Follow Me Gentlemen, June 1989: Difference between revisions
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“I don’t want to get further into this, because you get this thing of, ‘He’s bitter ‘cos he hasn’t sold a lot of records’,” he says, defensively. “That isn’t really it. I see it as a disturbing trend. It doesn’t really affect me, because the record will either sell or it won’t.” | “I don’t want to get further into this, because you get this thing of, ‘He’s bitter ‘cos he hasn’t sold a lot of records’,” he says, defensively. “That isn’t really it. I see it as a disturbing trend. It doesn’t really affect me, because the record will either sell or it won’t.” | ||
The trouble with this kind of talk is that it can easily lead to the kind of fundamentalist anti-technology stance that made many of Costello’s post-new-wave-records sound so dated and out-of-time. ''Spike'', however, is the third in a series of albums that represent a renaissance in his work: his music of the past few years has blossomed in the studio. | |||
Listen to his Best Of compilation, ''Elvis Costello: The Man''; the songs from the early-to-mid-‘80s stand out as his richest. ‘Beyond Belief’, ‘Shipbuilding’, ‘Pills and Soap’, ‘New Amsterdam’: song after song flooded with limpidly wrought changes. The beauty of the songs is remarkable, sophisticated in their strange twists in the way only jazz standards usually manage to be. | |||
Yet listen to the albums these songs come from: the let-down is immediate. Some, like ''Imperial Bedroom'', are a mixture of the commonplace and the outstanding. Others, like ''Punch The Clock'' and ''Goodbye Cruel World'', can be ghastly unlistenable: grey, plodding arrangements, forced effects, a generally bland tenor. | |||
Ever since ''The King Of America'', a couple of LPs back, Costello has been more self-assured and consistent, more relaxed when he needs to feel laid-back, more convincingly intense when he feels like letting rip. | |||
Recorded with the aid of T-Bone Burnett and seasoned American players like guitarist James Burton and bassist Jerry Scheff, famed for their work with the other Elvis, King is the album most likely to provoke non-Costello-philes into a reconsideration, a lush, deeply melodic record of country-inflected music for those who never felt they liked country, so light in its touch that it virtually floats off the stereo. | |||
''Blood And Chocolate'', its follow-up, is equally strong but opposite in atmosphere, Costello re-hiring the Attractions, who this time cast-off their old pub-rock mannerisms and swing the axe with claustrophobic intensity. And neither is it without its tendernesses. | |||
Yet there’s something else that makes Costello still worth watching: he remained fascinating because he’s so unpredictable, so hard to pin down. One moment he’ll happily play the role of reactionary – the last time we spoke he’d lashed out at everything from computer-sampled dance records to independent-label rock bands (“just beatniks in the basement”) – and the next he’ll be tearing apart the New Right. | |||
Costello’s tongue has landed him in serious trouble in the past. The most notorious incident of his career occurred around ‘79/80, when, in a heated argument with members of Stephen Stills’ band, Manassas, in a roadhouse in the States, he reportedly made racist remarks about prominent American black musicians. Enraged, Manassas went to the press; a flurry of “Elvis Costello In Race Controversy” headlines followed. | |||
His first album, ''My Aim Is True'', had won the Rolling Stone critics’ Album Of The Year award in 1977, but the hostility generated by the above put a serious hold on his American career. Costello, incidentally, has always played down the incident, claiming it was exaggerated out of all proportion, his remarks mere facetiousness intended to get up the American musicians’ noses. At that, at least, he was successful. | |||
The last time we had met, Costello had given England a particularly vicious tongue-lashing, calling it “a very tatty, Third World country, a whorehouse”. It wasn’t just the greed encouraged by Thatcher that appalled him, it was the way people seemed to be enjoying getting one over on their neighbours. | |||
At the time he was thinking of making a move, possibly to Ireland. Twelve months later he has bought a house just outside Dublin with his wife Cait, former bass player with The Pogues (though he keeps a flat in London for business purposes). Already it seems that he has merely swapped the frying pan for the fire, however. | |||
“The opportunist, entrepreneurial instinct is very hot there, at the expense of everything that’s worthwhile,” he complains. “It is in England as well, but it’s given a little more window dressing.” | |||
“In Ireland it’s bare-faced, as it is here – the Alan Bonds of this world almost go out of their way to be cruder and more down to earth. It’s what excuses them for being so wealthy: because they speak like a guy you’d meet in the pub, they get away with it. In England, you’d have to dress up that kind of greed.” | |||
Talking to Britons these days, the impression of a national ethos that has become inextricably entangled with venality invariably emerges. It’s not a complaint Australians will make about their own country. Yet could it be simply that being a new-world nation, built on new money, we are not so much immune from the ‘80s zeitgeist as merely less surprised by it? | |||
While Britain, with its centuries-old establishment, still finds the open discussion of wealth a bit shocking? It’s interesting that to an outsider like Costello, Australia’s political scene seems in some ways as bad as contemporary Britain’s. | |||
The scene in John Pilger’s ''Bicentennial'' series (which was screened in the UK) depicting Bob Hawke in banquet with Australia’s billionaires shocked Costello so much that it inspired him to write a song about it. The result is This Town, the opener on ''Spike''. The chorus? “''Everybody in this town knows you’re a bastard.''” | |||
Says Costello of the program, “I thought, this is so humiliating, this guy’s supposed to be in the Labor Party, and he’s grovelling to these nauseating …” The appropriate swear-word is left untendered. | |||
“It’s a general malaise, isn’t it,” he continues. “It’s everywhere, it’s in America. I’m sure you’d find it in France or Italy. We always attribute greater style to people when you can’t understand what they’re saying, they appear to be hipper and cooler there, but they’re probably just as bad.” | |||
The slightly depressing aspect of Costello’s indignation is how rare it seems to be becoming. Maybe it’s a case of battle fatigue – even militant one-man band Billy Bragg has gone soft. | |||
Costello’s value is that he is a man who swims against the prevailing currents. As his current album title suggests, he is like a spike in a patch of smooth ground: unpredictable, sharp, provocative, his own man; a leader. | |||
His failure to adapt simple formulas, whether in music or opinions, reflects a rounded consistency of character that is never less than profoundly convincing. Everything about Costello’s character falls into place because he never appears to do anything for false motives. He has the integrity and complexity of an artist. | |||
The adenoidal voice? I think I can live with it. | |||
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{{tags}}[[God's Comic]] {{-}} [[Veronica]] {{-}} [[I Wanna Be Loved]] {{-}} [[Stiff]] {{-}} [[F-Beat]] {{-}} [[Warner Bros.]] {{-}} [[Columbia Records]] {{-}} [[Oliver's Army]] {{-}} [[Sting]] {{-}} [[Steve Nieve]] {{-}} [[Nick Lowe]] {{-}} [[My Aim Is True]] {{-}} [[Pump It Up]] {{-}} [[Watching The Detectives]] {{-}} [[(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea]] {{-}} [[Alison]] {{-}} [[This Year's Model]] {{-}} [[Randy Newman]] {{-}} [[The Specials]] {{-}} [[The Pogues]] {{-}} [[Clubland]] {{-}} [[Trust]] {{-}} [[Spike]] {{-}} [[...This Town...]] {{-}} [[The Byrds]] {{-}} [[Prince]] {{-}} [[Roger McGuinn]] {{-}} [[New Orleans]] {{-}} [[The Dirty Dozen Brass Band]] {{-}} [[Paul McCartney]] {{-}} [[Michael Blair]] {{-}} [[Marc Ribot]] {{-}} [[Tom Waits]] {{-}} [[Chrissie Hynde]] {{-}} [[Allen Toussaint]] {{-}} [[Get Happy!!]] {{-}} [[Almost Blue]] {{-}} [[Billy Sherrill]] {{-}} [[Kirk Joseph]] {{-}} [[Miss Macbeth]] {{-}} [[Paul Simon]] {{-}} [[Pads, Paws And Claws]] {{-}} [[Phil Spector]] {{-}} [[George Martin]] {{-}} [[Brian Eno]] | {{tags}}[[God's Comic]] {{-}} [[Veronica]] {{-}} [[I Wanna Be Loved]] {{-}} [[Stiff]] {{-}} [[F-Beat]] {{-}} [[Warner Bros.]] {{-}} [[Columbia Records]] {{-}} [[Oliver's Army]] {{-}} [[Sting]] {{-}} [[Steve Nieve]] {{-}} [[Nick Lowe]] {{-}} [[My Aim Is True]] {{-}} [[Pump It Up]] {{-}} [[Watching The Detectives]] {{-}} [[(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea]] {{-}} [[Alison]] {{-}} [[This Year's Model]] {{-}} [[Randy Newman]] {{-}} [[The Specials]] {{-}} [[The Pogues]] {{-}} [[Clubland]] {{-}} [[Trust]] {{-}} [[Spike]] {{-}} [[...This Town...]] {{-}} [[The Byrds]] {{-}} [[Prince]] {{-}} [[Roger McGuinn]] {{-}} [[New Orleans]] {{-}} [[The Dirty Dozen Brass Band]] {{-}} [[Paul McCartney]] {{-}} [[Michael Blair]] {{-}} [[Marc Ribot]] {{-}} [[Tom Waits]] {{-}} [[Chrissie Hynde]] {{-}} [[Allen Toussaint]] {{-}} [[Get Happy!!]] {{-}} [[Almost Blue]] {{-}} [[Billy Sherrill]] {{-}} [[Kirk Joseph]] {{-}} [[Miss Macbeth]] {{-}} [[Paul Simon]] {{-}} [[Pads, Paws And Claws]] {{-}} [[Phil Spector]] {{-}} [[George Martin]] {{-}} [[Brian Eno]] {{-}} [[The Man (The Best Of Elvis Costello)|Elvis Costello: The Man]] {{-}} [[Beyond Belief]] {{-}} [[Shipbuilding]] {{-}} [[Pills And Soap]] {{-}} [[New Amsterdam]] {{-}} [[Imperial Bedroom]] {{-}} [[Punch The Clock]] {{-}} [[Goodbye Cruel World]] {{-}} [[King Of America]] {{-}} [[T-Bone Burnett]] {{-}} [[James Burton]] {{-}} [[Jerry Scheff]] {{-}} [[Blood & Chocolate]] {{-}} [[Stephen Stills]] {{-}} [[:Category:Columbus incident|Columbus Incident]] {{-}} [[Cait O'Riordan]] {{-}} [[Billy Bragg]] | ||
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[[Category:Interviews]] | [[Category:Interviews]] | ||
[[Category:1989 interviews]] | [[Category:1989 interviews]] | ||
Latest revision as of 21:19, 24 April 2022
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