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Declan Patrick Aloysius MacManus was born in 1954 and raised in a blue-collar section of London, in 1977 he took the name Elvis Costello and released an album called My Aim Is True that catapulted him to the front ranks of the first wave of English punk. By 1980 the first blush of success had faded and the next five years were a period of controversy and trouble. The quality of Costello's music has never been in question; instead, the problem has been what Costello himself dubbed his "mouth almighty." He simply refused to play The Music Biz Game; worse than that, he refused to kowtow to the press. They exacted their revenge by portraying him as an angry young psychotic, and Costello's fine music was frequently drowned out by the din of his ongoing battle with the Fourth Estate.
Costello recently released a new album, “King of America,” which he hopes will set the record straight. “Though it’s not without anger, there’s more generosity and love in this record,” he explains. “I’m not trying to hide behind anything and there’s no meanness in the songs, which tend to be very open and simple. There’s a difference between being mellow and reasonable, however, so it’s possible for this reasonable record to also be a punk record - which it is.”
Talking with Costello in a suite at the Parker Meridien Hotel in New York, I found him to be a far cry from a stormy soul. Fueling himself with mineral water, carrot sticks and cigarettes, he responded to my questions with wit and honesty. It’s no news to anyone who’s followed Costello’s music that he’s a smart and clever man; what did come as a surprise is that he seems uncommonly happy and light-hearted. One of the things he’s happy about is his engagement to Cait O’Riordan, bass player with the Irish punk group the Pogues.
What’s the most insidious idea currently being peddled by popular culture?
That things will be all right and we’ll all be very cozy if we just allow ourselves to be sucked backwards into the comfy fireside embrace of Mr Eisenhower’s sitting room. I do a version of an old song called “Eisenhower Blues” on my new album.
Are you an easily enchanted person or do you resist allowing your emotions to be manipulated?
I’ve certainly been easily led in the past but I’m not easily led at all now, I think that’s a change for the good.
Is vanity a vice, affliction or hobby?
That depends on who you are. If you’re Joan Collins, then vanity is a career. If vanity holds you back from doing your best, then I suppose it could be affliction. And if your vanity is somehow detrimental to other people, then it would be a vice.
Why is originality so highly valued in art?
Is it valued? Who by? Critics are the only people who care about that. Go to the Museum of Modern Art and look at Pablo Picasso’s work and tell me that he valued originality. All those people stole loads of stuff. The Dadaists and Surrealists parodied previous forms and used them for their own ends with ruthless abandon. I don’t think they cared a damn about originality - perhaps they realized they couldn’t help but be original and that’s part of what made them great.
Why is Western culture so enamored of the idea of celebrity?
People love failure as much as they love success. They like to see people taken down a peg and they like to see Elizabeth Taylor get fat. I just recorded a song called “Suit of Lights” which is about this sort of morbid embrace of celebrity.
Would you agree that the creative drive and the impulse toward self-destruction are intertwined?
No, that’s just a romantic myth perpetrated by artists lacking self-discipline. But that’s not to say that there isn’t an element of creativity to be found in the pursuit of self-destruction. The two things are not mutually exclusive.
How do you explain the fact that two people can have comparable painful experiences and one will come away embittered by it while the other comes away having gained some wisdom?
I don’t think it’s that black and white. You could be a number of other things as well. You could be wiser and more bitter, or you could just be stupid. And, of course, some people are more masochistic than others and they enjoy the pain of, say, unrequited love. They come away neither wiser nor more bitter, but with something they can build a career out of. Many people do that, you know.
What’s the most important thing you get from your work?
I get it out of my head and therefore am a bit less neurotic. I can be very neurotic, a terrible hypochondriac - all those sorts of things. I’m a human being and have all the usual vanities and frailties. But I’m not trying to make them into a career.
In Ernest Becker’s book, The Denial of Death, he presents the theory that what sets artists apart from other men is that they tend to see the world as a problem - a problem they must address - whereas other men simply don’t perceive life in that way. Do you think there’s any truth to that?
No, I don’t agree with that. I think that artists are the problem. They’re the thorn in the side of the world and the ones with a problem. The world carries on as it would.
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