Miami Herald, March 4, 2005

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Elvis is not dead


Evelyn McDonnell

Survivor Costello brings old-school punk rock to Miami Beach

Few writers wield wit as lethally as Elvis Costello. The man who sneered "Did he leave your pretty fingers lying in the wedding cake?" on a famous early ballad, "Alison," is not what one would call merciful when it comes to the (many) things he disdains. His poison pen, balanced by his immense passion for beauty, even when it's "useless," is a large part of what makes Costello great.

So when he takes on the endlessly merging music industry during a 45-minute phone interview-cum-odyssey, ragging on the inequity of the deals between artists and record companies, heads up moguls.

"We've all agreed for the last 50 years this completely corrupt relationship has existed," Costello says. "Now it's finally being challenged by new technology, originally by pirates and now by legitimate business people, and [labels are] coming unglued. ... They're gathering together in larger and larger groups — the way dinosaurs do just before they die."

Elvis Costello is a survivor, and often, survival is the best revenge. When the singer, songwriter and guitarist takes the stage at the Jackie Gleason Theater in Miami Beach tonight, it might feel like an old-school punk-rock reunion to those who have followed the artist born Declan MacManus since he was a quintessential Angry Young Man. Keyboardist Steve Nieve and drummer Pete Thomas have played with Costello since his first tour. Costello and the Imposters (as the band that includes bassist Davey Faragher is called) are likely to dig into his catalog as far back as the late '70s.

But stasis is anathema to the man who simultaneously released two divergent albums last fall: the Americana-ish The Delivery Man and the classical Il Sogno. During a conversation that transpires while he journeys from a dentist's office to "bouncing around in the back of a taxi in London" to an elevator then finally home, Costello returns often to the theme of personal transformation.

"What's really important to remember is we're not the same people as we were when we started out, because we've had lots of other experiences, good musical experiepces, that we've had together and independently," Costello says. "That doesn't mean you can't find the fire when you need it. But it would be absurd if you hadn't ever learned anything along the way."

The 50-year-old Buddy Holly look-alike began his musical lessons early: His father was a big-band singer and trumpet player. Costello came to fame amid the creative cauldron of London in '77. His songs benefited from the fast and furious urgency of that time, but at heart, he was too serious about his craft to ever be a real punk.

By the '80s, his melodic muse led him to forays into country and soul, paths he revisits on Delivery Man. The album was recorded in Oxford, Miss., and features duets with country singers Emmylou Harris and Lucinda Williams. Costello says he got the idea to record in the South a couple years ago when the Imposters toured in Florida.

"The last time I was at Jackie Gleason we had a great time, people were throwing themselves on the stage," he says. "People forget Florida's in the South."

In the past, Costello has had a somewhat snobby attitude toward the music he adores. He dubbed an '86 album King of America and became infamous in '79 for racist comments about Ray Charles and other stateside artists. A more mature Costello sounds slightly humbler these days.

"I'm not proposing I'm Hank Williams ..." Costello says. "Obviously a lot of British groups have absorbed American forms like R&B and fed them back to America with some sort of weird spin or edge. That's the Rolling Stones, that's the Who, that's me and the Attractions in different times, and it's me and the Imposters now."

Costello's musical questing is certainly not confined to Delta byways. An Italian dance company commissioned Il Sogno for their adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, and released by classical label Deutsche Grammophon.

"Just putting down the guitar for a while to write something like Il Sogno makes picking it up again exciting," Costello says. "It's simple. It's not as analytical or complicated as people seem to think it is. When you talk about reinvention and all these top psychology words they use to describe things in criticism, from my point of view it's just what I'm curious about. I didn't have any ambition to do these things, they were just presented to me ...

"If somebody shows faith in you to do something unusual that you've never thought of doing yourself, then why not have that experience. All it can possibly do is broaden your appreciation of music and the arts generally, and at the same time, the thing that you began with then becomes richer to you."

Given that some of the songs on Delivery Man tell interlocking stories and that he just wrote a dance score, it's not surprising to discover Costello's writing an opera. The Royal Danish Opera has commissioned him to write about children's story master Hans Christian Andersen. He sounds slightly sheepish about it: "The minute you say the word opera you see some big woman in a Viking helmet. It needn't of course be that at all."

But mostly, he sounds as enthusiastic as when he begins discussing recurrent themes in American soul classics. The opera revolves around three 19th century pop culture icons: Swedish singer Jenny Lind, American circus magnate P.T. Barnum, and Andersen.

"The whole story takes place in a very interesting time. There's a lot of amazing change going on, and a lot of it relates to today. The transformations of individuals. If you take Barnum, a man who was known to be something of a carouser in his younger years and put a 70-year-old slave woman on display as supposedly George Washington's nurse ... Later on in life he was an abolitionist and advocate of temperance. Those are the kinds of transformations people were capable of in those days, casting off the drink and then starting to hear messages from God. Well, we wouldn't know anyone in present day who did that, would we?"

Costello has the gleeful excitement of a kid when he talks about the Imposters and his other musical projects. But when it comes to making the albums that have been his life's work, the, old vitriol comes out, tinged with sadness.

"I have no way of knowing if and when I will ever record again. I hope I will. I have a piece of paper that says I will record for at least one label again. But ... I have to see whether I have any place in that world."

Costello moved to Lost Highway, the Americana label that's home to Williams, Willie Nelson and Ryan Adams, after the parent company shifted ownership several times (it's now Universal Music Group).

"There are some lovely individuals that I work with who I think are very dedicated to music and share my enthusiasm for a lot of great music. I think they have the very best of intentions. But it's very difficult for every one of these little imprints that are on these labels to reach very far, unless the people who hold purse strings within the major corporations want that to happen. Sometimes I think there's a slightly cynical use of their enthusiasm and abilities, and my enthusiasm and abilities, to simply have people like myself around to lure unsuspecting people into signing for them.

"People like myself, who have out-lived eight-track, outlived cassette and vinyl, now we're closing in on outliving CD, are still working. All we're trying to do is get our job done. And one of our jobs used to be to make records. Meanwhile, the company I've signed to has changed shape five times. The label I was on is completely a hip-hop empire. That's OK, but don't pretend there's a place for someone like me in it. I took myself off to Lost Highway because I know some of the people there. But it's not in their gift or mine to make another record for Universal. It's someone senior at Universal whom I've never seen and never met and don't know the name of, that will make those decisions."

Costello takes comfort in his belief that satellite radio, broadband and the Internet will soon send the music industry as we know it into the tar pits. Meanwhile, he's in love — he wed jazz singer Diana Krall, his third wife, in '03. And he can always play with the Imposters. This tour takes them to places they've never played before: Boseman, Mont., the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.

"I was a little guilty of allowing my map of America to shrink to the places where I knew I had an audience. That's not what it's about.

"You can't reproduce what happens in a concert, that's the great thing about it. It's completely unique, that's the night you're all there. It's not just about how good that artist is, it's not egotistical like that, it's about how everybody feels."


Tags: Jackie Gleason TheatreMiami BeachFloridaThe ImpostersAlisonDeclan MacManusSteve NievePete ThomasDavey FaragherThe Delivery ManIl SognoRoss MacManusJoe Loss OrchestraEmmylou HarrisLucinda WilliamsKing Of AmericaThe AttractionsA Midsummer Night's DreamLondon Symphony OrchestraMichael Tilson ThomasDeutsche GrammophonRoyal Danish OperaHans Christian AndersenJenny LindP.T. BarnumWillie NelsonRay CharlesHank WilliamsThe Rolling StonesThe WhoDiana KrallNew Orleans Jazz & Heritage FestivalAll This Useless BeautyBuddy Holly

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Miami Herald, March 4, 2005


Evelyn McDonnell interviews Elvis Costello ahead of his concert with The Imposters, Friday, March 4, 2005, Jackie Gleason Theatre, Miami Beach, Florida.

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Illustration by Philip Brooker.


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Photo by Jesse Dylan.


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