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It would be the tour T-shirt of the year.
Elvis Costello: North America, 1995. New York. Edmonton.
And, er... that's it.
For once, we could be permitted a small provincial conceit for attracting one of popular music's brightest lights for what amounts to a solitary moment.
What we do with it is another matter. Fifteen hundred tickets are still available for the Thursday concert, opening night for the otherwise sold-out folk festival.
At least for some of us, the sense of occasion is every bit (read more) as powerful as the 1994 edition, when a then-stage-shy Joni Mitchell favored us with a solo performance. And hey — don't expect Elvis to show up on the Dini Petty Show later this year.
For although the man has had his share of ill-fated collaborations and brushes with artsy pretense, there's no question of Declan Patrick MacManus's place in popular music over the past two decades. Like no one else, Elvis Costello has bridged the chasm between the Sixties and the '90s, forming the direct line from John Lennon to Kurt Cobain, if you will. That he's done it without (if to his chagrin) the same level of marketplace validation as these and other musical totems is of little import to history. The fact is, from 1976's My Aim is True to this year's Kojak Variety, there stands a body of work that will stand the test of time, often brushing up with — and embracing — genius.
And it's worth noting that the contributions have been across the board, from musician to vocalist to songwriter to lyricist to producer to scenemaker, involving an impossibly large suitcase of musical roots, branches and personalities.
He came to the task as well-prepared as any cabinet-bound English politician with a classic cricket pitch and Oxford c.v.
Although some American rock journalists like to go on about his tough, blue collar background, Costello in fact grew up in the pleasant, leafy environs of London's Twickenham, a neighborhood blessed with a variety of comely riverside pubs and not incidentally, Pete Townshend's Eel Pie recording studio. Son to a progressive, working class Liverpool mum and Ross MacManus, singer with the middle-tier Joe Loss Orchestra, Costello grew up surrounded by diverse musics and a healthy world view. By his teen years, the budding guitarist had already met most of England's British Invasion hierarchy, along with a wide swath of jazz, country and pop stylists who appeared on his father's TV show or in the kitchen for after-hours curries. While his peers queued up for the latest single by The Hollies or Stones, wee Declan had had the record company promotional acetates for weeks.
By the time he met up with Jake Riviera, his own Colonel Parker/Brian Epstein, in 1976, Declan/Elvis was already miles ahead of most of his contemporaries, not only in musical chops and education, but also in his essential understanding (and fundamental distrust) of the music biz and all its trappings.
Over the years that cynicism for the machinery has manifested itself in a number of seemingly ugly demonstrations (once gleefully stoked by Riviera) from his infamous, incomprehensible "Ray Charles is an ignorant, blind nigger" rant to now-forgotten singer Bonnie Bramlett, to wholesale denunciations of media swine, corporate swine, American swine, any kind of swine.
At 40, apparently happily ensconced in his ancestral Eire with second wife Cait O'Riordan (The Pogues), surrounded by moderating influences, those days would seem to be in the past. Still, any interview with Elvis Costello is bound to be an adventure.
The call came from London at precisely the appointed minute, with the man himself phoning, no minders or minions. Far from the fabled one-word (or no-word) responses of earlier times, Elvis '95 is bright, cheerful and full of questions about the festival and holiday possibilities in Wild Rose Country. How big will the crowd be? What will the natural acoustics be like? Museums? Food? "The Cambridge Folk Festival will be a nice tuneup, at least I'm loud!"
With festival recommendations from friends and collaborators June Tabor and T Bone Burnett, impressed by the enthusiasm of Mitchell, Ry Cooder and other happy customers, he says he's really looking forward to it and seems to mean it. "I'm interested in the mountains, finding a quiet place. But I hate heights. Can I look at them without having to be on top of them?"
Talk centres on the new album, which he'll begin recording in Dublin after a week of shows at New York's Beacon Theatre and the Edmonton date.
"Life is great, very busy as we're rehearsing with The Attractions and gearing up for the album. Of the 15 or 16 songs on the list now, about half will not have been heard, the other half my songs recorded by other people. It's not an exercise in nostalgia, a retro or backward-looking at all. One of the songs dates back to 1978, but most of the rest have been written over the last five years. Good songs last — it's up to us to pick them."
And he's enthusiastic about the re-release of (my personal fave) King of America, re-mastered by Elvis for the Rykodisc label.
"I can tell you it sounds far better than the Columbia version, having been stripped of compression, a more natural-sounding record. We worked seriously on it. And (chuckling), yeah, I've always loved giveaways, so the first 10,000 or whatever lucky buyers will get a bonus CD called Live On Broadway, a snapshot of that band at that time."
That included work by guitarist James Burton, ex- of Rick Nelson, Gram Parsons and that other Elvis, who Costello praises as "such an unaffected guy, completely untainted by fashion, a timeless musician."
Lately, he's done some dates with Bob Dylan ("a nice guy in great form") and a "weird adventure playing to 300,000 people at an Italian May Day festival."
Time is up, leaving a final question on how life in Ireland is these days.
"I live up in the hills, where it's 10 degrees cooler than here in London, where I can't wait to escape from at the moment. There's no mystical or arcane reasons for it. I just feel comfortable there. I can make noise or enjoy the quiet, it's much better for work and for not working. Got to run, thanks, looking forward to it"
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