WAMG Talks To GRAHAM PARKER – THIS IS 40

Graham Parker isn’t quite ready to give up his rock and roll to act, but in Judd Apatow’s THIS IS 40, he put his acting chops to the test as a rock and roll legend with less than stellar album sales.

This past week Mr. Parker and I discussed his role in the film, the reunion of The Rumour, and getting up at the crack of dawn to be on set. Check out our discussion below.

From the director of Knocked Up and The 40-Year-Old Virgin comes an unfiltered, comedic look inside the life of an American family. After years of marriage, Pete (Paul Rudd) and Debbie (Leslie Mann) are approaching a milestone meltdown. As they try to balance romance, careers, parents and children in their own hilarious ways, they must also figure out how to enjoy the rest of their lives. Featuring Melissa McCarthy, Jason Segel, Megan Fox, John Lithgow and Albert Brooks, This is 40 is a candid and heartwarming comedy about the challenges and rewards of marriage and parenthood in the modern age.

You play a character that basically sinks his record label in THIS IS 40. How did Judd Apatow approach you for this project, and what did he say to convince you to come onboard?

HAHAHA! Very delicately! I like to say what he came to me and said was “We need a loser in this film Graham, and you’re it! How bout it?”, but he approached it a little more carefully than that. He had this idea that one of the acts that the character Pete signs to his label… Pete’s signing a lot of people from the 70’s and 80’s… this is kind of his speciality… which a lot of indie labels do, honestly. Quite a few do. He had the idea that he needed one of those people in the film, to be a character, and he wasn’t quite sure who to get. As he explained it to me, while he was in this process… because he’s said… when I’ve been on a panel with him… he’d mentioned that he had some trepidation about it because he had to say to someone “You’re going to be the act that is selling so poorly that it’s probably going to sink the record label” and he’s like “who do I ask to do that?”. Anybody, I think, in their right mind would want to be in a Judd Apatow movie, whatever they were. I mean, they could be someone who gets trampled on by dogs… whatever… and disappear after two seconds… “I’ll do it! It’s Judd Apatow!”. I like his work. It’s great, and he’s the king of comedy. This was brilliant, so it went down very well with me, and I basically hammed it up out of all proportions.

One of the reasons he thought of me is because he’s a fan. He’s also a fan of a lot of the acts on the label. You know, what’s his name is mentioned quite a few times from the Pixies, Frank Black… So, he came to me because I wrote an essay or a blog on my website about my last album, which is called “Imaginary Television”. The songs are based on the plots of TV shows that don’t exist. That was basically a device that I used to kick myself into writing songs. I came up with these ideas for TV shows, and wrote songs based on them. It was a very interesting device to make new songs, and to try new angles of song writing. So, that album had come out and I had put a blog on my website explaining what the album was about, and how I came up with it, and somehow I said “Judd Apatow call me” in a rather facetious manner… meaning that Judd should be reading the synopsis of the scripts that I’d written for these phony shows. He could be turning them into TV shows. C’mon Judd! It was all a bit facetious, but somebody pointed it out to Judd and said “You should read this.”… and he read it and said “Ahh, Graham Parker. This is a sign.” and, yeah, he took it as a sign that I would be the man to contact.

When we met up, we hit it off, and he stuck with his convictions and kept me in it… which is an amazing thing. I thought it would fall apart many times. I thought, I can’t believe I am going to last and be in this movie, and the next thing I know… eventually I’m on an airplane, and, like “Wow”, I guess this is getting real.

You reunited with your band right before all of this happened, and actually released a new album. How do you think this film has impacted your album sales, and how did the reunion actually come about?

Well, the reunion came about quite by accident. I wanted to get the drummer of The Rumour, and the bass player… and I wanted them to do an album with me as a trio, because I’ve played with both of them in the past, especially Andrew, the bass player, on various albums… and Steve, the drummer. We’ve all been in touch, including other members of the band, and worked with each other, on occasion, individually. I thought it’d be great to have a trio. I had no thought of reforming the band. I had a bunch of songs written, and I just didn’t think in that sense… and then, Steve made a joke about it. He emailed back and said “Great. I’ll do it. Now, what if we get the rest of the guys. That would be a proper band”, and before I knew it I was emailing everybody, and they were all saying “Yeah! Of course!” so, there it was. The story goes, a week or two after I’d already had them committed, Judd gets a hold of me.

I have no idea what the results of this will be. I know that it’s definitely added a great deal of excitement to The Rumour reunion, and to our shows… and to the fans. It’s definitely given them this feeling of “We knew this would happen to Graham!” (Laughs) and, there’s a certain amount of “YAY! Well done GP!” (laughs) I think it’s a good… sort of celebratory thing for my fans, and hopefully a few new people will pick up on this. And, to fans that have gone on to have kids… and have gone on with their lives not knowing if I still existed or not… I mean, there’s plenty of people I get at gigs that come up to me at the merch table that say “I loved you in 1980, and then life happened, and now I find out that you’ve been working this whole time, and making all these albums!” so there’s definitely all of that stimulation… It’s a pretty good thing to have at the ripe old age of 62.

As a musician, what was the most challenging thing about acting, and transitioning onto a film set?

Well, being up at six in the morning, I guess. “Ok, we’ll meet you outside of your hotel at quarter after 5.” That’s like dawn in Los Angeles. I mean, I’ve never seen that before… apart from coming from the wrong way! In other words, being up all night and seeing it. This was actually getting up, and getting down to the set, and finding yourself on stage at 9 with the band… and doing songs like “Protection”, which is kind of intense to be singing at 10 o’clock… and then you’re singing it all day long. We would do songs three in a row, and then Judd would come up and discuss what other songs we would do, because we picked a set out, of about 15 songs, and we’d do them over and over again… for two days. It’s a little odd to do this. It’s not like a show, where you do it, and then it’s done… where you start at 8:30, and it’s done in an hour and a half or an hour and forty-five. It’s a very different discipline.

THIS IS 40 is available on Blu-Ray and DVD now