|
|
| (9 intermediate revisions by 2 users not shown) |
| Line 1: |
Line 1: |
| {{Bibliography header}} | | {{Bibliography header}} |
| {{:Bibliography index}} | | {{:Bibliography index}} |
| | {{:ElvisCostello.com index}} |
| | {{:Elvis on index}} |
| {{Bibliography article header}} | | {{Bibliography article header}} |
| <center><h3>WHERE THE SECRETS ARE KEPT</h3></center> | | <center><h3> Nightspot </h3></center> |
| ---- | | ---- |
| <center> Elvis Costello </center> | | <center> Elvis Costello </center> |
| ---- | | ---- |
| {{Bibliography text}} | | {{Bibliography text}} |
| The arrival of the “[[Purse]]” E.P. and the long-delayed delivery of the 45 RPM, 7” vinyl edition of “''Look Now''” concludes the release of material from these sessions.
| | I spent a week in Miami at the end of March. It was the first time that I had been in that city for more than a day or two. It's quite the place. |
|
| |
|
| “''Look Now''” was conceived as a twelve-track, two-sided vinyl album, although we concede that many of you will have heard this music via a streaming service, digital download or some other obsolete medium like the CD.
| | Much of my time, through the summer and autumn of '07, was taken up writing and orchestrating ''Nightspot'', a collaboration with the choreographer, Twyla Tharp for the Miami City Ballet. |
|
| |
|
| The “''Regarde Maintenant''” E.P. was added to this collection, completing a four-sided double-vinyl edition for people who wanted to hear a little more of the music from these sessions.
| | Now that the piece was in rehearsal, I finally got to hear, what had previously been going around in my head, played by real musicians. |
|
| |
|
| “''Purse''” is a collection of song-writing collaborations; a song composed with [[Burt Bacharach]], another co-written with [[Paul McCartney]] and musical settings of words by [[Johnny Cash]] and [[Bob Dylan]].
| | The score calls for a ten-piece dance band, performing at the back of stage, while the dancers enter a swinging nightspot. A modest-sized orchestra plays in the pit. They combine at times into one big ensemble while at other moments they play in dialogue. |
|
| |
|
| For those of you who are curious to know more about these songs and their relationship to the music of “''Look Now''”, you should look no further than the first song, “[[Everyone's Playing House|Everyone’s Playing House]]”.
| | When enquiring about songs, people often ask, "When comes first? Words or music?" I suppose a similar question might be asked about ballet music only with regard to movement and music. |
|
| |
|
| Astute listeners may detect a thematic musical link to the “''Look Now''” song, “[[Don't Look Now|Don’t Look Now]]”, this is because they were originally written to be successive numbers, in a stage adaptation of “''Painted From Memory''”. To carry the story forward I wrote a variation based on Burt Bacharach’s open melody leading to a refrain of my own invention that had something of the schoolyard taunt about it.
| | Ms. Tharp's method was to listen to a number of my existing songs and then ask me to write something new that departed from one or other station, |
|
| |
|
| I imagine that the hardest aspect of writing the script for this show was to find an agreement between a new dramatic narrative - by Chuck Lorre and Steven Sater - with the existing stories contained or implied by the songs from the original record album.
| | Although the writing doesn't have a verse-chorus structure and music is played continuously, none of the individual cues are very much longer than the average song. Once I had some knowledge of Twyla's intentions for the dance, I could proceed. |
|
| |
|
| As their storyline developed, Burt Bacharach and I were called upon to turn the corners by writing new songs for specific characters rather than people I had imagined or the parts of my own experience found in the first folio of songs.
| | I made an early decision to make passing reference to some of those existing songs; a handful of changes here, a melody completely re-harmonized there or a background motif, brought to fore and fastened to an entirely new rhythm and melody. |
|
| |
|
| Burt and I worked together and independently to create this expanded score and the “''Look Now”'' sessions saw the first recording of full-band arrangements for “[[Stripping Paper]]” - which I wrote alone and “Don’t Look Now” and “[[Photographs Can Lie]]”, for which I wrote lyrics to Burt’s music.
| | Words and ideas attached these fleeting musical fragments plotted a line through the score while I was writing it, though it isn't necessary for anyone in the audience to recognize or follow them in order to understand or enjoy ''Nightspot''. |
|
| |
|
| Two more songs, which I instigated, were attempts to drive a developing plot in a new direction. A song of doubt and betrayal, “[[Why Won't Heaven Help Me?|Why Won’t Heaven Help Me?]]” and “[[He's Given Me Things|He’s Given Me Things]]”, a song describing a drastic reversal of the initial fortunes in the story, in which the penniless model has become a woman of substantial means, whose tycoon husband hires the now disgraced artist to paint her portrait in humiliating circumstances.
| | ''Nightspot'' portrays many forms of nightlife and a series of couples as they go through various temptations, flirtations, betrayals and transformations. There was plenty of opportunity for waltzes, a Spanish guitar ballad, some satirical striptease music, a little ragtime tune, a cockeyed tango or two and a show business hymn. |
|
| |
|
| Actually, none of this was to be found in Chuck and Steven’s script (or “book” as it is called in the musical theatre) but I wrote the song anyway in an attempt to divert the tale in that direction and Burt helped me make sense of the music in the bridge, while he only changed one note of the vocal melody of “Why Won’t Heaven Help Me?” and didn’t regard this as a sufficient contribution to call it a co-write but this still left us ten new songs to augment the titles selected from the original album.
| | On three occasions in the score, I used processed loops to augment the on-stage rhythm section. This was the first time I'd employed this sound since the album, ''When I Was Cruel''. |
|
| |
|
| I won’t try to tell you the entire story, as it was still a work-in-progress when the show seemed to run aground with proposed producers and theatrical houses, probably due to absence of opportunities for tap-dancing and a preponderance of slow, melancholic ballads. Broadway just isn’t crying out for Eugene O’Neill On Ice or even on roller skates. | | In fact the "dummy" name of one cue was actually "When I Was Cruel No. 5," as it was a more expansive version of the ideas contained in the song of that name, "No. 2." |
|
| |
|
| So back to “''Purse''” - “Where the secrets are kept” - you can now get yourself a cardboard box to act as the stage, one of those books of cut-out dolls and recreate the opening scene of “''Painted From Memory''”, if you so wish.
| | There is no immediate plan to record the score in the studio but it is not entirely impossible to imagine a performance of the entire 38-minute work being recorded for DVD, some time in the future. That way you would be able take in the entire scene as it was intended. |
|
| |
|
| The show was to open on a young woman serving as a life model for an older, apparently respectable and successful society painter. Quite why he is painting an unknown, penurious woman is unknown but as “Don’t Look Now” unfolds it is clear that the subject suspects that the painter’s interest is not entirely artistic. | | The dancers of the Miami City Ballet are a wonder to behold at work. Even physical preparations that they undertake in order to begin to dance would kill a small stable of horses. I am no expert on dance technique but to my eye they gave a wonderful performance of the material. |
|
| |
|
| The song concludes with the observation, “I see you looking at me, looking at how you’re looking at me” and the command, “Oh, don’t look at me now”, the young model would then cross to another part of the stage where a sumptuous dining table is set. | | The premiere was a fairly swish affair. People were dressed up to the nines and really raised the roof at end of the night. |
|
| |
|
| Two women - a wife and a daughter - sit in uneasy expectation. The painter re-enters and takes his place at the head of the table. They are frozen in the act of avoiding conversation or eye contact, perhaps a glass or fork is already raised in place, when the model and singer of “Don’t Look Now” appears.
| | The performance went without any obvious catastrophes, but even as you are taking your bow and accepting bouquets, the mind is bound to stray to changes that occur, now that the music been heard in the heat of battle. |
|
| |
|
| It is unclear how (or even if) she is clothed. Perhaps she is an apparition. The family do not register her presence or move at all, as she first examines the dishes on the table, stealing a taste of cream from a bowl, contrasting the unhappy domestic scene with darker memories of her own father that are not very pretty, aware that the hypocrite at the head of the table imagines a very different scene between them -
| | I will make a number of small but crucial revisions in time for the Los Angeles performances in October 2008. |
|
| |
|
| ''“Do you want to slap me?
| | Miami City Ballet could not have been more gracious hosts but for most of the time I was in their city, there seemed to be a 700ft. motorbike approaching from several streets away. This turned out to be the low, dull rumble of an electronic music festival that was dominating the aural and social landscape. |
| Until I can say what for
| |
| Do you want to kiss me?
| |
| Just once and no more
| |
| You play the family man in the sad aftermath
| |
| Fingers for peeping right through, just like Daddies do.
| |
| My scent is on your breath
| |
| I’m going to make you a mess
| |
| He held the glass to my lips
| |
| I’m going to make you…”''
| |
|
| |
|
| | I suspect that a few of the company left the post-show gala to dance the night away in an actual nightspot but I shall not pretend that I was among their number. |
|
| |
|
| As the song says, “Everyone’s Playing House”.
| |
|
| |
| The other songs on “''Purse''” have less complex origins.
| |
|
| |
| I’ve wanted to record “[[The Lovers That Never Were]]” for thirty years and have performed the song on occasions but found it hard to get out of the shadow of the demo Paul McCartney and I made shortly after writing the song at one of our first writing sessions in 1988.
| |
|
| |
| I played piano on that cut, so when it came to working out this arrangement, I felt most at home on the Wurlitzer electric piano while leaving the more expansive, orchestral flourishes of grand piano in the more capable hands of [[Steve Nieve]].
| |
|
| |
| [[Sebastian Krys]] recorded and mixed this cut in “hard stereo”, that is more radically panned than most other “''Look Now''” recordings, leaving space for the vocal parts and guitar figures that give our version a character and dream-like mood distinct from Paul’s unbeatable one-man and his guitar, (with his mate playing piano) version or his later more elaborate rendition on the album “''Off The Ground''”.
| |
|
| |
| “If You Love Me” was the second of two texts from the “''Forever Words''” collection of Johnny Cash poems and lyrics that I set to music. Knowing the range of musical styles of the artists who were to contribute to the Columbia Records collection of those Cash words, I elected to record a ballad unlike any other contribution, as the text put me in mind of the philosophical verses of Willard Robison - writer of “I Guess I’ll Go Back Home Next Summer” and “Cottage For Sale”. Consequently, I put aside my guitar to arrange a small chamber orchestra around my own piano, mandolin and Pete Thomas’ drums for the poem, “I’ll Still Love You”.
| |
|
| |
| However, when we were in the final days of recording on Sunset Boulevard, I suggested that we do one live-on-the-floor performance (all of “''Look Now''” until then had demanded a more considered approach to each instrumental part in order to allow for orchestration and vocal arrangements without clutter) but [[The Imposters]] remain a band for whom you only have to count off a good song to get a great spontaneous performance.
| |
|
| |
| I remembered my other Johnny Cash setting, “If You Love Me” and we cut the song in a single take, adding only [[Steve Nieve]]’s Hammond organ and the electric guitar and background vocal parts which I dubbed in a small studio on Sullivan Street, NYC.
| |
|
| |
| “[[Down On The Bottom]]” was one of a dozen Bob Dylan lyrics which I set to music for possible inclusion on [[the New Basement Tapes]] album, “''Lost On The River''”. If you’ve heard that album then you’ll know that it leads off with a superb mid-tempo setting of this text by [[Jim James]] but then the impromptu band of songwriters and accompanists recorded some 42 pieces of music over the next twelve days, including multiple, contrasting settings of the same Dylan lyric by different participants.
| |
|
| |
| Producer [[T Bone Burnett]] had the task of making an attractive, balanced programme of all these songwriting contributions and performances. On one session [[Rhiannon Giddens]] and I harmonized on my ballad setting of “Down On The Bottom” but we both had to be content with our very different approaches to the title text, “Lost On The River”: being included while all of us saw some fine songs left in the can and a few titles such as “Virginia Gray” that couldn’t be recorded, even at the extraordinary pace that we sustained.
| |
|
| |
| I believe there may be a plan to release another 20-track album of the remaining songs but I think that this is scheduled for 47 years from now and will be called, “''The Basement Tapes Of The New Basement Tapes''”.
| |
|
| |
| Nevertheless, my ballad setting of “Down On The Bottom” quickly became part of the repertoire for my “[[Detour]]” show, especially when I was joined by Rebecca and Megan Lovell of [[Larkin Poe]]. We took the song from Cain’s Ballroom, Tulsa to the Circus Krone in Munich, so it was only fitting that our friends should join [[Davey Faragher]] and I in the choruses of the cut which closes “''Purse''”, beamed into Hollywood from their lair in Nashville by the miracle of modern technology.
| |
|
| |
| We hope to return to the studio on another occasion and bring you some more recordings to be heard on the medium of your choice but until then we leave you with “''Look Now''”, the E.P., “''Regarde Maintenant''” and this collection of songwriting collaborations, “''Purse''”.
| |
|
| |
| For those of you who like to give gifts, there is also a Box-Set Edition of “''Look Now”'' presented over eight 7” vinyl 45 RPM singles, each with its own picture sleeve and recalling a time in which music listeners were kept in fine fettle by getting out of their chair to turn the record over and perhaps stumbling upon an entirely different mood or narrative by playing a “B-" instead of an “A-Side” and find that this turns out to be your new favourite song.
| |
|
| |
| Sadly, the Gods Of Manufacturing had different ideas and made the bewildering decision to punch a hole in each picture sleeve creating a most unfortunate and avoidable delay in these box-set editions reaching the purchaser for which I would apologize if I had been responsible for such an idiotic mistake.
| |
|
| |
| I did my best to speed the process along, by asking the artist concerned if he might accept this accidental edit of his cover images and he responded that it would be just fine with him if the labels of the discs themselves were over-printed with the missing details of each illustration but this proved to be impossible.
| |
|
| |
| Then there was the matter of the Special 10-disc “''Complete Works''” edition and it was at this point that Concord Records and I reached a fork in the road.
| |
|
| |
| I could see no reason why we should not inform purchasers that the Disc Nine and Ten of the box-set contained the same songs to be found on the “''Purse''” E.P., after all some people simply like 7 inches, while others prefer 12 but my objection was overruled. This is certainly not the way we conduct business at [[Lupe-O-Tone]].
| |
|
| |
| To me, it seems a shame to have done this silly ducking and diving in hope of squeezing a pitiful rooker full of money out of what began with the intention of creating a beautiful object that one might give to the one you love. Oh well. Don’t ask me what I think of you, I might not give the answer that you want me to, as someone once said.
| |
|
| |
| Yours through music and daubs. Elvis Costello and Eamon Singer
| |
| {{cx}} | | {{cx}} |
|
| |
|
| Line 97: |
Line 52: |
|
| |
|
| {{Bibliography notes}} | | {{Bibliography notes}} |
| '''From Elvis' website, May 31, 2019''' | | {{Bibliography next |
| | |prev = ElvisCostello.com, August 15, 2005 |
| | |next = ElvisCostello.com, June 3, 2008 |
| | }} |
| | '''ElvisCostello.com, April 22, 2008 |
| ---- | | ---- |
| Elvis writes about recording ''Look Now'' and the ''Purse'' EP, collaborating with Burt Bacharach on the stage version of ''Painted From Memory'' and the recording of ''Lost On The River: The New Basement Tapes''. | | Elvis writes about collaborating with [[Twyla Tharp]] on her ballet ''[[Nightspot]]''. |
| {{Bibliography images}}
| |
|
| |
|
| [[Image:2019-05-31 Self Portrait.jpg|x200px|border]]<br>
| | {{Bibliography no images}} |
| <small>Painting credit:Eamon Singer</small>
| |
|
| |
|
| {{Bibliography notes footer}} | | {{Bibliography notes footer}} |
|
| |
|
| {{Bibliography footer}} | | {{Bibliography footer}} |
| ==Internal links==
| |
| *''[[Look Now]]''
| |
| *''[[Purse]]'' EP
| |
| *''[[Lost On The River: The New Basement Tapes]]''
| |
|
| |
|
| ==External links== | | ==External links== |
| *[https://elviscostello.com/#!/news/298446 Elviscostello.com] | | <!-- *[http://elviscostello.com/news/journal.php?uid=12 Elviscostello.com]--> |
| | | *[http://elviscostello.com/ ElvisCostello.com] |
| | <!-- *[http://www.twylatharp.org/content/nightspot Twylatharp.org] --> |
| | *[http://www.twylatharp.org TwylaTharp.org] |
| | *[https://web.archive.org/web/20090210234950/http://elviscostello.com/news/journal.php?uid=12 archive.org{{t}}][https://web.archive.org/web/20100527001026/http://www.elviscostello.com/news/Your+Unreliable+Correspondent+Writes/28 {{t}}] |
| | *[https://web.archive.org/web/20160628183407/http://www.twylatharp.org/content/nightspot archive.org] |
|
| |
|
| | {{DEFAULTSORT:ElvisCostello.com 2008-04-22}} |
| [[Category:Bibliography]] | | [[Category:Bibliography]] |
| [[Category:Bibliography 2019]] | | [[Category:Bibliography 2008]] |
| | [[Category:ElvisCostello.com| ElvisCostello.com 2008-04-22]] |
| | [[Category:Blog articles]] |
| [[Category:Elvis writes]] | | [[Category:Elvis writes]] |
| | [[Category:Nightspot]] |
