Crowd, June 1984

From The Elvis Costello Wiki
Jump to navigationJump to search
... Bibliography ...
727677787980818283
848586878889909192
939495969798990001
020304050607080910
111213141516171819
202122232425 26 27 28


Crowd

Australia publications

Newspapers

Magazines

Online publications


-

Elvis Costello


Richard Guillatt

Used to be disgusted — Now he tries to be a muse

Elvis Costello once shouted mockingly to an audience in Washington: "Next time we come back… we'll bring an army and take over!" It was one time when Costello's brazen boasting was sadly misplaced — it's taken six years for the British to invade America's airwaves, and Elvis is definitely not in the landing party. While the sweet new fa(e)ces of English pop have been converting Americans by the stadium-full, Costello's last tour of America consisted of several low-key solo concerts in small venues.

Like The Clash and Sex Pistols before him, Costello assumed that he could tackle the U.S. with the same arrogance and venom that had upended the British music industry. Instead, he very nearly upended his own career. The man who had vowed that he would never succumb to the trappings of rock careerism was in complete confusion by 1979. He had shut himself off from the press, left his wife, and taken on an inhuman schedule of touring, writing and recording. It was during this period that he toured Australia, playing erratically and causing a near-riot at Sydney's Regent Theatre by walking off after only 50 minutes. Later in Ohio, when he tried to provoke a bunch of American musicians by making racist remarks about Ray Charles, Costello finally blew it. The event was widely publicised and he did not return to the U.S. for two years.

The aftermath of these events was documented in a long interview in The Face last August. Costello and the Attractions recorded Get Happy under "extreme self-inflicted emotional stress" and then did a short British tour which left Costello so disillusioned that he momentarily quit the band. Almost Blue, an album of country cover versions, was a vain attempt to capture the old creative spark and a new audience.

Yet unlike others who have lost the thread since the heyday of 1977, Costello has clawed his way back to produce music of equal substance to his early years. Instead of fracturing his career into a myriad of interests — acting and video being the pet interests of anyone from Sting to John Lydon — he has sought to re-establish himself as one of Britain's most ingenious songwriters. Imperial Bedroom was perhaps the peak of his fluency as a lyric writer and while Punch The Clock was a disappointing lightweight follow-up, four recent records have proved anything but light-weight.

"Pills and Soap" was a jaundiced view of Thatcherism where…

"… all we get are pictures of Lady Muck.
They come from lovely people with a hard line in hypocrisy,
There are ashtrays of emotion for the fag-ends of aristocracy."

The "Shipbuilding" single recorded by Robert Wyatt, cleverly examined the Falklands War from the perspective of a shipbuilding town in England.

"It's just a rumour that was spread around town,
Somebody said that someone got filled in,
For saying that people get killed in
The result of this shipbuilding."

Subsequently, Costello produced The Specials' single "Nelson Mandela," a song about the jailed black African campaigner. His newest record is "Peace in our Time," another bleak prognosis of world events.

Whereas once Costello would have set these songs to blustering, hard music, often his most vitriolic lyrics are set to plaintive and unadorned melodies. Similarly, the arrogance and confrontational nature of 1979 has been tempered. At 30, he is as affable as he once was arrogant. He arrived for the interview wearing baggy pants, a woolly jumper, leather coat and a well-worn porkpie hat. But behind the bookish appearance, he is still a man with an emphatic belief in his own worth and a complete disdain for many of his contemporaries. When Costello's thoughts turn to those who displease him, his tongue is just as sharp as ever.


I'll start with a couple of general questions. The last few things that I have heard of you being involved in were "Peace in our Time" and a television series that you were possibly going to be involved with.

Well "Peace in our Time" is out in England as an Imposter record, which is just to separate it from the next record. Then we've got an album coming out, Goodbye Cruel World, at the beginning of June. "Peace in our Time" was recorded at the same time, I just wanted to put it out ahead of it, just as a song. I think its good to use different identities, different labels, just to make people approach a song differently.

Well, that certainly worked with Pills And Soap.

Yeah, it did. Of course that was more tricky, there was more intrigue with the release.

What about this television series?

Oh well, I play a very small role in that. I've written the title song for the series. The series is called Scully, the song's called "Turning The Town Red." It's about a young fella's ambitions and dreams, sort of a tragic comedy written by Allan Beasedale who wrote a series of plays about a group of unemployed fellas in Liverpool, about 18 months ago (a reference to Boys In The Blackstuff, recently screened on ABC). This is by no means as bleak as that, but some of the conclusions are quite tragic. It's about this lad and I play his elder brother. It's a very small part, I'm just a figure of fun in most of the scenes. I speak once.

That was one thing I was going to ask you about… there's been this trend over the last couple of years for your contemporaries, or people in a similar field to try and crack it in acting like Sting and Lydon.

Yeah, well Sting's got the looks y'know. He need only be on-screen on a video and it's arresting, whether the song's rubbish or whether it's good. It naturally follows that if he had any ability at all to portray a character he would be good at it, because he's photogenically very good. I'm not, so in that sense it wouldn't automatically follow. I thought he was pretty good in Brimstone And Treacle actually. He certainly made a more credible stab at it than Mick Jagger glorifying Ned Kelly or Mick Jagger playing anything really.

Because there's [ illegible] real diversification lately with people diversifying — people like Paul Weller starting a publishing venture.

Well I think he's to be applauded for that, it's better than just going and buying a castle or an island and becoming a recluse. He's got a lot of criticism in England from the Respond lobby because they haven't come up with too many people who are world beaters. But he has enough faith them to put his money where his mouth is, and sooner or later he's going to come up with something good. I think he had already — he's got Tracey (Ullmann). I wrote a song for her new album because I was impressed with her singing.

I don't think the diversification thing is bad, as long as it's honest.

I was more wondering why you haven't joined in?

Well I have. I've got the Imp label. Its not been terribly active… I put the Imposter Record out and then a record by a man called Philip Chevron which I produced. That was a Brendan Behan Song. And we're going to be doing an album with an Irish singer, she's a cabaret singer, does German cabaret songs: Agnes Burnel. I'm the executive producer , kind of the A&R man. She is about 60 years old and she's really good.

I have branched out into that area. I just don't really have the time to do any more. I will when I finish this tour because I'm taking a break of some indeterminate length from recording and touring, at the end of this year.

Your albums have sometimes been influenced by very specific styles of music. I was wondering whether this was true for this next record?

I thought it did when we started to record, but it changed half-way through. Put it this way, "Peace in our Time," is not representative of the album at all, in the same way "Pills And Soap" wasn't representative. I mean, if everything (on the last album) sounded like "Pills And Soap" and "Shipbuilding" you'd want to go out and kill yourself. The whole trick of that album was that it drew you into those songs because of the brashness of the rest of it. It is a little bit like boxing, that album, all the time egging you on with one hand and hitting you with the other one. Because you're not expecting a song that sombre or that thoughtful to suddenly appear among these quite cheerful sounding pop songs.

This album… overall I think these are the best songs I've ever written. In terms of songwriting, I think this is among the four best records that we've made, the four best being This Year's Model, Get Happy, Imperial Bedroom and this one. When I finished 'Imperial Bedroom' I thought that was the best songwriting I'd done up to that point, whereas I could find faults with parts of Trust even before the record came out. That's true of Punch The Clock as well: I was aware before it came out that there was some songs I thought were insubstantial as songs, even though they made good records. It's a good record; it could have been a great record, but we lost it somewhere. That's perhaps the least substantial lyrical album I've put out, but I'm still proud of some of the pop creations on it.

Yes, because your early records were fired by this incredible venom, really, and I was wondering whether it becomes increasingly difficult to…

Well, I don't go looking for the venom. There's quite a lot of venom in Pills And Soap, although it's not screaming. I think there's a time to speak softly and carry a big stick, as Theodore Roosevelt once said.

But venom also about relationships

Well (laughs) you better hear the new record. I'm not always looking for that. You've gotta look inside yourself. Most of the most negative songs I've written are about something inside myself. I used to really resent the label of being a misogynist. Because most of the songs on This Year's Model were written for the pity of what a woman was made to be, not attacking her for being that. They just didn't listen properly. They didn't get past the sound of the record. You name me a song on This Year's Model which is as demeaning as Under My Thumb.

I mean, I had never heard the album Aftermath (the Rolling Stones' 1968 classic) until 1978, and a lot of the songs on This Year's Model were written as response to hearing that album. I think it's a very intelligent Rolling Stone album; it's not nearly as phoney-macho as some of their later records. I see them as these kids who have suddenly grown up and are in a sophisticated world, dealing with some of the hard realities of the adult sex world. And that was exactly what I was experiencing, except that it was 1978. I wrote an album that was parallel to that, so it therefore reflects the changes in attitudes. I wouldn't adopt that macho persona; it's so ludicrous. That's why those songs have a lot of compassion. The tone of them sounded like I was saying "You worthless slut" when in fact I wasn't saying that at all.

What about Armed Forces, some of the stuff on that’s pretty nasty. Party Girl…

Party Girl is a lovely song. That’s just the opposite, that’s in sympathy with someone who is being labelled a party girl. That’s got a lot of affection in it, that song. And a lot of self-criticism. I don’t like that song all that much. I’m not capable of singing it anymore, because it comes from a period of my life that … I don’t feel that way. But I still reject that it’s a negative song. There’s a couple, perhaps, on that album. That’s a more mean-spirited album than the one before.

You don’t like it, though, do you?

I’m not averse to it. It doesn’t sound nearly as slick as I think it does. In my imagination it sounds like an ABBA record, but when I hear it it sounds quite rough.

Because I read in that FACE interview where you said you looked back on that album as being very glib.

A lot of it is glib. A lot of it is drug talk. The drugs are doing a lot of the songwriting in the less substantial songs. The better songs on it stand up. I was doing Green Shirt on the solo tour and it was nice to rediscover that song. You just have to recognise which are the bad songs and the good ones.

I was doing the song Riot Act on the solo tour which most people overlooked on Get Happy because it was last on the album. It was actually a good song and when I wrote it, it was a very important song for me.

It was something very honest. It was written in the wake of our almost-demise in America, and it’s the only song that really talks about that.

“I got your letter
Now they say I don’t care
For the colour that it paints me
Trying to be so bad is bad enough
Don’t make me laugh by talking tough
Don’t put your heart out on your sleeve
When your remarks are off the cuff
Riot Act – you can read me the riot Act
You can make me a matter of fact
Or a villain in a million
A slip of the tongue is going to keep me civilian”

When you first came out here that first time, what was your state of mind?

(Laughs) What mind?

Because there were some pretty ugly stories about what happened both in front of the stage and backstage.

And they’re all true. I think I explained it pretty clearly the last time I was here. One of the promoters didn’t hire us gear that was of professional quality. It was just a joke, it was insulting. I don’t think they took us seriously.

Were you also feeling contemptuous towards your audience?

Not towards the audience. Well, there was a lot more complacency then. There was a lot more to react against then. Since then there has been things with a real original attitude, but there wasn’t much to be impressed with last time. It was at least five years behind what was going on in England.

I mean I don’t remember it that clearly now, it is six years ago, and I make no pretense about the fact that most of the time I was completely drunk. We took drugs then, we drank all the time, and that tends to put you right over the point where you’re so unreasonable that any kind of conflict and it’s all out war. Elzic (the promoter) said ‘Your boys aren’t worth the money,’ so we kicked him up the arse.

They’d read a couple of press releases, they had me portrayed as some punk mad-man. ‘Punk Rock Mister Nasty Comes To Town’ was the headline in Melbourne. They were looking for some sensational angle. It was like the press was trying to whip up something like what happened with the Pistols in England. They were trying to antagonise us. They did hound us. And I just wasn’t prepared to be made a monkey out of. You try planting some ludicrously-attired girl in a photograph with me and I’ll punch you. I still would.

One person described you as being incredibly wound up and aggressive both before and after a concert. Is this true?

I think I was wound up, yeah. Like I say, I’m not going to be coy about the fact that we drank too much and … well, you couldn’t take drugs here because there weren’t any, or they’re very expensive, or very useless. One of the three. But I still felt like I was in the right.

In the FACE interview you said that after that period you had a radical change of attitude. I was wondering whether you could elaborate on that.

Well, I stopped taking drugs (laughs). I did. And I still don’t take any drugs. I like to drink, but I certainly don’t drink before a show. I physically couldn’t with the new band now, it’s different when you’re only playing anything between 20 minutes and 40 minutes a night, but when you play for 2½ hours you need stamina.

But for an artist in your position, is it a conscious decision that you have to take stock, change your whole approach?

Well it’s a lot more personal and complicated than that, I can’t explain it without explaining areas of my life that I don’t want to discuss (possibly a reference to his reconciliation with his wife, Mary).

Well, on to something different. I read in a 1978 interview that you said you’re not on a mission you’re not out to convert people. Yet in the last year or so you’ve been involved in four quite political songs – Pills And Soap, Nelson Mandala, Shipbuilding and Peace In Our Time.

Well my very first single was politically motivated. It’s always been there, I think it’s just how people pay more attention to what I do. The fact that (the songs) are more controlled means you either listen to what I’m saying or you don’t. Pills And Soap demands that you listen to it. It’s just a quiet song you have to think about.

It just struck me that in a conservative country like England, they’ve all been hit records, apart from Peace In Our Time.

Well Robert Wyatt’s version of Shipbuilding only ever got to No. 32. It got a lot of play, but I wouldn’t exactly say it stopped the world. I think if you read the New Musical Express you can start exaggerating the importance of these things and start taking yourself really seriously and imagining that you are really important as a social commentator.

Yeah, well one of the things that really offended me recently was David Bowie’s posture on that sort of thing, because he come out here recently to do that Let’s Dance film clip which…

I thought that was a really ludicrous film clip.

Yeah, it had these aborigines scrubbing the back streets of Sydney, set to a funky backbeat.

And he tries to justify it by saying it was some kind of political statement. Sorry… it was just a load of crap.

What I’m saying is – how much do you think people perceive the message you’re putting across?

I dunno, you’d have to ask them. There’s no handbook on how to listen to my songs. People get from them what they want. Some people don’t listen to the words, regardless of how stark the instrumentation. I don’t demand any particular way – I think it’s arrogant. It’s as arrogant as trying to justify a blatantly commercial move by spraying it lightly with a bit of political commentary and trying to come off as really credible.

I mean, I know what effect Nelson Mandala had on South Africa. None. On Nelson Mandala’s life – absolutely none. Except through the channels that they have contact with him. He may conceivably be heartened for one minute of his miserable day by the thought that there are suddenly all these extra inquiries as to his well-being because of that record. The anti-apartheid movement in London suddenly got an influx of inquiries about their activities and Mandala, purely because that was a hit record. I mean, I can’t think for one minute that it’s going to make much difference to his life, and it’s certainly not going to make much difference to whether he’s freed. But it heartens the people who are constantly fighting that. That’s a tremendous achievement, to have new people, new blood, coming into the fight. But the other songs, they’re not statements. They’re mostly written from an ironic point of view so they strike people from an emotional standpoint rather than a polemic stance.

I was in the bar last night and three USAF airmen came in in combat fatigues. We were very drunk and being very offensive about them – loudly, - hoping they might get the hint. And in the end I had to go to the manager and ask him if he could ask them to leave.

I regard them as an army of occupation in England, and I think it’s only polite to not rub it in your face. They have the arrogance to walk around as if they got straight out the F-111. I find it really insulting that they were in there – I find it really insulting that they’re anywhere.

Do you find it’s a dilemma for you, not knowing what effect the work you do has?

Well, we’re tending to concentrate on these songs which you could construe as being political. But there are other songs on the albums that mean just as much to me, so how much effect do they have on people? Presumably you might write a love song that might move someone, might make them cry, might be important in their life. That’s always been my ambition writing any kind of love song, whether it’s a sad one or a cynical one … although I try to avoid cynicism now. One that writes of the sadder realities, as I see them and as I can get them down on the page or on the disc. I hope it would be as important to somebody else as the songs that have meant a lot to me. That’s all you can achieve, really.

Yeah, I was more thinking that it seems to be a syndrome of rock musicians that as they get older they seem to be in this dilemma of doubting the actual art form they’re working in.

The Roger Waters Syndrome eh? Well, if that’s the case they should quit.

You don’t suffer from that?

No, I know rock ‘n’ roll is a useless item. I have a song called Worthless Thing which is about how much I think rock ‘n’ roll is worth. Rock ‘n’ roll as we know and love it on MTV or as purveyed by the Stray Cats- and I mean that symbolically, what they represent – if that’s all it’s worth, a rehash revival, then it’s really come to a sad and sorry state.

We’ve gone past the pomposity of 1973 and what have we got left – a cartoon of something that was once proud. I think there’s still some music of pride and danger to be had, but I don’t necessarily think you’re going to find it wearing crepe-soled shoes and a quiff.

So if you’ve got that attitude, why do you…

I don’t play rock ‘n’ roll – exclusively. I can, and I can play it a damn sight better than the Stray Cats, as well. But it’s much harder to hit a moving target, and that’s what’s important, if you set yourself in any one mode or idiom then you’re really in trouble. You can really set yourself up for a big fall.


Tags: WashingtonRegent TheatreThe ClashSex PistolsRay CharlesThe AttractionsGet Happy!!Almost BlueStingJohn LydonImperial BedroomPunch The ClockPills And SoapRobert WyattShipbuildingThe SpecialsFree Nelson MandelaPeace In Our TimeThe ImposterGoodbye Cruel WorldScullyTurning The Town RedAlan BleasdaleMick JaggerPaul WellerTracieThe ImposterPhilip ChevronBrendan BehanThe Captains And The KingsAgnes BernelleThis Year's ModelTrustAftermathThe Rolling StonesArmed ForcesParty GirlABBAThe FaceGreen ShirtRiot ActDavid BowieWorthless Thing

-

Crowd, June 1984


Richard Guillatt interviews Elvis Costello.

Images

1984-06-00 Crowd page 28.jpg


1984-06-00 Crowd page 29.jpg


1984-06-00 Crowd page 61.jpg
Page scans.



-



Back to top

External links