Costello views Hall as 'Dirty Rotten Shame'
Rocky Mountain News, 2003-07-16
- Mark Brown

 

Costello views Hall as 'Dirty Rotten Shame'

By Mark Brown, Rocky Mountain News
July 16, 2003

Elvis Costello continues to bite the hand that feeds him, slagging the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as an event to amuse Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner and his socialite pals.

"The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (is) . . . really about the people who run it," says Costello, who was inducted in March. "It isn't about the people who are in it. That was obvious in the speeches they made. We were just the hired help.

"I tried to have an open mind. I had said the whole thing was a waste of time. My friends' enthusiasm for it tended to make me revise that opinion. 'Maybe I shouldn't be so churlish; they want to have a party in our honor.'

"But it wasn't really a party in our honor. We were just the cabaret. It's about getting people through the turnstiles in Cleveland. Any pretense that it's anything noble is laughable."