Eighty-8, 1996-07-01

That old familiar attraction
An interview with Elvis Costello

Eighty-8, The magazine of WRAS Atlanta, 88.5 FM, July 1996

By Christopher Simony & Yancy Yohannan


88: I guess the best place to start would be with your new album.

EC: What would you like to know?

88: From what I understand, most of these songs were written for other
people. Is that correct?

EC: A few of them were. Actually, that's a good one to talk about because I
think that's been exaggerated a bit. I think it's a convenient way to fill
up space so that reviewers don't have to think too hard. You know, they
don't want to tax their brains too much. It's true that four of the songs
were previously recorded by other people and a couple of them were written
by other people, but beyond that, quite a lot of the songs I just wrote for
myself and I often use other singers as a model when I'm writing as a way
of getting a new song out of my head... so I think that sort of developed
into a story.

88: What was it like getting back with The Attractions? You had been away
from them for seven, maybe eight years?

EC: Well, this is the first record that we've started together. They played
on half of "Brutal Youth", the last record, so I suppose we've gotten to
know each other in the making of the record and we've toured since that
record and in the preparation of this album, we started from day one in the
preparation and we went to New York and we played shows there where we
played all the new songs. I'm treating them like new songs. I think there's
a bit of a neurosis about every song having to have been written last week
because I've been writing songs for quite a while now and I've sort of
gotten over that I must put my new songs out right away.  Sometimes it's
good to put them to one side and think about them and decide what you want
to do.

88: Do you remember the first song you ever wrote?

EC: I do, yea.

88: What song was that

EC: What was it called?

88: Did you ever record it?

EC: No, no. I'm talking 12 or something. I don't really remember how it
goes. It was a typical 13 year old song. I think it was in E minor and I
think it was called "Winter," so you can tell I was a pretty cheerful 
teenager.

88: You did a lot of work with Paul McCartney on this album. Didn't he
co-write a couple of songs on this album?

EC: We wrote one together on this album, "Shallow Grave".

88: Is this a new song or is it between "Flowers in the Dirt" and "Spike"?

EC: We've sort of written them. We didn't have any sort of special deadline
on when to record them. We've written about a dozen songs together over, I
suppose about seven years, and a couple have been on my albums and a couple
have been on his albums and this one. We passed it back and forth to each
other and he suggested he was going to record it on his last record, then
it didn't work out and I fancied having a try at doing it on this record.
It seemed to fit with some of the other songs, so that's what we did and we
always say that maybe we'll do some more who knows when.

88: What did you think of the Beatles reunion and all the hullabaloo?

EC: Well, I grew up with the original records and they were the first
records that I listened to so I was very curious about all the archived
stuff. That was what I was interested in mostly and I see no problem with
them making a record of this tape that they had. I don't think there's
anything particularly horrifying about it. There's a  nice melody to a
couple of them. But I find the archived stuff is the stuff that interested
me more because it shows what was behind these great records.

88: You've been heavily involved with orchestras and I know The Beatles
were bringing in orchestras in their last couple of albums. Is that where
you got that interest? I find it funny that you're working with Paul
McCartney and you're working with orchestras as well.

EC: Not really. We made a record about 14 years ago with Jeff Emerick who
co-produced this album and on that album that was the first one where we
took time in the studio to use the studio as a place where we would
experiment. On that record, we arranged for a 40 piece orchestra, so we're
talking about 1982....so it wasn't like we decided last week to do some
different things. Over the years, some of the records that I've made have
been pretty spare in terms of instrumentation but others have been more
intricate and it really depends on the material. If you've got the songs
that are going to benefit from a more elaborate orchestration, then
sometimes it's good to experiment with those things but it isn't as if it
occurred to me recently. Of course, in the last sort of five years, I've
been working with some people who are classical musicians by training but
they've also got their ears open to other types of music. I did this record
with the Brodsky Quartet. We toured around the world with that and since
then I've been trying to use some of those sounds to make more interesting
records that everybody can hear. Obviously we made this record and people
who like rock and roll and electric guitar and drums are not going to be
necessarily curious about a string quartet record as you can hear on this
album. We did a track where they're our guests and we did an orchestration
involving them and some clarinets...they're just instruments. It's special
only if it sounds special. I don't think of it as a different kind of
music, if you understand my meaning.

88: I remember reading, I guess it was between "Mighty Like a Rose" and
"The Juliet Letters" I read in an interview with you and you said something
to the effect that new sounds could only be found in orchestral music or
classical music of the past. Do you feel the same way now or is that a
complete misquote?

EC: I think that's the trouble with saying things or more importantly
assuming that they are an absolute and forever statement. Perhaps when I
said that, that was the way I felt because I was absorbed in.... for me,
the most interesting things at that time were in listening to music which
because I hadn't had the patience or concentration to listen to. It hadn't
rewarded me when I listened to it in the past and suddenly I was able to
hear it and I think that happens throughout life. You find the time in your
life for different kinds of music and it isn't necessarily an inexorable
sort of dissent or reduction of the passion of youth that you sometimes
just find the stillest music can be unbearably moving when previously you
had no patience for that. Some music, the like of which you thought was the
be all and end all of music, suddenly seems facile and then it can all
change again. It can change completely. I don't think that anything I ever
say is a permanent condition because music is changing all the time and my
attitude toward it is changing and hopefully I'm changing as well.

88: One thing you said once that I hope is permanent, this is one of my
favorite quotes of all time... you said, "Writing about music is like
dancing is about architecture."

EC: That's credited to me so often but I don't think I said it. I think I
was quoting someone. It nevertheless can be true. I mean that's not to say
that there aren't some books about music or about
musicians that don't open up some things about them. Like sometimes the
lives of musicians can be interesting to read just as the lives of artists
are or writers. In some cases they're more illuminating than reading every
word they wrote or painted or composed, you know. But, I think sometimes we
think too hard about stuff that is supposed to work on several different
senses at once. I mean just thinking about and reducing it to words... I
obviously like words because they play a big part in the songs that I
write... but a song really that works on our
complete senses and works on you rhythmically and on your emotions
sometimes...have you ever heard a song that you can almost like smell the
circumstances where you heard it first? Have you every had that experience?

88: Yea, sure.

EC: And it can be a song or piece of music, a piece of classical music, or
jazz or a particular solo on a song you like but the thing you really like
is that one moment. It could be something that's actually a mistake or
something about the actual atmosphere of a record before it starts, you
know. All of those things are very special and somewhat illusive to
definition.

88: I guess your understanding of music has allowed you to be in a position
where you can be an excellent producer. I know you've done producing work.
Are you interested in doing any more of that?

EC: Well actually, I'm coming out of retirement as a producer because I
produce my own records. I co-produced this one with Jeff Emerick and I've
been involved in the production of all my recent albums and even when your
name is not on the production credit, you always have something to say. But
the last record I produced in earnest was The Pogues in '84 or '85,
whenever it was. So it's been about 10 years since I produced a record and
actually just this week I'm about to come out of retirement as it were
because I'm doing an exchange, a mix exchange with, do you know who Tricky
is? -- so I approached him to do a reworking of one of the tracks on his
record because I'm doing sort of an unusual sort of release in London where
I'm releasing a single every week for the month of July because I'm playing
in London during July. I wanted to have as much of the music of this record
available to people during that period so we decided to do something that's
kind of different. And I wanted to make sort of like a magazine or just
have a forum on the record's concept for a month, so I've engaged a couple
of people to recut some of the songs in the way they hear them, so you know
that they'll be very contrasting to the original version. It continues the
idea that these songs are here to be sung. That's what these songs are
there for. They're to be sung and they're to be heard. I'm very curious to
hear what some of these people do because they're quite different from me
and they'll no doubt bring something very new to my ears and the ears of
other people. The deal that I have with Tricky is that he's going to mix my
track if I mix his.

88: What do you think of trip-hoppers, the direction, the sort of spacy
direction....

EC: Well, I'm always suspicious the minute there's a sort of newspaper
definition of anything. I started out at a time when everything was called
either punk or new wave and I didn't really feel very connected to any of
the other bands that were defined as new wave or whatever it was we were
being called. I'm sure the same applies to groups in England now who are
all called triphop and likewise. There are very few people who are proud to
be known by such a defining and excluding name like that. I think most of
the artists like the name they go under whether it's a group name or an
individual and i think that's the danger, but it flatters the worst people
and insults the best. I hear lots of really fascinating things in the use
of sounds to create moods which I find have more in common with some area
of jazz than they do with rock music I think what's called trip-hop has
more of a jazz sensibility than a rock sensibility and that's what's very
peeving to me. That's not to say that I like everything that's just labeled
like that because you have to have some critical faculty about it.

88: You talked about back in the '70s a lot of things were classified as
punk. Didn't you produce one of The Specials albums? '

EC: Do they count? I guess maybe they do now. There was a sort of mixture
that emerged out of those times and you know punk itself, with the bands
like The Specials and The Clash had moved on. They'd either broken up or
moved on to other things by the time The Specials emerged and they combined
a fairly unique English view of dance music. Whether it be from Jamaica or
Detroit together with things from punk and a very straight way of speaking
because they had a very vernacular way of delivering the words which, of
course, wouldn't have been acceptable before punk. He didn't sing in a 
melodious way, he just delivered the words in a convincing way...he was 
great in that way. I just did it because I really liked the group and I 
didn't want anyone else to get their hands on them and maybe make them 
slick. Most of the records I've produced have been a question, a sense, of
what's right for the group even if it may be less ambitious than sounding
like what's on the radio. The Pogues record I produced has the same sort 
of character. It has a very, you know, it's very accurate to the way they
sounded. It made sure that everything was coming through but it doesn't
blow them up out of all proportion so that when you saw them live they 
actually sounded like that....which I think is a good thing. It wasn't
like a live record. It was like a very good studio record.

88: So coming out of the whole punk idea...I hate to keep asking you about
comebacks and stuff. How do you feel about The Sex Pistols?

EC: They made some really great records and they caused a lot of fuss in
England. At the time it was much easier to shock people than now and that
was all great for the time and beyond that I really don't have an opinion
about what it means for them to reform. It apparently means that they're
going to get rich or richer. It doesn't really bother me one way or
another. I think there are many more interesting things happening in music.
I'm sure they'll be an entertaining spectacle at the same time.

88: What particularly floats your boat right now as far as new
artists....as far as new artists now, who do you listen to?

EC: I don't know. I just listen to all sorts of things. I listen to a
mixture of things. I try to listen to something different every day to keep
my mind moving so a lot of the things I listen to are older music but
they're new to me - seem fresh to me. I've been listening to a lot of music
by a guy called Oliver Nelson and I've only just discovered his records and
also to Eric Dolphy but that's just my private listening. Of records that
are out currently, my favorite album is that Fugees record. I really love
that record. I like everything about it. It has great singing and great
character and the way the tracks are put together, it sounds fantastic. I'm
trying to think what else. My mind always goes blank when people ask me
that question, you know. I've been listening out for new bands that I'm
interested in and I hear a record by people and then I sort of forget their
names before I get a chance to listen more to them. I'm sure there'd be
something else if I could think of it, but I can't. I hear things and go
"that's fantastic" and then it's gone again.

88: You've worked with a lot of different people. I was looking over this
incredible list...you've worked with Roy Orbison, Chet Baker, Johnny Cash.
A lot of country influences there. Didn't you recently go to Nashville?

EC: I've been to Nashville several times. I went to Nashville the first
time to record in 1979 and I recorded a duet with George Jones of a song I
wrote which was on a record he was doing of duets at the time. So that was
a tremendous break in terms of being a Nashville songwriter. It was like
hitting the jackpot the first time. It didn't, because of the kinds of
songs I was writing at the time, really lead to a career in writing songs
for people in Nashville and truthfully there really aren't many artists
there I aspire to write for. Johnny Cash has been good enough do a couple
of my songs and did consider doing "Complicated Shadows". I sent it to him
but he didn't end up doing it. I've always been fascinated since the '60s
with the rawer end of country music. I don't like it when it gets too
slick. I listened to country music originally through the group The Byrds,
you know, and through Gram Parsons and then I got curious about who these
artists were because I wasn't familiar with Merle Haggard and people like
that. They weren't well known in England. When I first came to America
which was 19 years ago, a lot of music opened up to me then, both R&B and
country because I had access to records that weren't available in England
and I learned a lot very quickly about various artists. I went and cut a
record in Nashville and we did one with Tammy Wynette and George Jones
which Charlie Richards produced which was an album of covers. Then after
that I went to California in the mid-80s and cut a record called "King of
America" which was certainly influenced by the styles of country writing. I
was using sort of country instrumentation but I don't think in a million
years it was country record. I was singing about things you'd never find in
a country song. Since that time, a lot of artists who are called country
are writing that way as well. You've got people as diverse as Steve Earle
and Lyle Lovett and in her earlier career, k.d. Iang, and they're all
making records which are called country but are quite sophisticated. I
don't think anybody now has the illusion that country is somehow separate
from the main sort of thrust of songwriting. It really comes down to what
you grew up with, don't you think? My experience when I came down to the
south of America for the first time was that a lot of the local people who
came to see us play, I'm talking about 1978 now, didn't really share a lot
of the music maybe because it was more familiar to them because they grew
up with it all around them. When I first went to Nashville, everyone wanted
to hear urban music, you know. They wanted to hear punk because they were
sick of steel guitars and maybe if you come from the city then stuff that
comes from the country has more romance to
it, you know.

88: Well, someone you worked with early in your career is highly into the
country side of things, Nick Lowe.

EC: Well, Nick produced the first five albums and he then produced the last
record I made with The Attractions before we stopped working together in
'86 and he also played bass on the last album I made before this
one,"Brutal Youth".

88: How did ya'll originally get together?

EC: We'd been pals a long time. We've been friends since about 1972 and
before I was a professional, he was somebody I looked up to and he's still
writing great songs and occasionally producing but he mainly does his own
writing and producing now. I don't know if you heard the record he put out
last year, maybe 18 months ago, "The Impossible Bird". It's a very
beautiful record and has some wonderful songs on it. But he has always had
a real love for certain elements of country music and also rhythm and blues
and they're in his songs. That had quite a big influence on me because I
got a lot of my ideas from him initially and eventually you develop your
own style. That's the way it works.

88: Who have you enjoyed working the most with? I know that's a tough question.

EC: It is kind of tough because recently you mentioned Nashville and I've
been back and did a track with The Fairfieid Four, the gospel quartet,
based out of Nashville, so bring the conversation around full circle. You
mentioned Paul McCartney earlier and we recut one of the songs that Paul
and I wrote together called "That Day is Done" and that's going to be on
their next record and that was a very special experience but it wasn't like
anything I've ever done before. I also recently wrote a song with Burt
Bacharach which is going to be in a film that comes out in a year....so you
can't really compare that but they were both really wonderful to do. I had
to do different things. I had to sing different ways but that's what I'm
enjoying doing now as much as making my own records so I'm getting to work
with lots of different people.... and each thing I learn something new so
when I make another record of my own, I'll have some new ideas. I'm not
just standing in one place and saying,"I know it all now". I'd be really
upset if I knew everything about music cause you can't possibly stop
learning about it

88: Who is there that you have not worked with...is there anyone left
that's like a dream perhaps? Have you ever worked with Phil Spector at all?

EC: No, I think that sometimes, you know, you have to acknowledge is the
thing that makes you like people is the period in their career when they
were perhaps the most in control of their abilities and able to do the most
with them and the opportunity to work with them may have passed, that
moment may have passed. Most of the people that I've come across and
admired in music when I was a kid, I've been fortunate enough to work with.
I met Roy Orbison just on one show and writing 12 songs with Paul McCartney
is something I wouldn't have dreamed about when I was 11 years old. I was
just a fan of this group you know. It doesn't mean that there isn't
somebody round the corner that I haven't heard of that I'm going to be
delighted to work with or is going to present a whole new challenge to work
with. It could be somebody that nobody's ever heard of yet. It could be
somebody that I've not met. There isn't like a list of famous people that
I'm trying to meet before I retire. I've been very lucky. I worked with a
lot of people in a lot of different circumstances. Sometimes the results
have been really only for that night. Recently I did a track with the Jazz
Passengers, a group out of New York who I really love, and their singer is
Deborah Harry who used to be with Blondie. She's now developed into this
wonderfully witty and terribly gifted singer of the music that they do
which is very tricky jazz. It's got a lot of wit and humor and is very
technically difficult and demanding but she makes it sound really human and
brings a great personality to it. I did a track with them and one track I
was singing and another track I was singing a duet with her. Things like
that are like a holiday from what I do anyway. That isn't to say I don't
enjoy my own stuff, whether making records or touring, I'm getting to meet
these other people and do these other things and some last for one evening
and some of them point the way to something else.

88: You're a very difficult person to peg as far as seeing what exactly
you're interested in. It's just a wide range of things, so it's nice to see
why you stray all over the place.

EC: Well some people I think find that suspicious....that you don't have
conviction about anything or that you don't want to stick in one place. I
just find it boring to stick in one place. I think all musical things can
be connected in some way and there are certain qualities that music
inexplicably shares even though there are obvious divides of time and
experience....like you can talk to people with 20 or 40 years difference in
age with wildly different experience and training or success and there will
be something they agree upon in music. That is perhaps why I find it the
most satisfying thing in life, beyond words really. It doesn't bother me if
it doesn't add up to a convenient pattern but the convenient pattern is
what a commentator is looking for, not so much people on the radio but
people in print who write about musicians and are looking for some
explanation or definition as you say and it's quite hard to achieve one.
Sometimes it's suggested that I do these things because I just don't want
to have one big success. I've had success.... I don't need to do it again.
If it all adds up into a big success, that's great. From time to time I
have a hit record and that's when everybody agrees with what I know, that
I've made a good record. I don't release bad records. I just release some
records that are more popular with more people than others. It may sound
arrogant but I don't try to make bad records. I know some are more, in
retrospect, better than others, but when I release them that's the best I
could do at the time with the resources that I had, with the musicians that
I had and the hope and imagination that I had in that period of time and if
they suddenly click and you find yourself with a hit single and
consequently a hit album, that's fantastic because a lot of people have
agreed all at once that there's a quality in it you hoped was there. If it
doesn't happen, then you have to...it's not a question of saying I can sell
myself with this, you have to respect the fact that if eight people bought
your record with great sincerity, then that's eight more people than you
that really took it to heart. I think sometimes people in the music
industry lose sight of that because they think that people that listen to
music and the public are fools and they become very cynical. And I'm not a
little bit cynical. You can't possibly please everybody. You have to be
respectful of that fact that everybody listens differently.

88: Well, sometimes it turns into a numbers game, too.

EC; Yea, when I was first starting out and was told I'd sold a thousand
records in a day, I just couldn't imagine that because at that time I'd
never played to a thousand p (?????)
-d now the biggest audience I've ever
played to is 300,000. That was in Rome. And I've been on television on
things like Live Aid where there were a billion people watching and it's
beyond your comprehension. So to become obsessed with the difference
between selling 100,000 and 5,000,000 records is ridiculous because if they
all came around to your house and asked for a drink, you'd really be in
trouble. You'd find it very difficult to imagine having the conversation
we're having with everybody that buys a record. To some extent it's a very
unnatural thing. Once the records are issued and released on a major label
and released around the world, it's no longer as personal as when you were
first learning to play the guitar and taking the songs to a club and trying
to play them. I'm trying very hard, particularly as I get older, to try and
hold on to the human aspect of it and play in smaller venues than I have in
recent years by choice and not worry about status and things like that as
much. Sometimes I go on small tours with other sounds, like I'm going on
tour to Spain with the Brodsky Quartet because that music that we did
together is gaining an audience in Spain. I'm not sure why and people are
very curious to hear the music we wrote together and that's an opportunity
for us because these towns have never been visited by a rock and roll band.

88: Are we Americans going to have a chance to see you this summer?

EC: Yea, I'm coming back..I don't know...you're having that Olympics in
Atlanta. That's made it quite difficult for us. I don't know whether
there's a date in Atlanta because of it. Of course, nothing's ever set in
stone and if we're not there this time, we'll certainly be there next time.

88: I can make some phone calls. We could cancel those damn things.

EC: So I'm hoping we will be back before very long. I don't know what my
plans are beyond September. I'm just about to start a European tour and
we're traveling all over and going as far as Greece. This is the first time
I've played there. It's quite good after 20 years to play in a country
you've never played in. And we're in Paris and all these towns and we're
playing in London every weekend and then we come over and play in America
and end up in Japan. So we've still got a long way to go.

88: You need to send us some postcards from the road.

EC: Yea, I'll send you some postcards.

88: The record again is called "All This Useless Beauty"?

EC: That's right.

88: It's been great having you give us a call from....?

EC: I'm calling from my home in Dublin, Ireland.

88: We appreciate you not calling us collect

EC: Well that would be a bit of an imposition. It's very nice to speak to
you. I hope that I will see you before very long.