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DURING THE PAST YEAR, Elvis Costello has appeared on David Letterman’s show four times with different collaborators: Burt Bacharach, the Fairfield Four, the Jazz Passengers and Toshi Reagon & Big Lovely.
For those keeping track at home, that’s a pop classicist, a gospel quartet, a modern jazz outfit featuring former Blondie singer Deborah Harry and an obscure Manhattan rock band.
It’s typical Costello in the 1990s, where he’s changed direction so much it’s a wonder he doesn’t have whiplash. Even fans accustomed to the twists and turns of an eclectic 20-year career that bgan with blasts of angry punk rock have to be shaking their heads.
What’s up with Elvis Costello? Is this a test or something?
Over coffee at a midtown Manhattan café, Costello acknowledges he’s given his followers quite a challenge. But don’t expect any apologies.
“I’m not trying to annoy them”, he said. “I have to be prepared to lose people who want everything to stay the same, in order to gain the people who are prepared to listen with all their heart. That’s much more important, really.”
At age 42, Costello finds himself at something of a career crossroads. He’s broken up his longtime backup band for the second time, released a compilation disc that’s essentially a “divorce settlement” from his record label and is about to sign a new deal to distribute his music for the next several years.
The disc “Extreme Honey” is an overview of his decade recording for Warner Bros. Records. It includes one hit “Veronica,” several over-looked songs and one new one “The Bridge I Burned,” which offers up Costello’s son, Matt MacManus, on bass.
“I have absolutely no complaint with the musical freedom I’ve been allowed over the past eight or nine years,” Costello said. “I think I’ve exploited it in my own way, sometimes to the detriment of commercial logic. But the shoddy treatment I’ve had over the last two or three years had to end.
“I was either going to quit completely or whey were going to let me out,” he said, referring to his contract.
Costello feels the company didn’t do enough to sell his music over the past few years. Corporate turmoil at Warner, where there’s been a turnover in top management, may be partly to blame.
Don’t discount, however, company resentment at Costello’s own wobbly output. A classical album and collection of obscure cover tunes are not the easiest things to sell in today’s marketplace.
Costello’s anger reached such proportions that, in a devilishly twisted move, he commissioned musicians like Tricky, Lush and Sleeper to “deface” some of his songs from his “All This Useless Beauty” album with their own versions.
His vision of a musical form of graffiti ultimately backfired because the artists were too “nice” to the songs, he said. And Warners never released the new versions domestically anyway.
Costello chooses his latest album’s liner notes to announce the final dissolution of his backup band, the Attractions. In their prime, keyboard player Steve Nieve, bassist Bruce Thomas and drummer Pete Thomas rivalled the E Street Band and the Heartbreakers as rock’s most cohesive backup unit.
But since their former leader referred to them in an interview as “that sorry carcass,” don’t expect another reunion tour soon.
Costello’s ongoing conflict with Bruce Thomas – who once wrote a thinly disguised novel about a tyrannical rock star – seems the chief reason. That’s basically why the Attractions were shelved from 1987 –94 before reuniting for two albums and a tour.
Costello said Thomas “just couldn’t concentrate any more and he was making a lot of embarrassing mistakes.” And the Attractions had taken pride in never being erratic.
As for the music, he said, “We did set a very high standard and the last thing I wanted it to be was a sorry excuse for it.
“I think the two records we made made a very good case for the band as a bunch of grown-up guys playing music together – one playing in the framework of the music we started out with and the other doing all of the other things that we had learned in the interim,” he said. “And that’s really where I wanted to end it.”
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