The Independent (Eye On Tuesday) - 28 October 1997 

       Elvis's Army Is Here To Stay 

Elvis Costello wraps his chips in other people's opinions,
says Nick Hasted. But he still has a few strong views of
his own. 

Elvis Costello is waving goodbye. Goodbye to his record
label, some employees of whom he loathes the sight.
Goodbye to his old band, torn apart in acrimony. Goodbye,
too, to a decade which saw his stock as a pop star sink
perilously, as journalists and public alike turned their back on
his dizzying musical twists. But he's not bitter. As a parting
gift, he's released the album of the year. 

Extreme Honey has the advantage of being a compilation -
18 tracks from Costello's nine years on Warner Brothers -
chosen, unusually, by the singer himself. It's a period which
marked a concerted fracturing of Costello's carefully
assembled punk-era image as a Buddy Holly-resembling,
Presley-taunting singer of twisted rock 'n' roll, with lyrics
requiring dissertations from the singer to pierce their
triple-edged, swirling meanings; the period when he told a
journalist that his songs were about "guilt and revenge". 

Costello can hardly blame the host of fans who never got
beyond that first, exhilarating apparition. But when he moved
to Warners in 1987 he meant to put those limitations behind
him. His band - The Attractions - had split, and his
subsequent collaborations ranged from Paul McCartney to
the Brodsky Quartet. But, as he's turned this way and that,
the contract between himself and a suspicious public has
loosened. An Attractions reunion, Brutal Youth (1994), was
greeted with tell-tale relief. A second and, it transpired, final
album with the band, last year's All This Useless Beauty -
handled "atrociously" (in Costello's view) by Warners -
brought him to the end of this particular line. 

But, as the dust clears, Extreme Honey shows that the
rumours of artistic decline, of a talent pulled apart by
diversity, are so much hot air. The album stitches together
classical laments and punk assaults. Through it all, the spirit
stays undimmed. Focused by maturity, filtered through
multiple sounds and moods, Costello's unwillingness to
excuse the world's shoddiness, its lazy evils, hasn't been
neutered. Almost alone among his peers, Costello hasn't
given up. 

Forty-three now, seen in the flesh for the first time, Costello
looks as you'd expect him to. Semi-shaven, trademark
thick-rimmed glasses half-swamping his face, half-masking
his feelings, he's polite, hardly bothering to disguise his
disinterest in journalists, but still playing their game, filling
every second he can with his own agenda, the things he
wants to express. Personal revelation isn't on the list. But
it's there between the lines. Trying to be fair in the last week
of his divorce from label and band, traces of bitterness at old
wounds are glimpsed. Old enemies remain unforgiven. Some,
he'll hate to the grave. 

"Tramp The Dirt Down", Extreme Honey's lynchpin, names
one. It was an infamous song from the day of its release, nine
years ago. Beginning with the image of Margaret Thatcher
kissing a crying child in an NHS hospital, it showed a sordid
Britain, drained of hope. Costello sang it with a mixture of
anger and grief. He pleaded that he'd outlive the Premier, so
he could jump on her grave. The sentiments seem a lifetime
away, until the song drags them back. Costello rarely plays it
now. He's wary even of discussing it, of being labelled, like
Ben Elton, as an Eighties hangover. But the rage that fuelled
it hasn't stopped. 

"I feel exactly the way I felt at the time," he says. "I think
it's the worst period, certainly this half of the century, and
you've got to hold all the people who cajoled and tricked all
that greed out of those responsible. A few of them should
probably be in jail, at least one of them on a murder charge.
But that's by the by. It's not going to happen." 

"The cynical ones say that it all ends the same in the long
run" spit the lyrics of "Tramp The Dirt Down" with disgust.
It's a despair at the British tendency to forgive anything
which goes back to Costello's first single, "Less Than Zero",
provoked by a fawning 1970s interview with Oswald Mosley.
"That is a peculiarly English thing," he agrees. "I've been
watching that history of the Tory party, and it's funny to see
the recent stuff presented as history. People are saying,
'Well, of course, she'd lost her mind by then.' And you're
thinking, 'That's not what you were saying at the time.' It is
funny, like time softens the blow somehow - no 'Then we
take you out and shoot you.' For me, it's not 'Yes, now it's
all a good laugh.' For me, it's 'No - now we have a show
trial.'" 

When he writes about those feelings, does he want to
change anything? "It's just to get it out of my head. When
people say, 'They're the political songs,' they're not. They're
the ones I write because I don't want them in my head a
second longer." 

For anyone who's followed Costello, the starkest line
Extreme Honey draws across his past is the admission in its
notes that his band, The Attractions, are finished. Always
more than a backing band, they were the key to the
soul-rock roar that still defines Costello for most. Costello
puts the blame on bassist Bruce Thomas, referring to him
only as "that twattish bassist" (the only picture of The
Attractions on Extreme Honey crops Thomas from the
frame). "I don't have any sentiment at all about The
Attractions," he says calmly. "You won't see them again.
When somebody is deliberately fucking it up, you have to get
rid of them, it's as simple as that." 

Was he aware that when the reformed Attractions played
there was an element of nostalgia? "Yeah," he relents. "I
don't think you can help it. There's always the danger
there'll be this fading picture. I had a slight feeling of sadness
on the last night that we played. It was like the last night of
your childhood. I knew I wouldn't do that again. But I would
like to make another rock 'n' roll record. One the like of which
no-one's ever heard. I feel to some extent, everything I ever
did with The Attractions was sampling. It was like Oasis
with wit. If I ever make a rock 'n' roll record again, it won't
sound like anything else." 

The problem for Costello these days is getting anyone to
hear it. For all his adherence to his art, the commercial failure
of last year's All This Useless Beauty is rumoured to have
led to a stormy showdown with Warner Music's President.
Costello thought the record's chances had been sabotaged by
idiots. It's questionable whether he could have found his way
back into mainstream favour anyway, while its media remain
so tied to his past. The only one of his records to make an
impact in recent years has been Brutal Youth, because it
sounded like his old ones. "I'm not secure enough to be
complacent," Costello admits of his position, "and I think
that's healthy. If things had kept sky-rocketing like they did
at the beginning, I could be miserable now. Or I could be
dead." 

Walking through central London a few minutes later, Costello
still sounds optimistic. He's in the middle of recording a new
album, co-written with Burt Bacharach. And he's signed a
new contract, tailored to his own, unique specifications.
Before he leaves he makes a final effort to explain what he's
been up to all these years. 

"If you're in music because you want to be in music, then
you've got to find a way to do it," he says. "That's all I did. I
realised in 1979 being a pop star wasn't going to go on
forever, and started doing what I wanted. I made it my job to
completely take apart my image, or it would have turned into
a self-defeating prophecy. Altering my identity, altering my
appearance, all the things journalists think are so important,
has just been so I can work. I just wanted to do this for the
rest of my life." 

"People who write about stuff for a living are always looking
for more meanings than there are. From where I'm standing,
it's completely obvious why I've done things. I don't actually
think anybody other than journalists care about those things.
They're too busy living their lives. They just care about
whether they like my new record. People's opinions about
you are just stuff you wrap old potato peelings in. None of it
matters, in the end."