BAM, April 7, 1989

Bibliography   72 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 UK & Ireland weeklies UK & Ireland magazines UK & Ireland newspapers US newspapers US rock magazines US music magazines US magazines US alternative weeklies European magazines European newspapers Canada  •  Mexico  •  Asia Australia  •  New Zealand South America  •  Africa Blogs  •  Fanzines  •  Books Online publications BAM   1984 May 18 1989 April 7 1993 March 12 1994 April 8 1994 May 5 1996 June 30 California publications  Newspapers Alameda Times-Star Berkeley Daily Planet Berkeley Gazette Chula Vista Star-News East Bay Times Eureka Times-Standard Fremont Argus Fresno Bee Lodi News-Sentinel Los Angeles Daily News Los Angeles Herald-Examiner Los Angeles Times Marin Independent Journal Modesto Bee Napa Valley Register Newhall Signal Oakland Tribune Orange County Register Oxnard Press-Courier North County Blade-Citizen Palm Springs Desert Sun Palo Alto Times Peninsula Times Tribune Petaluma Argus-Courier Pleasanton Tri-Valley Herald Riverside Press-Enterprise Sacramento Bee San Bernardino County Sun San Diego Union-Tribune San Francisco Chronicle San Francisco Examiner San Jose Mercury News San Luis Obispo Tribune San Pedro News-Pilot Santa Cruz Sentinel Santa Rosa Press Democrat Simi Valley Enterprise Torrance Daily Breeze Ukiah Daily Journal Ventura Star-Free Press University publications Cal Poly SLO Mustang Daily Cal Poly SLO Report Cal St. Long Bch Daily 49er Cal St. Northridge Sundial California Aggie City College SF Guardsman CSU-Chico Orion East LA Coll. Campus News Fresno State Daily Collegian Hastings Law News Medanos College Experience Rio Hondo College Paisano San Diego State Daily Aztec San Francisco Foghorn San Jose State Spartan Daily Santa Clara Univ. Santa Clara Santa Monica College Corsair Santa Rosa College Oak Leaf Stanford Daily UC Berkeley Daily Californian UC Irvine New University UC San Diego Daily Guardian UC San Diego Triton Times UC Santa Barb. Daily Nexus UC San Francisco Synapse UCLA Daily Bruin USC Daily Trojan Univ. of San Diego Woolsack Whittier Coll. Quaker Campus Magazines and alt. weeklies Back Door Man BAM Bay Area Reporter Berkeley Barb Chico News & Review Coachella Valley Weekly Enlisted Times Exposure Haute Living Isla Vista Free Press LA CityBeat LA Downtown News LA Weekly Metro Silicon Valley New Vinyl Times New West North Bay Bohemian Oakland East Bay Express OC Weekly Orange Coast Pacific San Diego Magazine Redding After Five Sacramento News & Review San Diego Reader San Francisco magazine Santa Barbara Independent SF Weekly — From a king to a jester Keith Moerer Elvis Costello abdicates his crown to become god's comic I didn't see the Beatles at the Caravan Club, and I missed Dylan at Newport. Too young. But I like to think I witnessed the birth of a musical legend in 1977 when I sat, knees five feet from the stage at London's Nashville Room, and saw the first public performance of Elvis Costello with the Attractions. It was a good summer to be in London. Though I arrived too late to catch the Sex Pistols and Clash (both touring Europe), I did see early shows by X-Ray Spex, the Adverts, the Jam (this took crawling through the bathroom window of the Battersea Town Hall), the Police, the Boomtown Rats and a dozen others who never made it past the opening slot at the Marquee. To most of England, it was the Silver Jubilee summer, commemorating the Queen's 25-year reign. To me, and most of the natives I met, it was the summer of punk, pure and simple. That meant hanging out in clubs, and listening to pumped-up sound systems playing "White Riot" or Eddie & the Hot Rods' "Do Anything You Wanna Do" and waiting for the band to stumble on stage. The night the Ramones' "Sheena Is A Punk Rocker" came blasting out of the house speakers to a deafening crowd roar, my chest welled. I was still proud to be an American. As often as not, the bands were awful, amateur in the worst rather than best way. Not Costello. Though he raced through his set — virtually all the songs off My Aim Is True including a hair-raising "Watching The Detectives" — he did so with a kind of annoyed but tuneful assurance. Afterwards, the crowd seemed stunned. Taking the tube back to my hotel, I got into an excited discussion with a couple of spike-haired punks who'd also been at the show. "'E's kinda poonk," said one of them appreciatively, "but not really." His friend nodded, and so did I. We knew exactly what he meant. Twelve years later I still do. Though angry enough, Costello was a punk mostly by association and the accident of timing. Like a lot of punks he knew how to say "What the fuck"; unlike most of them, he knew how to say it in many musical languages. But in '77 anyone young and in the way was considered a poonk, putting Costello in peculiar company that included Bob Geldof and Sting. If thought about at all, Geldof's now known principally as the unshaven organizer of Live Aid, and Sting's become a talented if humorless bore, rich enough to buy the talented jazz band he probably dreamed about, even in '77. I don't know what happened to the Adverts (their one standout single, "Gary Gilmore's Eyes," is about a guy who wakes up after surgery to find himself looking through the donated eyes of a murderer), but Paul Weller has mutated into a crooner of elegant socialist soul, while Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex ("Oh, Bondage, Up Yours") changed her name and joined the Hare Krishnas (yours, too). John Lydon and Mick Jones have fared better than most but Costello, virtually alone among the Brit class of '77, has continued to make music that truly matters. A great songwriter, Costello has proven himself to be a shrewd disciple of American soul, country, blues, folk, and Tin Pan Alley pop. For every failed experiment — the schlock country of Almost Blue, the over-active cleverness of Goodbye Cruel World, the tired punk wail of Blood & Chocolate — Costello has delivered three good albums, some — This Year's Model, Imperial Bedroom, King Of America — true masterpieces. Add to these the newly released Spike, an album recorded with help from some of the rock's biggest names (Paul McCartney, Chrissie Hynde) and many underappreciated talents (the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, T Bone Burnett, Allen Toussaint, Donal Lunny, and Marc Ribot). The results are frequently stunning: "Tramp The Dirt Down," a beautiful if scaldingly bitter attack on Margaret Thatcher; "This Town," a playful poke at the cult of entrepreneurship; "Deep Dark Truthful Mirror," a successful melding of classic New Orleans r&b (Toussaint) with modern Crescent City sounds (the Dirty Dozens); and "God's Comic," jazz-inflected pop sure to incite fundamentalist ire for its depiction of the Almighty as a long-haired lover of trash culture. Never the most cooperative interview subject, I'd been assured that Costello was more relaxed and amenable than in the past. Meeting him, between a battery of San Francisco radio station visits in mid-February, I found this mostly to be true. But Costello can still be brittle and brisk, cranky when asked an innocent question the wrong way, or faintly dismissive when a subject doesn't interest him. Asked if Spike Jones, supposedly the inspiration for the new album's title, was truly a comic influence, Costello offered obfuscation in place of a straight answer: "I think Spike Jones is a constant inspiration to everyone in this time of woe and trouble. But it could just as easily be said that [the album] is named after the bulldog in Tom And Jerry — he's called Spike. Or the railroad spike that was struck... It's just the name of the record, that's what it's called. But I suppose it did come out of a conversation about Spike Jones..." I see. Next question... In general, though, Costello was forthcoming and surprisingly modest in discussing his work with Roy Orbison, his newfound appreciation of Bruce Springsteen, the joy of writing incidental music for a movie (The Courier), his assessment of new traditionalist country singers, the oddball studio habits of his collaborators, his disdain for corporate sponsorships, and the horror of being blown off the same stage by both Tony Bennett and Count Basie. The discussion of politics was a more prickly, if frequently interesting, subject. Though Costello has written songs with an undeniable political bent since 1977 ("Less Than Zero" being a pointed attack on the rise of British fascism), and has spent the better part of this decade directly or indirectly bashing the policies of Maggie Thatcher ("Pills And Soap," "Shipbuilding," "Peace In Our Time"), he refuses to wear the mantle of "political songwriter," preferring to offer his views as a personal response to publicly violated trust. Fair enough — this helps explain his cynical view of large scale benefits like Amnesty International and Freedomfest — but he also bristles at the suggestion that the anti-English sentiments he's expressed so often had anything to do with his recent move from London to Dublin. Ridiculous, he insists — a move is as simple as packing up the furniture and sleeping in a new bedroom... The interview itself was conducted in the lobby lounge of the Four Seasons Clift, a swank San Francisco hotel with thick carpets and an officious staff. When I arrived, I was informed by a Warner Bros. publicist that Elvis was not in his room, but would — the assurance seemed a little shaky — show up any minute. I was also told that Costello had asked that his wife, former Pogues bassist Cait O'Riordan, be present throughout the interview. Almost as if on cue, the two of them strode through the hotel's lobby, unnoticed and unaccosted. Both were dressed in black, though Costello accented his dark trench coat and pants with a hideous floral print shirt and a day or two's worth of scraggly stubble. After settling into a trio of overstuffed sofas and ordering a pot of coffee — which Costello graciously refused a waiter's assistance in pouring — I began asking questions. Tested and occasionally challenged by Costello, the proceedings were watched, in a sense refereed, by O'Riordan, who said nothing but broke into a laugh once or twice, and wore the bemused half-smile of a cat, along with dark glasses that hid her eyes. Remaining text and scanner-error corrections to come... Tags: Spike  •  The Beatles  •  Bob Dylan  •  Newport  •  Nashville Rooms  •  The Attractions  •  The Sex Pistols  •  The Clash  •  The Jam  •  The Police  •  Boomtown Rats  •  My Aim Is True  •  Watching The Detectives  •  Bob Geldof  •  Sting  •  Live Aid  •  Sting  •  Paul Weller  •  John Lydon  •  Mick Jones  •  Tin Pan Alley  •  Almost Blue  •  Goodbye Cruel World  •  Blood & Chocolate  •  This Year's Model  •  Imperial Bedroom  •  King Of America  •  Paul McCartney  •  Chrissie Hynde  •  Dirty Dozen Brass Band  •  T Bone Burnett  •  Allen Toussaint  •  Donal Lunny  •  Marc Ribot  •  Tramp The Dirt Down  •  Margaret Thatcher  •  This Town  •  Deep Dark Truthful Mirror  •  God's Comic  •  Roy Orbison  •  Bruce Springsteen  •  The Courier  •  Tony Bennett  •  Count Basie  •  Less Than Zero  •  Pills And Soap  •  Peace In Our Time  •  Shipbuilding  •  Freedomfest  •  Warner Bros.  •  The Pogues  •  Cait O'Riordan There's a song on Spike called "God's Comic" which isn't exactly controversial but could be misinterpreted or offend some listeners. In light of Khomeini's death threat against Salman Rushdle, do you ever worry about being misinterpreted or offending any of your audience? There are plenty of examples of my songs being misinterpreted, but never in such a drastic way as we've recently witnessed. But no, I write what I think.... I've never deliberately gone out of my way to say something which I knew to be wrong, but I've said it for effect, or something like that. I've said things privately (laughs) but who hasn't. In terms of songs, that's one thing I can say. I have plenty of songs that I say, "Well, that wasn't a very good song," or "We didn't make a very good job of recording that song." But the good songs, I stand by them and if they cause any offense to people, it's maybe because they look at that particular thing differently than me. Have you ever written a song that you later regretted or wish you hadn't written? Only badly written ones, you know what I mean? (laughs). I don't think I've ever written something that would bring about such an extreme reaction.The only ones I might think of are ones that might have political interpretations. (But) if someone was so removed from your point of view, chances are they never would hear the song to begin with. There are a couple of songs on that album written with Paul McCartney. Were you a big Beatles fan as a kid? Absolutely. Yes I was, yes. Was it intimidating, then, to sit in the same room and write with him? No, not really. Not as a person. He's a very friendly sort of man, he's very down to earth. He doesn't put any conditions on it. If anything, I think everybody else, critics and record company people are more concerned about all those things than we were. We were just two people trying to get on with our job. You've collaborated with a lot of different musicians in the past. As far as collaborating with other songwriters, though, you haven't done a lot of that. I've never done one long sort of songwriting job with somebody like this was. The brief was to write for his record; now by coincidence I brought some material so we had a starting point and he had a song to work on in a similar sort of way. I think we were both aware of the fact that we might just sit there and stare at each other, waiting for the inspiration to strike, and wouldn't that have been embarrassing? Was there anything you learned from writing with Paul McCartney, in terms of his taking a different approach to songwriting? He is very practical about it, you know? He made me understand that sometimes I don't explain myself, I maybe take too much for granted in the listener, (that they'll) understand my sort of internal logic in the song. He analyzes a lot of things that I maybe just take for granted. Sometimes I like to leave things a little ambiguous. It helps create a bit of mystery and atmosphere, and other times you're just being stupidly vain and missing the opportunity to say something more concisely. So I think his contribution to the two songs that appear on this album is, lyrically, a little bit of that kind of discipline. Musically, he entered the picture at the certain stage. We took a left turn from there, and then obviously had to resolve back. In the case, say, of "Pads, Paws And Claws" - which is really a simple song so it sounds a little stupid trying to analyze the structure. But it goes along telling the story, and it gets to the chorus, then it tells another verse about the guy, and then it gets to the chorus and he (McCartney) said, "Now all we need to do is explain what this Pads, Paws and Claws is." Simple as that! Another time, I might have come to that conclusion myself, I've written songs like that, "Everyday I Write The Book" or something like that. That's one style of songwriting, it ("Pad, Paws And Claws") doffs its cap to a certain kind of pop songwriting. That gave us the opportunity to inject that little bit of melody in there instead of just being a John Lee Hooker riff with a little rockabilly one. Up till then it was like John Lee Hooker meets Carl Perkins and suddenly you have got the Kinks come in the room or something. We wrote the damn thing in ten minutes. How did the Dirty Dozen Brass Band get involved with the album? Well, obviously I don't live in New Orleans so I don't know them all for years and years and years. But I had their first record when it came out, I went to see them in New York City. Then Demon (the English independent label that Costello co-owns) actually put out their second album, but that's just the good release policy of Demon. I can't take any personal credit for that. And I look forward to hearing their new album, too. So I just heard things in them, particularly Kirk Joseph, the sousaphone player. It's hard to separate any one member of that group. They create this one kind of very multi-faceted voice through the different ways in which they approach their instruments. Kirk's probably the only one you can isolate a little bit, probably because it is so extraordinary to find such a virtuoso on the sousaphone. So I had the idea to use him on his own on "Chewing Gum" and then we developed the idea of the horn refrains being interludes of the song, 'cause it's such a strange displaced sort of song I thought it was quite appropriate for these horn things to appear out of nowhere, like a little commentary on the way the story jumps locations. We were using (the horns) in a visual sort of way. They do conjure up good pictures. You contributed a song, "The Comedians" to the Roy Orbison album. We did an interview with Orbison last November where he mentioned that you brought the song to him and he asked you to simplify it. Yeah, what it was, well I don't know if you're aware of the other version of the song I recorded, you're not missing an awful lot if you're not, was written the way you hear it now musically. When I came to record it, I had a lot of ballads lined up for the album Punch The Clock and we really were a little stuck for mid-tempo material, so we did a very kind of peculiar arrangement which I think really undersold the song. It was fun to play at the time, but it was like in 5/4. It was like a novelty track. But that's all well and good, you make those mistakes, you have to accept them. So when T Bone Burnett rang me up and said, "Do you have a song for Roy?" I was able to present the song. Now at first I just wanted him to hear the melody. I had the inkling there might be some work to do on it. I sent it [the original version] to him. The lyrics, the original lyrics, were also kind of that opaque lyric where you assume the listener's gonna read a lot into it and I don't think Roy's songs have ever been like that. So I think that's what he found, you know, that it was too complicated a lyric, so I wrote a completely new lyric which told a much clearer story and I was able to revert to the original rhythm and everything which had him in mind in the first place, ironically. I had that "bolero" feel that he used on "Running Scared" in the back of my head when I wrote it. All I did was modify the kind of modulation at the end so it stepped up to a much higher crescendo out of my range, but effortless for him. BAM, No 305, April 7, 1989 Keith Moerer interviews Elvis Costello. Images Cover and page scan. Page scans. Page scans. Page scan.

External links

• Wikipedia: BAM (magazine)
• elviscostello.info