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Outside a small country and western club in Aberdeen, a handwritten billing announces for those with the patience to read the scrawl ... "Mystery guest to star tonight."
Hardly something to race the pulse of the average Aberdonian country music fan. A lanky youth in a cowboy hat and fringed shirt says to his friend: "That'll mean that they haven't been able to book anyone yet," and wanders on.
But the cynical Scottish cowboy is wrong. For down among the plastic-topped tables, beneath the spinning crystal, a plump figure in dark glasses is rehearsing. A towel slung round his neck to catch the sweat, rumpled clothing abandoned to the contours of long-distance travel, he stands between ceiling-high stacks of amplification equipment — the black totems of decibel that denote a band more used to playing 100,000-seaters than small Scottish clubs.
The drum set gives the game away. It announces: "Elvis Costello and The Attractions."
Why should Elvis Costello, hero of the New Wave and one of rock's most articulate songwriters with numerous golden albums and hit singles to his credit, be performing in the Metro Hotel, Aberdeen?
Costello has been to Nashville, USA, to make a country and western album, and this strange turn of events has been filmed for The South Bank Show. Now the band plans to try the songs out on country and western music fans, partly for fun, but mostly for the documentary.
Costello has just flown in from London. He's lost the mean, lean appearance that was his trademark a few years ago, but he still looks haunted. He seems older than his 28 years — except when he smiles, and that's not often. He's drinking pints of soda water, mopping his forehead and trying to avoid me because he does not like giving interviews.
I corner him before he can bolt for his hotel room. He doesn't sit down. He's uneasy, but polite, and so am I. We begin gently. He says: "I worked my way backwards to country music. I heard covers of country songs by bands like The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers and I got interested in who had done them originally. Who had written them. I liked the lyrics, so simple and clear. They dealt with real things, ordinary lives."
From the country repertoire, Costello has picked songs that tell of broken relationships, painful love affairs, drink and death. He says: "I picked the songs I could relate to — love, marriage, drinking. Songs about God, family or patriotism are not for me."
The result is a very melancholic album, but Costello says: "That's right. That's me. I'm more renowned for being miserable than happy. Even when things are going well, I have a permanent sense of sadness."
This hand-picked emotionally masochistic set of songs could, at worst, be described as maudlin and banal. Peter Carr, The South Bank Show producer and a country and western fan, prefers to describe them as "pure expressions of pain." At first glance they seem a long way away from Costello's own clever songs, where cliches, evocative phrases and vivid images scramble over each other like worms in a bucket. But Costello says "No, emotionally they are not so far away."
He's tired of reading intellectual interpretations of his own songs. "I don't want to be a guru. I don't want to be loved, because I'm as worthless as anybody else. Sure, these country and western songs deal with cheap emotions, but then people's lives aren't Gone With The Wind. The thread of destruction running through the songs we picked fascinated me."
Costello's heroes on the country scene are as self-destructive as the songs he admires. The album includes two numbers by Gram Parsons, a central figure in country music who dies after taking an overdose of morphine at the age of 26. Another Costello favourite, Jimmy Rogers, dies in his 30s. There there are the hard-living stars still with us, such as George Jones, Jerry Lee Lewis and Charlie Rich.
Costello says he's attracted to the idea of live fast, die young, although he realises that these young deaths from drink and drugs are far from romantic. In an interview with a music paper he said: "Gram Parsons had it all sussed. He didn't stick around. He did his best work, then he died. That's the way I want it to be. I'm not going to be around to witness any artistic decline."
He adds: "I'd hate to be like one of those guys from a Sixties rock band, still hanging around and turning out what I consider a load of rubbish."
He peers over the top of his dark glasses to see how you're taking it, revealing a pair of startling brown eyes. In an interview with Costello, there are a lot of taboo subjects. Anything to do with his family is out. He is married to Mary, a childhood sweetheart, they have a son, Matthew. His father, Ross MacManus, sang with Joe Loss and his band for 14 years. Before he became a pop star, he worked as a computer programmer in Acton. The name he chose for himself has nothing to do with his feelings for Elvis Presley, and when people say that the name isn't a very original one, he says: "Neither is John." But he won't speak about any of this. "The past is gone. If you weren't there, you missed it," he says.
His reluctance to talk of the past makes it seem as though he went from being a computer programmer to rock star overnight. But in truth, he did his fair share of tramping round record companies with his songs only to be told they weren't commercial enough. In 1976, he walked into the offices of Stiff Records, struck up an instant and lasting rapport with Stiff's then supremo, Jake Riviera, was signed immediately and launched to rapturous critical acclaim and instant public recognition.
But all that was five years ago, a long time in the life of a pop star who is unwilling to remain working in the confines of one type of music for long. Success too, is now just part of the dead past and Costello says he finds it even duller than failure.
"I never wanted to be successful so that I could get a lot of money and retire to a house in the country. I don't want any of that rock 'n' roll rubbish. I don't want to go cruising in Hollywood or hanging out at star parties. I'm not interested in that. I'm only interested in writing songs and playing."
He mounts the small stage and runs through his country numbers. He starts with a personal favourite, "Sweet Dreams." The club staff get quite excited and put on a light show – a revolving crystal and a few flashing coloured bulbs. A few minutes of this and Costello is asking for the globe to be switched off because it hurts his eyes. Then keyboard player, Steve Nieve, asks for the other lights to be killed. The club staff look a bit put out and start to bang beer mats down on the tables with increased ferocity. Then the film crew want the furniture shifted. The club think it's perhaps time to ask for more money, but are told "No." Sour looks set in of the type that generally occur when ordinary people are forced to mix with film units and well-known pop personalities.
Costello fans will be surprised at his voice on the new album. The nasal tone is a giveaway, but his voice is richer and deeper. He says, "I've put a lot of depth into my voice. When I do my own songs, I generally shout. I rant. I sing tenor, although I'm really a light baritone. I do this to get the strain and tension I think I need for rock. But this is the proper singing I'm doing now. I'm using the lower part of my register for these country songs."
Costello believes in songs. Not in instrumentals. Not in flashy musicianship, but in songs. "They are effective. They get people going."
Costello believes in passion too. "I feel emotional about all the songs I do. These country songs are obviously emotional, but my own songs are sometimes even more so. There's one called "Alison" [a harrowing portrait of passion turned to disgust and ugliness] that I can't do a lot even though it's requested all the time, because to me it's a very emotional number. I have to be ready for it."
Strange that a hero of the New Wave in rock should be heading in precisely the opposite direction to most other New Wave bands who strive for remote alienation and produce emotionally sterile music.
"Records should have some passion. They should sound as if the people who made them cared," he says.
I ask him if he thinks his regular fans will like his country and western record. He shrugs. He really doesn't mind. "I have always found commercial success to be in inverse proportion to creative success."
It is time for the punters to arrive. They file in and are a little puzzled by chairs all over the dance floor and the TV lights. The country music fans, seeing the name Costello on the drums, think they aren't going to enjoy it. But they are wrong. As soon as he starts to sing, his rapport with the audience is immediate, binding and extreme. That passion he was talking about is mesmeric.
As the show takes him over, he seems to become unable to play his guitar and his small fingers flutter around him as he puts everything into the songs, lending them a dignity and authority one feels they don't really deserve.
"I've never reckoned him before, but I'll buy this record," says a 14-stone Scottish cowboy, riding and rocking his chair the wrong way round.
Off-stage, leaving behind furious, cheering and applause, Costello is dripping with sweat. He goes straight to his room with the band. Everyone is jubilant. Bottles of spirit are opened and huge supplies of beer are brought in. The drummer wants to talk about life. The drummer wants to talk about life. Costello is a listener mostly. The session ends at 3am with everyone looking bombed out. Not surprisingly, the early start next morning after only four hours sleep finds Costello in a down mood.
The idea," says producer Peter Carr, bravely managing to rise above his hangover, "is to go to an old house or castle or whatever and do a promotional film of the single for Top Of The Pops."
Costello says: "Do you know this morning I woke up with an active dislike of the whole thing? Hating the whole album."
"Oh dear. Well, the idea is…"
"I'm not even keen on the single they've chosen."
"Oh."
Then, seeing that he is extinguishing a very hard-won enthusiasm, Costello rallies. "Come on, let's go. I'm notoriously bad at selecting singles. I fall in and out of love with different tracks over the weeks. These feelings of dislike are often just day-long things with me."
The location is Meldrum House, a beautiful 700-year-old country house turned hotel set in acres of parkland beside a small loch, and furnished with antiques collected with care over the centuries.
Hungover, Costello sits on chaise longue and revives himself with coffee and delicious fresh-baked shortbreads. He flicks through a copy of Country Life. "Who reads these things?"
He stares at a portrait of Lady So and So engaged to Lord Such and Such. "Pretty girl," he says. The drummer snorts in disgust and calls the antiques a load of rubbish. The steel guitar player, John McFee, imported from Nashville to play on the country and western gig, is just knocked out by the old-world charm and delights everyone by acting like a typical American tourist.
It's dark in the rooms of Meldrum House, but Costello persists with wearing his sunglasses.
"I started to wear them so I could go to supermarkets without being recognised. The people that talk to you always seem to be the brash, unpleasant ones. Nice people you might like to meet are shy and respect your privacy. Now the glasses have become a bad habit. But perhaps I'll change my image soon and get rid of them."
Carr decides that for the mime to the song "It's Been A Good Year For The Roses" a violin is needed, so he phones a local music school. Twins arrive with a violin. The keyboard player is to pretend to play it and the twins are roped in to mime backing vocals. The whole group assembles before a stately fireplace.
That evening is turning into another heavy drinking session, another night in the life of Elvis Costello. Live fast, die young?
"It's just a flirtation. A phase." says Costello.
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