In Profile: ELVIS COSTELLO
It’s been more than a quarter of a century since Elvis Costello’s debut. Terry Staunton looks over the career of one of the most prolific, intrepid and gifted songwriters of all time.
They only wanted the songs at first. When young Decland MacManus started skiving off from the computer department of Elizabeth Arden cosmetics and turning up at the London offices of Stiff Records, the
powers-that-be (-were?) at what was to become one of the world’s most fondly remembered labels had the germ of a plan. How about getting this upstart to write material for Dave Edmunds…?
The Welsh rocker was performing and recording with Nick Lowe, the label’s first signed and house producer, but by his own admission he wasn’t much of a writer, and Lowe was too busy to church out a whole bunch of tunes for his pal. It would seem that Edmunds wasn’t much of a judge of top tunes either, as Costello recalls in the sleeve notes to the latest reissue of his debut ‘My Aim Is Tru’ album, having been offered ‘Mysety Dance’, Edmunds wasn’t convinced, so the writer was sent off to a tiny eight-track studio in North London to beef up his original bedroom demo.
So began the recording of one of the most accomplished and lauded debut albums ever released, and the start of an incredible journey that has seen Costello develop into arguably the most important singer-songwriter in the world since Bob Dylan.
The sheer scope of the music he’s delivered over the years has been breath-taking Refusing to stand still for any length of time, the man born Declan Patrick MacManus on August 25, 1955, has, after dispensing with the “New Wave” tag at the start of his recording career, investigated dozens of varying styles of music, mostly greeted by unanimous critical acclaim, if not always huge commercial success.
But at the heart of every dalliance and diversion has been the Elvis Costello song : a magnificent beast dripping with both musical and lyrical sophistication. Sure, there’s been the occasional throwaway item, but who else has so many classics in their catalogue? He may not have troubled the higher reaches of the singles charts all that often, yet like Dylan there is a wealth of recordings that many people naturally assume were big hits.
“That was a really fuccked up record, (Goodbye Cruel World), That’s the worst one really, because I had all the arrangements arse-backwards, picked the wrong producers, then asked them to do an impossible job, and my marriage was breaking up, it all sounds like a fuckin’ sob story now, but it probably the worst period of my life.”
Beyond his own records, Costello has proved to be the collaborator of choice for a particularly mixed bag of players; he has written for, recorded and performed with some of the biggest and best, including country giants Johnny Cash and George Jones, Roy Orbsion, Paul McCartney, mezzo soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, jazz greats Chet Baker and Tony Bennett, Van Morrison, Carloe King, Burt Bacharach, Christy Moore, Dusty Springfield, Tricky, Chrissie Hyne, Oh, and Wnedy James of Transvision Vamp.
But over these next few pages, we’re going to salute those releases that carry the Elvis name, his own recordings over the last 25 years, albums and songs that have consistently taken the songwriter’s art to a higher plain. As another of his collaborators, theatre singer Lemper, whose 2000 album, ‘Punishing Kiss’ housed three Costello originals (including the title track), said of him: “His poetry and composition are unbelievably sophisticated and complex. He writes like the French intellectuals and poets of the ‘60s, uncompromising, passionate and emotionally disturbed; lost, conversational like Stephen Sondheim, he’s a wicked portraitist and satirist.” That’s a mighty long way form ‘Mystery Dance’ …
What was especially remarkable about ‘My Aim Is True’ was the fact that it was put together in a total of 24 hours studio time (what a difference a day makes!), Elvis frequently pulling a ‘sicky’ from work, and swapping his IBM 360 for a battered Fender. The “vanity factory” (as Costello referred to his workplace in the lyrics of ‘I’m Not Angry’) was no place for such a burgeoning talent: “My duties included printing out invoices for the moustache waxes of the occasional duchess who visited the company’s West End salon,” Elvis recalled. “Some of the work was more tedious.”
Despite Stiff’s vague plan to have Elvis as house writer to complement Lowe as house producer, it was inevitable that Costello would sing his own compositions, having done the whole troubadour bit in clubs and pubs in Liverpool and London since his mid-teens, sometimes under his given name, later as DP Costello (after his great-grandmother), and then as front man of the Band-influenced Flip City. The group’s set in those early days was pretty much a 50-50 split between the singer’s original songs and rootsy Americana covers of the likes of Bob Dylan’s ‘Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door’ and The Amazing Rhythm Aces’ ‘Third Rate Romance’.
Flip City recorded some demos at the Hope & Anchor studios in Islington, North London, part of the pub rock mecca run by Dave Robinson, later to become co-founder of Stiff Records, but it was the singer’s solo home demos that found their way on to DJ Charlie Gillett’s London radio show and ultimately led to the Stiff deal.
Elements of the folkie Elvis (now sporting a new name, courtesy of manager and Stiff boss Jake Riviera) survive in ‘My Aim Is True’, but there is also a venom and anger fitting for the days of punk, albeit in tandem with a formidable lyrical insight and articulacy for a young mane not yet 22. The phrase “unlucky in love “ hardly does it justice, but the aforementioned ‘I’m Not Angry’ and ‘Mystery Dance’, plus such spleen-venting classics as ‘No Dancing’, ‘Red Shoes’ and the delicately beautiful ‘Alison’ are classic anthems of male frustration – mostly written in the first person.
The political Elvis also rears his head in ‘Less Than Zero’, written after seeing a TV interview with Oswald Moseley, who peddled hatred in the 1930s as the former leader of the British Union of Fascists. Curiously, when one American gig reviewer mistakenly wrote that the “Mr Oswald” mentioned in the first line referred to the alleged assassin of JFK, Costello promptly re-wrote the lyrics for Stateside consumption. A live recording of the ‘Dallas Version’ appears on the ‘My Aim Is True’ double-CD reissue.
With ‘My Aim Is True’ in the can, accompanied by worldwide favourable reviews, the time came for Elvis to take to the road with a band. Auditions were held with the temporary assistance of Andrew Bodnar (bass) and Steve Goulding (drums) of Graham Parker’s band The Rumour (the rhythm section who would play on Costello’s first chart hit ‘Watching The Detectives’), and soon The Attractions were born. Keyboard player Steve Nason (later to become Steve Nieve ) was studying composition at the Royal College of Music, while drummer Pete Thomas and bassist Bruce Thomas (no relation) were more familiar with the long hard slog of the touring life, the former in pub rock perennials Chilli Willi & The Red Hot Peppers, the latter with more laid-back performers like Al Stewart or the Sutherland Brothers & Quiver.
The new combo played their first show in Penzance, Cornwall, supporting gender-bending comedy punks Wayne County & The Electric Chairs, just five days after the release of ‘My Aim Is True’, but it wasn’t until the autumn of ’77 that the country at large got to see Costello and The Attractions, as one-fifth of the Live Stiffs package tour which also featured Ian Dury, Nick Lowe, Larry Wallis and Wreckless Eric (indeed at one point Stiff toyed with the idea of Elvis and Eric sharing a debut album, one side apiece).
It was during this outing that The Attractions began to gel into what was arguably one of the greatest live bands ever, the musical dexterity of the three players was such that it allowed Elvis to fly off on vocal tangents, often abandoning playing guitar altogether. Despite what they achieved on stage and in the studio, there was never much closeness between the four individuals – Costello had initially turned Bruce Thomas away at auditions for The Attractions – and the splendour of their musical career was frequently punctuated by friction over the years.
“That lot had a very strange relationship. It was very abrasive, “ producer Nick Lowe told Rolling Stone magazine in 1989. “There was never any real warmth between them, but you don’t have to be in love with the bass player to make great records. They certainly respected each other, but they were never really pals.”
Shortly after the Stiffs tour, and with ‘Watching The Detectives’ firmly ensconced in the Top 20, Jake Riviera left he label to set up Radar Records taking Elvis Costello and Lowe with him. March 1978 saw the release of ‘This Year’s Model’, the first full outing for The Attractions who proved to be much tougher nuts than the Marin County country rockers Clover who backed Elvis on ‘My Aim Is True’. There was a steelier, more urgent sound to this album which came as little surprise to anyone who’d heard the vicious overhaul The Attractions had given Costello’s earlier songs ( the author strongly recommends seeking out the double vinyl live bootleg ’50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong’, the cover aping the famed Presley album of the same name), and the lyrics were again steeped in aggression and dissatisfaction.
Certainly, songs like ‘No Actions’, ‘Lipstick Vogue’ and ‘Little Triggers’ pointed to a character still not having much joy with the ladies, but elsewhere the narrator sneered at the vagaries of style and celebrity on definitive masterpieces ‘This Year’s Girl’ and ‘(I Don’t Want To) Chelsea’ – what would he make of today’s Taras and Tamaras, one wonders?
‘This Year’s Model’ also went a long way to establishing the public perception of Costello as a sulky, nasty piece of work. Whereas the Elvis of ‘My Aim Is True’ was seen as as geeky four-eyed nerd, the man who started out at us from behind a camera tripod on the second album wasn’t the sort of fella you’d want to mess with. He was aware of how his image was developing, but he didn’t seem at all bothered when talking to the NME’s Nick Kent on the album’s release: “I don’t necessarily think I’m going to become a nicer person or a more complete person … this job is not designed to make you nicer, or more mature, even.
I can feel tenderness and I’m not afraid of it, and it isn’t entirely absent from either of my albums. It’s just that everybody with their typical lack of imagination chose to ignore any signs of that completely and plump for the other extremities instead. I would be completely happy to play up to the image of me as a one-dimensional revengeful character all the time. I think I’m more devious than obsessive.”
The album was followed by more extensive touring both in the US and Europe, Bruce Thomas missing several dates after slicing open his hand on a broken beer bottle, but anyone expecting the next album to be another all-out blistering sonic attack form a gang of road-hardened minstrels who been living in the back of a bus, was in for a surprise.
‘Armed Forces’ was an elaborate piece of work, which, at face value appeared to be obsessed with the military (‘Oliver’s Army’, ‘Senior Service’, ‘Goon Squad’, ‘Green Shirt’), but that was largely due to Elvis being in full-on metaphor frenzy mode. A more general theme would be one of control, as suggested by the original working titles of the record. It was initially conceived that the album would be called Little Hitler, but Costello made the mistake of mentioning that to producer Nick Lowe who pinched the title for a track on his own ‘Jesus Of God’ debut. Costello ended up closing the album with the song ‘Two Little Hitler’s’, and an apocryphal tale from the time suggest that Elvis wasn’t convinced about including ‘Oliver’s Army’, until Lowe offered to “take it off his hands”. Another mooted title was ‘Emotional Fascism’.
‘Oliver’s Army’ proved to be the biggie, however, the most out-and-out pop production the Costello-Lowe axis had yet to come up with – hardly surprising when you consider Elvis’s confession on ITV’s The South Bank Show, back in 2001, that the piano intro was ‘inspired’ by one of Abba’s finest moments ‘Dancing Queen’. Perhaps that helped it to sales of over 400,000 and a No.2 placing in the UK singles chart.
‘Armed Forces’ easily became Costello’s biggest-selling album, and would remain so for 10 years. It was the first ‘New Wave’ record to go gold in the US, and even earned him a prestigious Grammy nomination for Best New Artist. The fact that he lost out not to hot favourites, The Cars, but to one-hit-wonder dance duo A Taste Of Honey (remember that classic ‘Boogie Oogie Oogie’?) is still a source of bafflement to industry watchers the world over.
Still, America’s love affair with Elvis continued, with one radio station receiving a quarter of a million phone calls for tickets to a New York club show with a capacity of little more than a thousand. It was this that indirectly led to one of the great Costello stories of the time; manager Jake Riviera thought such demand could only be met by booking his artist to play Shea Stadium, scene of legendary Beatles shows in the mid-‘60s, but the US label Columbia refused to underwrite such a costly venture. Riviera promptly sent each senior executive a shovel, accompanied by a note reading: “If you really want to bury my act, I thought you could do with some help.”
The next stage in the Costello story is hampered by murky legal battles involving Riviera, Radar Records and parent company WEA, all too space-consuming to go into here. Suffice to say that after a brief delay which saw rumours of Elvis signing to Coventry’s 2-Tone label (copies of ‘I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down’ were pressed but ultimately given away at a London concert). The new Costello offering ‘Get Happy!’ appeared on the equally new F-Beat label, again with Riviera at the helm. After the lush and highly polished ‘Armed Forces’, this 20-track (20!) release too many by surprise, as it featured Elvis, if not returning to his roots, then certainly someone else’s.
Costello had delved into his old teenage singles boxes and dusted down several 45s bearing such legendary labels as Mowtown, Stax and Volt. He’d also been spotted making several trips to the best second hand and specialist record shops in London’s Camden Town and Notting Hill to fill the gaps in his own formidable collections. Oh yes, Elvis was planning a dance record, perhaps as a reaction both to the sheen of his previous releases and the glut of Costello sound-a-like’s that were beginning to infiltrate the airwaves. Recorded in Hilversum, Holland (most likely an attempt to get away from the spotlight), Costello later admitted that the sessions were nowhere near as much fun as the finish product might suggest.
“It was made under extreme self-inflicted emotional stress,” he told The Face. “It was a very extreme record from the point of view of the condition that I and the rest of the band were in.”
A large part of the emotional stress was due to much publicised bar-room scrap with songwriter Stephen Stills after Costello had alleged ly made some choice racist remarks aimed at Ray Charles and James Brown. A sheepish Elvis ultimately apologised, claiming he was both misquoted out of context and the worse for wear and tear after several tear after several too many drinks. A classic issue of Rolling Stone magazine from the time features a cover image of our humbled hero with the heading ‘Elvis Costello repents’.
What was especially fun about ‘Get Happy!’ was playing Spot The Steal sifting through the 20 tracks for points of reference, borrowed bass-lines, lyrical lifts , and ll manner of other influences; a touch of Curtis Mayfield here, a smidgen of Booker T & The MGs there, and a doffed cap to The Supremes, The Four Tops, Al Green, etc. Hey, if you’re gonna pilfer, you may as well pilfer from primo sources.
As for Elvis the lyricist, the general familiar themes were pretty much in place, but the grumbling adolescent caught ear-wigging outside the bedroom in ‘I’m Not Angry’ back in 1977 had matured into a more reflective animal on the likes of ‘Possession’ and (for many the stand-out of all the set) ‘King Horse’. A lot of the earlier word play was abandoned for a more direct approach, again much in keeping with the work of Motown team like Holland/Dozier/Hollan or Whitfield/Strong, whose own concise and powerful lyrics were frequently overlooked by dance-happy music fans.
Following the loose themes of his previous releases, 1981’s ‘Trust’ seemed curiously disjoined, schizophrenic even. One of his least-remembered albums, it still contains some vintage Costello, especially the magnum opus first track ‘Clubland’, a hugely ambitious slice of pop bombast in which Elvis revisited the film noir world of ‘Watching The Detectives’, but set it in the less that salubrious surrounding of a Mecca ballroom or anyone of its pale imitators dotted around the UK at the time.
Several of the ‘Trust’ tracks (the obtuse protest ;New Lace Sleeves’, the paranoiac anthem ‘Watch Your Step’ and the country infidelity of ‘Different Finger’) had existed in one form or another from way back in the Flip City days, which led some reviewers to suggest that Costello, the song machine, who on album releases alone had delivered 55 cuts in little over two-and-a-half years, was beginning to dry up. His second album of 1981 served only to fan the flames of such theories, as Elvis and The Attractions upped sticks to Nashville to record an album of country chestnuts with Billy Sherrill, a legendary producer of both George Jones and Tammy Wynette.
“I don’t necessarily think I am going to become a nicer person or a more complete person – this job is not delighted to make you nicer, or more mature even”
Costello had met Sherrill three years earlier when he appeared on the Jones duet album ‘My Very Special Guests’, exchanging verses on his own ‘Stranger In The House’. Their reunion was a frosty affair for a lot of the time, and a South Bank Show TV documentary from the period captures the friction between the singer and producer; Elvis had obviously soaked up music of all kinds form an early age, most notably thanks to his father’s job as featured singer with the Joe Loss Orchestra, while Sherrill – albeit highly professional and regarded 0 seemed more than a tad jaded., finding it difficult to comprehend why this bespectacled limey would even want to have a crack at these tired old tunes. But it was obviously a labour of love for Elvis, especially getting to record the entire album in Columbia’s famed Studio A, birthplace not only of country classic’s like Wynette’s ‘Stand By Your Man’, but the very room where Dylan put together ‘Blonde On Blonde’.
Elvis was also wary of what sort of reaction he might receive from his fanbase, and the resulting album entitled ‘Almost Blue’ just to confuse matters further ,came with a cautionary sticker on its sleeve, which read: “Warning! This album contains purely Country & Western music, and may produce radical reaction in narrow-minded people.” Fears were unfounded ,as it easily outsold its predecessor (not especially hard to do, granted) and also gave Costello another big hit single with the George Jones classic, ‘Good Year For The Roses’ (to this day, Elvis the much-valued songwriter, has only hit the UK Top 10 with one self-penned tune – Oliver’s Army). In another wilful deviation from the accepted nor of pop star behaviour, Costello and The Attractions performed much of the album, plus a healthy dose of former glories, at the Royal Albert Hall, in January 1982 – accompanied by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
It was at this gig that fans got a taster of what was to come next in the shape of a wondrously overblown torch ballad called ‘Town Cryer’, which would be the closer of his next long player ‘Imperial Bedroom’. After five albums with Nick Lowe at the helm, followed by his Tennessee two0-step with Billy Sherrill, Costello wanted to produce himself but knew he needed a helping hand. Hence, the album credit of “Produced by Geoff Emeric from an original idea by Elvis Costello”.
The singer had seen how, after producing Squeeze’s ‘East Side Story’ album with Roger Bechirian, the respected engineer’s name was more often than not left out of reviews and articles about the record, and didn’t want the same thing to happen here, especially to a man of Emerick’s calibre who, working with George Martin, had engineered some of The Beatles’ most brilliant work, ‘Revolver’ and ‘Sgt Pepper’ included: “It was nominally co-producer with Geoff, in truth he did nearly everything that could be called ‘production’ in terms of sound, while I concentrated on the music.”
Emerick brought much of his Fab Four trickery to ‘Imperial Bedroom’, Costello’s most ambitious and experimental release to date, conjuring up tape effects and the like which perhaps only the most ardent of Beatles’ fans would be able to pinpoint. The expansive creativity an expert like Emerick encouraged led to cinemascopic flights of fancy (‘…And In Every Home’ ‘Beyond Belief’, ‘Man Out Of Time’, endearingly over-the-top backward harpsichord on first single ‘You Little Fool’).
It is at this point, we leave the Elvis Costello story as we have to leave something for part two, don’t we? Please leave your comments below to one of the most talented song-writers.
We are pleased to announce the new album from Elvis Costello, National Ransom, is now available worldwide! The album features 16 new songs produced by T Bone Burnett.
You can pick up National Ransom right now at www.NationalRansom.com – all orders from this site include an exclusive digital download of the 4-song National Ransack EP featuring 4 additional tracks recorded during the National Ransom sessions. The album is available as a digital download, CD, Vinyl LP and also some great Deluxe packages.
