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I saw Elvis Costello on television the other morning, being interviewed by the very serious Jeremy Vine. After a wobbly live version — not so much unplugged as battery-powered — Vine asked him if he still meant what he said in "Tramp the Dirt Down." In case you don't know the song, it's a solemn promise to dance on Margaret Thatcher's grave, rendered all the more vitriolic by having the Chieftains fluting and whistling away in the background as if Costello were singing the praises of some dark-haired girl called Kathleen.
Costello confirmed that he did, indeed, mean every word. The punctilious Vine remonstrated. Surely Mrs T is now just a poor old widow wummin who doesn't get out much and doesn't know her supply-side from her trickle-down any more? Costello was sternly unmoved, astonishing Vine with a comparison between Mrs Thatcher and Martin Bormann, who was also probably confused and dribbly "near the end." As well as being historically inaccurate — Bormann is alive and well and working as a traffic warden not far from here — this smells like overcooking, as if Costello is determined to prove himself unsoftened by marriage to that blonde piece everything mistakes for a jazz singer ... whoops! I'm "doing a Costello."
Invective is beautiful when it is improvised, acid-intense and of the moment. Still banging away with the same insults 20 years later runs the risk of sounding merely sullen. Having said that, "Tramp the Dirt Down" doesn't run any risk of becoming cosified with the passage of time. When the specific targets of satires like Gulliver's Travels and Animal Farm faded into forgetfulness, both notoriously became childish fables with vaguer and more universal themes.
By the same token, the haunting opening to the Costello song — the newspaper picture from the political campaign of a woman kissing a child "who was obviously in pain" — has a nightmarish intensity and ambiguity that goes beyond its original occasion and moment. Why is that child crying? Because of the pain or because of the kiss? Was the kiss intended to comfort or was it merely a photo-opportunity? Is there a touch of Oedipal rage behind the politics?
At the end of that part of the interview, Costello was reduced to saying Vine was giving a different stress to the lyrics. Not quite "You're twisting my words!" — more "It doesn't sound quite like that when I sing it." And of course it didn't. Costello was part of a generation that brought political invective back into pop and gave the tarnished idea of the "protest song" (always an uneasy concept) a new currency.
The argument is that protest has now all been channelled into hip-hop and rap, but even a cursory listen to the most inflammatory rap records of the last ten years suggests that protest is merely the armature on which the music's rhythmic and vocal innovations are hung. So what has happened to the protest song that they had to wheel out Costello's "Shipbuilding" for Iraq? Without a task force and cold Atlantic grey, it didn't have quite the right theme and tonality. Is purple flour the only way we have left of registering anger? Have we lost the means to channel it into metaphor and imagery, or is it simply that, carefully stickered rap apart, the industry can't be fussed with music that has agenda?
There's a hefty contradiction at the heart of my argument, but this is one cake I'm determined to have and to eat: great invective is of its moment; great invective is universal. For reasons best known to myself, I played all my Phil Ochs records the other day: "Here's to the State of Mississippi," "The War is Over," "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends," the haunting "There But For Fortune." Ochs committed suicide in 1976, so these are old campaigns and old wars. The songs would sound dated if they hadn't evolved into something else larger and more capacious than their original intent.
When Mrs Thatcher — who has somewhat haunted this month's columns — does eventually go, I hope Costello finds other ways of expressing his rage. "Tramp the Dirt Down" has already moved to a different plane. It deserves to be more than a petulant stamp of the foot.
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