Uncut, November 2008

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Ultimate Music Guide


UK & Ireland magazines

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Elvis Costello

London, July 1977

Allan Jones

They put us in a small room on the top floor of 32 Alexander Street in Bayswater, where downstairs and in the building's ratty basement Stiff Records have their HQ, noisy this afternoon with various comings and frequent goings and volatile Stiff supremo Jake Riviera giving raucous voice to his typical impatience with just about everything.

A couple of weeks earlier, the scrappy 23-year-old sitting opposite me had made his live debut at the Nashville Rooms in West Kensington as Elvis Costello, the name by all accounts attributable to the famously combustible Jake.

By then Elvis had released two great singles on Stiff – "Less Than Zero" and "Alison," the latter, unusually for the time, a ballad. At the Nashville, he plays most of his still-unreleased debut album, My Aim Is True, which means songs like "Mystery Dance," "Miracle Man," "I'm Not Angry," "Welcome To The Working Week," "(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes." He leaves to the sound of jaws dropping. I meet him briefly later and arrange an interview he initially has to cancel because he can't get time off from work at the Elizabeth Arden cosmetic works, the "vanity factory" of "I'm Not Angry," which he very much is when we eventually meet, stroppily refusing to answer questions about his background and swearing a great deal.

"I don't want to talk about it," he says bluntly about the past. "Nobody showed any interest in me then, so I'm not going to get into it now. If you weren't there, you missed it."

We do establish early on, however, that he's a prolific songwriter.

"I've written hundreds of songs," he says. "They're not all classics, though," he adds, no hint of modesty, just a pragmatic assessment of his own songbook, which to his ire has already been compared to people he doesn't like, Bruce Springsteen among them.

"Springsteen's always romanticising "The Street," he says contemptuously. "I'm bored with people who romanticise the fucking 'Street'. 'The Street' isn't fucking attractive, there's nothing romantic about it. I mean I live in fucking Hounslow. It's a very boring area, a terrible place, awful. It would be fucking ridiculous of me to try to romanticise fucking Hounslow."

How did he end up on Stiff?

"Well it wasn't for the fucking money they offered me, that's for sure. There was no phenomenal advance," he laughs. "They've bought me an amp and a tape recorder and I'm glad they're not subsidising me to any great extent beyond that. I don't want to end up in debt to a fucking record company and I don't want fucking charity.

"I went to a lot of record companies before I came to Stiff, major labels. And I never went looking for charity. I didn't want any favours. I didn't go in and say, 'Look, I've got these songs and, well, with a bit of polishing up and a good producer I might make a good record if you'd just be kind enough to sign me to your wonderful label.' I went in and said, 'I've got some fucking great songs, why don't you get off your fucking arse and put them out?'

"I went around for nearly a year with demo tapes before I came to Stiff and it was always the same response," he goes on, building up formidable head of steam now. "'We can't hear the words.' 'It isn't commercial enough.' 'There aren't any singles.' They were just idiots, all of them, those people. And I'd just like them to know I haven't forgotten them.

"I just felt like I was bashing my head against a brick wall. It's a terrible position to be in. You start thinking you're mad. You listen to the radio and you watch the TV and all you hear is a lot of fucking rubbish. And all the time you know you're capable of producing something infinitely better."

Did he feel embittered by the experience?

"No, it didn't make me bitter," he snorts derisively. "I was already bitter."

There's a pause, a rare thing in his conversation, now and for years to come.

"I knew what it would be like," he says then. "I had no illusions about the music business. It was no sudden shock to be confronted by these idiots. I didn't ever think that I was going to walk into a record company and meet some fat guy with a cigar who'd say something like, 'Stick with me, son. I'll make you a STAR.'

"I'm not starry-eyed in the fucking slightest. You can tell what these people are like instinctively. You just have to look at them to know they're fucking idiots. But I don't want to come off sounding like I'm obsessed with the music business."

God forbid!

"Seriously," he says. "I couldn't give a shit about the music business. They don't know anything, those people. They're irrelevant. I don't give any thought at all to them. They're not worth my time."

He's been backed on My Aim Is True by American country-rockers Clover and was now putting a band together, a very specific sound in mind. "I want to get away from the conventional group sound," he says. "I certainly don't want it to be a rock band. I hate rock bands. I hate anything with fucking extended solos or bands that are concerned with any kind of musical virtuosity. The songs are the most important thing. I like and write short songs. It's a discipline. There's no disguise. You can't cover up the weaknesses in songs like that by dragging in banks of fucking synthesisers and choirs of fucking angels. They have to stand up on their own, with none of that nonsense. Songs are just so fucking effective. People seem to have forgotten that.

"People used to live their lives by songs. They were like calendars or diaries. And they were pop songs. Not elaborate fucking pieces of music. You wouldn't say, 'Yeah, that's the time I went out with Janet, we went to see the L-S-fucking-O playing Mozart.' You'd remember you went out with Janet because they were playing The Lovin' Spoonful's 'Summer In The City' on the radio."

We talk a little about the vagaries of fame.

"If ability had anything to do with success then there would be a whole lot of obscure people who would be famous," he says, "and there would be a whole lot of famous people who'd be lingering in extremely well-justified fucking obscurity."

And was there anyone he'd like to see becoming famous?

"Yeah," he says, not missing a beat.

"Me."


Tags: StiffJake RivieraNashville RoomsLess Than ZeroAlisonMy Aim Is TrueMystery DanceMiracle ManI'm Not AngryWelcome To The Working Week(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red ShoesBruce SpringsteenCloverLondon Symphony OrchestraThe Lovin' SpoonfulElizabeth Arden

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Uncut, No. 138, November 2008


Allan Jones revisits his 1977 interview with Elvis Costello.

Images

2008-11-00 Uncut page 162.jpg
Page scan.


Photo by Barry Plummer.
2008-11-00 Uncut photo 01 bp.jpg


Cover.
2008-11-00 Uncut cover.jpg

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