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Declan Patrick McManus was born some twenty-odd years ago somewhere near London, and spent his childhood in London and Liverpool. The sole offspring of a broken marriage, McManus was raised as a Catholic, married at an early age, had a child, became a computer technician for Elizabeth Arden beauty consultants, and, on weekends, followed in the footsteps of his musician father by playing in bluegrass bands in the London area.
A photographer is trying to get a posed picture of Elvis Costello backstage at his Milwaukee gig. It's been an uphill fight just getting there, but now the photographer is being quizzed: is he the one who took the picture of Costello and a member of Cheap Trick backstage at a Madison concert? The photo in question appeared in an issue of Creem; apparently, it had not been intended for public release.
"No," replies the photographer. Costello and company abruptly lose interest in him. "Don't I get a picture?," the photographer cries after them.
Costello shakes his head. "Once bitten, twice shy," he says.
In the early portion of 1977, Elvis Costello made his first ripple on the British rock scene. Stiff Records, a new label created by Dave Robinson and Jake Riviera (Costello's future manager), released "Less Than Zero" (backed with the first apocryphal Costello track, "Radio Sweetheart") as a single. It did little in the way of sales or airplay, but the critics, at least, began to pay attention. Not a few listeners suspected that Nick Lowe, an ex-member of Brinsley Schwarz, had actually done the record. Certainly the name was a joke—no one had ever heard of Elvis Costello.
"Like, I went around for nearly a year with demo tapes before I came to Stiff, and it was always the same response. 'We can't hear the words.' `It isn't commercial enough.' There aren't any singles.' Idiots. Those tapes were just voice and guitar demos. I didn't have enough money to do anything with a band. It was just a lack of imagination on the part of those people at the record companies. I felt as if I were bashing my head against a brick wall, those people just weren't prepared to listen to the songs.
"But I never lost faith. I'm convinced in my own talent, yeah. Like I said, I wasn't going up to these people meekly and saying, 'Look, with your help and a bit of polishing up, and with all your expertise and knowledge of the world of music we might have a moderate success on our hands.'
"I was going in thinking: 'You're a bunch of fucking idiots who don't know what you're doing. I'm bringing you a lot of good songs, why don't you go ahead and fucking well record them?' They didn't seem to understand that kind of approach."
Costello's meteoric rise coincided with the release of his second single, "Alison," and the first album, My Aim Is True, which offered, for the first time, the physical proof of Costello's existence.
But what proof! Two pictures featured the same skinny figure, his hair cropped into a pre-Beatles tuft, his face covered by black, horn-rimmed glasses, oversized coat decking his frame. His hands clutched a Fender Jaguar.
The music he made was the best rock-and-roll since the early Who.
Apparently, Costello's appearance is no more a joke than his music — he's been dressing that way for years, the perfect unarchetypal rocker. The music was unusual for 1977, also; Costello, bored with empty technical virtuosity, extended solos and meaningless songs that extend forever, opted to write songs that would reach people on a personal level.
"That's why I like and write short songs. It's a discipline. There's no disguise. You can't cover up songs like that by dragging banks of fucking synthesizers and choirs of angels. They have to stand up on their own. With none of the nonsense. Songs are just so fucking effective. People seem to have forgotten that.
"Like, people used to live their lives by songs. They were like calendars or diaries. And they were pop songs. Not elaborate fucking pieces of music. You wouldn't say, like, 'Yeah, that's the time I went out with Janet, we went to see the LSO playing Mozart.' You'd remember you went out with Janet because they were playing 'Summer In The City' on the radio."
Elvis Costello's songs are double personal, written, played and sung with unparalleled intensity. Consider "Alison", which at first listen sounds like a sympathetic love song: "Sometimes I wish I could stop you from talking when I hear the silly things that you say / I guess somebody better put out the big light, 'cause I can't stand to. see you this way / Alison, I know this world is killing you / Oh, Alison, ley aim is true." His tunes are all based on personal experience, and so Costello is only interesting in expressing his own feelings;. songs may have wide application for people, but they are visions of Costello's condition, not humanity's.
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