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Mr. Costello, you're working with all and sundry.
(Laughs) You might say that yeah. It makes it sound a little bit indiscriminate. I did a lot of recording at the end of last year towards, well from the middle of last year. In fact with various people and it just so happens it's all come out at once, so it makes me appear like I've been an extremely busy person but er, I am generally a very busy person. At the moment I, in fact I was on a six month break but somehow that seems to have evaporated into thin air.
A six month break doing what?
A six month break from playing live and making records but erm...
So what did you do in that time?
I made records (laughing), played live... I haven't done any tours since. I haven't played a concert except one Miners Benefit and one solo gig so I have really kept the live performance down to the absolute minimum and I've been writing a lot and as you say a lot of other things.
But when you decided to take the six month break was it with the intention of doing absolutely nothing or was it with the intention of...?
I had all these great plans. I was going to go to Spain and write the great novel and learn to drive and learn to play the trumpet and all these things and I didn't do any of them. I just got derailed somewhere along the line and erm just ended up er enjoying myself a lot, and it's about time too. I spent seven years without really taking much of a break, so sometimes it. I realise now the value of taking this kind of pause from a routine which touring and recording gets into a bit of a spiral, it can do.
Why is it there are certain things that you'd like to do then, like writing a novel or learning to play the trumpet or learning to drive and you can't actually motivate yourself to do those, whereas you can with music?
Because I'm a lazy bastard basically.
I can't believe that for one second...
Well I am obviously in regard to... that and the fact that I'm totally illiterate and colour blind. I'm not colour blind actually. I don't know my left and my right though so, that's a bit of a disadvantage when you're trying to drive.
I don't think I will... I think I'd write a collection of short stories because I get bored too easily and I'm sure anybody reading a book that I wrote would get bored even quicker.
Why do you think that would be?
Well I think I think in shorter, y'know segments, er I mean I've trained myself in that way, thinking — songs sometimes they're not, they're not er telling a story but those that tell a story, I mean that's what I've learned to do, perhaps one of these days I might attempt writing, something in another form but, it's only a crazy idea that you have.
Do you read a lot?
Not a tremendous amount, not as much as I should, but you always say that, y'know. At the beginning of every year er not being a real smoker or er being a sort of er periodic drinker I don't do the things like make erm make resolutions to stop any of those things but I do sort of always draw up a mental list of all these, all those important books you're supposed to have read that I haven't and the next year comes round and I still haven't read them so... I guess I'm not a very good reader.
So are you music 24 hours a day?
No, not with my neighbours.
(Laughs).
About ten minutes a day.
Well, what's the first track that we're going to play now?
Well this is a title song of a film, a feller just gave me a tape with, y'know, people hear you're interested in R & B kind of music, people — it was just a journalist, who was one of the good guys gave me a tape of some stuff he thought I might not have heard and among them, this actually came from a film called Heartbeat which is a Sissy Spacek film. I never saw the film but I remember hearing it wasn't very good in fact, but this is a song by Aaron Neville who's from the Neville Brothers and made records, y'know, under his own name in the '50s and '60s and one I think of the really remarkable vocal performances, particularly considering that it was just more or less throwaway for a film, y'know, that you might never ever hear of. So this is called "I Love Her Too."
Aaron Neville and ‘I Love Her To’, what an incredible voice.
Yeah, it’s just like, it’s like, y’know those liquid, I think they call them Lava Lamps, y’know those old lamps with the ….
Yes, yeah …..
With the plastic stuff goes up and down when you heat it, that what I think his voice is like.
And you were saying that he did backing vocals ….
Sorry, I had a sharp blow to the head (laughs) late last night and obviously it’s having an effect on me.
You said that he did backing vocals on that as well.
Yeah, I think he does all the backing vocals as well. I heard a story that he did that vocal in two takes, but y’know that’s the legend that builds up about songs. But I’ve seen him sing live and he is a most remarkable singer, I mean er, sings perfectly in tune and with that kind of control live when you can’t, you often lose the subtleties of singing – anybody that’s seen me sing live will know I lose the subtleties of singing quite easily.
Apart from him who do you admire as a vocalist?
Oh, there’s millions of them. I’ve got a huge big list. I mean some of them aren’t really even what you’d call good singers, y’know. I like Randy Newman’s voice and he just delivers a song really in a particular way for that sort of song and then I like really the sort of singers that everybody accepts as great, like George Jones and Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra, and then, I mean like Fred Astaire, I mean he’s a good singer yet y’know he’s not really even a singer, well he’s not a singer, he’s a dancer I realise that. There’s a record of him dancing, have you ever heard that?
(Incredulous) No.
Yeah, there is, it goes (drumming hands on table), it really is a record of him dancing, it’s Fred Astaire Live At Carnegie Hall.
(Laughing) John Walters and I are always taking the micky out of tap dancers and doing things like that but I didn’t think there was a record of it.
Well, this is the, this is the radio station that once had a ventriloquist dummy on it, I don’t think the BBC has any place criticising.
Do you think though that some vocalists, particularly nowadays, can suffer because of over-production as well sometimes really good singers are swamped by their own ambition and also they suffer from what I call the ‘Fabulous Singer Syndrome’ which I think there are one or two of our erm better thought of vocalists today suffer from it sort of … I think it started back with Mel Torme and it’s never got any better.
Like who?
Erm, Helen Terry I think is a real over-singer y’know and that’s kind of sacrilege these days to say about those kind of people. I also think Tina Turner is an over-singer as well, I think she sings certain things with tremendous passion but, er well almost everybody on the “We Are The World” record is actually over-singing like crazy. Actually it sounds like a Stevie Wonder impersonation contest if you listen to it in a cynical light y’know. I think it’s a really worthwhile, obviously it’s a really worthwhile endeavour but as a piece of music it’s absolute nonsense y’know.
I heard somebody saying the other day as they were watching that, it just proves that Americans are far better vocalists than anybody in Britain.
I think that’s complete rubbish.
Umm.
I don’t necessarily think that y’know any kind of record done like that is going to be a wonderful piece of music. I think, as I say, you can’t really, the reason for doing it far outweighs any critical, y’know, sort of criteria. But when you actually watch it now the thing has achieved some of its aim, obviously, which was to make a tremendous amount of money which is great y’know, you can sort of afford to look at it and just realise how, the vanities of some of the singers involved there are quite remarkable.
And this next particular track, didn’t you turn this down?
Er, yeah. I was rather embarrassed, but I did actually turn … this was actually, well we – the very first track we played is an Imp record which is my label and occasionally I get tapes and things there, er, sometimes they’re not in their finished form and sometimes they’re in a Swedish form and a Norwegian form and er… I get all kinds of things and sometimes you don’t always see the true jewel like clarity of them immediately. There is a certain kind of record that I like to put out on Imp and I think sometimes other people could do things better and that’s why I don’t always erm, y’know sort of immediately hot foot it to people, round peoples abode with a contract in my hand because I don’t have very much to offer them. It’s a question of whether you’ve got something to offer a group or an artist other than just being able to put the record out, and with a certain kind of style or flair that you might be able to bring to it, that’s’ really all I can say about the Imp thing. This is one of my favourite records, this is called ‘Tommy’s Blue Valentine’, Pride Of The Cross.
Clearing your throat, Elvis Costello picked that – ‘Tommy’s Blue Valentine’ from Pride Of The Cross.
Take that Sade.
Yes (laughs) so how does Imp work, what did it set out to do and who is it?
Well, it set out to stop that record coming out immediately (laughs). Imp just came about by accident really. I put out a record called ‘Pills And Soap’ while I was between contracts, I wanted the record out specifically at that moment. I think I made the decision on a Wednesday and I think I had an acetate in this building on the Thursday night and so that came out and the sort of machinery was there, the name was there. It was put out through the Demon independent label, which is part of F Beat erm which the Elvis Costello and the Attractions records come out on and erm Phil Chevron came to me with the tape of him doing a version of Brendan Behan’s song ‘Captains And The Kings’ and said was I interested in producing a record and I said yeah, so we went in and I said the only difficulty is – you’ve got to understand that this is eighteen months ago nearly now and erm there wasn’t really the basis for a folk sort of instrumentation having any chance of getting any attention, except on the Wally Whyton programme y’know erm so I said lets, as it was a satire of I think probably of Noel Coward, the original song, we had David Bedford do an arrangement and we did it sort of like mock Elgar, which was a sort of a musical joke to back up, to echo the sentiments of the song – and it seemed to work quite well and those people that liked the record liked it an awful lot. And erm therefore the machinery was there always to do something but it wasn’t like a record label where we set up an office and y’know, nobodies on the payroll, y’know, we use the offices of Demon when something needs to be done. Phil carries on with his projects, does production, works in a record shop and consequently has his ear very much to the ground. When I came back to England having been away on tour the first part of last year he, erm I went along to see him, he was at this point engaged in doing the Agnes Bernell album, which subsequent to the ‘Captain And The Kings’ had agreed to do, which was a slightly bigger project obviously because there are quite a few more financial backing arrangements and a lot more musicians involved and we could talk about that later and, er y’know I sort of asked him, there was starting the beginning of some sort of scene I think which is always very dangerous once the music papers get hold of it and stick labels on things, I’d seen it happen so many times before – we all have. I was curious to know whether any of these groups that were being touted were any good, and he said, yeah the Pogues were a good group, y’know and they were already in the process of coming towards Stiff and The Men They Couldn’t Hang were just in their infancy really. I went along and saw them and they were doing a version of ‘The Green Fields Of France’ I think, y’know I don’t think they would object to this, that they, they started out very much with the Pogues as their model and have developed their own style from that as they’ve moved away from that sound. Put out ‘The Green Fields Of France’, which did remarkably well in the independent charts much to everybody’s surprise, for a seven minute ballad about death and doom y’know, a wonderful song all the same and erm, y’know the label just sits there waiting for somebody to come up with the bright idea of releasing another record on it, y’know.
Presumably you’re sent loads and loads of demos and you said before ….
Not really a tremendous amount, not as … I’m not saying this so that I get millions, y’know next week. It’s only I people sort of think there’s something simply … The very difficult thing about it is that the first three records that came out on it had some sort of vague political overtones so people naturally presume that everything has some sort of ideological stance. That isn’t the case that’s a mere coincidence y’know, if I’d heard the finished version of Tommy’s Blue Valentine I certainly would have put it out, it was only in a rough mix stage, it wasn’t actually finished when I heard the tape and that’s got nothing, nothing political about that at all. So it’s really open to an imaginative idea, that’s what I’m looking for, is imagination, that’s what all of the records that I’ve brought with me today and we’re going to play have got some spirit about them which makes them worth putting on plastic – and so many records that are released through major companies are just a load of lies. They exist in an imaginary world, like Sade, imaginary sophistication for people who can’t really be bothered to go and listen to Billie Holiday records.
So what do you think of something like ZTT?
I think it’s, I think it’s really self important, I liked the whole Frankie thing when it happened, y’know but to, I read a ludicrous quote saying Frankie Goes To Hollywood are the last great pop group. Paul Morley’s been writing, been a journalist too long, y’know? I think being given charge of a record company was the worst thing that could possibly have happened to him really because it … I quite like the man and I think he’s quite funny in an irritating sort of way and I think he feels the same way about me, y’know, but I actually actively dislike this rather bogus ‘50’s or early ‘60’s view of European sexuality which we’re getting thrust down our throats with Anne Pigalle and Propoganda. I just think it’s, it’s, it’s setting the clock back, y’know twenty-five years.
You said before that…
It’s not European, it’s actually really jingoistic.
You said before that, um, if you didn’t think that you could do a band justice you wouldn’t actually ….
No, there’s no point, I can’t …. I haven’t the finances y’know, I’m not ….
So what do you do in that case ?
I’m not, contrary to popular belief, a very rich man, so I don’t have the money to finance like big, y’know, tours and be able to give people – bands as well, they need to buy equipment and stuff. But on the other side of that is that we can do things properly, like we made the Agnes Bernell album properly, it could have been done with piano and voice but we decided to do it with small orchestral groups and do the songs justice, bring them to life, y’know.
Next track, T-Bone Burnett.
This is a song from T-Bone Burnett’s ‘’Behind The Trapdoor’’ album, his sequel to ‘The Trapdoor’ er, it’s a song called ‘Strange Combination’.
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