Elvis Costello didn't set out to scare rock 'n' roll fans.
But his new album will.
The Juliet Letters sounds like a rocker's nightmare: a collaboration between Costello and Britain's Brodsky Quartet. No guitars. No drums. Just Elvis' voice and the classical string quartet lineup of two violins, viola and cello.
"I'm open to a lot of different collaborations and drawing in sounds from outside of rock 'n' roll or pop," a fit and happy-looking Costello says while nestling into a hotel room sofa on a recent overcast New York day.
"I think you have to break down the fear," he says. "The boundary between pop and classical is the one boundary people seem really scared of. The Juliet Letters is just like saying there is no boundary. It's just music. And the sound does work, I think."
But others from both sides of the musical fence are bound to disagree. The Juliet Letters could cost Costello — and the Brodsky Quartet — some fans
"We've already upset some people," says the Brodsky's first violinist, Michael Thomas, on the phone from Germany, where the quartet is on tour "My father for one. He won't talk to us any more."
Thomas kids not. "He's not happy about it. My father doesn't think rock 'n' roll is something his children (Thomas and Brodsky cellist Jacqueline) should be doing. It's unfortunate. There's a risk for us in this. I think the results are worth it."
Costello, wearing a conservative suit over a black shirt with bold red polka dots, agrees. He's unabashedly enthusiastic about the album. "I'm as proud of this as anything I've ever done," he says. "It contains one or two of the best things I've ever written. But the minute you tell people about it, they get all agitated. They think about what they fear it might be, not about what it actually is.
"Just relax," the musician says. 'We're the professionals. We know what we're doing."
Costello, who will perform The Juliet Letters with the Brodsky Quartet at Symphony Hall on St. Patrick's Day, is a musical omnivore who spends a good deal of time in concert halls. He became a fan of the Brodskys after hearing them perform several Shostakovich quartets. Then he discovered the quartet's members where fans of his.
"We met in a coffee bar and spent the whole afternoon talking away about music," Costello recalls. "Then we got together with our instruments and just threw ideas back and forth, like in a workshop."
Once Costello's wife, ex-Pogue Cait O'Riordan, pointed out an odd newspaper article, Costello and his new colleagues had the germ of what would become The Juliet Letters.
"It seems there was this professor in Verona," Costello says, "who from around 1968 to '72 somehow got the letters from the dead-letter office written to Juliet Capulet. It's strange to write to a dead imaginary person, but then people write Sherlock Holmes. Anyhow, this professor took it upon himself to write these people back. It was a rather poetic and, I think, very beautiful thing to do."
After discarding Shakespeare's Juliet and her professor stand-in as subjects, Costello and the Brodskys began writing letters — love letters, suicide notes, sales pitches, graffiti messages — with the Idea of turning them into songs
"It certainly was a new experience for us," violinist Thomas says "None of us had ever written lyrics before. I don't think any of us had even written a letter before. Then it was hard enough to stand there and read them in front of the other members of the quartet, let alone one of the great lyricists of our time. So embarrassing."
The four Brodskys, plus Thomas' wife Marina, share credits with Costello for the words of nine of the 17 songs (plus three instrumentals) on The Juliet Letters.
"What we wanted," Costello explains, "was to get that curious way that people write letters and change gears. The way a letter can start off 'Dear So and So, how are you doing, it's great here' and then, 'to tell the truth, actually things aren't so hot and I'm going to kill myself.' People do that in letters. But it's hard to imitate. But by me being editor and juxtaposing and substituting things, we were able to achieve that."
While the form and expression of The Juliet Letters will be new to Costello fans, his voice, sometimes snarling, sometimes sweet, will be familiar. And it's more impressive than ever heard in this spare setting.
"I made an obstacle course for myself in some of the things I composed for this," Costello says "I didn't mean to. I just found myself going up to high B. I've done it before in the yelping way you do in rock 'n' roll, but I've never gone full out and sustained it. But it's not opera. I'm just using the full extent of my range, which, despite what some people think, is not three notes."
Costello laughs hard enough to reveal the pencil-thick gap between his front teeth. He says he's looking forward to the production of a staged musical he's written and is already at work writing another — non-string quartet — album.
"I don't want people to think I don't have complete confidence in this," he says, "like, 'Hey, folks, I've done this weird thing and I'll be back in a minute.' I'm really proud of what we've done. If people can get by that fear thing, there's a lot in it."
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