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PARIS — Spin Magazine recently sent writers to places like Tulsa and Anchorage to "try to find the soul of rock roll." It seems to be lost.
As far as I can make out from the magazine's I-didn't-do-any-research-but-I'll-write-this-anyway style, rock's soul has been eaten by heavy metal bands and fat Americans in fast-food chains. Whatever hint of soul found was played by blues or rhythm and blues bands on the wrong side of the tracks, which should surprise nobody. The music of the folks doesn't get lost. As far as I can hear rock never had any soul it didn't take from its sources anyway. One writer went to New Orleans and he heard some soul but they call it jazz down there so he didn't take it seriously.
Europe was not taken into Spin's equation so they did not look for Elvis Costello in Dublin, where he lives in nearby hills looking like a Mountain Man.
Even if Spin had found him, would he be considered rock? Irish punk? Midlife-crisis Pop perhaps. Old-World folk-rock? To be honest, Costello is one of those acts I only deal with when absolutely unavoidable — like now; after an interview, he's on tour and just released a major album, Mighty Like A Rose (Warner Brothers). He's news, and you nave the right to be informed.
Despite starting this project — which demands repeated listening to the album — with a certain amount of resentment (I'd rather be listening to Joe Henderson), I ended up with a fair amount of respect. I tried hard. As far as this sort of music goes, the album's not without assets. Maybe I tried too hard, but I concluded it was flawed but soulful and you could call it rock.
Although there are segments which sound like The Beach Boys riding polluted surf or The Pogues sober and he often speaks with forked tongue and twisted ambiguity. Costello has something to say. Saying it seems important to him.
My reservations are in part based on the fact that he can't read music, which he considers an asset. My advice to him is "learn, Lazybones." He has the royalties and thus the time. His instincts are (unlike John Lennon, for example) just not good enough to remain illiterate, which is his missing edge. The messages are somehow unfinished, or is it unfurnished?
He could certainly use some education when it comes to melody and harmony, although it occurs to me I'm being hopelessly bourgeois just mentioning those elements these days. Actually, he reminds me of me speaking such crippled French after living in France for 20 years. Speaking of forked tongues...
He was born Declan McManus in 1955 in Liverpool, left home at 16, wrote songs, programmed computers for Elisabeth Arden, wrote songs, worked as a roadie and wrote songs. After his debut album in 1977, his manager renamed him. With his horn-rimmed and mild-manned Buddy Holly image, Elvis Costello was the antithesis of the aggressive punk clashes then in fashion.
His wounded, clipped delivery and melodic instincts were compared to Randy Newman. Now it has come to pass, more or less by default amidst the rap and electronic drum programs, that he is an eminent songwriter. He has had major hits and slumps, changed his billing back to McManus for a while, collaborated with Paul McCartney and hired Chet Baker to solo on his "Shipbuilding," a nice slice of irony about the Falklands war.
I asked him if he'd done anything about the Gulf war. "I wrote something called 'Invasion Hit Parade' about the way the U.S. networks took images of the Panamanian invasion and it was such good entertainment we were almost disappointed when it was over. Those Marines trying to pry Noriega out of the Papal Nuncio's house were living out a fantasy of being in a Coppola or Oliver Stone movie. I put those images together in a fractured narrative to point out its ludicrousness. Events have overtaken the song. People are going to say it's about the Gulf."
He's positively jumping at the chance to explain himself: "If I was looking for an image to represent the Gulf war, it would be a man talking into a microphone wearing a gas mask as though that were perfectly normal. And the other day I looked into a shop window on Berkeley Square in London and there was a mannequin wearing a sharp Italian suit. Where the head should have been was a BMW hubcap. That sums it up for me. An expensive Italian suit with a hubcap for a head."
Trouble is, his narratives can be so fractured that it takes five listenings to get them. I asked him, putting it gently, if he wasn't overestimating his audience.
"I just try and write a feeling I have, or to tell a story. I try to satisfy myself and hope it will get across. But I think the songs on this record are easy to grasp. You ask me if it's too complicated. Compared to Vanilla Ice, yes. Compared to Stravinsky, not at all."
Talking about the road, he said "People sometimes applaud when the music is at its worst. On a bad night they'll tell me how great it was. Maybe they've just not heard any good music lately. On the other hand, maybe it was better than I thought. Look, I just do what I do. And I don't really care so long as we can get across to the audience even if it's a battle. It doesn't have to all be friendly or ingratiating. Sometimes a battle is good. Anyway, I'm not bored with it yet."
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