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No doubt you read the account in the Village Voice last week, or heard about it. In a short piece by Marc Kirkeby in Richard Goldstein's "Artbeat" column, it was reported that on March 16 an altercation developed in a Holiday Inn in Columbus, Ohio, between members of the entourages of Elvis Costello and Stephen Stills. Bonnie Bramlett, who is singing backup with Stills, claimed Elvis called James Brown "a jiveass nigger" and Ray Charles an ignorant, blind nigger" and said he hated Americans and "only came here for the money."
Well, last Friday at 3 p.m. Elvis called a press conference in CBS' 15th floor offices on 52 Street. As he strode into the tiny conference room, overcrowded with reporters from rock magazines, black music magazines and other sectors of the press, Elvis showed none of the indecisiveness reflected in the opening line of his Armed Forces LP ("I just don't know where to begin").
"Eh... I never thought I'd be in a situation like this... It seems necessary for me to be here to make one statement: I am not a racist. The remarks attributed to me in the Voice this week were taken out of context and misquoted. That's understandable. I don't wanna get into a trivial feud with another act, but it does seem that maybe some people are using this incident to get publicity at my expense, which I don't like."
(The publicity angle is an interesting one. Bramlett's career is at an all-time low right now, and it would make sound business sense for her to use the story. Rumors have it that Bramlett called reporters herself with the story the day after it happened. Hope Antman at Columbia said either Bramlett or members of Stills' entourage called Martha Hume of the Daily News, Stan Soocher of Circus and Dean Zimmerman, Lisa Robinson's assistant at Hit Parader. Neither Hume nor Zimmerman could be reached at press time, but Soocher said, "I'd been planning to interview Stills right around that time anyway, and the day after it happened Joe Lala, Stills' percussionist, told me about it. The Voice piece pretty much matched what Lala told me. Stills mentioned it too, but he didn't seem to think it was any big deal. But no, Bonnie Bramlett did not call me with it.")
A reporter asked the obvious: What was the context for calling Ray Charles "an ignorant, blind nigger"?
"It was just a very typical, trivial, after-hours barroom type thing. We'd been drinking, yes... an argument developed, and as it escalated I just decided to say the most outrageous and offensive things I could think of to bring the whole thing to a swift conclusion. It worked, too: Started a fight, cleared everything up...
A black woman asked: "Mr. Costello, do you believe that a drunken mind reveals what a sober mind conceals?"
After a moment's consideration, Elvis shot back, "No, I don't. But that's a good try." Cool as a cuke, that El.
After several irate inquiries as to how Elvis reconciled his use of such epithets, he told us: "Look, I said I was misquoted and the misquotes were taken out of context. Those remarks do not reflect my true beliefs or feelings. I'm not afraid to use the word apologize when I say I apologize to Ray Charles, James Brown or anyone else, black or white or whatever, who got really pissed off by this whole business. I mean, I'm sure that if the other parties involved read the Voice story they'd be as confused as I was when I read it."
Richard Goldstein fairly screamed at Elvis, "But we tried to reach you constantly. You made yourself unavailable. We couldn't reach you. You can't blame it on the press. We tried! It was you! It was YOU!"
"Look," replied Elvis the C., "I'm on tour. I'm hard to reach. It wasn't up to me, I didn't make myself unavailable for comment." Several reporters muttered "bullshit" under their breath.
Then Elvis was asked about his anti-American remarks.
"Well, that sort of thing's true one minute and not true the next, innit?"
"I don't know," cried the irate reporter who'd asked, "is it?"
"Yeah, I think so. Look, I've got American friends. I think there's a lot of things wrong with America. There's a lot wrong with England. There's a lot wrong with the world."
During the course of the questioning, Elvis reacted to the ever-present camera clicking with, "Look, let's hold off on that for a while, eh? I mean, I'm sure that after a few reels it all looks the same." And after more discussion on the matter of being misquoted, Elvis fired this off:
"Look, it was such a trivial thing I can't believe we're all here. For me to be here and you to be here is absurd. I mean, the remarks attributed to me made great copy, right. But they didn't report Bonnie Bramlett saying that all Limeys are lousy fucks and can't get it up. They didn't report what I'd said about Crosby, Stills and Nash."
Before he could explain what he'd said about CSN (Robert Christgau of the Voice conjectured in the elevator after the conference that, whatever it may have been, it would have been appropriate, "because they were terrible"), a reporter with a Southern drawl interrupted: "Mr. Cahstellah, hah wood yew feel abaht someone callin' yew a sawed-off Lahmey po-zer"
"Actually, I believe that was said during the course of that evening," he replied.
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