Mojo, June 1996: Difference between revisions
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Back with his old band The Attractions, resuming the connection that he established on 1994's Brutal Youth album, Elvis Costello has a new album called ''All This Useless Beauty''. Save for the faint beginnings of another beard — albeit a less insane one than the thing he was sporting circa ''Mighty Like A Rose'' — he looks remarkably like the young man who promised us, nearly two decades ago, that his Aim was True. | Back with his old band The Attractions, resuming the connection that he established on 1994's Brutal Youth album, Elvis Costello has a new album called ''All This Useless Beauty''. Save for the faint beginnings of another beard — albeit a less insane one than the thing he was sporting circa ''Mighty Like A Rose'' — he looks remarkably like the young man who promised us, nearly two decades ago, that his Aim was True. | ||
And so it was — but is it Still? With every curve and corner of his career so far he has been a man who has followed his own star. And to hell with anyone who can't keep up. On the one hand, he's an excel-lent talker when it comes to other people's music. It's like a conversation with your best-informed and most opinionated mate. If you can't remember, say, that Philippe Wynne was the singer of The Detroit Spinners, or that ''Kiko'' is an album by Los Lobos, then he'll leave you floundering. But on the subject of his own work, Costello's steely resolve is obvious. Questions are stripped down | And so it was — but is it Still? With every curve and corner of his career so far he has been a man who has followed his own star. And to hell with anyone who can't keep up. On the one hand, he's an excel-lent talker when it comes to other people's music. It's like a conversation with your best-informed and most opinionated mate. If you can't remember, say, that Philippe Wynne was the singer of The Detroit Spinners, or that ''Kiko'' is an album by Los Lobos, then he'll leave you floundering. But on the subject of his own work, Costello's steely resolve is obvious. Questions are stripped down and pulled apart for any signs of woolly thinking. If he wore a placard around his neck, it would say: "No fools suffered here." | ||
But it's an exhilarating ride. "We're going through this weird period, no" he says, at one point, "where kitsch music from the '70s is being revered, and the same theories are being erected around it as music that really deserves that treatment. But of lt means that much to the person, I'm not going to argue about the relative merits of The Rubettes or whatever. It's just silly. I know the sort of music I like. | But it's an exhilarating ride. "We're going through this weird period, no" he says, at one point, "where kitsch music from the '70s is being revered, and the same theories are being erected around it as music that really deserves that treatment. But of lt means that much to the person, I'm not going to argue about the relative merits of The Rubettes or whatever. It's just silly. I know the sort of music I like. | ||
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''"You Bowed Down," another track, has already been recorded by Roger McGuinn. Yet your version is more Byrds-like than his. | ''"You Bowed Down," another track, has already been recorded by Roger McGuinn. Yet your version is more Byrds-like than his. | ||
He sang it beautifully, but the arrangement was very straightened out by the producer. It had the potential for him to go into space on, his great talent in The Byrds. That was a big reason for me wanting to re-record the song. We tried doing a Sonic Youth version of it, but it didn't work, it wanted to have a 12-string on it. When I was rehearsing ''My Aim Is True'' with Clover, musicians never know the titles of songs when you're first doing them, they know them by a riff. They'd | He sang it beautifully, but the arrangement was very straightened out by the producer. It had the potential for him to go into space on, his great talent in The Byrds. That was a big reason for me wanting to re-record the song. We tried doing a Sonic Youth version of it, but it didn't work, it wanted to have a 12-string on it. When I was rehearsing ''My Aim Is True'' with Clover, musicians never know the titles of songs when you're first doing them, they know them by a riff. They'd say, "Let's do that Byrds one again" for "The Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes." | ||
So McGuinn's been in there all along. There wouldn't be any R.E.M., any Petty without him. It's a port of musical language that he and The Searchers and George Harrison put in there. "Last Train To Clarksville" and all these great records had 12-string signatures. So you just use it. The song is looking at an idealist that's lost the ideal. In The Byrds he did a version of Dylan's "Positively 4th Street," and he managed the same trick as Tasmin Archer - he took a very accusative song and found a shred of compassion in it. | |||
''What about the first single, It's Time? | |||
"It's not the days when you leave me / But all I fear are the nights." I always think about KC And The Sunshine Band when I sing that. I love those guys, and all that Miami music. I wanted it to sound like a nightmare in a disco - a nightmare in Munich. It's like a Mann & Weil tune and then it has a bit of ''Station To Station'' to it. Things occur to me in a passing moment - there's a KC moment in my mind. It probably sounds nuts when I say it, but it's not as if I'm trying to capture them. It's just a fleeting thought comes through your mind when you're singing. It's got its "Be My Baby" moments in it, that Brill Building singing. | |||
Do you know who's real good at that? Bon Jovi. He should do more of it. He can sound like Dion - the Italian/American pop tenor. I don't like all his rock'n'roll-will-save-your-soul thing. But if it was the Brill Building now, he'd be a singer who they employed to do these songs. | |||
''In fact you've just written with Burt Bacharach for a film about the Brill Building, called ''Grace Of My Heart''. He's someone who's come back into vogue lately. | |||
Strange isn't it? I think there's two or three things going on simultaneously. There comes a time for anybody to be picked out of the blue, good or bad. And with a slightly patronising sense of discovery. Younger people will suddenly decide somebody is hip. It could be Benny Hill: 'Yeah, he was really funny, a real comedic pioneer." And they'll make up a theory that fits with that. With Burt Bacharach, some people decided that putting on an acrylic wig and wearing a pastel suit is something and I don't think it has a lot to do with him. I'd hate to think they were making fun of him, because he's a very sincere musician. Then there's those people who liked him all along. The success now has got to be those two things meeting. People like myself had all those records to begin with and they've come back conveniently on one CD. | |||
''You told me you were having to write the song [God Give Me Strength] via fax and answering machine. | |||
We did. He'd fax me some music and I'd play a demo into his phone. The film is set in the Brill Building era but uses original songs. It resembles Carole King's story, professionally anyway, although it's not about her. The character has a big, tragic love affair and this is the song she writes that catapults her back into a performing career. The deadline was to write the song so they could shoot the scene where the actress, at her piano, goes: "You know, since that tragic love affair I've written ''this'' song..." | |||
I was doing dates with Bob Dylan last year. After the show in Dublin I went out with Bob and his people, got home about two, got on the phone and finished the song. I couldn't believe this was happening. It's hard to get past who Bacharach is, but he's a very easy-going chap. He's a thorough musician, but not a muso - they're the people who go, "Hey these are my chops" and really that's all they've got, whereas he's got everything. He works just as hard as he ever did. We were there 12 hours a day for three days, and right at the end he was listening to the minutest detail with the same level of concentration as he did when we started. And I'm pretty obsessive! | |||
''No, you're no slouch yourself. | |||
No. And I'm really glad, because I don't plan on getting any more lackadaisical as I get older. I'm glad there are people around who, without being mad, are insisting on this kind of detail. People say, "Why are you spending all that time on one thing?" But I want to. It makes sense to me. I don't need permission to do it and he doesn't. If you don't like the result, well, there's plenty of other music to listen to. It would be great to see what could happen if we did get in a room together. | |||
''Shallow Grave is another collaboration with Paul McCartney. Did you play with him a while back? | |||
Yes, at St James's Palace. It was as low-key as it can be when you play for the Royal Family. It was amazing, actually, such an odd event. I never would have done if Paul hadn't asked. I'd never play for the Royal Family, I can't stand 'em. But it was for the Royal College of Music - as we know, the government isn't going to pay for education any more and music is way down their list. | |||
It was a good opportunity to hear him perform his 'chamber' songs with the Brodskys. I've always had this idea that he should do a tour with just a guitar and sing the 15 best songs he ever wrote. People went on about The Beatles being like Schubert but it's really true. In 150 years time they'll be singing his songs - him, Brian Wilson, Burt Bacharach. And it won't be some dusty thing, They'll be getting joy out of them. When you hear old songs from the 19th century done properly, they really come to life. You still get the sense of this person who made those songs. | |||
''Have you been enjoying the Anthology series? | |||
Yes. I don't imagine I'll play those versions in preference to the ones I've grown to love. But some of it I found very touching, particularly on the second volume. I like the first volume as well, because it's like the old Sunday afternoon Hancock tapes. I remember enough of the way England felt then. I'm just aid enough to remember the sinking feeling that Sunday used to have. And the little clips from the radio shows, as on the ''Beatles Live At The BBC'' record. I went to shows like that with my Dad, so it was very evocative - not nostalgic, I don't wont to get back there - but it's this fun world: "These jolly old chops are coming up to sing us a few songs and here they are, The Beatles!" | |||
When Lennon sings "Strawberry Fields" he sounds like Robert Johnson or something. You can tell it's all in his head. He's so focused on what he's doing it's scary. When they're jamming on the psychedelic stuff they sound as messy sand awful as other psychedelic groups. But then you hear the real "Strawberry Fields." and it's like classical music, everything in exactly the right place. And a lot of that, I have to say - though I know I'm biased - is Geoff Ernerick [Costello's co-producer]. George Martin wrote the music that was added, but the sound is also what it's got to do with. And Geoff was are of their main engineers in that period. The great thing is we're working now with Jon Jacobs who was Geoff's assist on ''Imperial Bedroom'' 14 years ago, and Jon has learned all his stuff. It's like the last of the blacksmiths or something - there aren't many engineers who know how to record like this. A lot of things got destroyed in the '80s, like how to record real instruments. | |||
''You've used The Brodsky Quartet again on this album. Do you look back on ''The Juliet Letters'' as a successful exercise? | |||
I love playing with the quartet and we've got a lot of repertoire now, apart from ''The Juliet Letters'' so I want to carry that on. I know that, of my catalogue at Warner Brothers - it's the record that's selling all the time. New people are discovering it. It's not in a different world to the other things that I do. It's all part of the same music, but just has a different colour to it. I did this record with The Attractions and that one with The Brodsky Quartet and the results are what we did. I know it sounds like I'm explaining the bloody obvious, but scene people didn't get that. | |||
''You've also performed with someone called Anne Sofie von Otter? | |||
She's a classical singer. If you ask anybody who knows about that stuff, she is one at the two or three singers at the top in classical music. She probably has more range of repertoire than anybody of her generation. She's my favourite singer, easily - of any kind of music. I've been a fan for about six years, I got to meet her a couple of times. Then, out of the blue, we did this concert together in Stockholm. We did "Baby, It's Cold Outside," and the audience really got into it. It was like being Sammy and Frank, live at the Sands... I was Sammy, of course... | |||
''Your track "My Dark Life," on the ''X-Files'' compilation ''Songs In The Key Of X'', finally brings you together with Brian Eno. | |||
I only met him last summer. I'd seen him around in Notting Hill Gate - for the post 10 years I've hod a flat there when I've been in London - but I wouldn't know him to say hello to. One of our neighbours is Adam Clayton [of U2], who lives over the hill from us in Dublin and he was having some friends over on a sunny day. I met Brian then, and he seemed such a great bloke. The image I had of him was of this boffin, but he had a great sense of humour and was very easy to talk to - but | |||
Revision as of 14:17, 29 April 2013
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