Irish Times, May 29, 2009

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Irish Times

UK & Ireland newspapers

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" People think that anything I've done since 1978 is of no consequence whatsoever"


Brian Boyd

He borrowed his name from Presley and his inspiration from every genre under the sun. Now Elvis Costello is releasing a bluegrass album – except it’s bluegrass with a bit of Hans Christian Andersen and a bit of Elvis Costello added, he tells BRIAN BOYD

AFTER Elvis Costello first appeared on Top Of The Pops in the late 1970s, a teacher at my school said he would like to “take him out and give him a good thumping”. Costello’s crime was not his surly and sardonic demeanour or his rowdy “New Wave” music – it was because he took the name of the saintly Elvis Presley in vain.

When the punk wars broke, the London-born, Liverpool-raised of Irish heritage Declan MacManus took the King’s first name and his mother’s maiden name as his “nom de guerre” . It didn’t diminish the teacher’s hostility when it was patiently pointed out to him by some music know-it-all student that in interviews, Costello had spoken about how much he loved the music of country legend George Jones – a particular favourite of this teacher. If anything, it just increased his antipathy to, and I quote, the “snarling little fucker”.

At some point during the interview with Costello, I wanted to crowbar this silly anecdote into the conversation – but he brought weightier topics to the table: Hans Christian Andersen’s sexuality; PT Barnum; slavery and the abolitionist movement; The Clash’s London Calling; Johnny Cash; and the “gangsters” who now run the record companies.

Costello’s new album, Secret, Profane and Sugarcane is ostensibly an acoustic bluegrass affair – pitched somewhere between King Of America and Almost Blue. Recorded with country/bluegrass royalty – T-Bone Burnett, Jim Lauderdale, Emmylou Harris, Stuart Duncan, Jerry Douglas, Loretta Lynn – it all began with Hans Christian Andersen.

“A few years ago I was commissioned to write an opera about Andersen, but I never really finished it,” says Costello. “I knew I wanted to do an acoustic record with T-Bone Burnett and I had these songs I had written for the opera in my back pocket which I thought would work for the album. I felt with the players we had assembled we could achieve this easily. They were intricate songs but the ease with which these amazing musicians expressed them allowed me to really sing them.

“The playing was so responsive it just flowed. There’s a song on there, She Handed Me A Mirror, which goes through four key changes, it modulates four times, but you don’t get that when you hear it. And there’s a second voice on the album – Jim Lauderdale takes the close vocal harmonies – it’s a very skilled technique to add that harmonic interval.”

The album was recorded in an almost unbelievable three days. “I know,” he says. “Just three days in Nashville. We weren’t isolated in studio booths, we just sat around in a semi-circle where we could see each other very readily. The song I Felt The Chill on the album – I co-wrote that with Loretta Lynn in an hour just sitting around a table. These aren’t traditional bluegrass songs, I don’t think they sound like bluegrass songs – they’re my songs with bluegrass instrumentation.”

The songs are informed by the assiduous research he carried out into the life of Hans Christian Andersen. Costello found Andersen’s famous fairy tales to be much darker and more tortured than he had remembered them and thinks he discovered a key to the author when he surmised that the author was in love (but it was unrequited) with the most famous opera singer of the time, the Swedish soprano Jenny Lind.

“I think Andersen had infatuations with both men and women – but Lind was his ideal woman,” he says. “The song How Deep Is The Red is about Andersen’s infatuation, while She Handed Me A Mirror explains why Andersen’s love was unrequited,” he says – the author was by no means conventionally good-looking.

Costello was greatly impressed by an out-of-print book about Jenny Lind’s 1850 American tour, which was promoted by PT Barnum. “Lind was the most famous singer of her day, and the tour was a disaster. Barnum viewed her as a commodity but there is evidence that she got the upper hand on him – she was a shrewd businesswoman,” he says.

“With She Was No Good – which is about that tour, I have them coming across a plantation (where the black slaves were forced to work) and the shock of that. To hear the song is to hear the implication of that shock. The next song is Red Cotton, which imagines Barnum reading an Abolitionist pamphlet. And then there is the Liverpool connection with the slave trade – it was one of the main ports used.

“These were all interesting song opportunities that were handed to me by the original Hans Christian Andersen commission – there is some liberty with historical facts taken. But I couldn’t see myself dealing with them in any other way than on this record.”

For Costello, these songs contain “undeniable threads and themes of rivers and oceans travelled, of bondage and guilt, of shame and retribution, of piety, profanity, lust and love, though only the last of these is absolute. There are always contradictions. The music offers the way out.”

Back at the beginning of his career – when he was a “new wave” artist releasing his debut, My Aim Is True, on the Stiff label in 1977, Costello used to have his hide his love of country/bluegrass music – whenever journalists of the time got on his tour bus, he would rush to hide his George Jones tapes. This would have been around the same time he unsettled some of the punk crowd for covering Burt Bacharach songs in his shows.

“This all goes back to my dad,” he says. Costello’s father, Ross MacManus, was a noted musician who sang and played trumpet with Joe Loss and his orchestra from the 1950s on. “He would bring back records he had to learn for his job – a very diverse collection – there were Sinatra and Nat King Cole records, but also stuff by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie that I just didn’t understand,” he says.

“I suppose what I learnt from an early age was not to be fearful of other types of music. And that’s stayed with me. Later I would have been into 1960s r’n’b, soul, Otis Redding – acts like that, but country music at that time was all novelty stuff, it was all Jim Reeves and Johnny Cash doing novelty records such as A Boy Named Sue . It took the ‘long-haired’ musicians such as Gram Parsons to really open up the soulfulness of country music. And the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band were important too. When I went to the US for the first time in the late 1970s, I picked all this stuff up in second-hand records shops.”

“Because I wasn’t fearful of any type of music, that allowed me to love both The Clash and George Jones. I never subscribed to that 1977 idea that you had to musically deny the past. You know, Joe Strummer was a big Johnny Cash fan but it wasn’t until London Calling that they started doing New Orleans music, rockabilly music. They went ‘behind’ in order to get ‘ahead’ because on the next album , they were among the first to be doing rap music.”

Renowned for not just being a walking encyclopaedia of modern music but also a genre-spanning composer (he has done classical with The Brodsky Quartet; recorded an album with Burt Bacharach; Almost Blue was an album of country covers), Costello knows that to some he is frozen in time as the angry young man on the Stiff Records label.

“There are people who think that anything I’ve done since 1978 is of no consequence whatsoever,” he says. “That sort of world view is so limited. I’m not playing for those people, or for anybody else. I have a sense that there is an audience there for what I do but I’m not trying to flatter anyone with my music. I write about what I’m interested in. I’ve done very well from music, but I’m sort of glad that it has never been too well. There have been moments of success which I could have followed up but I didn’t. I made my own choices: change and transition.”

The “change and transition” within the industry itself provokes an angry but measured tirade: “I have some insight into music having worked inside a few record companies. The contempt that flows in the direction of the musicians . . . it just seems all about rampant profiteering. It’s the undoing of the music business and that began when entities not involved in music took over the labels. This was a business investment for them – they used the same business model as they did for running their sewage business or whatever. I’ve seen labels fire half their staff – the competent half of the staff, the people who are actually qualified for the job, because that makes their business plan easier.

“I know that musicians were very badly ripped off in the 1950s and 1960s. The music business has been stealing from its customers and its audience for years, but now you have a more ‘elegant’ type of gangster. Look at what’s going on now. Round the corner from where I live in New York there’s a huge record store which is now boarded up. I can’t find a record shop anywhere in New York. That’s the reality of their ‘innovation’. They have killed the very thing they had at their disposal.”

Secret, Profane and Sugarcane is released today


Tags: Elvis PresleyTop Of The PopsGeorge JonesThe ClashLondon CallingJohnny CashSecret, Profane & SugarcaneKing Of AmericaAlmost BlueT-Bone BurnettJim LauderdaleEmmylou HarrisStuart DuncanJerry DouglasLoretta LynnThe Secret SongsShe Handed Me A MirrorNashvilleI Felt The ChillHow Deep Is The Red?She Was No GoodRed CottonLiverpoolMy Aim Is TrueStiffRoss MacManusJoe Loss OrchestraFrank SinatraNat King ColeCharlie ParkerOtis ReddingGram ParsonsJoe StrummerThe Brodsky QuartetBurt BacharachSpectacle: Elvis Costello with...Apollo TheaterElton JohnBill ClintonLou ReedStingRufus WainwrightKris KristoffersonNorah Jones

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The Irish Times, May 29, 2009


Brian Boyd interviews Elvis Costello about Secret, Profane & Sugarcane and reviews the first season of Spectacle: Elvis Costello with....

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Making a spectacle of himself


Not the most obvious choice for a chat show host, Costello has had great success with his Spectacle: Elvis Costello with TV programme. Recorded in the famous Apollo Theatre in Harlem, executive produced by Elton John and screened by the Sundance Channel in the US and Channel 4 in the UK, Spectacle guests have included Bill Clinton, Lou Reed, Sting, Rufus Wainwright, Kris Kristofferson and Norah Jones.

Using the chatshow format, the show also includes that week’s guest performing. Spectacle works because Costello is not a smooth and sleek chatshow performer. The guests trust him and he has a profound knowledge about his subject matter.

“The main difference between me and even the best journalists is that I do the same job [as the guests],” he says. “I don’t want to come across any slicker. I don’t mind the fact that the beginning of my career was singing songs.”

The 13-part series has now finished its run (there may well be another series and beyond) but to see Costello in action just type “Elvis Costello” and “Spectacle” into YouTube.

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