Mojo, November 2020: Difference between revisions
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While some artists of his generation grumble about the process of recording in 2020 – flinging sound files around the world, with parts and mixes flying back, there’s only going to be more of it post-Covid. So Costello is minded to embrace the digital connectivity. It allows even more opportunities to collaborate and work. | While some artists of his generation grumble about the process of recording in 2020 – flinging sound files around the world, with parts and mixes flying back, there’s only going to be more of it post-Covid. So Costello is minded to embrace the digital connectivity. It allows even more opportunities to collaborate and work. | ||
“I was hooking up with Steve Nieve every Sunday morning,” he says. “We were cheating physics! We’d worked out a way we could play together on Facebook to a group of people who’d been tuning in to these 45-minute or hour improvisations, with his partner Muriel narrating and her son singing. We tried some tunes that I wouldn’t normally sing, songs that people would never hear you sing on a stage. It was a way of connecting with people because we didn’t have the prospect of doing that in person for a while.” | |||
His partnership with Nieve has spanned five decades. How would he define their working relationship? | |||
“It was always me and Steve,” he says . “Steve and I have a huge repertoire of piano, voice and guitar. We can literally play anything we can remember. He’s a remarkable player. He can find music in all sorts of corners. I can predict in advance what he might do to something I give him – or he can completely surprise me, and he continues to. When Steve and I play together, just the two of us, in some ways the scope of the music is much greater than when it’s the band.” | |||
Stuck in lockdown with a jazz pianist, did Elvis find himself making music with Krall, or did they work in their own man/woman caves? | |||
“Diana has a record that I think might even come out before mine (Krall’s ''This Dream Of You'' is due in September. ''Hey Clockface'', November),” reports Costello. “I know it’s my wife but its been absolutely thrilling to hear her pull a record out of these beautiful performances – and the way she asked Al Schmitt [Sam Cooke, Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan], who is one of the great engineers, to mix them was something quite different. They have an immediacy and an intimacy that you sometimes don’t get on modern recordings, and some beautiful piano playing. | |||
“So that will be going in one part of the house,” he continues, “and there’s one boy mixing in one room, and another boy has got the room set up with every kind of computer for video games, and I’m out on the back porch writing a song. This isn’t my man cave. My lads populate this part of the house most of the day – they’re just not up yet! I have a man porch. I like being in the open air. If it’s not too windy I can record out there. So it’s a busy house.” | |||
A final question. Elvis and I last spoke five years ago, in Vancouver. He had just published his 688-page memoir, ''Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink''. If he were writing that book today, how might he see two big things that have happened since: cancer and his OBE? | |||
“I have some things to say about those two subjects,” he says. “One, cancer. Steve rang me up an said, “Don’t even say it.’ And the only reason anybody know about it was because I overestimated my own energies: I’m so used to being able to carry on regardless, and I just went out on the road before I had my strength back to do the job. I regret announcing it – although I had to – because people that I hadn’t got around to telling personally yet got alarmed, and because other people go through so much worse. I have friends who are no longer with us. I lost a couple of good friends. I was so fortunate to avoid serious illness. There’s nothing more to say. | |||
“The other thing” – he doesn’t spell out its letters – “I took the gong because my mum wanted me to do it. I don’t even know how you can get an Order of the British Empire when there isn’t an empire. It’s a ludicrous idea.” | |||
Of good Irish stock, Declan MacManus/Elvis Costello’s views on the British establishment have not been warm. Oliver’s Army, Tramp The Dirt Down, Shipbuilding again, have referenced its iniquities and hypocrisies. Moreover, there was a score of sorts to settle with Buckingham Palace on behalf of jazz singer father Ross. “I wanted to see the inside of that place one time,” he says. “My dad went in the back door. I went in the front door. Playing there in the late ‘50s, early ‘60s with Joe Loss, my dad used to go in through the service entrance. Eventually they’ve got to look you in the eye.” | |||
How did it go? “Nobody was unpleasant. I know symbolically some people don’t like the idea of it, but to me it doesn’t mean anything. I’ve been to see for myself something that’s been building up in my mind for a long time. After my moment, the military band played ‘''Consider yourself at home / Consider yourself one of the family''’ [from the musical ''Oliver!'']. Somebody there” he laughs, “has a sense of humour.” | |||
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{{tags}}[[Diana Krall]] {{-}} [[Steve Nieve]] {{-}} [[Armed Forces]] {{-}} [[Shipbuilding]] {{-}} [[The Band]] {{-}} [[Rick Danko]] {{-}} [[Budd Schulberg]] {{-}} [[A Face In The Crowd]] {{-}} [[Tommy McLain]] {{-}} [[Sweet Dreams]] {{-}} [[Almost Blue]] {{-}} [[Hey Clockface]] {{-}} [[Look Now]] {{-}} [[The Imposters]] {{-}} [[Burt Bacharach]] {{-}} [[Carole King]] {{-}} [[John Legend]] {{-}} [[Detour]] {{-}} [[No Flag]] {{-}} [[Hetty O'Hara Confidential]] {{-}} [[We Are All Cowards Now]] {{-}} [[The Attractions]] {{-}} [[The Imposters]] {{-}} [[Eventim Olympia|Liverpool Olympia]] {{-}} [[Radio Is Everything]] {{-}} [[Newspaper Pane]] {{-}} [[Bob Dylan]] {{-}} [[Bill Frisell]] {{-}} [[Michael Leonhart]] {{-}} [[Chet Baker]] {{-}} [[Robert Wyatt]] {{-}} | {{tags}}[[Diana Krall]] {{-}} [[Steve Nieve]] {{-}} [[Armed Forces]] {{-}} [[Shipbuilding]] {{-}} [[The Band]] {{-}} [[Rick Danko]] {{-}} [[Budd Schulberg]] {{-}} [[A Face In The Crowd]] {{-}} [[Tommy McLain]] {{-}} [[Sweet Dreams]] {{-}} [[Almost Blue]] {{-}} [[Hey Clockface]] {{-}} [[Look Now]] {{-}} [[The Imposters]] {{-}} [[Burt Bacharach]] {{-}} [[Carole King]] {{-}} [[John Legend]] {{-}} [[Detour]] {{-}} [[No Flag]] {{-}} [[Hetty O'Hara Confidential]] {{-}} [[We Are All Cowards Now]] {{-}} [[The Attractions]] {{-}} [[The Imposters]] {{-}} [[Eventim Olympia|Liverpool Olympia]] {{-}} [[Radio Is Everything]] {{-}} [[Newspaper Pane]] {{-}} [[Bob Dylan]] {{-}} [[Bill Frisell]] {{-}} [[Michael Leonhart]] {{-}} [[Chet Baker]] {{-}} [[Robert Wyatt]] {{-}} [[Muriel Teodori]] {{-}} [[AJUQ]] {{-}} [[Sam Cooke]] {{-}} [[Frank Sinatra]] {{-}} [[Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink]] {{-}} [[Oliver's Army]] {{-}} [[Tramp The Dirt Down]] {{-}} [[Ross MacManus]] {{-}} [[Armed Forces (2002) liner notes]] {{-}} [[Bruce Thomas]] {{-}} [[Pete Thomas]] {{-}} [[Nick Lowe]] {{-}} [[This Year's Model]] {{-}} [[David Bowie]] {{-}} [[Iggy Pop]] {{-}} [[:Category:1978 European Tour|Scandinavian Tour]] {{-}} [[The Beatles]] {{-}} [[The Rolling Stones]] {{-}} [[Benny Andersson]] {{-}} [[Anni-Frid Lyngstad]] {{-}} [[Knowing Me, Knowing You]] {{-}} [[Swindon]] {{-}} [[Elvis Presley]] {{-}} [[Lipstick Vogue]] {{-}} [[(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding?]] {{-}} [[American Squirm]] {{-}} [[Sunday's Best]] {{-}} [[(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea]] {{-}} [[Emotional Fascism]] {{-}} [[Pinkpop Festival]] | ||
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'''Mojo, No. 324, November 2020 | '''Mojo, No. 324, November 2020 | ||
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[[Sylvie Simmons]] interviews Elvis Costello. | [[Sylvie Simmons]] interviews Elvis Costello about lockdown and ''Hey Clockface'' and previews the super deluxe edition of ''Armed Forces''. | ||
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{{Bibliography images}} | {{Bibliography images}} | ||
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<br><small>Page thumbnails.</small> | <br><small>Page thumbnails.</small> | ||
{{Bibliography box 360}} | |||
<center><h3> Elephants Memories </h3></center> | |||
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<center>Sylvie Simmons</center> | |||
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'''''Armed Forces'' returning soon in "last word" box set form hoiked Elvis Costello to the next level. It was all thanks to ABBA, he tells Sylvie Simmons<br> | |||
{{Bibliography text}} | |||
"If you like this record and you've liked it for 40 years, this is the last word on it." | |||
Elvis Costello is talking about the pending reissue of his 1979 album ''Armed Forces''. He admits it's been resurrected a couple of times before - the 1993 Rykodisc CD with bonus tracks, the 2002 Rhino with bonus disc and Costello's copious linernotes. "But this" he says, "is the innards of it as well as the outer thing, the wonderful artwork. There is nothing more to be said." | |||
Costello was in his early twenties with two albums under his belt when he and the Attractions - Steve Nieve, Bruce Thomas, Pete Thomas - went into Eden Studios in London with producer Nick Lowe in the summer of '78. A few months before, he'd released ''This Year's Model''. It reached the UK Top 40 and went gold in the US. Since then they'd been on a non-stop tour. The songs for a follow-up would have to be written on the road - in his hotel room after a show (Bruce his hotel room-mate, recalled him sitting up all night scribbling in a notebook) or on the bus heading to the next one. | |||
"The experience and the oulook of travelling around the world, everything I saw seemed like the beginning of a song," Elvis remembers. "Whatever came past the window got into the song." So to some degree did the music they were playing on the bus. "We only had about five cassettes: Bowie and Iggy's Berlin records - and Abba." The Abba cassettes were picked up at motorway service stations on the Scandinavian tour. Elvis and the band would argue the toss over whether The Beatles were better than the Stones ("Me and Bruce were more Beatles, Pete was Rolling Stones and Steve claimed not to have heard either of them and listened to T. Rex") but they all came together on Abba. Literally so at a Swedish festival where they met Benny Andersson and Frida Lyngstad and serenaded them with a four-guitar acoustic version of Knowing Me Knowing You. | |||
The band had never been so solid, he says. On the reissue's live discs, "You're going to hear the band ''tearing'' through this music. In the liner notes I've talked more about the playing and the pace. The pace is probably the reason it all came crashing down, but it's also what maade the band ferocious. It all got up to speed very quickly. There's a video of us playing in [[Concert 1977-08-15 Swindon|Swindon]] the night before Elvis Presley died where we seem like a youth club band. Then three months later we were making ''This Year's Model'' and playing things like Lipstick Vogue, and by the next summer ''Armed Forces''. That pace had a lot to do with melding the sound of the band." | |||
Two long weeks in the studio - "a luxury!" - made for a richer, more textured, sophisticated-sounding record. Costello's version of Lowe's song (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding), previously a B-side to Lowe's American Squirm and credited to Nick Lowe And His Sound - although it was in fact Elvis and the Attractions - wound up on the US album in place of Sunday's Best. "They didn't really understand the English references," notes Costello. | |||
"They didn't understand (I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea either and took that off the previous album, so I wasn't too surprised." Nor was he when they turned down his original album title ''Emotional Fascism''. | |||
The upcoming box set reissue, he says, including "facsimilies of my original notebooks, all handwritten, lines scrawled out, half verses not used and all these subtle changes. It was a way of learning the songs as I wrote them, how to sing them and also to understand the story the album told." | |||
There are also comic books, postcards and six discs, including two 10-inch live records, the entirety of their [[Concert 1979-06-04 Geleen|June 4, 1979]] Pinkpop festival show and the original album remastered directly from the studio tapes. "It sounds as close to the way it sounded to us in the studio as we could make it," says Costello. "That's a beautiful thing." | |||
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[[image:2020-11-00 Mojo cover.jpg|x120px|border]] | [[image:2020-11-00 Mojo cover.jpg|x120px|border]] | ||
<br><small>Cover.</small> | <br><small>Cover.</small> |
Revision as of 12:17, 1 November 2020
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