Music Express, July 1991: Difference between revisions
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Elvis' wife, former Pogues bassist Cait O'Riordan, wrote one song on ''Rose'', the sombre "Broken," and there are two more he wrote with Paul McCartney, a promising but odd onetime collaboration that's resulted in several songs on each other's albums. "Over two years ago I got a call to see whether I'd stop by his office, and we had tea together," Elvis recalls. "It was like a Noel Coward play. Obviously he's been through some incredible experiences, but he's always looking for new things to do. He could do anything he wanted, I suppose, but he wanted to try writing with someone again. | Elvis' wife, former Pogues bassist Cait O'Riordan, wrote one song on ''Rose'', the sombre "Broken," and there are two more he wrote with Paul McCartney, a promising but odd onetime collaboration that's resulted in several songs on each other's albums. "Over two years ago I got a call to see whether I'd stop by his office, and we had tea together," Elvis recalls. "It was like a Noel Coward play. Obviously he's been through some incredible experiences, but he's always looking for new things to do. He could do anything he wanted, I suppose, but he wanted to try writing with someone again. | ||
"We have certain things in common, which may not have much significance. Both our fathers were musicians, we're both from Liverpool, we're both left-handed — although I don't think there's anything particularly significant about that — but we just chatted about coincidences, and we got together in his studio and wrote the songs that appeared on Spike and the ones that appeared on ''Flowers In The Dirt'' and another bunch, among which were these two songs ['So Like Candy' and 'Playboy To A Man']. He had originally said that he wanted to do them, but he left them off his record. And I said, | "We have certain things in common, which may not have much significance. Both our fathers were musicians, we're both from Liverpool, we're both left-handed — although I don't think there's anything particularly significant about that — but we just chatted about coincidences, and we got together in his studio and wrote the songs that appeared on Spike and the ones that appeared on ''Flowers In The Dirt'' and another bunch, among which were these two songs ['So Like Candy' and 'Playboy To A Man']. He had originally said that he wanted to do them, but he left them off his record. And I said, 'Well, if you're not going to make a record for a while, let me have a go at them.' | ||
"And I think in the long run 'Candy' suits my voice really well. On 'Playboy' I went out of my way to make a completely different sounding voice by singing down a big metal pipe. It's pretty difficult to decide whether he would sing that song better than me. I don't think it really matters; what matters is whether it's an interesting version of the song. That one is about a fairly sleazy kind of playboy character who thinks he can woo any woman he chooses. I wanted to make him sound as disgusting as possible. I think I succeeded, don't you?" | |||
It's interesting the way McCartney's saccharine tendencies are balanced by Costello's sharpness —perhaps it's what he's needed since he stopped writing with John Lennon. "Some of his songs are not to my taste, I'll be honest; I'd say that to his face," Elvis admits. "And some of my songs he probably finds a bit dense or serious. But the combination is pretty strong. | |||
"The other thing is that when you write with somebody else, you tend not to write about immediate feelings; you try and make a song that's really true and has some strong feeling," he adds. "With certain songs I've written, if I hadn't released them for a couple of years they'd have sounded a bit out of date, because they were contemporary with something that had happened to me or I'd observed. Whereas if you write with someone else, they can sit there, and if they're good they'll last. When you write with other people you maybe write in a more universal sentiment, so they tend not to date as much, as opposed to when you write a more obviously personal song that has something to do with your life, and if you let that moment go by you won't feel quite the same about it. When I sing my older songs in concert now, I sing them in a different way than I did when I wrote them." | |||
As a songwriter, Elvis has rarely been covered, in spite of his large output. But ''mostly'' he's been pleased with the results. Country singers George Jones and Johnny Cash have done versions of his tunes, and he counts both among his heroes. "The country stuff I heard as a kid was mostly what became hits on the pop charts," he says. "But as I got into people like The Byrds I started to learn about Merle Haggard and George Jones, or I'd listen to The Everly Brothers and I'd want to know who the Louvin Brothers were. It's just like when people bought the Rolling Stones' records and found out who Howlin' Wolf was. I think it's great when people do that— they find this whole world of music." | |||
Certainly many people were turned on to the charms of George Jones' voice when Elvis covered "A Good Year For The Roses" and "Brown To Blue" on ''Almost Blue'', and sang his own "Stranger In The House" with Jones. "It seems a funny thing to say, 'cause to me he's as permanent as Mount Rushmore," he says. "Him and Johnny Cash. I like George Jones' singing among all country singers; I hardly regard Johnny Cash as a country singer. I just think he sings Johnny Cash music, you know? I don't mean he's not authentic, just that he's got his own complete style, like Jerry Lee Lewis or Roy Orbison. Funnily enough, all those Sun Records guys did. They're stylists that can't be copied, whereas George Jones is more of a pure singer. | |||
"I think it's a good thing that he's changed labels — maybe he was getting stifled. Look how good Johnny Cash's recent records sound, since he left Columbia. Let's face it, everyone gets better when they leave Columbia — him, me, Miles Davis..." | |||
Cash's Costello cover was the wry hangover song "The Big Light." "He did it with great humor," Elvis recalls. "We both know what we're talking about with that one. I've sung 'The Big Light' with him, which was a terrifying experience. His voice sounds so enormous when you're standing next to him on stage; your voice sounds like a tiny little thing. I sing very loud, but I can't compete with him at all — it's just deep and resonant, and of course his whole presence is commanding. | |||
"I've been extremely fortunate, really. Most of my favorite singers have recorded my songs. I've only had a dozen covers, but they've all been by people I really admire, like Chet Baker, Georgie Fame, Roger McGuinn, Roy Orbison. They're worth 10 bad versions that make you a lot of money." | |||
What about Linda Ronstadt's cover of "Alison," which Elvis rather uncharitably, if accurately, described publicly as "rubbish"? | |||
"Well, you know, I wasn't really very kind about her version," he says sheepishly. "I was kind of all punky and, 'Aw, rubbish,' you know? But she chose to do it, so although I didn't really care for the arrangement — I don't think they added a lot to it, and I didn't think it suited her voice very well — it did show some imagination, 'cause she was mostly doing songs by all these Californian guys. Why in the world she or her producer decided to do one of my songs I've no idea, but I suppose I could have been a little bit more polite about it. But that wasn't really the style in those days. | |||
"It sounded too much like my version with her singing on it. But that's all in the past. I don't suppose she'll ever cut any of my songs again. She's an opera singer now, isn't she? Or something or other. A Mexican opera singer. I must say I like some of her records. Maybe we should do an album together!" | |||
Currently Elvis is touring North America with a band that includes many of the players on ''Mighty Like A Rose'' — guitarist Marc Ribot, keyboardist Larry Knechtel, bassist Jerry Scheff and drummer (and original Attraction) Pete Thomas. "It's a really good band," he says. "Some of the guys I worked with on ''King Of America'' and ''Spike'', and some, like Knechtel, I've only worked with on this record and some other recordings I did last year. | |||
"I did another record which'll maybe come out next year," he adds, "a whole other record in two weeks. It's sort of like a record of my favorite songs, all different kinds of music. I don't know, I keep saying 'In the old days,' like I was 103, but when I first started buying records there were things like Sam Cooke's ''Night Mood'', where he would do a record in a certain mood, and then the next week he'd do 'Twisting The Night Away,' and nobody would think anything funny of it. Whereas when I did ''Almost Blue'' people thought it was the weirdest thing I could possibly do. They didn't realize that I hadn't turned into a country singer forever; it was just a record of country songs. In the same way, I wanted to do a record of my favorite R&B and rock 'n' roll songs, and some ballads as well. It's not the sort of record I want to come out with a big fanfare and a roll of the drums — I just want to put it out between this album and the next one I write. | |||
"On ''Mighty Like A Rose'' there's all kinds of music — there's my dance music, there's ballads and little dark stories, and some songs that are quite tender and mean quite a lot to me. I want to put all that on a record, but at the same time I don't want to cut off the possibility of doing a record where I just scream and shout or sing some rock 'n' roll songs that I dig doing. So hopefully there'll be a chance to put that out without making it seem like it's really important, you know? It's just a record!" | |||
But with Elvis Costello it's never just a record, really, it's an event. As we speak he's just back from a promotional tour of Holland and Germany, and although he's very good-humored about it, he's clearly tiring of the manic attention he gets in the press. "You get all kinds of peculiar things said to you," he laughs. "I had a young German journalist who claimed to have listened to my records since he was eight years old, and he was very angry 'cause everything I'd said on this record was so negative. And I said, 'Well, what's so negative?' And he said, 'Well, you said, 'You hate all the people you used to adore,' and you say you hate Beethoven!' And I said, 'That means you think everything I said on this record, everything the characters say, is what I really mean. Don't you think it might be ''ironic''?' And he said, 'No! You are like Richard Wagner. He was trying to destroy symphonic music, and you are trying to destroy pop music!' I said, 'You're thinking too much!"' | |||
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{{Bibliography notes header}} | {{Bibliography notes header}} | ||
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'''Music Express, No. 161, July 1991 | '''Music Express, No. 161, July 1991 | ||
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[[Mary Dickie]] | [[Mary Dickie]] interviews Elvis Costello. | ||
{{Bibliography images}} | {{Bibliography images}} | ||
[[image:1991-07-00 Music Express cover.jpg|360px|border]] | [[image:1991-07-00 Music Express cover.jpg|360px|border]] | ||
<br><small>Cover.</small> | <br><small>Cover photo by [[Caroline Forbes]].</small> | ||
[[image:1991-07-00 Music Express pages 08-09.jpg|360px|border]] | [[image:1991-07-00 Music Express pages 08-09.jpg|360px|border]] | ||
<br><small>Page scans.</small> | <br><small>Page scans.</small> | ||
[[image:1991-07-00 Music Express pages 10-11.jpg|360px|border]] | |||
<small>Photo by [[Caroline Forbes]].</small><br> | <small>Photo by [[Caroline Forbes]].</small><br> | ||
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[[image:1991-07-00 Music Express | [[image:1991-07-00 Music Express page 08 clipping 01.jpg|x120px|border]] | ||
<br><small> | [[image:1991-07-00 Music Express page 10 clipping 01.jpg|x120px|border]] | ||
[[image:1991-07-00 Music Express page 11 clipping 01.jpg|x120px|border]] | |||
<br><small>Clippings.</small> | |||
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[[Category:Music Express| Music Express 1991-07-01]] | [[Category:Music Express| Music Express 1991-07-01]] | ||
[[Category:Magazine articles]] | [[Category:Magazine articles]] | ||
[[Category:Interviews]] | |||
[[Category:1991 interviews]] |
Revision as of 02:39, 22 March 2015
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