National Post, February 13, 2015

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National Post

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The night Elvis Costello tried to save radio on the TV


Dave Bidini

Saturday Night Live turns 40 this year, and if JFK’s assassination or 9/11 or Paul Henderson vs. Vladislav Tretiak are events burned into our consciousness, music fans of the right vintage might remember where they were on the night of Dec. 7, 1977, when Elvis Costello almost singlehandedly tried to save radio and wrench the final breath out of rock and roll’s fading body.

Booked as the last-minute musical guest after the Sex Pistols cancelled due to visa issues, Costello and his matchless band interrupted one song — “Less Than Zero,” a choice encouraged by his recording masters, Columbia Records — for another, “Radio Radio,” a searing indictment of control over the airwaves and un-vetted by SNL producers, Columbia or Costello’s management. I was 14, at another kid’s house whose name has been lost to memory. For us, there were no drugs, no beer, no making out. Just the glow of the TV set in the wood-panelled basement and the promise of weird, live television where things were said and done that shouldn’t have been said or done (unless, you know, it was on SCTV).

In December 1977, Costello’s album, My Aim Is True, was only available as import vinyl, yet he’d come to North America to tour. With the explosion of punk and New Wave in the late ’70s — still a micro-phenomenon here, but a tsunami in England — music fans were keyed to the release of imports, so the listening public (or at least that sect of it who watched SNL) would have been mostly aware of Costello, and his impact on music in the U.K. For me, Saturday afternoons were about subwaying to either Records on Wheels on Yonge or the Record Peddlar on Queen, where albums and singles were racked out of boxes just-shipped from abroad. If Sam the Record Man and A&A’s — both estimable stores in their own right — mostly stocked music that you knew, these other shops traded in stuff you didn’t know. To a kid, it made me feel like these bands (Gang of Four, The Ruts, Magazine, The Stranglers and The Slits) were my own, more so because they didn’t stand a chance being played on the same radio stations that Costello sang about in a language that only a few other kids in my high school could pronounce.

If punk bands were vile and sick, Costello had a sense of comportment about him.

Reading about Costello or seeing his ads in NME or Sounds, his persona seemed aimed toward the U.S.: his name, his bow tie, his Buddy Holly glasses. If punk bands were vile and sick, Costello had a sense of comportment about him. Even when he appeared on video twisted into himself staring into the camera, eyes blazing and tongue lolling over gapped-teeth, he did so in a blazer and good shoes. If his album — recorded with the American country-rock band, Clover, who would later play with Huey Lewis — had a few moments of racing intensity, it was songs like “Alison” and “Waiting for the End of the World” that bewildered for their collection of verses, choruses, intros, outros and bridges at a time when most punk songs said what they had to say before getting out.

Despite Costello’s poised rage, it all seemed a little too varsity for a young listener welded to the pace and heat of English punk. That he became a major threat to the sensibility and concerns of the establishment was something his early music never would have portended.

On Dec. 7, the Billboard charts had “Baby Come Back” by Player, “Come Sail Away” by Styx, “Sentimental Lady” by Bob Welch and “Slip Slidin’ Away” all in its Top 20, with “Saturday Night Fever’s” velour revolution only a few weeks away. Despite the dynamism and vitality of punk and New Wave, North American radio playlists were still, mostly, low-pocket grooves and sleepy melodies, everything riding, one way or another, on the monster success of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. So even though Costello was more showbiz than The Clash or The Damned, he was still as sharp and unwieldy as a cutlass to a middle America (and Canada) whose mainstream listeners sold-out Yes concerts and lined up to get into fairground shows by Grand Funk, partly explaining why Columbia wanted Costello to play “Less Than Zero.” Because Costello was, and has always been, a self-aware artist, he measured the song’s blade and knew it wasn’t enough. Pacing backstage with his band as the lights fell and the show’s cold opening began, Costello resolved to do something that no artist on that show had done before.

With drummer Pete Thomas dressed in jeans and a pressed-letter t-shirt with THANX MALC on it — a nod to the Pistols’ manager Malcolm MacLaren — Costello and band performed “Watching the Detectives,” paused for a few skits, Weekend Update, and more comedy before they began their second song, “Less Than Zero.” So far, the show had been pretty cool. Franken and Davis were on, and Emily Litella and Wino Santa and a John Belushi skit where he brought home the show’s host — an elderly woman, Miskel Spillman, who’d won a “Host SNL” contest — so that his family could meet his girlfriend. For my friends and I, it would have all been enough. Tomorrow was Sunday and then school, and then the following Saturday we would have done it all over again. Steve Martin was the host and Randy Newman was the musical guest.

Costello started playing. Because the performance happened well past midnight, we were all, I think, a little more tired and open to what was about to happen, ready to be shaken to life. We might have watched out of one eye having watched so much already, but when Costello turned and waved off his band through the early verses of the song, we were drawn in, sensing that something was falling apart. The moment was that which SNL liked to promise, but, in reality, rarely delivered; a true spontaneous instance that wasn’t simply laughing out of turn or botching a line. Costello said something no punk would have said, “I’m sorry, folks…” but it was alright because of what followed. Then he said, “There’s no reason for me to do this song.” Then he counted in Pete Thomas. You could hear him shout the numbers. They started “Radio, Radio.”

Because Costello was, and has always been, a self-aware artist, he measured the song’s blade and knew it wasn't enough.

Part of the brilliance of the performance is the expression and body language of the players: keyboardist Steve Nieve furiously chopping at his instrument; Pete Thomas trying to hold it all together on the drums; Bruce Thomas drolly playing as if at a noontime show for seniors in an outlet mall; and Costello nearly breathless through one of the great and intense vocal performances of his era.

My friends and I would have lurched at the screen and, the next day, everyone in the hallways was talking about what they’d seen. It was a thrilling moment in rock and roll television and afterwards, Costello forced himself into the world’s musical consciousness. He went on to make great records, sold tons of units, anded tour everywhere to packed theatres and arenas. But the song never unclogged the airwaves and people still went to fairgrounds to hear Classic Rock.

The radio remained in the hands of such a lot of fools trying to anesthetize the way that you feel. And soon, it wouldn’t only be the radio.

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National Post, February 13, 2015


[[Dave Bidini] writes about Elvis Costello and The Attractions' appearance on Saturday Night Live on Saturday December 17, 1977.

Images

2015-02-13 National Post screen cap.jpg
Elvis Costello's unauthorized 1977 Saturday Night Live performance of "Radio Radio"

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