Interview with Elvis Costello
Q, 2002-05-01
- John Aizlewood
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Elvis Costello and corner staff, Dublin, 4 February 2002. |
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Another Good Year For The Roses
He's Homer Simpson's latest co-star, and a new breed of US punk
kid calls him "daddy". But still Elvis Costello thinks the world just
wants him to remake his old albums. "I'm an idiot, we all are," he informs
John Aizlewood.He's Homer Simpson's latest co-star, and a new breed
of US punk kid calls him "daddy". But still Elvis Costello thinks the
world just wants him to remake his old albums. "I'm an idiot, we all
are," he informs John Aizlewood.
Photographs by Jamie Beedon
U2 own the Clarence, a discreet hotel situated on the south bank of
the River Liffey which bisects Dublin's ugly north from its more beautiful
southern side, a reminder, despite everything, that British rule did
leave nice Georgian buildings, handsome parks and wide streets. The
Clarence serves the least edible but most expensive cheeseburgers this
side of Glastonbury Festival and it is here where Elvis Costello has
chosen to discuss his latest album, When I Was Cruel.
The leather jacket, thick-rimmed glasses and unruly haircut suggest
otherwise, but he's looking less like Bono's slightly seedy uncle than
he has of late. The jowls, tinted glasses and unkempt, sweaty air have
been replaced by a look reflecting a successful artist who will turn
50 in 2004.
When the revolution nearly came, Costello was the angry but articulate
voice of punk. More curiously, 20 years later he briefly became a soundtrack
hero after covers of She and I'll Never Fall In Love Again made it onto
Notting Hill and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me respectively.
He is due to appear in a forthcoming episode of The Simpsons and is
getting a new generation's respect, hence a 1977-vintage Costello photograph
taken backstage at New York's CBGB appearing in a Sum 41 video.
"I loved that," he coos. "Apparently, they sell a lot of records. You
know what I hear? In groups such as American Hi-Fi and Sum 41 I hear
our early stuff processed through Green Day, who, to use Buffy speak,
are the portal through which they pour bits of me and Joe Strummer.
It's healthy but it's not going to change my life unless a bunch of
kids buy the new record or reissues of the old."
However, none of this need equate with contentment. Costello doesn't
so much have a bee in his bonnet as a hive. Thus he oscillates wildly
between being guardedly defensive to the point of paranoia, and being
infectiously enthusiastic about myriad musics, from the Mingus Big Band
to the "seriously ugly" ex-Buzzcock Howard Devoto.
Costello's beef concerns the press reaction to his endless litany of
side projects. Since 1996's All This Useless Beauty, these have included
Painted From Memory, a disappointing album with Burt Bacharach; guest
vocal appearances with our new friends the Mingus Big Band among many
others; a Country Music Television special with Lucinda Williams ("Having
me on it got her on CMT. I'm the one who wrote a song for George Jones
and Johnny Cash - I've got pretty serious credits in Nashville") and
producing Anne Sofie Von Otter's For The Stars.
"They're not side projects," he declares. "There's no sense of that
to my mind. I go in there whole-heartedly and I give them all my time
and attention. You're asking me to say that I somehow do them while
my left foot is cracking walnuts, which is not the case. The attitude
since All This Useless Beauty has been, Why doesn't he knock it off
and make an Elvis CosteIlo record? I know that's the case."
WHY I LOVE ELVIS
By Sum 41's Deryck Whibley
The first record I got was My Aim Is True and it's still my favourite.
I bought it four years ago because I kept hearing this name, Elvis
Costello, and the few songs I'd heard I liked.
"I'm mainly into the stuff with the Attractions, because
all the songs are really short and catchy. He manages to put so
many different parts of hte song into a minute and a half - the
sort of ingredients that would take anyone else four minutes or
more. That's why we've always tried to get a similar feeling into
what we do.
"I've not met Elvis but it so happens that he's on our label.
I wouldn't want to ruin the experience though - in case he's not
a nice guy."
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Can't you understand that attitude?
"Not one little bit. You're asking me to subscribe to the idea that
I shouldn't do them or that they're not worthy. I just don't see them
that way and I never will. There's no argument or any of your talking
at me that will get me to say Painted From Memory, working with Anne
Sofie or scoring a ballet weren't worthwhile things. I was offered the
opportunity to do them, I've really enjoyed them and that I've learned
from them. It satisfies a need and, apart from that, I don't really
give a damn."
Yet this catholic, spread-yourself-thin approach takes its toll on
what he refuses to acknowledge are "proper" Costello albums. When I
Was Cruel was made in just two weeks. A little hasty perhaps? The 200-page
ballet score he mentioned will take a year.
"No. That's how long we recorded for. They're not exactly hard songs,
and I'd been writing some of them for two years. This record is more
about rhythm than melody because the melodies were so big on Painted
From Memory. It's not like there's a shortage of tunes: My Little Blue
Window, Tart _ and Radio Silence are all really good melodies. It's
definitely not Armed Forces."
In fact, it's a fine record - Tart and Tear Your Own Head (It's A Doll
Revolution) would make a Best Of collection. Those expecting something
comparable in terms of quality with 1979's Armed Forces or `86's King
Of America, let alone `80's Get Happy!!, the achievement of his lifetime,
will be disappointed. Again. And this is the nub of the entire Costello
problem. Is it that he won't do sustained magic again? Or that he can't?
"I could, but why would I do that? It's like if you ask Brian Wilson
why he hasn't re-made Pet Sounds. It's because he didn't want to."
He trails off and looks across the Liffey. Dublin has been his home
for 12 years now.
"I don't feel British. I'm about as far out of Britain as you can be
while being so geographically close."
He hitches up his bright yellow socks and trots off for the world's
longest wee. On his return, his hands smell of expensive soap.
`Green Day are he portal through which they pour
bits of me and Joe Strummer."
"Actually, I'm wrong about being able to do Armed Forces again. I don't
think I could - not through a lack of ability to capture melody, but
because the air is different. I can't go to Belfast for the first time.
I can't ride around America for the first time thinking, Isn't this
odd, wow, look at the name of that shop, that sounds like the beginning
to a song. I could pretend I was that naive again and that it was fresh
to me, but you can't go back. That's the main reason for not doing it
- you would be affecting it. The fact that I won't make Armed Forces
again is something that I should get applauded, not criticised, for."
Costello says all this without rancour but with fervour. Again, that
defensiveness ensures he will not admit to wrong turnings.
"I wouldn't characterise what I'm doing now or at any time as a mistake.
Obviously."
Nor will it allow him to regard any of his own material with irreverence:
"Then I'm denigrating some song that I believed in as I was writing
it."
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"I don't think I'm combative": Elvis is about to leave
the building. |
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More realistically, Elvis Costello's lyrical edge is still tack-sharp.
There's little of the bitterness of yore, although calling him bitter
was always the easy option. Indeed, there's a beguiling ambiguity running
through When I Was Cruel: 15 Petals' protagonist is part naive lovestruck
soul, part deranged psychopath.
"Oh I like that," he purrs, "that's a lovely interpretation. There's
quite a lot of humour in the record, not as in laugh out loud, more
a celebration of the absurdities of life. There's a lot of love songs
in the world, but I haven't written too many - they're always around
the twist. I wanted 15 Petals to be as mad as love is."
He wears the burdon of being a great wordsmith lightly.
"The thought of being a great lyricist doesn't occur. I'm an idiot.
We all are, we're all beautiful and we're all ugly. I'm not kidding.
I'm not being falsely modest..."
Oh come on. Of course you are...
"No. I believe it. I don't care about it. I know that I can spin words
and I know people admire it, but I don't want people applauding as I
walk into the room. If you believe it, you start reaching only for big
ideas and dazzling expressions. Upon A Veil Of Midnight Blue is a little-known
song I wrote for Charles Brown - `You find your tongue is tied, your
words escape and hide/ But she's so patient and kind, that she's prepared
to read your mind/But that's all very well, `til you find because of
the wine you drank/Your mind is just a blank.' Charles just sang, `I
find it hard to think when I drink.' That's what happens if you get
the quill out and say, I'll dazzle you. Fuck it, you're going to get
slapped down."
He's made his money, but not enough to stop working. Sales of When
I Was Cruel will show how much of his core audience he has retained.
Typically, he purports not to care.
"They don't owe me anything. I don't owe them anything. I don't have
disdain for them, but the price of admission is only to get to hear
the thing I've made. People have more to do with their lives than count
the days until I do a record."
If he says that too often, it might come to pass, but for all his ambivalence,
Costello's been famous once and then gone back for more. He sounds starstruck
by his dabblings with the word of film.
"One week Phantom Menace was Number 1, followed by Notting Hill and
Austin Powers. I was thinking what a drag it was that I wasn't in Phantom
Menace. I was big in Brazil and Thailand, I got to go to two premieres,
I met Julia Roberts and everyone was really sweet. Now I'm older, being
famous is not affecting me so much so I'm much happier than 20 years
ago when I'd quit the business four times a week because I'd not gone
into it to get famous. It's really silly, we worship the wrong gods."
It's time to go now. Costello has a photo session to endure.
He takes part with good enough grace. "Doing this picture is like asking
me to subscribe to the premise that I'm combative - and I don't think
I am. That's why I said I'll only do it if the ring is full of roses
and my corner staff are girls. Perhaps we can make a beautiful, absurd
picture."
He still awaits Kate Bush's telephone call after he suggested they
work together at last year's Q Awards ("We're hoping she will. Perhaps
if she comes this way... "), but the future looks interesting, Costello
is artist in residence at the University of California, Los Angeles
and he's kept his Equity and Screen Actors Guild cards, the latter coming
in useful when he guested in the overlooked film 200 Cigarettes and
that Simpsons episode.
Annoyingly, he refuses to discuss the latter, refusing to reveal that
he plays a counsellor at a music camp as Homer Simpson once more embraces
rock. Then there'll be the ballet, more collaborations and perhaps a
little time spent on actually being Elvis Costello. Don't bet on it,
though.