London Times, October 15, 1978: Difference between revisions
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The highly stylised aggression of British punk rock may have been greeted with indifference by American audiences. But in Costello they appear to have found the perfect antidote to the comfortable complacency which has infected American pop: an artist who combines excitement, wit and a refreshingly challenging intelligence in his songs. | The highly stylised aggression of British punk rock may have been greeted with indifference by American audiences. But in Costello they appear to have found the perfect antidote to the comfortable complacency which has infected American pop: an artist who combines excitement, wit and a refreshingly challenging intelligence in his songs. | ||
Elvis is not, of course, his real name. Nor, come to that, is Costello. He was born Declan MacManus. His father, Ross MacManus, was once a singer with the Joe Loss Orchestra, and now earns his living on the northern club circuit and singing in television commercials. Elvis would accompany his father to concerts and recording sessions. "But, if anything, that was a discouragement," he says. "Being a musician never seemed like a good job to do; it's not a good job. I mean, it's not guaranteed to make you a better person or give you a stable kind of life. It's something you do in spite of your better judgment." | Elvis is not, of course, his real name. Nor, come to that, is Costello. He was born Declan MacManus. His father, Ross MacManus, was once a singer with the Joe Loss Orchestra, and now earns his living on the northern club circuit and singing in television commercials. Elvis would accompany his father to concerts and recording sessions. "But, if anything, that was a discouragement," he says. "Being a musician never seemed like a good job to do; it's ''not'' a good job. I mean, it's not guaranteed to make you a better person or give you a stable kind of life. It's something you do in spite of your better judgment." | ||
He left school at 16, in 1971, with neither qualifications nor ambition. "I squandered my education," he says drily. "I probably could have gone to university if I'd put my mind to it, the same as anybody could. But I was just lazy." Moving from the family home in Twickenham to Liverpool, Costello took a job as a computer operator, writing songs in his spare time. The job, he says, was money for old rope. He did it for four years, always careful to appear less knowledgeable about the subject than he actually was, so he would not be given more work. He moved back to London in the meantime and married. He and his wife, Mary, have a three-year-old son, | He left school at 16, in 1971, with neither qualifications nor ambition. "I squandered my education," he says drily. "I probably could have gone to university if I'd put my mind to it, the same as anybody could. But I was just lazy." Moving from the family home in Twickenham to Liverpool, Costello took a job as a computer operator, writing songs in his spare time. The job, he says, was money for old rope. He did it for four years, always careful to appear less knowledgeable about the subject than he actually was, so he would not be given more work. He moved back to London in the meantime and married. He and his wife, Mary, have a three-year-old son, Matt. | ||
Costello had already made up his mind to pursue a musical career. In the evenings he played in semi-professional groups; by day he would use the office stationery for his songwriting, and the telephone to call record companies and music publishers, trying unsuccessfully to interest them in his work. | Costello had already made up his mind to pursue a musical career. In the evenings he played in semi-professional groups; by day he would use the office stationery for his songwriting, and the telephone to call record companies and music publishers, trying unsuccessfully to interest them in his work. | ||
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"I was actually walking into people's offices with my guitar to play them songs because I figured a direct form of communication would do the trick," he says. "I've always admired people like Sammy Cahn and James Van Heusen who would audition a song for someone like Frank Sinatra by just sitting there and hammering it out. It wasn't professional, but it did get the melody across. I figured if it worked for them it could work for me. But it never did." | "I was actually walking into people's offices with my guitar to play them songs because I figured a direct form of communication would do the trick," he says. "I've always admired people like Sammy Cahn and James Van Heusen who would audition a song for someone like Frank Sinatra by just sitting there and hammering it out. It wasn't professional, but it did get the melody across. I figured if it worked for them it could work for me. But it never did." | ||
It was a newspaper advertisement for new talent which brought him to Stiff Records and Jake Riviera. A 30-year-old ex-grammar-school boy from Pinner, Riviera had formed Stiff out of the conviction that most people in positions of power in the record industry "are complete dinks who wouldn't know good music if it bit them in the arse." Styling Stiff "the undertakers to the industry," Riviera has made a vocation of developing the careers of those misfits and oddballs | It was a newspaper advertisement for new talent which brought him to Stiff Records and Jake Riviera. A 30-year-old ex-grammar-school boy from Pinner, Riviera had formed Stiff out of the conviction that most people in positions of power in the record industry "are complete dinks who wouldn't know good music if it bit them in the arse." Styling Stiff "the undertakers to the industry," Riviera has made a vocation of developing the careers of those misfits and oddballs either passed by or discarded by the major record labels. | ||
Costello's tape was the first Riviera received, and Costello was his first signing. "Elvis just didn't conform to anybody's idea or a rock star," Riviera says. "Because he didn't look like Peter Frampton — all long hair and aviator-shades — nobody could see it. Record companies don't like self-confident, cocky people, which Elvis was. They like the beholden, forelock-tugging approach. But guts, determination and character are really useful. Other managers see that as a handicap — oh-oh, this chap's got too much of his own viewpoint. I liked his attitude. I've always liked people who are so wrong they're right." | |||
Riviera christened the singer in a West London pub (Costello is a name father Ross would sometimes use for professional purposes) and the first album, ''My Aim Is True'', was launched with a promotion proclaiming 'Elvis Is King' — a statement both of intent and of heresy against Presley, then still alive. | |||
Like everything about Stiff Records, the campaign was a tongue-in-cheek parody of the po-faced earnestness with which the music industry usually goes about launching new idols. Riviera put the company on the verge of bankruptcy with an advertising campaign which included a full-sized poster spread across six pages of three separate British music papers (readers wanting the complete Elvis were obliged to buy all three). Elvis himself was arrested for obstruction after setting up his guitar and amplifier outside the Hilton Hotel and giving an impromptu performance for the American executives of Columbia Records gathered for a company convention. | |||
No longer with Stiff, Costello now nestles in the ample corporate bosom of Warner Brothers Records in Britain and Columbia in America (his Hilton gambit was successful). Ironically, Columbia's English subsidiary was one of the companies who originally turned him down. "When we headlined the Columbia convention in New Orleans the head of English A&R came up to me and said, 'Sorry I couldn't do anything with the tape you sent me, but it's worked out all right, hasn't it ?' I said, 'Yeah — for ''me'''." Costello gives a mirthless chuckle. "I derive an ''enormous'' amount of satisfaction from crossing people like that off the guest list when they come round for favours — all .the company men who wouldn't give me the time of day when I needed it. I defy anybody to tell me they wouldn't do the same thing in the same situation." | |||
While privately gloating over Costello's potential, Columbia are being careful not to subject him to the sort of hyperbolic promotional overkill which almost destroyed their last discovery, Bruce Springsteen. They have spent $70,000 promoting Costello's This Year's Model — a campaign which includes special promotional records, with the singer's face printed on the plastic, and Elvis Costello dollar bills. Riviera vetoed the idea of giveaway Elvis horn-rims. | |||
His refusal to court the media, his uncompromising stand before audiences and his infrequent public pronouncements ("I'm here to corrupt American youth," he told ''Newsweek'', "but my visa will probably run out before I get to do it") have led the American Press to tag Costello as rock's new "Angry Young Man". Incidents in which a persistent photographer was physically ejected from his dressing-room and when Costello himself threw an apparent fit on stage, destroying two guitars and an amplifier — an aberration which puzzles even him — have only compounded the image. | |||
Costello prefers to describe himself as an irritant. "I'm contrary and awkward by nature," he says. "I like to disrupt people's preconceptions, to disrupt things generally. Not simply from a destructive point of view, but any other way would be dull, and I'm not interested in dull things. That's the enjoyment that I get out of all this — that it isn't dull, and I intend to keep it as varied and different as possible. It's the only way to survive; otherwise it would be just impossible. It's all too easy to be pigeonholed and written-off; become a captive and a hasbeen. It happens all the time." | |||
His disdain of fashion in all its manifestations — and of its followers — is a recurring theme of Costello's work. In one song, "This Year's Girl," he decries the way in which glamorous images are promoted and the inadequacies which they so often disguise in those who adopt them. | |||
''{{n}}A bright spark might collar the market in this year's girl <br> | |||
''{{n}}You see yourself rolling on the carpet with this year's girl <br> | |||
''{{n}}Those disco synthesisers <br> | |||
''{{n}}Those daily tranquillisers <br> | |||
''{{n}}Those body-building prizes <br> | |||
''{{n}}Those bedroom alibis <br> | |||
''{{n}}All this but no surprises from this year's girl | |||
Costello harbours few romantic illusions. His best songs are impressive by virtue of the universality of the feelings expressed — frustration, rejection, and the thirst for revenge, which are not often grist to the songwriter's mill — dealt with in tones veering from barely suppressed rage to ironic humour. In "(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes" he sings: | |||
''{{n}}I said "I'm so happy" I could die <br> | |||
''{{n}}She said "Drop dead" and left with another guy | |||
Costello says that much of his inspiration is drawn from the atmosphere of mediocrity which he believes permeates English life — what he calls "the schoolteacher mentality" of the country. "In America things are either dazzling or totally mundane: that middle ground which exists in England is so much more interesting — that seething sort of atmosphere in which nothing ever gets out of control; nobody ever raises their voices above a certain pitch, and if they do they're looked down upon for it; that underachieving the whole society is based on. You mustn't be too clever. At school you're not encouraged to think for yourself, to be too smart. 'Who do you think you are?' — that's a favourite phrase. Passions are suppressed; any extremes or freakishness are just soaked up. It's a country totally based on mediocrity." | |||
He is a prolific writer, borrowing his ideas from snatches of overheard conversation, television and | |||
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{{tags}}[[:image:1978 This Year's Model billboard.jpg|Sunset Strip billboard]] {{-}} [[Concert 1978-06-04 Los Angeles|Los Angeles]] {{-}} [[The Attractions]] {{-}} [[Jake Riviera]] {{-}} [[Whisky a Go Go]] {{-}} [[Sam Cooke]] {{-}} [[1st US Tour]] {{-}} [[2nd US Tour]] {{-}} [[3rd US Tour]] {{-}} [[Watching The Detectives]] {{-}} [[Elton John]] {{-}} [[My Aim Is True]] {{-}} [[Rolling Stone, December 29, 1977|Rolling Stone]] {{-}} [[This Year's Model]] {{-}} [[Declan MacManus]] {{-}} [[Ross MacManus]] {{-}} [[Stiff Records]] {{-}} [[Joe Loss Orchestra]] {{-}} [[Twickenham]] {{-}} [[Liverpool]] {{-}} [[Sammy Cahn]] {{-}} [[Frank Sinatra]] {{-}} [[Elvis Presley]] {{-}} [[New Musical Express, July 23, 1977|My Aim Is True ad campaign]] {{-}} [[Concert 1977-07-26 CBS|Hilton Hotel]] {{-}} [[Columbia|Columbia Records]] {{-}} [[Warner Bros.]] {{-}} [[Concert 1978-01-26 New Orleans|New Orleans]] {{-}} [[Bruce Springsteen]] {{-}} [[This Year's Model]] {{-}} [[Newsweek, May 8, 1978|Newsweek]] {{-}} [[This Year's Girl]] {{-}} [[(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes]] | |||
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Revision as of 19:39, 30 July 2020
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