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He doesn't look like a candidate for pop music stardom. Elvis Costello would seem far more suitable to the role of brooding computer analyst, which, in fact, he was until the music industry machinery began working in his behalf late last year.
Now Costello has emerged as the great punk hope of New Wave music. Even those who are on record as detesting the punk movement concede that Costello has a shot at the Big Time.
And while his debut album for Columbia Records, My Aim Is True, was greeted with a rather lukewarm response last November, the LP has been making steady progress up the Billboard chart. This week My Aim Is True moved from number 46 to number 41.
What gives Costello an obvious edge over other highly heralded punk acts — such as the Sex Pistols and the Dead Boys — is the comparative substance found in his lyrics.
These are working-class songs. And the message is often an angry one. But there are also generous strokes of undeniable style in the raw-boned music inspired by the hard-nosed basics of primitive rock 'n' roll. Costello will be New Wave's first major showcase in the Philadelphia area when he headlines a concert at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby tonight, along with Willie Alexander and the Boom Boom Band. And there's more to come. A second New Wave event featuring the Ramones and the Runaways has been announced for the Tower on March 18.
Until now, New Wave has been limited mostly to The Hot Club, which for several months has presented punk two to four nights a week.
The jury, of course, remains out on the future of punk. Despite its gradual progress, the music is still little more than a plaything for the trendy set and those who wallow in the outrageousness of it all. The outcome will be the ultimate test of record industry hype and media saturation. All of the major pop trends — like those heralded by Elvis Presley or the Beatles — were brought about by spontaneous public reaction. Now the record industry is gambling large sums of money that the the public can be forced to turn New Wave into the pop explosion awaited since the start of the 1970s.
The guess at this point is that New Wave won't make it. But it seems likely that isolated New Wave performers will take a firm hold on public taste.
Costello could be among them, despite the fact that he is not a performer who generates instant rapport with a new audience. To say he is unlovable puts it mildly.
He oozes arrogance and hostility. While Costello has not granted interviews on his American tour, earlier stories in British publications are filled with Costello's caustic observations on the "(bleeping) idiots" who share space with him on this planet. Born Declan Patrick MacManus and raised in a blue-collar section of London, Costello is not too delighted with his countrymen because "They settle for so little and they are stupid for having a queen."
But he's not very crazy about folks in the States, either. "I hate Americans because they've got so much and they do so little with it."
Just how much of Costello is part of a carefully calculated image and how much of it is authentic nastiness is open to debate. Clearly, he wants to be a star. This was evident last summer when he hauled his guitar over to the London Hilton to CBS Records international convention, and provided a sidewalk concert. Audacity worked. CBS signed Costello on its Columbia label.
Costello will not tolerate anything or anyone upstaging his music. The production is sparse — only Costello's electric guitar, bass, keyboards and drums.
On stage, he is a painfully awkward sight, moving like a man who wants desperately to swagger but never learned quite how to do it.
Hecklers are dealt with as (bleeping) idiots who should be stomped in the ground. On Costello's last tour, one such uncouth ringside witness at the Troubadour in Los Angeles received a drink in the face from Costello, who then promptly armed himself against any potential physical attack with a broken drinking glass.
Clearly, Costello's "Aim Is True." You can love him or you can hate him. But you can't ignore him.
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