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Elvis Costello's written plenty of songs about how opposites attract, so it's not surprising that this willful anti-star, this sworn enemy of the ostentatious, has developed an interest in Donald Trump.
"Do you know what my ambition is, my latest ambition?" he said effusively during an interview last week at the Regency Hotel. "Since I've been here, I've seen Donald Trump on TV a few times. I'd really like to do the soundtrack of his life story. I think they should do it like the Al Jolson story, while the guy's still around to advise. I think he should write it, in fact. I think they should get Dennis Hopper to play him." Ivana Trump will probably be more flattered by Costello's recommendation that Meryl Streep or Kim Basinger play her part.
The topic of Trumpian acquisitiveness is very much on Costello's mind. On his new album, Spike, his 12th (but first for Warner Bros. after a fitful decade at rival Columbia), there's a song called "...This Town..." that reviles the ruthlessness of today's real-estate barons: "You're nobody 'til everybody in this town thinks you're poison," Costello sings.
Despite the critical accolades Costello has accumulated since My Aim Is True (1977) put him on the map as one of England's feistiest rock-oriented singer-songwriters, there's little chance he will ever become popular enough to become similarly despised. Only two of his albums — Armed Forces (1979) and My Aim is True — have even been certified gold (for more than 500,000 sales), and most sold in the 150,000-200,000 range.
"Those measurements of success are not ones I can agree with," Costello said. "This might sound like convenience, because I've never had any major commercial success, but I see it as two separate endeavors. One is making records, making music, which you commit to vinyl literally as a record. There it is, it's a piece of work; whether it's art or it's junk, it's something."
Spike is certainly closer to art than junk, a typically sophisticated mixture of pop styles that blends contributions from Paul McCartney (a collaborator on two songs) to New Orleans' avant-traditional Dirty Dozen Brass Band.
Costello brazenly mixes musical input from members of Irish traditional bands with that from mainstream American rockers like Roger McGuinn, Benmont Tench of the Heartbreakers, T Bone Burnett (who co-produced) and Jerry Scheff, who played with that other musician named Elvis. (Costello will perform a solo concert at C. W. Post's Tilles Center, in Brookville, on April 11).
But art or junk, pop music is also a product to be marketed, and that's where Costello has had his problems. He's always defied complacency and predictability. Though erroneously lumped with the punks of the late 1970s, his music had an undertone of hostility that provided a jarring contrast to the blandness of that period's popular rock: He still detests as vacuous once-dominant former competitors such as Foreigner and Boston.
Costello's songs are filled with intricate wordplay, imaginative puns and acerbic wit. It's no wonder that when pressed to name a book he'd take to a desert island, he chooses a James Thurber anthology. The only notable hit from his repertoire was a rendition of "Alison" by Linda Ronstadt that neutralized the bitter longing of Costello's own stinging version.
"The record can't suddenly become a failure just because it doesn't sell a lot of copies," Costello said "Obviously, I would be delighted if it reached a wide audience, and I get frustrated if I think I'm being misrepresented or in some way disqualified from being heard for other considerations than my inability to make a good record. If the criteria keep changing, and they are, then I'm entitled to resent the criteria putting me out of the race."
Among them: "High-gloss, hundred-thousand-dollar Duran Duran-style videos that put everybody who wasn't photogenic out of the game for a couple of years, in large commercial terms," said Costello, whose thick eyeglasses and angular features have never made him Everyteen's pinup-poster fodder.
One current Columbia Records executive thinks Costello's griping is sour grapes. "Elvis really screwed himself royally," said the executive, who asked not to be named. The executive felt that back-to-back releases of Get Happy!! and Taking Liberties months apart in 1980, shortly after the success of Armed Forces, created a Costello product glut for both the company and the fans.
The prolific Costello often included as many as 20 songs per album, and released them as quickly as he could record them — a delight for aficionados, but overwhelming to those who weren't already converts. "It was totally impossible for the public to digest that much music," the Columbia executive said.
Costello's uncompromising image as an angry young man and his iconoclastic songs made it difficult for some record-company executives to understand him.
"You have to remember what the world was like in 1977," said Gregg Geller, a former Columbia Records A&R executive who was one of the company's Costello boosters. "What made Elvis so attractive to some of us was what made him foreign to those whose daily lives were spent swimming in the mainstream of the record business. He wasn't Neil Diamond. If your world is Neil Diamond, it didn't leave much room for Elvis Costello."
Then it was Neil Diamond. Now it's Michael Jackson, Madonna and Guns N' Roses. Costello is not encouraged.
"I can understand that entirely," Costello said of Guns N' Roses debut album's selling more than 7 million copies. "All I find amazing is that it took somebody so long to think to do it. I mean, Guns N' Roses are like the Archies or something: They're like the Archies for rebellious people. They're like a cartoon version of every rebellious image in rock and roll, and they're tremendous fun. But let's not kid ourselves... Guns N' Roses can sell seventy-seven million records, and in twenty years, or ten years, nobody will remember their name. They're Grand Funk Railroad."
Costello is similarly disdainful of the possible lasting power of other icons of today's pop. "Michael Jackson, I don't think anybody will remember him," Costello said. "I think he'll be like Rudy Vallée. Rudy Vallée, Rudolph Valentino, they're just distant memories and still photographs. [Jackson's] videos will be artifacts, but nobody will be able to reconjure the feeling that they had, because there is no feeling — it's just reaction music.
"All of those people — Madonna, Whitney Houston, all of these people who have sold themselves out to Pepsi — by their very action they've diminished themselves completely in the face of what, a can of soda pop?
"Madonna — I saw Madonna on TV, talking about following her dream. She followed her dream all the way to the end of the line, straight into some Pepsi commercial. When she was some kind of hot young dancer-cum-singer-cum-wanna-be celebrity on the scene, can you really think that the epitome, the pinnacle of her career would be a soda commercial? I don't think so. I don't think you can be remembered for a soda commercial."
While it once seemed that Costello would be remembered largely for his bitter chronicles of the battle of the sexes, he's widened his perspective on Spike: castigations of Thatcher's England, impressionistic images of the global village, humorous constructions of the afterlife, even poignant lullabies. And his use of varied musicians, instead of his longtime backup band the Attractions, gives the record rich and varied textures.
"They were the best people to play the music," Costello said of his diverse supporting cast. "A couple of people, like Derek Bell of the Chieftains, had never played with Steve Wickham of the Waterboys, who'd never played with Frankie Gavin of DeDanaan. So, just in that local sense it was quite a hybrid, and that was the best way I thought of achieving an original effect, an original twist on using those instruments."
Also featured: Costello's wife, Cait O'Riordan, formerly of the Irish roots-rock group the Pogues. The couple recently moved from a small London apartment to a house in Dublin. (Costello also has a 13-year-old son from a previous marriage.)
"It was just a practicality," Costello said of the move to Dublin. (Costello is English-born of Irish descent.) "We lived in a two-room apartment in London, a very small place, you were falling over something every time you turned around. London's very expensive, and the prevailing winds are not to my taste there. Dublin's not without its problems, its entrepreneurs and its sleazier side. Financially, we can afford not a mansion, but a reasonable house."
Things would be different if the critics were right about Costello. With each release, the reviews would say, this is the Costello breakthrough, his most accessible record. If that were true, "I might be Donald Trump by now," Costello said. "It would be the Costello Tower."
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