Transcript of interview from 2003-09-17ra6: BBC Radio 4, Today - Interview
- John Foyle

 

BBC2 Radio 4, Today

Show co-presenter, Jim Naughtie-

.....and now it's 21 minutes to nine. We heard earlier this week about Labour politicians and some doctors dabbling in rock 'n roll. You remember David Hill, Tony Blair's new communication's man and his background. Why are musicians so reluctant to write about politics anymore, you may well ask. In the sixties and seventies you couldn't move for protest songs, Hippies writing about Vietnam, Punks later, about the dole, all the rest of it. These days, 9/11, Bush, Blair, terrorism, Al Quaida, even Lord Hutton. Well song writers don't seem to want to know. Give them time on Lord Hutton, but anyway -

Elvis Costello does have a new album out this week - and there isn't a political song on it. Mark Coles has been finding out why not.

(Extract played of Tramp The Dirt Down) 'I saw a newspaper picture from the political campaign ....'

Mark Coles: Pop and politics - for singer/songwriter Elvis Costello they've always gone hand in hand. From his vitriolic anti-Thatcher song Tramp The Dirt Down, back through Oliver's army, Pills And Soap, even his cover of Robert Wyatt's Shipbuilding, recorded right at the height of the Falkland's war.

(Extract from Shipbuilding )

'Is it worth it....'

M.C.: Costello has always's managed to capture the political and social mood of the time in song. So, something of a surprise this week with the world in turmoil to come across a new Elvis Costello album, North, that doesn't even mention politics. A collection, instead, of simple, straight forward love songs, their composer unapologetic.

Elvis Costello: I don't feel a responsibility to write about the world 'cos it's in such a dreadful state. A lot of people have written a lot of songs in reaction to events in the world in the past couple of years. But for me singing about love is about as good a thing you can do right now. Particularly as it goes from a more desolate place to somewhere, you know, more hopeful.

(Extract from When It Sings) ' All the words you say to me Have music in them All the sorrows and the joy like magnetism'

E.C.: I live in the time after Franz Schubert, I live in the time after Rogers and Hart, I live in the time after Joni Mitchell - and it is my responsibility to write as well as I am able to solve the musical puzzle of craft that comes after inspiration.

(Extract from I'm In The Mood Again) 'Hail to the taxi/They go where I go/Farewell the newspapers that know more than I know/Flung under a street lamp/Still burning at dawn/I'm in the mood again'

M.C.: Why no political songs, though? Why no songs about Bush or Blair in the same vein that you sang about, say, Margaret Thatcher?

E.C.: You have to do, 'cos you really believe you have something to say. The complexity - I mean, when Margaret Thatcher was there it was very easy to say 'Her regime was a heartless entity...and her ideology was in many ways despicable...'. At the present time you're dealing with a class of politicians who are really in the advertising industry. They don't appear to have any convictions. They have a piety about them. But they have a piety that they wheel out in reaction to outrages and - perpetrated by people with distortions of faith. In the case of the American President they don't have any sense of history to inform their current actions. Now - I can say all these things but finding a way to sing about it is very difficult. Because you don't want to be opposing that wretched and cynical and ignorant policy and imply a tacit approval of monstrous crimes and a structure of society that represses women.

(Extract from Someone Took The Words Away) 'It's strange to finally find myself tongue-tied..'

E.C. There are some pretty complicated issues in this thing and they're not easily expressed. You'd maybe need a Grand Opera, or a great, you know, Shakespearean tragedy in scale, and I don't doubt that there will be some time to say these things in song. But to simply in, like, a knee jerk reaction is very dangerous. I mean, Bruce Springsteen wrote a very passionately felt record about the attacks on the World Trade Centre. Some other songs written at the same time were cheap, exploitative things, which were a disgrace to the memory of the people killed, because they sought to make a maudlin, melodrama of these things and play on people's weakest instincts - and I just won't join in.

(Extract from Someone Took The Words Away) 'Someone took the words away...'

M.C.: Rock 'n roll has always fought the establishment , in a way -

E.C.: - Yeah -

M.C.: - it seems as if there isn't an establishment to fight against at the moment.

E.C.: Well, in England you're living in a one party state, you know. My mother has just tore up her Labour Party card after fifty years because of her disgust at the prosecution of the war in Iraq, among other things, among the complete betrayal of the identity and the ideals of the Labour Party. Again that's very difficult to describe in song. It doesn't mean that nobody sing about it. It certainly begs the question about when will be the time and who will be listening because, you know, people don't expect commentary in popular music now. One of the depressing things about the younger music scene is the content is so shallow. It's just - it's lyrics are just sort socially asp rational expressions. There's no poetry and there's no commentary and there's very little anger. And the anger is unfocussed sort teenage angst. It's not about anything. - that I can see.

(Lee Konitz's alto sax solo from 'Someone..' has been playing behind Elvis'words and plays up to complete the segment.)