London Times, June 11, 1995: Difference between revisions
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In one concert to be given by the London Philharmonic plus guests, Costello has lined up Dowland alongside Duke Ellington, the cartoon movie scores of Carl Stalling, and Korngold's violin concerto. In another, by the Composers Ensemble, a song by Brahms crops up next to one by the great jazz pianist Billy Strayhorn, the evening to be rounded off with a version of the Kinks' "Waterloo Sunset." Other unlikely bedfellows include Debbie Harry, formerly of Blondie, fronting New York jazz oddities, the Jazz Passengers, on the festival's opening night ([[Concert 1995-06-23 London|June 23]]), and what a surprise it is, too, to see "Dinah And Nick's Love Song" by Harrison Birtwistle jostling for attention on a bill that kicks off with a piece by Chick Corea. Costello's own performances — with the Brodsky Quartet, the guitarist Bill Frisell, the American gospel group the Fairfield Four and his old snarling partner from The Attractions, Steve Nieve — are actually among the mom conservatively programmed concerts in the Meltdown festival. | In one concert to be given by the London Philharmonic plus guests, Costello has lined up Dowland alongside Duke Ellington, the cartoon movie scores of Carl Stalling, and Korngold's violin concerto. In another, by the Composers Ensemble, a song by Brahms crops up next to one by the great jazz pianist Billy Strayhorn, the evening to be rounded off with a version of the Kinks' "Waterloo Sunset." Other unlikely bedfellows include Debbie Harry, formerly of Blondie, fronting New York jazz oddities, the Jazz Passengers, on the festival's opening night ([[Concert 1995-06-23 London|June 23]]), and what a surprise it is, too, to see "Dinah And Nick's Love Song" by Harrison Birtwistle jostling for attention on a bill that kicks off with a piece by Chick Corea. Costello's own performances — with the Brodsky Quartet, the guitarist Bill Frisell, the American gospel group the Fairfield Four and his old snarling partner from The Attractions, Steve Nieve — are actually among the mom conservatively programmed concerts in the Meltdown festival. | ||
Costello is well aware that having thrown the cat among the pigeons, some unfriendly observers might now be looking forward to kicking the cat. "I know there are some people who are going to say, 'Who does he think he is?' or imagine that I'm looking for approval, or that I'm trying to act grown-up now by doing some worthy thing. I know those thoughts am out there. But it's rather like when I started, then | Costello is well aware that having thrown the cat among the pigeons, some unfriendly observers might now be looking forward to kicking the cat. "I know there are some people who are going to say, 'Who does he think he is?' or imagine that I'm looking for approval, or that I'm trying to act grown-up now by doing some worthy thing. I know those thoughts am out there. But it's rather like when I started, then I had to be very aggressive because sometimes you have to clear the ground around you, to lean a certain way — too far maybe — to get your point out. You have to scare people up a bit." | ||
Some of his original plans for Meltdown leaned | Some of his original plans for Meltdown leaned so far in the direction of scaring people that they had to be abandoned: for example, an open-air recital of obscure modern music on Waterloo bridge, designed to obstruct the traffic and annoy the police while being simultaneously broadcast on Radio 3, was soon felt to be too pranksterish, or perhaps just plain silly. "Jazz and classical people are a bit shy of drawing a crowd. I'm not. But I'm happy that what we've ended up with in this year's Meltdown are music-based concerts rather than events." | ||
Although he insists that "there is nothing evangelical about this festival; | Although he insists that "there is nothing evangelical about this festival; I'm note on a crusade and I have no big theory, this is just a series of possibilities", Costello is implicitly offering up his own catholic tastes as a sort of template. That, after all, is what Meltdown expects of its guest composer/directors; and if listening habits are indeed becoming less rigid as the millennium draws near, then Costello's CV marks him out more clearly as 21st-Century Man than 20th-Century Rock Star. | ||
His musical upbringing was unusual for a late baby-boomer, and probably much closer to that of a person half his age in the respect that all the family shared a liking for broadly popular music. While other kids growing up in the 1960s decided what they liked in opposition to their parents' taste and wishes, the young Declan McManus (b 1955) loved what he heard at home — which was mostly jazz from the | His musical upbringing was unusual for a late baby-boomer, and probably much closer to that of a person half his age in the respect that all the family shared a liking for broadly popular music. While other kids growing up in the 1960s decided what they liked in opposition to their parents' taste and wishes, the young Declan McManus (b 1955) loved what he heard at home — which was mostly jazz from the 1940s and 1950s. McManus Sr was a professional singer with a showband; mother worked in record shops, including Brian Epstein's NEMS store. "My parents loved The Beatles and all those beat groups because my dad had to sing a lot of those songs," Costello explains. "In those days a radio dance band, such as my dad's, was just like a jukebox. They had to play ''everything''." One of his most treasured curios, he reveals, is an old tape of the Joe Loss orchestra performing Pink Floyd's early hit "See Emily Play." | ||
Peer-group pressure during his teenage years held him up. "I had really sophisticated taste until I started buying my own records. Then I'd deny I'd ever listened to certain things, and sold records, only to buy them back three years later." When he started performing himself in Liverpool in the 1970s, he came up against a keenly policed frontier that separated the traditional and the contemporary folk clubs. "Of course, real talent always outlives labels, but there is something about English taste that seems very oppositional. It's like, The Beatles ''or'' the Stones, the Clash ''or'' the Sex Pistols." Mindful of the need not to trip any wires during his elevation as a new-wave godhead, Costello deliberately held back on recording some of his more intricate songs until the fans of punk had abated. | Peer-group pressure during his teenage years held him up. "I had really sophisticated taste until I started buying my own records. Then I'd deny I'd ever listened to certain things, and sold records, only to buy them back three years later." When he started performing himself in Liverpool in the 1970s, he came up against a keenly policed frontier that separated the traditional and the contemporary folk clubs. "Of course, real talent always outlives labels, but there is something about English taste that seems very oppositional. It's like, The Beatles ''or'' the Stones, the Clash ''or'' the Sex Pistols." Mindful of the need not to trip any wires during his elevation as a new-wave godhead, Costello deliberately held back on recording some of his more intricate songs until the fans of punk had abated. | ||
He started attending classical and contemporary "not-rock" concerts about seven years | He started attending classical and contemporary "not-rock" concerts about seven years ago. "Initially it was just something different to do. There comes a point in your life when you find you don't want to sit in a club all night." If any conversion was necessary it was supplied by a performance of Schoenberg's thunderous ''Gurrelieder'' at the Festival Hall. "I knew absolutely nothing about the piece, but I found it overwhelming. Very physical. I firmly believe that music ''happens'' to you. I don't analyse it when I'm listening to it. It draws its own response. | ||
Soon the owlishly bespectacled figure of Costello was a regular fixture on the London concert circuit. Alike Wigmore Hall one night after a Schubert recital he was surprised to be recognised and invited backstage by the pianist Andras Schiff. Less surprising was a warm welcome | Soon the owlishly bespectacled figure of Costello was a regular fixture on the London concert circuit. Alike Wigmore Hall one night after a Schubert recital he was surprised to be recognised and invited backstage by the pianist Andras Schiff. Less surprising was a warm welcome from a young and fashionably untidy foursome called the Brodsky Quartet, whom Costello went to hear at the QEH, performing a cycle by one of his favourite composers, Shostakovich. Out of this relationship came both the 1991 song-cycle collaboration, ''[[The Juliet Letters]]'', and a trip to Dartington summer school, where the Brodskys happened to be quartet in residence. It was there that Costello received the invitation to programme this year's Meltdown. | ||
The album ''The Juliet Letters'', though it received a slightly sniffy response over here at the time of its release, has sold 250,000 copies worldwide and is still much in demand; as a "catalogue item", it now sells more than Costello's most commercially successful album, 1989's ''Spike''. In territories where his reputation as a rock 'n' roller precedes him less forcefully, the response has been encouraging. The song-cycle is still being performed in Spain, and this autumn the Gothenburg opera in Sweden is mounting a full-scale adaptation. | The album ''The Juliet Letters'', though it received a slightly sniffy response over here at the time of its release, has sold 250,000 copies worldwide and is still much in demand; as a "catalogue item", it now sells more than Costello's most commercially successful album, 1989's ''Spike''. In territories where his reputation as a rock 'n' roller precedes him less forcefully, the response has been encouraging. The song-cycle is still being performed in Spain, and this autumn the Gothenburg opera in Sweden is mounting a full-scale adaptation. | ||
His connection with the Brodsky Quartet has prompted a few changes in Costello's modus operandi as well. Because of pressures of time and the need for a more precise system of instructions than the one-two-thee-four-go style of the Attractions, Costello has taught himself to write music. There | His connection with the Brodsky Quartet has prompted a few changes in Costello's modus operandi as well. Because of pressures of time and the need for a more precise system of instructions than the one-two-thee-four-go style of [[the Attractions]], Costello has taught himself to write music. There are no symphonies planned just yet, but one three-minute piece, titled New Work, will be performed by the LPO. "It's just a thumbprint really. I'm still guessing. But I'm not afraid of writing things down now." | ||
There is nothing remotely pretentious in the maybe discusses his new enthusiasms. In fact, Costello has | There is nothing remotely pretentious in the maybe discusses his new enthusiasms. In fact, Costello has tended to appreciate a wider range of styles in many of the same random or indirect ways as the rest of us — through film soundtracks, for example. It was only after he now the Sean Connery movie ''The Offence'' and enjoyed some of the accompanying music that Costello came to terms with the work of Birtwistle. The composers he likes most, he says, tend to be either Russian or east European and often thaw their inspiration, as he has done over many pop albums, from folk themes or what he terms "remembered music". The idea behind many of this year's Meltdown concerts is quite straightforward: to try to communicate the same mood — usually a melancholic one — by attacking on many fronts. The link he perceives between Dowland, whom he refers to as "the deep blues man of English music", and Birtwistle is purely subjective. "People will probably say that you're implying that one piece here is the equal of the next. Well, I'm not." | ||
For an avowed iconoclast, Costello seems strangely anxious about all this imaginary criticism. Meltdown this year looks set to sell out for the first time ever, and, as Costello acknowledges, time and the growing maturity in general listening habits here is on his side. "There are hundreds of ways of doing things such as Meltdown. Almost every record you hear nowadays contains an element you wouldn't expect. I was watching Massive Attack the other day and they were using a tabla player. Once upon a time that would have been a consciously revolutionary thing, a sort of cultural statement. But they just put it in because they liked the sound of it. They wanted it there." | For an avowed iconoclast, Costello seems strangely anxious about all this imaginary criticism. Meltdown this year looks set to sell out for the first time ever, and, as Costello acknowledges, time and the growing maturity in general listening habits here is on his side. "There are hundreds of ways of doing things such as Meltdown. Almost every record you hear nowadays contains an element you wouldn't expect. I was watching Massive Attack the other day and they were using a tabla player. Once upon a time that would have been a consciously revolutionary thing, a sort of cultural statement. But they just put it in because they liked the sound of it. They wanted it there." |
Revision as of 07:37, 6 March 2014
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