http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... lenews_wsj
Wall Street Journal
MAY 29, 2009
MUSIC
The Latest Reincarnation of Elvis
The 54-year-old British rocker gets in touch with America’s roots
By JOHN JURGENSEN
On his countrified new album, “Secret, Profane & Sugarcane,” Elvis Costello sings in the guise of P.T. Barnum, a honky-tonk drunkard and a sleazy politician barnstorming from Albany to Ypsilanti. One character missing from this tableau of Americana: the so-called angry young man of British music that many listeners still identify with the bespectacled 54-year-old singer.
In an unpredictable career spanning three decades, Mr. Costello has collaborated with everyone from symphony orchestras to young pop acts such as Fall Out Boy. To feed his live act, the rock hall-of-famer has recorded recent albums at the pace of a garage band, an approach that’s seen him through the recording industry’s recent implosion. And now—intentionally or not—he is solidifying a role as a journeyman of American music and one of its most high-profile curators. That came into focus recently with his television show “Spectacle,” in which he interviewed and performed with influential musicians such as Herbie Hancock, Tony Bennett and Smokey Robinson.
Mr. Costello, who was raised in West London, married a Canadian (jazz singer Diana Krall), and has two-year-old twin sons who are American citizens, dismisses the idea that his art has a national identity. “In my mind the most important thing is the truthfulness of the emotion rather than where it appears to come from geographically,” says Mr. Costello, who lives primarily in Vancouver.
But some people close to Mr. Costello say he’s evolving into something of an American institution. “He’s the closest thing in our culture to a George Gershwin character, not just in his sophistication but in how he moves comfortably from one genre to another,” says Bill Flanagan, editorial director of MTV Networks and a friend of Mr. Costello. Spiky anthems like 1978’s “Pump It Up” represent Mr. Costello’s most familiar hits, but his legacy may be leaning more toward the sound of his new album, which features mandolin, fiddle and a country ballad co-written with Loretta Lynn.
“An awful lot of his greatest work has been in this American-roots music vein,” says Mr. Flanagan.
Mr. Costello, whose father was a bandleader and whose mother ran a record shop, has always borrowed from the pop, soul and folk of the U.S. But his collegial standing among earthy American artists, from George Jones to Solomon Burke, has been decades in the making and is unique among British acts of the punk generation. The relationship hasn’t always been smooth: He didn’t tour the U.S. for two years after a scandal erupted in 1979 over insulting remarks he made about black American singers including Ray Charles. (He immediately repudiated the drunken comments and continued to atone for them over the years, including in his 2003 liner notes for an album reissued from that era.)
The twangy sound of “Secret, Profane & Sugarcane” may be just a stopover for an artist moving through middle age, but the way it was created could signal where Mr. Costello is headed. He cut the album in three days and before he knew which record company would put it out. Album producer T-Bone Burnett says that approach “sends a powerful statement“ about how a veteran act can operate in unsteady times.
The narrative of “Secret, Profane & Sugarcane” is set in the American heartland, but the project started with the story of a Dane and his love for a Swede. In 2005, the Royal Danish Opera commissioned Mr. Costello to write an opera about Hans Christian Andersen. “Rather than set ‘The Ugly Duckling’ to music,” Mr. Costello says, he found inspiration in Andersen’s unrequited obsession with the Swedish songbird Jenny Lind.
“So many people feel themselves unfit and unsuitable for love, and Andersen, in this romantic era with a capital ‘R,’ had this tortuous relationship with love,” Mr. Costello says.
As a vehicle for this story and other historical threads, including slavery, Mr. Costello incorporated the true story of Lind’s turbulent concert tour of the U.S. in 1850, which was organized by P.T. Barnum.
Mr. Costello performed 10 songs from the opera commission—its only staging so far—in Copenhagen in fall 2005. Later, he considered using some of the songs for a solo acoustic album, but as he discussed them with Mr. Burnett, the singer decided they called out for additional instrumentation and “colors.”
A year ago the men convened at the Sound Emporium, a Nashville studio built by the musician and producer Cowboy Jack Clement. (“The best sounding room for acoustic music in the world,” Mr. Burnett calls it.)
They sat in a semicircle with the country string band they’d assembled and laid down three or four songs a day. With Mr. Costello setting the pace—“He just goes in and pulls the trigger,” says Mr. Burnett—there was little risk of overthinking the arrangements.
As he provided harmony vocals, Grammy-winning singer Jim Lauderdale “had to trail Elvis like a bloodhound because nothing was rehearsed,” Mr. Burnett says.
In lieu of drums, mandolin player Mike Compton and double bassist Dennis Crouch supplied a driving beat to songs such as “Hidden Shame,” about an accidental killer. “My All Time Doll,” a brooding blues about an out-of-reach lover, is flavored by Jeff Taylor’s accordion.
Dubbed the Sugarcanes, a version of this band will tour with Mr. Costello, starting this month. His long-term focus on his live act has helped insulate him from the industry-wide plunge in sales of recorded music, including his own. Released in 1998, Mr. Costello’s collaboration album with Burt Bacharach, “Painted From Memory,” sold more than 300,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
By comparison, his album “Momofuku,” which he recorded in a week last year and did little to promote, sold about 48,000 copies. “Any number they sell above zero is good,” he says.
His current disregard for the machinery of the music industry—“A lot of these people aren’t that smart”—caps a career of defying commercial expectations. When Warner Bros. hungered for new-wave hits in the vein of “Radio, Radio,” he delivered a country record, 1981’s “Almost Blue.” He continued to zig-zag, jumping from the solo folk of “King of America” (his first album with Mr. Burnett) to the pop punch of “Spike” in 1989.
“What seemed like career-wise counterproductive now seems pretty smart, because he has a tremendous live audience who never know what they’re going to see,” says Mr. Flanagan. “That actually turned out to be a good strategy for the post-record company world that we’re entering.”
After a decade under the Universal Music umbrella, Mr. Costello is releasing “Secret, Profane & Sugarcane” on Hear Music, a joint venture between the Concord Music Group and Starbucks Coffee, which will carry the CD in its cafés.
The album’s credits reflect Mr. Costello’s ties to a group of distinctly American musicians. Johnny Cash recorded the song “Hidden Shame,” which Mr. Costello wrote for him. In the kitchen of Mr. Cash’s cabin in Tennessee, Mr. Costello sat down to write “I Felt the Chill” with Ms. Lynn. And on the song “Crooked Line,” about the challenges of fidelity, Mr. Costello harmonizes with Emmylou Harris, who he first toured with 20 years ago.
Popping up in cameos and collaborations with Zelig-like frequency, Mr. Costello is as much a music geek as a pop institution. Last week he appeared at New York’s 92nd Street Y for a concert celebrating Mr. Bacharach. Sitting alone in row X at the rear of the theater, Mr. Costello balanced his purple fedora on his knee so he could clap loudly and hoot for Dionne Warwick and Sarah Dash, a founding member of the R&B group Labelle. Later, he crept out of his seat to take the stage and croon Mr. Bacharach’s “I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself” to orchestral accompaniment. He remarked, “I put that in my set in 1977 when people were expecting daggers and razor blades.”
The night after the Bacharach gala, Mr. Costello sat in at a jazz club with New Orleans piano player Allen Toussaint, who he made an album with in 2006, “The River In Reverse.” Earlier this week he helped sing the Spinal Tap song “Gimme Some Money” at a concert by members of that satirical band.
All this came on the heels of a guest appearance on the NBC sitcom “30 Rock,” in which Mr. Costello took heat about his given name (Declan McManus) and sang a satiric “We Are the World”-style anthem with the likes of Sheryl Crow, Mary J. Blige and the Beastie Boys.
Mr. Costello’s overlapping roles as performer, collaborator and music buff formed the basis for his TV show, “Spectacle.” The series appeared in the U.S. on the Sundance Channel, which is currently re-running the 13 episodes. Sundance recently announced that “Spectacle” had been picked up for a second season and discussions are underway with other broadcasters to fully complete financing for the new episodes.
Though “Spectacle” welcomed a few acts who originated outside the U.S.—including Elton John (who, along with his partner David Furnish, produced the show) and the Police—the roster was dominated by Americans. They ranged from the young indie rocker Jenny Lewis to Herbie Hancock and other artists who influenced the young musician who became Elvis Costello.
“To sing with Smokey Robinson at the Apollo and have him say you take lead and I’ll sing harmony, I couldn’t believe that was happening,” Mr. Costello recalls. “The show is not about the host’s personality. It’s not about me, it’s about them.”
From his early band the Attractions to the London Symphony Orchestra, Elvis Costello’s roster of collaborators is as varied as the sound of his catalog. A look at a few of Mr. Costello’s partnerships and stylistic experiments.
‘King of America’ 1986
Five years after Mr. Costello’s first foray into country music, “Almost Blue,” a collection of covers that included songs by Hank Williams, Merle Haggard and Gram Parsons, he dipped into the genre again as a songwriter. Numbers such as “Glitter Gulch” and “Brilliant Mistake” convinced critics and fans of his fluency in traditional American styles such as folk and blues. It was his first album produced by T-Bone Burnett.
‘Painted From Memory’ 1998
Mr. Costello co-wrote one of his first songs with pop composer Burt Bacharach by fax. Mr. Costello says there was meaning already embedded in the melodies Mr. Bacharach was creating—”I just had to write the words to unlock it. That’s when I knew I was dealing with a composer and not a jingle writer,” he says. Their fruitful tie-up resulted in this album, a series of concerts and lighthearted cameos in all three of Mike Myers’s “Austin Powers” films.
‘Il Sogno’ 2004
Mr. Costello tried his hand at classical music with “The Juliet Letters,” a 1993 collaboration with the Brodsky Quartet that had thematic ties to “Romeo and Juliet.” Shakespeare also supplied inspiration for a later project, the orchestral “Il Sogno,” the result of a commission by a ballet company to score “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Featuring saxophone and flashes of Duke Ellington, the work was recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas.
Write to John Jurgensen at john.jurgensen@wsj.com
Interview for WSJ subscribers -
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 07502.html
Elvis ' evolving into something of an American institution'
Elvis ' evolving into something of an American institution'
Last edited by johnfoyle on Fri May 29, 2009 6:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
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charliestumpy
- Posts: 710
- Joined: Thu Jan 06, 2005 7:33 am
Re: Elvis ' evolving into something of an American institution'
It is great news for world peace/harmony that the land of the red indian and the buffalo welcomes another willing immigrant.
Re: Elvis ' evolving into something of an American institution'
'Elvis in Irish newspaper interview' shock!
There's no indication if this was done in person or on the 'phone, and no reference to Irish shows and the lack thereof.
http://www.irishtimes.com/theticket/art ... 33916.html
The Irish Times
Friday, May 29, 2009
People think that anything I've done since 1978 is of no consequence whatsoever
He borrowed his name from Presley and his inspiration from every genre under the sun. Now Elvis Costello is releasing a bluegrass album – except it’s bluegrass with a bit of Hans Christian Andersen and a bit of Elvis Costello added, he tells BRIAN BOYD
AFTER Elvis Costello first appeared on Top Of The Pops in the late 1970s, a teacher at my school said he would like to “take him out and give him a good thumping”. Costello’s crime was not his surly and sardonic demeanour or his rowdy “New Wave” music – it was because he took the name of the saintly Elvis Presley in vain.
When the punk wars broke, the London-born, Liverpool-raised of Irish heritage Declan MacManus took the King’s first name and his mother’s maiden name as his “nom de guerre” . It didn’t diminish the teacher’s hostility when it was patiently pointed out to him by some music know-it-all student that in interviews, Costello had spoken about how much he loved the music of country legend George Jones – a particular favourite of this teacher. If anything, it just increased his antipathy to, and I quote, the “snarling little fucker”.
At some point during the interview with Costello, I wanted to crowbar this silly anecdote into the conversation – but he brought weightier topics to the table: Hans Christian Andersen’s sexuality; PT Barnum; slavery and the abolitionist movement; The Clash’s London Calling; Johnny Cash; and the “gangsters” who now run the record companies.
Costello’s new album, Secret, Profane and Sugarcane is ostensibly an acoustic bluegrass affair – pitched somewhere between King Of America and Almost Blue . Recorded with country/bluegrass royalty – T-Bone Burnett, Jim Lauderdale, Emmylou Harris, Stuart Duncan, Jerry Douglas, Loretta Lynn – it all began with Hans Christian Andersen.
“A few years ago I was commissioned to write an opera about Andersen, but I never really finished it,” says Costello. “I knew I wanted to do an acoustic record with T-Bone Burnett and I had these songs I had written for the opera in my back pocket which I thought would work for the album. I felt with the players we had assembled we could achieve this easily. They were intricate songs but the ease with which these amazing musicians expressed them allowed me to really sing them.
“The playing was so responsive it just flowed. There’s a song on there, She Handed Me A Mirror, which goes through four key changes, it modulates four times, but you don’t get that when you hear it. And there’s a second voice on the album – Jim Lauderdale takes the close vocal harmonies – it’s a very skilled technique to add that harmonic interval.”
The album was recorded in an almost unbelievable three days. “I know,” he says. “Just three days in Nashville. We weren’t isolated in studio booths, we just sat around in a semi-circle where we could see each other very readily. The song I Felt The Chill on the album – I co-wrote that with Loretta Lynn in an hour just sitting around a table. These aren’t traditional bluegrass songs, I don’t think they sound like bluegrass songs – they’re my songs with bluegrass instrumentation.”
The songs are informed by the assiduous research he carried out into the life of Hans Christian Andersen. Costello found Andersen’s famous fairy tales to be much darker and more tortured than he had remembered them and thinks he discovered a key to the author when he surmised that the author was in love (but it was unrequited) with the most famous opera singer of the time, the Swedish soprano Jenny Lind.
“I think Andersen had infatuations with both men and women – but Lind was his ideal woman,” he says. “The song How Deep Is The Red is about Andersen’s infatuation, while She Handed Me A Mirror explains why Andersen’s love was unrequited,” he says – the author was by no means conventionally good-looking.
Costello was greatly impressed by an out-of-print book about Jenny Lind’s 1850 American tour, which was promoted by PT Barnum. “Lind was the most famous singer of her day, and the tour was a disaster. Barnum viewed her as a commodity but there is evidence that she got the upper hand on him – she was a shrewd businesswoman,” he says.
“With She Was No Good – which is about that tour, I have them coming across a plantation (where the black slaves were forced to work) and the shock of that. To hear the song is to hear the implication of that shock. The next song is Red Cotton, which imagines Barnum reading an Abolitionist pamphlet. And then there is the Liverpool connection with the slave trade – it was one of the main ports used.
“These were all interesting song opportunities that were handed to me by the original Hans Christian Andersen commission – there is some liberty with historical facts taken. But I couldn’t see myself dealing with them in any other way than on this record.”
For Costello, these songs contain “undeniable threads and themes of rivers and oceans travelled, of bondage and guilt, of shame and retribution, of piety, profanity, lust and love, though only the last of these is absolute. There are always contradictions. The music offers the way out.”
Back at the beginning of his career – when he was a “new wave” artist releasing his debut, My Aim Is True , on the Stiff label in 1977, Costello used to have his hide his love of country/bluegrass music – whenever journalists of the time got on his tour bus, he would rush to hide his George Jones tapes. This would have been around the same time he unsettled some of the punk crowd for covering Burt Bacharach songs in his shows.
“This all goes back to my dad,” he says. Costello’s father, Ross MacManus, was a noted musician who sang and played trumpet with Joe Loss and his orchestra from the 1950s on. “He would bring back records he had to learn for his job – a very diverse collection – there were Sinatra and Nat King Cole records, but also stuff by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie that I just didn’t understand,” he says.
“I suppose what I learnt from an early age was not to be fearful of other types of music. And that’s stayed with me. Later I would have been into 1960s r’n’b, soul, Otis Redding – acts like that, but country music at that time was all novelty stuff, it was all Jim Reeves and Johnny Cash doing novelty records such as A Boy Named Sue . It took the ‘long-haired’ musicians such as Gram Parsons to really open up the soulfulness of country music. And the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band were important too. When I went to the US for the first time in the late 1970s, I picked all this stuff up in second-hand records shops.”
“Because I wasn’t fearful of any type of music, that allowed me to love both The Clash and George Jones. I never subscribed to that 1977 idea that you had to musically deny the past. You know, Joe Strummer was a big Johnny Cash fan but it wasn’t until London Calling that they started doing New Orleans music, rockabilly music. They went ‘behind’ in order to get ‘ahead’ because on the next album , they were among the first to be doing rap music.”
Renowned for not just being a walking encyclopaedia of modern music but also a genre-spanning composer (he has done classical with The Brodsky Quartet; recorded an album with Burt Bacharach; Almost Blue was an album of country covers), Costello knows that to some he is frozen in time as the angry young man on the Stiff Records label.
“There are people who think that anything I’ve done since 1978 is of no consequence whatsoever,” he says. “That sort of world view is so limited. I’m not playing for those people, or for anybody else. I have a sense that there is an audience there for what I do but I’m not trying to flatter anyone with my music. I write about what I’m interested in. I’ve done very well from music, but I’m sort of glad that it has never been too well. There have been moments of success which I could have followed up but I didn’t. I made my own choices: change and transition.”
Making a spectacle of himself
Not the most obvious choice for a chat show host, Costello has had great success with his Spectacle: Elvis Costello with TV programme. Recorded in the famous Apollo Theatre in Harlem, executive produced by Elton John and screened by the Sundance Channel in the US and Channel 4 in the UK, Spectacle guests have included Bill Clinton, Lou Reed, Sting, Rufus Wainwright, Kris Kristofferson and Norah Jones.
Using the chatshow format, the show also includes that week’s guest performing. Spectacle works because Costello is not a smooth and sleek chatshow performer. The guests trust him and he has a profound knowledge about his subject matter.
“The main difference between me and even the best journalists is that I do the same job [as the guests],” he says. “I don’t want to come across any slicker. I don’t mind the fact that the beginning of my career was singing songs.”
The 13-part series has now finished its run (there may well be another series and beyond) but to see Costello in action just type “Elvis Costello” and “Spectacle” into YouTube.
The “change and transition” within the industry itself provokes an angry but measured tirade: “I have some insight into music having worked inside a few record companies. The contempt that flows in the direction of the musicians . . . it just seems all about rampant profiteering. It’s the undoing of the music business and that began when entities not involved in music took over the labels. This was a business investment for them – they used the same business model as they did for running their sewage business or whatever. I’ve seen labels fire half their staff – the competent half of the staff, the people who are actually qualified for the job, because that makes their business plan easier.
“I know that musicians were very badly ripped off in the 1950s and 1960s. The music business has been stealing from its customers and its audience for years, but now you have a more ‘elegant’ type of gangster. Look at what’s going on now. Round the corner from where I live in New York there’s a huge record store which is now boarded up. I can’t find a record shop anywhere in New York. That’s the reality of their ‘innovation’. They have killed the very thing they had at their disposal.”
Secret, Profane and Sugarcane is released today
There's no indication if this was done in person or on the 'phone, and no reference to Irish shows and the lack thereof.
http://www.irishtimes.com/theticket/art ... 33916.html
The Irish Times
Friday, May 29, 2009
People think that anything I've done since 1978 is of no consequence whatsoever
He borrowed his name from Presley and his inspiration from every genre under the sun. Now Elvis Costello is releasing a bluegrass album – except it’s bluegrass with a bit of Hans Christian Andersen and a bit of Elvis Costello added, he tells BRIAN BOYD
AFTER Elvis Costello first appeared on Top Of The Pops in the late 1970s, a teacher at my school said he would like to “take him out and give him a good thumping”. Costello’s crime was not his surly and sardonic demeanour or his rowdy “New Wave” music – it was because he took the name of the saintly Elvis Presley in vain.
When the punk wars broke, the London-born, Liverpool-raised of Irish heritage Declan MacManus took the King’s first name and his mother’s maiden name as his “nom de guerre” . It didn’t diminish the teacher’s hostility when it was patiently pointed out to him by some music know-it-all student that in interviews, Costello had spoken about how much he loved the music of country legend George Jones – a particular favourite of this teacher. If anything, it just increased his antipathy to, and I quote, the “snarling little fucker”.
At some point during the interview with Costello, I wanted to crowbar this silly anecdote into the conversation – but he brought weightier topics to the table: Hans Christian Andersen’s sexuality; PT Barnum; slavery and the abolitionist movement; The Clash’s London Calling; Johnny Cash; and the “gangsters” who now run the record companies.
Costello’s new album, Secret, Profane and Sugarcane is ostensibly an acoustic bluegrass affair – pitched somewhere between King Of America and Almost Blue . Recorded with country/bluegrass royalty – T-Bone Burnett, Jim Lauderdale, Emmylou Harris, Stuart Duncan, Jerry Douglas, Loretta Lynn – it all began with Hans Christian Andersen.
“A few years ago I was commissioned to write an opera about Andersen, but I never really finished it,” says Costello. “I knew I wanted to do an acoustic record with T-Bone Burnett and I had these songs I had written for the opera in my back pocket which I thought would work for the album. I felt with the players we had assembled we could achieve this easily. They were intricate songs but the ease with which these amazing musicians expressed them allowed me to really sing them.
“The playing was so responsive it just flowed. There’s a song on there, She Handed Me A Mirror, which goes through four key changes, it modulates four times, but you don’t get that when you hear it. And there’s a second voice on the album – Jim Lauderdale takes the close vocal harmonies – it’s a very skilled technique to add that harmonic interval.”
The album was recorded in an almost unbelievable three days. “I know,” he says. “Just three days in Nashville. We weren’t isolated in studio booths, we just sat around in a semi-circle where we could see each other very readily. The song I Felt The Chill on the album – I co-wrote that with Loretta Lynn in an hour just sitting around a table. These aren’t traditional bluegrass songs, I don’t think they sound like bluegrass songs – they’re my songs with bluegrass instrumentation.”
The songs are informed by the assiduous research he carried out into the life of Hans Christian Andersen. Costello found Andersen’s famous fairy tales to be much darker and more tortured than he had remembered them and thinks he discovered a key to the author when he surmised that the author was in love (but it was unrequited) with the most famous opera singer of the time, the Swedish soprano Jenny Lind.
“I think Andersen had infatuations with both men and women – but Lind was his ideal woman,” he says. “The song How Deep Is The Red is about Andersen’s infatuation, while She Handed Me A Mirror explains why Andersen’s love was unrequited,” he says – the author was by no means conventionally good-looking.
Costello was greatly impressed by an out-of-print book about Jenny Lind’s 1850 American tour, which was promoted by PT Barnum. “Lind was the most famous singer of her day, and the tour was a disaster. Barnum viewed her as a commodity but there is evidence that she got the upper hand on him – she was a shrewd businesswoman,” he says.
“With She Was No Good – which is about that tour, I have them coming across a plantation (where the black slaves were forced to work) and the shock of that. To hear the song is to hear the implication of that shock. The next song is Red Cotton, which imagines Barnum reading an Abolitionist pamphlet. And then there is the Liverpool connection with the slave trade – it was one of the main ports used.
“These were all interesting song opportunities that were handed to me by the original Hans Christian Andersen commission – there is some liberty with historical facts taken. But I couldn’t see myself dealing with them in any other way than on this record.”
For Costello, these songs contain “undeniable threads and themes of rivers and oceans travelled, of bondage and guilt, of shame and retribution, of piety, profanity, lust and love, though only the last of these is absolute. There are always contradictions. The music offers the way out.”
Back at the beginning of his career – when he was a “new wave” artist releasing his debut, My Aim Is True , on the Stiff label in 1977, Costello used to have his hide his love of country/bluegrass music – whenever journalists of the time got on his tour bus, he would rush to hide his George Jones tapes. This would have been around the same time he unsettled some of the punk crowd for covering Burt Bacharach songs in his shows.
“This all goes back to my dad,” he says. Costello’s father, Ross MacManus, was a noted musician who sang and played trumpet with Joe Loss and his orchestra from the 1950s on. “He would bring back records he had to learn for his job – a very diverse collection – there were Sinatra and Nat King Cole records, but also stuff by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie that I just didn’t understand,” he says.
“I suppose what I learnt from an early age was not to be fearful of other types of music. And that’s stayed with me. Later I would have been into 1960s r’n’b, soul, Otis Redding – acts like that, but country music at that time was all novelty stuff, it was all Jim Reeves and Johnny Cash doing novelty records such as A Boy Named Sue . It took the ‘long-haired’ musicians such as Gram Parsons to really open up the soulfulness of country music. And the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band were important too. When I went to the US for the first time in the late 1970s, I picked all this stuff up in second-hand records shops.”
“Because I wasn’t fearful of any type of music, that allowed me to love both The Clash and George Jones. I never subscribed to that 1977 idea that you had to musically deny the past. You know, Joe Strummer was a big Johnny Cash fan but it wasn’t until London Calling that they started doing New Orleans music, rockabilly music. They went ‘behind’ in order to get ‘ahead’ because on the next album , they were among the first to be doing rap music.”
Renowned for not just being a walking encyclopaedia of modern music but also a genre-spanning composer (he has done classical with The Brodsky Quartet; recorded an album with Burt Bacharach; Almost Blue was an album of country covers), Costello knows that to some he is frozen in time as the angry young man on the Stiff Records label.
“There are people who think that anything I’ve done since 1978 is of no consequence whatsoever,” he says. “That sort of world view is so limited. I’m not playing for those people, or for anybody else. I have a sense that there is an audience there for what I do but I’m not trying to flatter anyone with my music. I write about what I’m interested in. I’ve done very well from music, but I’m sort of glad that it has never been too well. There have been moments of success which I could have followed up but I didn’t. I made my own choices: change and transition.”
Making a spectacle of himself
Not the most obvious choice for a chat show host, Costello has had great success with his Spectacle: Elvis Costello with TV programme. Recorded in the famous Apollo Theatre in Harlem, executive produced by Elton John and screened by the Sundance Channel in the US and Channel 4 in the UK, Spectacle guests have included Bill Clinton, Lou Reed, Sting, Rufus Wainwright, Kris Kristofferson and Norah Jones.
Using the chatshow format, the show also includes that week’s guest performing. Spectacle works because Costello is not a smooth and sleek chatshow performer. The guests trust him and he has a profound knowledge about his subject matter.
“The main difference between me and even the best journalists is that I do the same job [as the guests],” he says. “I don’t want to come across any slicker. I don’t mind the fact that the beginning of my career was singing songs.”
The 13-part series has now finished its run (there may well be another series and beyond) but to see Costello in action just type “Elvis Costello” and “Spectacle” into YouTube.
The “change and transition” within the industry itself provokes an angry but measured tirade: “I have some insight into music having worked inside a few record companies. The contempt that flows in the direction of the musicians . . . it just seems all about rampant profiteering. It’s the undoing of the music business and that began when entities not involved in music took over the labels. This was a business investment for them – they used the same business model as they did for running their sewage business or whatever. I’ve seen labels fire half their staff – the competent half of the staff, the people who are actually qualified for the job, because that makes their business plan easier.
“I know that musicians were very badly ripped off in the 1950s and 1960s. The music business has been stealing from its customers and its audience for years, but now you have a more ‘elegant’ type of gangster. Look at what’s going on now. Round the corner from where I live in New York there’s a huge record store which is now boarded up. I can’t find a record shop anywhere in New York. That’s the reality of their ‘innovation’. They have killed the very thing they had at their disposal.”
Secret, Profane and Sugarcane is released today
Re: Elvis ' evolving into something of an American institution'
I couldn't stop laughing at that comment. Since I'm mix of Native American and Irish.charliestumpy wrote:It is great news for world peace/harmony that the land of the red indian and the buffalo welcomes another willing immigrant.
American Institution, please. It should read, his epic level as Music Institutional Bad Ass. He could totally do a Root festival tour with Steve Earle, Fleet Foxes, Union Station, Del McCoury, etc. and call it The Backyard BBQ.
Re: Elvis ' evolving into something of an American institution'
Here's how the Irish Times feature looks in it's print edition -
Re: Elvis ' evolving into something of an American institution'
Brian Boyd has a e-mail address in the print edition of The Irish Times ; I sent him this -
It’s nice to see a Elvis Costello interview in a Irish newspaper. I wonder if you asked him if he’ll play a show in Ireland, considering he hasn’t done so since 2002. I asked Elvis about same after a show in Amsterdam a few years ago. ‘When Hell freezes over’ was his response. I didn’t have the nerve to ask him to elaborate!
Was the interview done on the 'phone? Or, maybe, while he was in the U.K. for shows with The Brodsky Quartet? I saw all six of those shows; they just got better 'n better.
He replied -
Everything I got I put into the article. It was a phone conversation as he was in New York at the time.
Did ask him about touring this record but he just alluded to a few U.S. dates
As regards the lack of Irish shows -it could be to do with a previous relationship
Brian
It’s nice to see a Elvis Costello interview in a Irish newspaper. I wonder if you asked him if he’ll play a show in Ireland, considering he hasn’t done so since 2002. I asked Elvis about same after a show in Amsterdam a few years ago. ‘When Hell freezes over’ was his response. I didn’t have the nerve to ask him to elaborate!
Was the interview done on the 'phone? Or, maybe, while he was in the U.K. for shows with The Brodsky Quartet? I saw all six of those shows; they just got better 'n better.
He replied -
Everything I got I put into the article. It was a phone conversation as he was in New York at the time.
Did ask him about touring this record but he just alluded to a few U.S. dates
As regards the lack of Irish shows -it could be to do with a previous relationship
Brian
Re: Elvis ' evolving into something of an American institution'
Gosh, not played in Ireland since 2002 and I've been whining about having to travel 7 hrs. to see a show.
Re: Elvis ' evolving into something of an American institution'
http://elviscostello.com/
To make "Secrets, Profane and Sugarcane," Elvis Costello's new album that incorporates country, gospel and ragtime, the singer assembled a Nashville string band and hired producer T. Bone Burnett, who has worked with artists such as Tony Bennett and Alison Krauss, and produced the soundtracks for "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" and "Walk the Line." Mr. Costello spoke to The Wall Street Journal about the project and his place in American music. Here are excerpts from the interview.
The Wall Street Journal: Some core songs on your album came out of a piece that you were commissioned to write about Hans Christian Andersen, "The Secret Songs." How did that shape the project?
Elvis Costello: Rather than set "The Ugly Duckling" to music, which has probably been done, I was fascinated with Andersen's obsessive love for [Swedish singer] Jenny Lind. So many people feel themselves unfit and unsuitable for love, and Andersen, in this romantic era with a capital ‘R,' had this tortuous relationship with love. Another piece of it came out when I got to the details of Lind's tours of America with P.T. Barnum. I like the idea of one man regarding Lind as his ideal, on a pedestal, and the other [Barnum] seeing her entirely as a commodity to be exploited. That had many possibilities for writing.
The story was set [around 1850], when some of the instruments we used [in the album] were the common instruments -- fiddles, mandolins and such things.
WSJ: The new album was recorded in three days, and your previous album, "Momofuku," was also cut quickly, then released with little fanfare. What did you learn about that approach, either from the way it was received or how it sold?
Mr. Costello: I wasn't concerned with how it sold. That record was made completely accidentally. I'm not concerned with how any of the records sell any more. Otherwise, you're just destined for disappointment.
I'm mostly concerned with adding to my repertoire of songs. They can be part of a show, and the show is different every night. The story of the concert is made out of all these component pieces from over the years. I'm not doing that old showbiz cliché of ‘Now here's my little retrospective 20 minutes. Remember when I wrote this?'
WSJ: For professional or personal reasons, did you ever consider becoming an American citizen?
Mr. Costello: I don't think so. I never felt particularly nationalistically English, but I was born in that country. I pay my taxes in America, so I never have any qualms about commentary that comes in song. I pay my share and if that money is being misspent, I'm entitled to my opinion. But it's not my main topic. My oldest son is English and my young boys are American citizens, but they carry English passports and I hope they'll carry Canadian ones, too. The amount of time we spend on the road sometimes feels like we don't really live anywhere.
WSJ: Do you feel like you have a national identity when it comes to your music?
Mr. Costello: It has nothing to do with borders. It never has. I didn't relate that readily to English culture, as I understood it, growing up. I'm Anglo-Irish, so there's a little extra confusion. But I don't think it's about national identity. It's about what goes on in your heart.
It's all in your imagination. Writers, in particular, can imagine themselves murderers, test pilots, mountain climbers, lion tamers. They can create a character, which is probably some version of themselves or a person they admire. And a songwriter can add to that because the power of music is that it can also give you the feeling of what you're saying.
WSJ: How did T-Bone Burnett help you open up that channel to roots music?
Mr. Costello: He's one of the people who's judgment I trust about most things. I regard him like a brother. We've
made four albums together over 25 years. He has a great degree of humility in not interposing himself between the artist and the listener. He also has clear ideas about how to deliver the music to people once it's made. He doesn't subscribe to this pathetically compressed digital version that sounds worse than AM radio.
WSJ: You advocated to get [rockabilly pioneer] Wanda Jackson into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Is there anyone else who you feel deserves similar attention?
Mr. Costello: You know who should be in? [Johnny Cash's backing band] the Tennessee Two. Or the Tennessee Three even. And [Howlin' Wolf's guitarist] Hubert Sumlin. Their singular approach to their instruments is the foundation to the way people play guitar in so-called indie rock. The angular way they both approached the guitar just didn't exist before those guys played. Most others came out of bluegrass or jazz. For Hubert particularly, people who don't know his name are influenced inadvertently by the people who copied him.
To make "Secrets, Profane and Sugarcane," Elvis Costello's new album that incorporates country, gospel and ragtime, the singer assembled a Nashville string band and hired producer T. Bone Burnett, who has worked with artists such as Tony Bennett and Alison Krauss, and produced the soundtracks for "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" and "Walk the Line." Mr. Costello spoke to The Wall Street Journal about the project and his place in American music. Here are excerpts from the interview.
The Wall Street Journal: Some core songs on your album came out of a piece that you were commissioned to write about Hans Christian Andersen, "The Secret Songs." How did that shape the project?
Elvis Costello: Rather than set "The Ugly Duckling" to music, which has probably been done, I was fascinated with Andersen's obsessive love for [Swedish singer] Jenny Lind. So many people feel themselves unfit and unsuitable for love, and Andersen, in this romantic era with a capital ‘R,' had this tortuous relationship with love. Another piece of it came out when I got to the details of Lind's tours of America with P.T. Barnum. I like the idea of one man regarding Lind as his ideal, on a pedestal, and the other [Barnum] seeing her entirely as a commodity to be exploited. That had many possibilities for writing.
The story was set [around 1850], when some of the instruments we used [in the album] were the common instruments -- fiddles, mandolins and such things.
WSJ: The new album was recorded in three days, and your previous album, "Momofuku," was also cut quickly, then released with little fanfare. What did you learn about that approach, either from the way it was received or how it sold?
Mr. Costello: I wasn't concerned with how it sold. That record was made completely accidentally. I'm not concerned with how any of the records sell any more. Otherwise, you're just destined for disappointment.
I'm mostly concerned with adding to my repertoire of songs. They can be part of a show, and the show is different every night. The story of the concert is made out of all these component pieces from over the years. I'm not doing that old showbiz cliché of ‘Now here's my little retrospective 20 minutes. Remember when I wrote this?'
WSJ: For professional or personal reasons, did you ever consider becoming an American citizen?
Mr. Costello: I don't think so. I never felt particularly nationalistically English, but I was born in that country. I pay my taxes in America, so I never have any qualms about commentary that comes in song. I pay my share and if that money is being misspent, I'm entitled to my opinion. But it's not my main topic. My oldest son is English and my young boys are American citizens, but they carry English passports and I hope they'll carry Canadian ones, too. The amount of time we spend on the road sometimes feels like we don't really live anywhere.
WSJ: Do you feel like you have a national identity when it comes to your music?
Mr. Costello: It has nothing to do with borders. It never has. I didn't relate that readily to English culture, as I understood it, growing up. I'm Anglo-Irish, so there's a little extra confusion. But I don't think it's about national identity. It's about what goes on in your heart.
It's all in your imagination. Writers, in particular, can imagine themselves murderers, test pilots, mountain climbers, lion tamers. They can create a character, which is probably some version of themselves or a person they admire. And a songwriter can add to that because the power of music is that it can also give you the feeling of what you're saying.
WSJ: How did T-Bone Burnett help you open up that channel to roots music?
Mr. Costello: He's one of the people who's judgment I trust about most things. I regard him like a brother. We've
made four albums together over 25 years. He has a great degree of humility in not interposing himself between the artist and the listener. He also has clear ideas about how to deliver the music to people once it's made. He doesn't subscribe to this pathetically compressed digital version that sounds worse than AM radio.
WSJ: You advocated to get [rockabilly pioneer] Wanda Jackson into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Is there anyone else who you feel deserves similar attention?
Mr. Costello: You know who should be in? [Johnny Cash's backing band] the Tennessee Two. Or the Tennessee Three even. And [Howlin' Wolf's guitarist] Hubert Sumlin. Their singular approach to their instruments is the foundation to the way people play guitar in so-called indie rock. The angular way they both approached the guitar just didn't exist before those guys played. Most others came out of bluegrass or jazz. For Hubert particularly, people who don't know his name are influenced inadvertently by the people who copied him.