The Guardian, Friday 1995-05-12
by Robert Yates

He's been pilloried by critics and his former punk brethren for
poncing around with classical musicians and country crooners, but
Elvis Costello is at it again. Robert Yates meets the man who wants
the best of all worlds. Photographs by David Sillitoe

Elvis and his new Distractions

ELVIS COSTELLO warns you that he likes to talk. It's an odd thing to
say before an interview - "talking's good," you assure him - but
Costello's warning soon makes sense. You don't have time to complete
a question before he's away, picking up on a couple of words and
running with them. You get to feel like a quiz master continually
interrupted by the enthusiastic contestant in the glasses. Mid-way
through the interview he orders a sorbet.

Apparently, his voice is feeling a bit sore. "The sticky weather
doesn't help," he says, somewhat missing the point.

We're talking in a hotel near Holland Park. Costello has a flat
nearby although he spends most of his time in the Dublin home he
shares with his wife, ex-Pogue Cait O'Riordan. The hotel is where he
meets journalists with whom, it's probably safe to say, he's not
particularly enamoured. His favourite gripe is about "boxes". "It's
a British thing," he reckons, "wanting to fit people into boxes."
It's his thing, he says, to endeavour to escape them.   

Many words, it's true, have been expended on the "Elvis case" - on
the confusions caused by having an old punk rocker and a classical
composer in the same man. It was 1992's The Juliet Letters that
started the fun. Composed by Costello with the Brodsky Quartet, this
series of pieces for string ensemble was not, some thought, suitable
employment for a purveyor of scabrous pop.

"I never understood the big deal," says Costello. "With the
different approaches. It's not trying to make a point, there's no
polemic. It's just doing music. People are always frightened off
doing things because they are told it's not for them."

Of course, there's no counter to Costello's argument. But he plays
disingenuous. He might plead to be judged solely on his music, but
he knows the image game. He's smart enough to have used it to his
advantage many times. When punk broke, he realised that even when he
felt perfectly happy, a good snarl would do his career the power of
good. It's probable that his non-stop interview technique is his way
of trying to make sure we stick to his agenda. "That's not quite the
question I was going to ask," I find myself saying several times.

Anyway, what Costello says he's up against is the sort of division
which means that last year the Daily Telegraph feigned shock when
discovering that he, as an unwashed rocker, should spend his
evenings in the Wigmore Hall, his favourite classical venue. On the
other hand, the NME wondered whether he was still "on our side".
Make up your mind, Elvis, was the sorry implication. Are you a pleb
or a ponce?

He's being a bit of both at the moment. A fine album of "pop" cover
versions, Kojak Variety, is about to be released. It includes songs
originally recorded by Screamin Jay Hawkins, the Supremes and Bob
Dylan and demonstrates again Costello's ability to inhabit a whole
range of styles. It's Costello's "personal jukebox"; some of the
songs have been knocking around in his head for 30 years.

"This American TV company wanted to do a special on the album," he
explains. "We were quite far into the planning when they suddenly
announced that they wanted the original artists to take part. They
didn't seem to realise that some of them were not around, some of
those who were, would not be too well, and what about the logistics
of getting Diana Ross to come and sing a song with me that she last
sang in 1964?"

No special then, but Costello is preparing for Meltdown `95, a
week-long festival of music at the South Bank, running in June.
Costello is the artistic director and his clarion call of a
manifesto aims to bring together "music from near and far, from now
and then, entirely new and extremely old". However, he's wary of
appearing too evangelical: "It has a sense of bureaucratic posturing
to it, you know, of the breaking-down-barriers school.
Unfortunately, Meltdown also sounds like a tacky burger bar."

Still, he's planned an impressive programme. The line-up includes
Jeff Buckley, the Jazz Passengers, his friends, the Brodskys, and
interesting mixes, such as Brian Wilson and Ray Davies compositions
placed alongside pieces by Shostakovich and Brahms. "I didn't want
to throw people together for the sake of it. I was following
threads," says Costello. Concerts are grouped around themes such as
melancholy and, er, melancholy. "Yes, I'm big on melancholy. But I
wasn't thinking, how extreme can I make this. I'm not trying to make
things unpleasant. But if you have a framework that comes out of a
very subjective view, then in effect you're asking the audience to
come along with you."

It sounds promising I say, but there's no pleasing the man. He can
already hear the boo boys. "It's going to offend some people, I
know. There's this over-statement of the dire in this country. You
hear all the time phrases like `he's really lost the plot', or `how
embarrassing'. I always think if you find something embarrassing,
why don't you just look away." The strength of his argument is
weakened by what follows.

"That Late Review programme which goes out on Thursday nights and
which I hate, is typical of what I mean." he says. "It's just
pantomime, pointless debate by people like Tom Paulin who are
infinitely less talented than those they're reviewing." The phrase,
"why don't you just look away" might pass through your mind. Also
deflating Costello's righteous anger is our shared recollection that
on the show Paulin gave Brutal Youth, Costello's album from last
year, something of a kicking.

He has a general strop about what he reckons to be the
mean-spiritedness of critical comment in this country. Debate is
frivolous too, he adds. For instance, he reiterates that he longs to
be judged purely by his music. He doesn't want all the flam, all the
chatter and fashion that routinely attends a pop performer. What he
doesn't say is how adept he's often been at using the flam to his
benefit.

He says now that he made his initial mark by "tailoring" his sound
to fit in with punk. While other punk faces were struggling to find
a third chord, Costello's problem was keeping his talents hid
holding back on the more complicated stuff which might have worked
against him at the time. He recognised the prevailing wind and
sailed with it. "There were songs on my fifth album written before
songs on my first. But I knew they would get slaughtered if I put
them out early. I'd be dismissed as precocious and pretentious."

For somebody who found his moment in punk, he holds a rare contempt
for it, precisely because of what others found liberating - its lack
of musicianship. "It was spectacle, street theatre, I wanted to
play." There was anarchy abroad and Costello was worrying about
having to veil his fancy tricks.

There are hints of Costello turning all puritanical when it comes to
pop. The suggestion that he has hardly been solely concerned with
music, that he has always made use of spectacle and of the timely
interventions that pop allows (whether in song, in the
post-Falklands Shipbuilding, for instance; or just using the
interview platform to start a good argument) doesn't go down too
well. It's not an insult, I say. Yet he's anxious that his changes
in musical direction should not be associated with role-playing.
That is the sort of thing Madonna would do; his changes, he says,
are simply music-led: "When the image comes first, what are you left
with? Something empty like Andy Warhol."

Costello says he still can't play any instrument "well enough to be
employed by another band". However, he's clear where his skills lie.
"I'll never be a specialist. But I can hear things across different
types of music, and I know how to get what I want. Take the Brodskys
- and I'm not saying this to say, hey, I know more than they do -
but to be as good as they are, you cannot afford to diversify. They
know the quartet repertoire inside out. However, they might miss
connections between different pieces of music which spring out at
me." FINDING "hidden" connections is an evident pleasure. He
mentions how he hears similarities between songs of Roy Orbison and
Schumann, and threads between Purcell and Duke Ellington. This is
not offered, he says, to blandly suggest that music is all
interconnected. It's more to do with "the thrill of finding two
musicians in different times and places discovering something
similar". Costello's enthusiasm and skill for this sort of
correspondence should make him an ideal choice for Meltdown. Soon
afterwards, he will record a new album with the Attractions, and -
still keen to mix it up - embark on an orchestral piece: "But I'm
not quite thinking of Symphony No l, just yet."

Meltdown `95, in association with the Guardian and BBC GLR, runs
from June 23 to July 1. Booking and programme information on 0171
928 8800. See the Guardian next month for reader ticket offers.