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Elvis Costello may be one of the biggest musical icons on the planet, but the legendary singer=song-writer doesn’t give two hoots about his own legacy:
“Honestly, I know it sounds odd – I don’t think in those terms. I’m quite proud of the records that I’ve done,” he said when we recently chatted on Zoom.
“But in terms of what it all means when I’m not here, what the f**k do I care? I won’t be here.” He paused to laugh. “What’s the point in worrying, you might as well live.”
I didn’t prefix the “singer-song-writer” description with English, British, or with the derogatory Plastic Paddy.
Even Elvis is hesitant about putting any labels on himself.
“I’m a bit like my grandfather – I choose what I am, all depending on who’s asking me,” he said.
“Obviously my great-grandfather was the last one to live in Ireland, but my grandfather used to give his nationality as Irish. Because what did he think he was? Both of his parents were Irish.
“The fact that he was born in Birkenhead (in Merseyside) is the same king of thing as I identify with my family home being on Merseyside, even though I was technically born in London.
“I have more of a sense of belonging to Merseyside because all of my family is from there.
“I was born in St. Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, the same as all the Royal Family.
“I’m actually probably 100th in line to the throne at this stage, I think! They’re just getting anybody that they can call a prince!
“The truth of it is, if somebody asks me what I am, I go: Well, I’m English when I want to be, but if you actually ask me I feel like the paternal line is pretty strong in that respect.
“And we’re Celts on two sides of my family, so we’re not English.
“I wouldn’t say we’re Irish, but we’re not English, that’s for sure.”
He added: “I haven’t lived in England since 1989. Things change, but it doesn’t change you. You’re still the same person.
“Other people have more concern about how you identify yourself than I do. I don’t even think about it. I’m a human.
“It says on my passport that I was born ‘here’ and ‘that’ – but look at my face! It’s pretty undeniable.”
He clearly feels a very strong infinity with Ireland.
“Of course. Very much. I lived there for a long while,” he said.
“I’m obviously, in a way that sounds like some sort of Irish fable, my eldest son is more Irish than me because his mother is from Galway.”
Elvis said his father, (circled) the musician Ross MacManus, who passed away in 2011, was proud of his Irish roots.
“I think my dad became progressively more Irish as he got older – that possible? He became sort of more Irish,” he recalled.
“He definitely grew up in an Irish community, literally dockside in Birkenhead. His grandfather was the one that came from Dungannon (County Tyrone). So, he just identified with that.
“And my half-brothers, who are twenty years or more younger than me, all play for the London-Irish. They’re all instrumentalists: the eldest played the whistle, the second is a drummer, the youngest two are songwriters.
“And my brother Ronan had a group, BibleCode Sundays” – a Celtic punk band that was “originally called Slainte”, according to the Wiki page – “ until a couple of years ago.
“Everybody in my family is a musician, basically.”
Elvis now, of course, has got an OBE at the end of that very Irish sounding name of his: Declan Patrick McManus.
It was awarded to him in 2019 for his service to music. But it’s pretty ironic that the Queen decided to bestow him with the title Officer of the Order of the British Empire considering the lyrics in his 1979 song Oliver’s Army.
“I thought it was pretty funny, too. I guess they didn’t listen to the words,” he agreed, laughing, about a song that “maybe I’d think twice” about penning nowadays. He hates when radio stations censor the controversial lyrics.
“My da went in through the tradesmen entrance in 1962 to play with Joe Loss at the Buckingham Palace staff ball. So eventually you get to walk in the front door and they have to look you in the eye.
“The British Empire had a pretty good job at killing both of my grand-fathers. So I hold a grudge!”
I would’ve presumed you’d have needed a proverbial pair of you-know-what to have called yourself after the King of Rock and Roll himself when starting out.
“I never really thought about it,” he confessed. “It was given to me by my first manager, as like a dare.
“And if you think about the names people had then they were provocative names. And that was the style of that time.
“Prior to that – because of my father being a singer – I was well aware that people took on different guises.
“My dad used to do a lot of adverts and jingles. He did a lot of session work. He was with Joe Loss (Orchestra) for many years; that was a radio dance band really. They would broadcast on the BBC. And one of the things was, the singers were not allowed to make records on their own names.
“So my dad would go off and do records under aliases, basically for cash. He’d do cover records and adverts.
“There would be these EPs that you could buy at the petrol station, that were like the pop hits. They were the equivalent of the cover records you used to buy in Woolworths.
“They were like an EP with four songs, so you were buying the song rather than the original performance.
“So you would get four hits songs for the same price as a single.
“And my dad was the lead singer on all of these four songs – and he had a different name (on each one, too). He was The Layabouts when he was singing The Rolling Stones’ song.
“You know, that’s your upbringing. Funny names didn’t really scare you.
“My dad had a minor hit in Australia with a version of The Long and Winding Road (in 1970). Do you know what his name was on that record? Day Costello.
“He was the first one to use the Costello name, which was my great grandmother’s name, as an alias.
“My dad’s name was not Ross, my dad’s name was Ronald, but he adopted Ross because it sounded more like a singer.”
Does Elvis find himself becoming nostalgic in later life?
“No, I’m really not nostalgic in the slightest. Never have been,” he admitted.
“I think you have to look back to spring forward. You lean back, just think about the movement: you use it like a kind of catapult. So, I think of that in everything.
“If you’re unaware of what went before you musically then you’re unlikely to spring any new surprises because you’re just starting from, like, nothing.
“It’s great to want to be original, but how do you know if it is original unless you’re aware of what went before? You might have come up with the same idea as somebody else already had.
“So I don’t think it ever harms to listen to the music from the past. Music from anywhere really.”
A deep affection for the Irish music scene. Elvis has fond memories of working with other Irish musicians on his album Spike recorded when he lived in Dublin.
The Waterboys’ fiddle player Steve Wickham recently told me that one of the greatest honours of his musical career was playing on that album, because it also happened to include one of The Beatles (Paul McCartney) amongst a who’s who that appeared on it.
Remaining text and scanner-error corrections to come...
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