another hit with the driving “Bad Case of Loving You,” though I was more
captivated with his cover of Todd Rundgren’s “Can We Still Be Friends?”
As a songwriter, Palmer returned continually to the
theme of the tangled relations between men and women. That, along with his
natty attire, encouraged many to view him as a Romeo for the video era. But he
could get restless with his image, just as he could with all the places where
he lived over the years.
“I guess I think of myself as a romantic, but it’s a
weighted word these days,” he said in an interview for “Cover Story: Robert Palmer,” on the USA Network. “I don’t
like any dogma or formality.”
The singer was equally eager to slip loose from conventional
musical categories.
"I'm only interested in, I only like songs," he told
an interviewer once. "There's no groups or singers that I like at all. I
like songs by a lot of different people, but I'm certainly not a fan of
anybody. I make up cassettes all the time -- to take on the road with me -- a
song from this album, a song from that album. That's the way I listen to music;
it's like one of those K Tel things, it's from all over. I listen to Fred
Astaire, I listen to African folk music, I listen to Talking Heads."
One thing I love about YouTube: the way it brings to
light dozens of songs you never knew existed by a favorite performer.
In this
regard, I would definitely have to mention Palmer’s cover of Marvin Gaye’s classic “Mercy, Mercy Me,” in a medley with "I Want You." (In an interview with Arsenio Hall immediately following that performance, he all too modestly noted, "I can't top Marvin's licks, only cop them.")
Unlike many contemporaries coming up in the early
Seventies, Palmer resisted a hedonistic lifestyle. "I loved the music, but
the excesses of rock 'n' roll never really appealed to me at all," he once
told Los Angeles Times writer Dennis
McLellan. "I couldn't see the point of getting up in front of a lot of
people when you weren't in control of your wits."
But if drinking and recreational drugs were not for
Palmer, he couldn’t resist an addiction of a different kind: to cigarettes.
Smoking caused the heart attack that in 2003 struck him down at age 54, shocking and
saddening thousands of fans like myself.
As I write this, I imagine him at age
70, a silver-haired fox traversing eras and styles in his dapper suits and
passion for any music that caught his fancy.
His good friend Sting described his professional and
personal appeal with economy but heart to People:
"He was a fabulous singer. A gentleman. And underrated."
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