Canberra Times, September 4, 2004: Difference between revisions
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Home these days is the New York apartment he shares with Krall, whom he married last December at [[Elton John]]'s Surrey mansion. The couple also spend time at their house on Vancouver Island in the Canadian's home province of British Columbia. For much of his 17-year relationship with Cait O'Riordan, he lived in Dublin. That is when he wasn't in a studio recording one of his near-annual albums or touring. As part of his present touring schedule, Costello will perform in Canberra's Commonwealth Park — on [[Concert 2004-11-21 Canberra|November 21]]. | Home these days is the New York apartment he shares with Krall, whom he married last December at [[Elton John]]'s Surrey mansion. The couple also spend time at their house on Vancouver Island in the Canadian's home province of British Columbia. For much of his 17-year relationship with Cait O'Riordan, he lived in Dublin. That is when he wasn't in a studio recording one of his near-annual albums or touring. As part of his present touring schedule, Costello will perform in Canberra's Commonwealth Park — on [[Concert 2004-11-21 Canberra|November 21]]. | ||
His departure from the British Isles is more than geographical. Of his two new albums, ''Il Sogno'' was originally written as a dance piece for an Italian ballet company, and ''The Delivery Man'' is a rootsy vaguely thematic rock set recorded in the deeply southern environment of Oxford, Mississippi. His next project will be a piece of musical theatre on the life of Hans Christian Andersen, commissioned to celebrate next year's bicentenary of the author's birth. | |||
If he were still in the Ireland of his ancestors or the England of his birth, he wouldn't be "allowed" to pursue his relentless high-art fancies. North released barely a year ago was savaged in Britain. After album-length collaborations with [[the Brodsky Quartet]], Swedish mezzo-soprano [[Anne Sofie von Otter|Anne Sofie Von Otter]] and [[Burt Bacharach]], Costello was accused of having ideas above his station. | |||
He'd prepared, he says, for ''Il Sogno'' to receive a similar kicking, not least from the classical purists. | |||
Does he get a kick out of offending purists’? “It’s not my motivation but I'm ready for it. I know that I'm going to read patronising dismissals of ''II Sogno'' simply because I wrote it. By people who won’t have heard it. I had the same thing happen, particularly in England, with ''North''. People dismissing it, and describing it in terms that really proved they hadn't even heard it. | |||
“But, you know, if ''North'' got the worst reviews of my career in England, it got the best reviews of my career in Germany. It was No 1 in the jazz charts in America. I mean, you can’t please all the people. I don’t live in England. I'm not very with the English sensibility. I haven’t been for many years. And I'm getting further and further away from it. It’s very distant to me and seems very small and — I don’t mean this to be rude — but kind of insignificant. That’s not to say the people of the country are insignificant — 1 have some of my closest friends there, my family lives there. But the cultural scene and its ''seethingness'' doesn’t interest me.” | |||
Does he find it insular? “It’s like a tiny crowded bar, with everybody elbowing for room. And it just bores me.” | |||
This is Costello at 50: still criticising the critics, ever convinced of his own infallibility. He zealously pursues his own agenda, and will stoutly defend his right to take whatever musical path he pleases. His excursions are not the idle indulgences of the moneyed bored. It is all about reinvention and regeneration for the angry young man who ditched his given name (Declan MacManus) for a deliberately provocative stage name. Who has had a succession of deals with different record labels, and has recently transferred his business affairs to the care of Krall’s high-powered management. Who thinks that, if he had not blown the whistle on the sudden success of his early career by calming down the excesses and reassessing his music, he would either be dead by now or “bent out of shape”. Commercial acclaim, he insists, “didn't sit well with me . | |||
All that said, he is patently less tense these days. Love seems to have chilled him out. When KraIl phones from Los Angeles during our conversation he comes back almost gooey. He’s also careful to temper his bliss. “I'm not ignorant or careless, or not mindful, of the sad things that you have to pass through to reach this point,” he says. | |||
“I haven’t made a success of two relationships before. I'm not proud of that but I can’t live in the past." | |||
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Revision as of 13:17, 2 June 2016
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