Retrospective of Costello's career
Preview: Victorian Arts Cnetre News, 2002-07-01
Elvis is back
Don't be surprised if a run of Elvis' sightings around the Arts Centre
gets reported in the media during July. Elvis is indeed making a comeback.
Elvis Costello, a true survivor in the music industry is returning to
Australia, appearing with The Imposters.
Decian McManus, as he was born on 25 August 1954 in London, is only
child of trumpeter, vocalist and erstwhile bandleader Ronald ("Ross")
MacManus and record store manager Lillian MacManus.
At the time of Declan's early childhood Ross was a featured vocalist
with the Joe Loss Orchestra (Britain's premier big band) and he used
to bring home acetate recordings to practice the latest pop tunes. Declan
loved to listen to these and other records, his favourite (even as a
toddler) being Frank Sinatra's version of Cole Porter's I've Got You
Under My Skin. At the age of nine, Declan bought his first record, the
Beatles' Please Please Me.
Coming from a musical family (aside from his parents' professional
connections with the music world, MacManus' grandfather, Patrick, was
also a musician, as are Declan's four half-brothers, Ronan, Liam, Kieran
and Ruari who formed a band called "Manus", later renamed
"Riverway", in the late 1990s) it was almost inevitable that
Declan would have some interest in music.
He first came to prominence during the United Kingdom punk era of 1977.
The former computer programmer gave impromptu performances, appealing
to the new wave market but also capturing the hearts and minds of a
wider audience with the sensitive issues he wrote about.
After a brief gig in a country rock act he was signed as a solo act
to Stiff Records.
Yet Costello failed to chart with his early releases, which included
the anti-fascist Less Than Zero and the sublime ballad Alison. His debut,
My Aim Is True introduced a new pinnacle in late 70s songwriting. Costello
spat, shouted and crooned through a cornucopia of radical issues, producing
a set that was instantly hailed by the critics.
His first hit single, Watching The Detectives, contained scathing verses
about wife-beating over a beautifully simple reggae beat. At the same
time, Costello's standing across the Atlantic was seriously dented by
his regrettably flippant dismissal of Ray Charles as "an ignorant,
blind nigger", an opinion he later recanted.
However by the end of the 1970s Costello was firmly established as
both performer and songwriter, with Linda Ronstadt and Dave Edmunds
having success with his compositions.
Through the years he has continued to impress with an output continually
challenging the soundwaves, both in its content and in the music partners
he has cultivated.
He demonstrated his right-on political and racial stance in 1983 by
producing the Special AKA's hit single Nelson Mandela, the proceeds
of which went to help free political prisoners (such as Nelson Mandela).
In much the same vein Costello also commented archly that his video
for Everyday I Write the Book featured 50 per cent of the black artists
featured on MTV at that time (the Afrodiziak singers). Presumably the
other two were Michael Jackson and Prince.
Towards the end of the 80s he collaborated with Paul McCartney, co-writing
a number of songs for Flowers In The Dirt.
His collaboration with the Brodsky Quartet in 1993 was a brave partnership.
The Brodskys were classically trained musicians accustomed to working
from sheet music. Costello could neither read nor write musical notation,
having always relied on his "musical ear", memory, tape recorders,
and an idiosyncratic form of written "shorthand" that only
he could understand.
Incredibly, in the space of a few months, Costello mastered musical
notation to the point where he could write four-part arrangements. The
result was The Juliet Letters - Costello had read a newspaper article
about a Veronese professor who took it upon himself to answer letters
written to Shakespeare's Juliet - a song-cycle about love, life, death
and correspondence. Costello asked the members of the quartet to suggest
different kinds of letters and lyrical ideas associated with the letters.
The result was a mixture of original compositions by Costello and collaborations
featuring different combinations of the Brodskys with Costello. Generally
speaking, most of the rock critics (with the exception of Rolling Stone)
thought that the album was nothing less than a tour de force. Classical
critics were predictably less enthusiastic: some of them sneered at
Costello's idiosyncratic vocals and obsessed over the obvious influences
in the arrangements: Shostakovich, Bartok, Debussy, Gershwin et al,
while they overlooked the inherent melodic invention and totally avoided
the lyrical beauty of the songs. In spite of the initial disdain in
some quarters, The Juliet Letters is now attaining the reputation as
a "standard" work and has been performed by a number of other
string quartets around the world.
Costello signed a worldwide deal with PolyGram Records in February
1998. Following their collaboration on the track God Give Me Strength,
featured in the 1996 movie Grace Of My Heart, Costello and songwriting
legend Burt Bacharach joined forces on 1998's Painted From Memory, a
finely crafted collection of ballads. I Still Have That Other Girl won
a 1999 Grammy for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals. The two collaborated
again on a cover version of Bacharach and David's I'll Never Fall In
Love Again, for the soundtrack to Mike Myers' Austin Powers: The Spy
Who Shagged Me.
Costello's cover version of Charles Aznavour's She also figured prominently
in the Hugh Grant/Julia Roberts film, Notting Hill, and returned the
singer to the UK Top 20. The following year he composed the orchestral
score for Italian ballet troupe Aterballeto's adaptation of A Midsummer
Night's Dream.
A stirring collaboration with opera singer Anne Sofie Van Otter in
2001 preceded a new "pop" album, When I Was Cruel.
Although Costello no longer tops the charts, he remains a critics'
favourite, and is without doubt one of the finest songwriter/lyricists
England has ever produced.
His contribution was acknowledged in 1996 when he collected Q magazine's
songwriter award. His left-of-centre political views have not clouded
his horizon and he is now able to assimilate all his musical influences
and to some degree, rightly indulge himself.
Elvis Costello and The Imposters
Concert Hall
16-17 July