THIS IS JOHN PARR SO WHERE’S ELMO?

FEATURES

THIS IS JOHN PARR SO WHERE’S ELMO?

Harold DeMuir

Suppose you’re a recording artist. You’ve got a major label deal and a highpowered manager. You’ve had two hit singles. Your songs have been featured prominently in three motion pictures. You’ve written material for Roger Daltrey and Meat Loaf. You’ve toured with Tina Turner, for chrissake. And your recentlyreleased second album seems certain to boost your career, which has been progressing quite nicely in the couple of years you’ve been releasing records.

Bet you’re pretty pleased with yourself, eh?

Not if you’re John Parr.

The multi-talented (singin’, writin’, playin’ and producin’) 31-year-old Englishman still doesn’t consider himself a success. Behind that earnest, easygoing demeanor is a man who’s spent much of his life honing his musical skills on stage—and who, now more than ever, is driven by an intense, consuming desire for public acceptance, as both an artist and a star.

"Performing is what I do, and, lose money or not, I feel the need to prove that I've got the goods."

While hip-cool critics may note the effortless commerciality of his records and instantly write him off as a lightweight, Parr is very serious about his work, and it shows. For all their mainstream appeal, Parr’s hits—“Naughty Naughty” (from his 1985 debut LP, John Parr) and “St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion)” (from that stupid St. Elmo’s Fire film soundtrack)—stand out in their melodic toughness and attention to detail.

To an outsider, Parr’s concern with living up to his own exacting standards can seem a bit obsessive. When I catch up with him, for instance, he’s preparing for his second appearance on David Brenner’s late-night TV talk show. On the surface, this ought to be a fairly routine plug of Parr’s new platter, Running The Endless Mile. But for the musician, it’s nothing less than an opportunity to exorcise a bothersome old ghost.

“The last time I did the Brenner show,” ne explains, “my voice was burned-out from doing interviews, and I was using the band from the show instead of my live band ... and I was fuckin’ bad. Nobody said to me, 'Man, you were shit,’ but I knew I was, and it pissed me off. I thought, This is what I’m supposed to be great at, and I went in front of all those people and wasn’t how I expected to be.’ It’s been torture, and tonight I’m gonna go out there and kick ass and set myself free again.”

When Parr’s first album was released, his U.S. label, Atlantic, circulated a ridiculous but attention-grabbing story about the artist being a mysterious amnesiac discovered wandering the English moors by former Who manager John Wolff. Somewhat more plausible was the subsequently-printed tale in which Parr met Wolff after being trampled at a London rock show and temporarily losing his memory.

Parr’s actual (I think) background is more instructive. He began playing in bands as a mere sprout, during the late 1960s; his first manager was his dad. “I was entertaining people as a little kid,” Parr relates. “At eight years old, I used to sing at Saturday matinees. By the time I was 12,1 was playing in clubs for money. We were playing, and it was going great, and I thought, ‘Well, it’s just a matter of time now.’ I honestly felt I was gonna be a big star by the time I was 16 years old.”

When adolescent fame failed to materialize, the ultra-motivated kid was in agony. “It was a curse!” he recalls. “I didn’t put it there—it was just this thing burning in my gut, and it was driving me crazy. It always felt like I was just naturally gonna be a star—it was always, when I do this, when I do that. Everybody around me was saying, ‘Man, you have something, I know you’re gonna do it.’ And there I was, 28 years old, getting nowhere.

“My naivete was in thinking that, just because I was great onstage and had a few original tunes, some talent scout was gonna see me and give me a start. What I really needed to do was sit down and write songs and record them in a studio.

I never really did that until I was 28, when I said to my parents, ‘Look, I’m not gonna earn any money for the next couple of years. I’m gonna lock myself away in a studio. Do you mind paying the bills for a while?’ That’s a pretty odd thing for your parents to swallow when you’re 28, but they did, and that was the key.”

Ironically, Parr’s straightforward style, which we Americans accept as natural and accessible, was considered uncommercial in the singer’s homeland. “Britain is really motivated by fashion and looks first, I think. What I used to find was, they’d say, ‘We’ll sign you, but could you make it a bit more Duran Duran?’ Being in my mid-20s at that point, I was already a bit past it for them, and my own arrogance kept me from compromising my music. And, as a last resort, we came to America and got a deal, and had a hit almost instantly.”

While the first LP stuck mainly to sleek, melodic medium-heavy guitar rock, Running The Endless Mile shows a bit more versatility, from the anthemic dynamics of “Two Hearts” (originally heard in the crappy teen pic American Anthem) to the radio-ready hyper-pop of “Blame It On The Radio” to the moody, low-key funk of “The Story Still Remains The Same.”

True to form, Parr flung himself headfirst into the making of Running. He’d orginally wanted to work with an outside producer, either “St. Elmo’s Fire” collaborator David Foster or metal vet Mutt Lange, in order to concentrate on his performance. Neither was available, though, so Parr ended up handling production chores himself.

“It was very emotional, a lot of paranoia,” he reports. “I was blessed by working with some great players, but the bottom line was that I was on my own. I knew I could make the record the way I wanted it to sound, but I didn’t really fancy the work load, and all the endless questions I was gonna have to ask myself. There’s always a lot of worry. I’m always very aware of rhythm and things, and unless the groove is right it really bothers me. The end result was a happy one, but it was tremendous hard work, and it’s not something I relish doing again.

“This record is really the record that I wanted to make the last time. When I made the first one, I only had a record deal in America, so I kind of tightened it up and tailored it for the American rock ’n’ roll thing. Now I have record deals around the world, so I’m trying to satisfy different tastes, as well as my own artistic interests. This record’s a cleaner production, and it’s not quite as edgy as the other one was. But the live show will definitely be a rock ’n’ roll show.”

Though “Naughty Naughty” established his hard-rock credentials, Parr says he’d prefer to find a niche as a multifaceted jack-of-all-styles, using other artists as an outlet for his less-rocky compositions.

“For my own stuff, I don’t want to step too far outside the boundaries that I’ve established on the new record. Even now, I’ve got certain songs that people are telling me I should record, and I go, ‘No, it’s not really me.’ Like, I’m working on something right now which hopefully is gonna go to Whitney Houston. It’s like a ’40s Cole Porter tune. It would be a beautiful one for me, but people would think I’ve turned into Barry Manilow, so I’d rather just give it to someone else.”

In addition to his tunesmithing, Parr’s services as a producer are also in demand. "My big dilemma now is that I have the choice of accepting these very lucrative production offers, or touring here in the spring and possibly losing money. The production offers are very tempting, because I did nothing in 1986 but spend money. I’m halfway to having my own studio finished, so I could retire to producing if I’d like, without all this hassle. But performing is what I do, and, lose money or not, I feel the need to prove that I’ve got the goods.

“Eventually, there’s gonna come a point where I’m gonna have to say ‘Enough already,’ but I hope I achieve success before that. I’m gonna keep trying, because I’m determined. If I don’t become as big as I want to be, then I will feel that I’ve failed, and I don’t like to fail, but I’m a big boy and I can take it. I’m not a quitter, but I’m also not someone who’s gonna bang his head against the wall forever. But I love this business so much that I would still like to be involved as a backroom person, working as a producer and writer, developing new artists.”

Parr has long expressed a desire to not emerge from his music-industry experiences as a typically jaded biz type. But, he admits, “I think I’m a bit more cynical about things than I was two years ago, and I don’t like that about myself. I’ve always been a realist, but there is a cynicism within me now that seems to fight with my positivity. That’s something that I’ve noticed more and more. Even with all of the good things that have happened to me, I think I feel more frustrated now than I ever felt before.

“Like a lot of other people, I’m always chasing this dream, and the dream is always out of reach. It has to be out of reach, because when you get to a point of no forward movement, it’s time for retirement.

“I’m kind of a hybrid,” Parr sums up, “and I don’t think there are many people walking on the line I’m walking on now. I’m kind of between two stools, and because there isn’t a pigeonhole available for me, I think I’ve got a bit of a problem at the moment. But hopefully, out of that problem, you can step into being a major artist.

“I grew up in what I consider to be the richest time in history, between the ’60s and the ’80s. Some of the greatest changes in the human race, and the greatest things we’ve achieved, have occurred in my lifetime, and everything I am and everything I do is made up of all those influences. I’m a product of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, TamlaMotown, man landing on the moon, Muhammad Ali, John Kennedy getting shot, John Lennon getting shot ... I’m a person who has lived through and been formed into a musician by all of those things, and I’ve been earning my living onstage for 18 years. I firmly believe that I have something to say on record that people will want to hear, and I think they won’t regret spending their seven dollars on my album.”