Lions & Ghosts

Lions & Ghosts was a late Eighties Los Angeles rock band playing melodic, bittersweet, slightly psychedelic pop. Front man and main songwriter Rick Parker found inspiration in decadent French poet Charles Baudelaire. The influence shows up in Parker's lyrics as a preoccupation with doomed romance, neon-illuminated city nights and lost innocence. Their first album, Velvet Kiss, Lick Of The Lime (1987), featured lush production by Peter Walsh (strings by Tony Visconti) and provided the band with a couple of modest hits.

Wild Garden, their second album (1989), had a leaner production and more straight rock songs. The album did not sell, and the band broke up.
Parker made the solo album Wicked World in 1992, but his kind of music had become unfashionable (grunge had happened) and the album was a commercial failure. Parker later formed the band Sparkler which released one album, Wicker Park, in 1997. He's gone on to be a record producer and to write songs for other artists.