21 Facts About Graham Parker

Graham Parker was a pupil at Chobham Secondary Modern School in Surrey.

Graham Parker left school at 16 and went to work at the Animal Virus Research Institute in Pirbright, Surrey, where he bred animals for foot-and-mouth disease research.

Graham Parker returned to mainland England for a year, living in Chichester in Sussex where he worked at the Chichester Rubber Glove Factory.

From France, Graham Parker hitchhiked through Spain to Morocco, where he travelled around for a year before moving to Gibraltar.

Graham Parker's guitar playing and writing skills were improving, and after playing songs to a few locals in a bar, he found himself on an afternoon show on Gibraltar television where he performed two or three of his own songs.

At that time, a strongly psychedelic influenced band named Pegasus often played in the same bar and asked Graham Parker to join them.

Graham Parker was growing out of the hippie trappings and decided the band needed to learn a few songs that involved major keys and so taught the members some of the soul numbers he had loved as a youth, including Wilson Pickett's "In The Midnight Hour".

In late 1972, Graham Parker returned to England and lived with his parents, working at a petrol station around the corner from his childhood home in Deepcut.

Graham Parker had one track, "Back to Schooldays", released on the compilation album, A Bunch of Stiff Records for Stiff Records.

At this point, Graham Parker began to change his songwriting style, hoping to break into the American market.

The group made a second Australian tour in late 1979, when Graham Parker appeared on Countdown as a guest presenter.

Graham Parker had long been dissatisfied with the performance of Mercury Records, finally issuing in 1979 as a single B-side "Mercury Poisoning" a song that directly attacked it.

Steady Nerves was recorded in New York City, and Graham Parker began living mostly in the United States during this time.

Graham Parker began producing his own recordings and issued The Mona Lisa's Sister.

Graham Parker continued to record for RCA through the early 1990s.

Graham Parker's 1991 offering, Struck By Lightning, had Bodnar and Pete Thomas in the backing band, as well as guest appearances from The Band's Garth Hudson on keyboards and John Sebastian on autoharp.

Also in 2003, Graham Parker contributed a solo acoustic version of Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" to the compilation album, A Fair Forgery of Pink Floyd.

Graham Parker published a set of short stories, Carp Fishing on Valium, in June 2000.

In early 2011, Graham Parker reunited with all five original members of The Rumour to record a new album, Three Chords Good.

Later, in July 2018, Graham Parker announced Cloud Symbols, his brand new studio album to be released on 21 September 2018.

Graham Parker announced a solo, acoustic 40th Anniversary version of Squeezing Out Sparks, for an 13 April 2019 release.