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Elvis Costello composed "(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes" on a train traveling from London to Liverpool in 1976, before he became a recording artist. Sketched out in the final 10 minutes of the three-hour journey, "Red Shoes" is a surrealist tale about an imagined jilting and the appearance of earthbound angels offering the singer immortality — in exchange for his footwear. Months later, Mr. Costello recorded "Red Shoes" for his first album, My Aim Is True, which was released in 1977.
As a U.K. single, "Red Shoes" had just a fleeting appearance on Britain's pop chart, but My Aim Is True remained on Billboard's album chart for 36 weeks. Mr. Costello, 61, recently released a memoir, Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink (Blue Rider), and a double CD of the same name from Universal. Edited from an interview:
Elvis Costello:
In mid-1976, I was on holiday from my London office job when I decided to take the train up to Liverpool to visit my mother. I was still working as a computer operator for the cosmetics firm Elizabeth Arden and had begun taking sick days to rehearse and record what eventually would become an entire album, completed before I even turned professional.
Back then the journey from London to Liverpool took around three hours, and Runcorn was the last stop before the train continued another 10 minutes to its final destination — Liverpool Lime Street.
At Runcorn station, I took out a little blue pocket-size notebook that was allegedly where I wrote the names of people who had crossed me but, in truth, contained only phone numbers and lyrics to songs I was writing. I'd write drafts of songs from page to page, rewriting them over and over until they made sense.
As the train pulled out of Runcorn, I began to write. The idea for "Red Shoes" came to me fully formed, with the song's summarizing chorus line — "the angels wanna wear my red shoes" — appearing first. So in the minutes that followed, I worked backward from the chorus line on the rest of the lyrics. I could write snappy lines like "Oh I used to be disgusted / and now I try to be amused" in my sleep, but it perplexed me a little to be suddenly writing this song about mortality at only 22.
The verses were a pretty routine tale for me of romantic letdown. What surprised me was the visitation by angels with rusted wings offering a deal for my shoes. I couldn't figure out if they were gatekeepers to immortality or fame, which seemed so far off at that point in my career.
When the train arrived at Lime Street 10 minutes later, the song's words were finished and the music was in my head. I have no idea where the song's inspiration came from. There wasn't much to see out the train windows. And I didn't own red shoes, only a pair of oxblood Doc Martens, which you might say were red. I had only one pair of shoes, but I didn't think of them as red.
The song's only connection to my past was the woman in the song who tells me to drop dead and leaves with another guy. Something like that had happened three years earlier on the same London-to-Liverpool train. Back then, I was seated in a compartment with a sophisticated-looking girl my age in a business suit and a soldier on leave.
At some point, the three of us started talking and eventually wound up sharing a bottle of whiskey that the soldier produced from his bag. Not being a terribly experienced whiskey drinker, I became convinced that I was irresistible. As is the case when one drinks too much, things became "all for one and one for all" pretty quickly. I was convinced the girl had eyes for me, but I quickly discovered that this wasn't the case when she disappeared with the soldier ["I said 'I'm so happy, I could die' / She said 'Drop dead,' then left with another guy"]. Eventually I woke up on a bench on Lime Street, having fallen asleep. I'm just thankful no one stole my guitar.
Three years later I was on the same train writing "Red Shoes." When I got off at Liverpool Lime Street, I worried I'd forget the melody before it was fixed in my head. I couldn't write music, and I had no way of recording the song on the fly like you can today with all the new technology. What's more, the slightest distraction could distort the song or erase it from my mind completely.
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