Robert Palmer: from American Forces Radio to Addicted to Love

Robert Palmer's glossy 1980s image can hide how long he worked before it arrived. Born in Batley in 1949, he moved to Malta with his family when he was only a few months old, because his father worked in British naval intelligence. There the radio did the teaching: American Forces Radio fed him blues, soul and jazz until the family returned to England when he was twelve.

He grew up in Scarborough, joined his first band, the Mandrakes, at fifteen, and briefly studied art. His break came in 1969 when he was invited to London to sing on the Alan Bown Set's single “Gypsy Girl”, and he re-recorded the vocals for their album. In 1970 he joined the twelve-piece jazz-rock band Dada alongside Elkie Brooks and Pete Gage, and from that grew Vinegar Joe, a soul and rock outfit with Palmer on rhythm guitar and shared lead vocals. They made three albums for Island before splitting in 1974.

Island then signed him as a solo artist, and his first record, Sneakin' Sally Through the Alley, was cut in New Orleans with the Meters as the backing band and Lowell George of Little Feat producing. Pressure Drop followed in 1975, named after the Toots and the Maytals reggae song and featuring Motown bassist James Jamerson. When the next album failed, Palmer moved to Nassau in the Bahamas, right across the street from Compass Point Studios. Journalist Paul Lester called him the master of several styles.

By the 1980s the pieces had come together. “Addicted to Love” in 1986 and its video, shot by fashion photographer Terence Donovan, came to epitomise the glamour and excess of the decade, and he also found success with the Power Station. Songs like “Every Kinda People” and “Can We Still Be Friends” belong to the earlier, softer part of that story. Palmer won two Grammy Awards for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance and died of a heart attack in 2003, aged fifty-four.