New York Observer, October 12, 1998

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The ballad of Burt and Elvis


Jim Windolf

Elvis Costello has run away from his past and straight into the arms of Burt Bacharach. Can this former angry young man find a way to "kick Celine Dion's ass"? Elvis explains it all to Jim Windolf.

Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach climbed aboard the stage in the basement of the Virgin Megastore on Union Square. It was not the hippest room in town.

The Virgin Megastore is a monstrosity. A disk jockey sits in a booth, overlooking the floor like a cheap god. There are tables where you can have coffee and croissants. There's an escalator. It's part state-of-the-art record store, part hell.

Mr Costello was wearing a black jacket, black shirt, black tie. Mr Bacharach was wearing a baby blue crew-neck sweater over a white Ralph Lauren tennis shirt. The audience of 150 or so aging sleeksters stood crowded together.

"This is the first time I've played in a concert hall with an escalator in the middle," Mr. Costello said into the microphone.

Twenty years ago, on his first U.S. tour, he didn't make nice with his audience. He played blistering shows that lasted 45 minutes. He glared. People left feeling impressed but ripped off. There were small riots.

Back then, he could afford to be nasty. That Elvis Costello was an instant legend, the darling boy of New Wave. The Elvis Costello in the Virgin Megastore basement was just a guy, a 44-year-old singer with a growing back catalogue and a shrinking fan base. No wonder he looked like a nervous suitor all dressed up for a first date.

Mr Bacharach, 70, tinkled the first few notes of "Toledo," a bouncy ballad from the just-released album Painted From Memory. The new duo seemed tentative and not quite acquainted with each other or the song. Mr. Bacharach played in an easy, decorative style that might have sounded mushy to fans of venomous Costello songs like "Pump It Up" or "I Want You." And Mr. Costello was singing in a voice that could easily put off fans of Mr. Bacharach's work with pop divas and "icons" like Dionne Warwick, Dusty Springfield, Tom Jones and Luther Vandross. But then he sloughed off imposters for the third song, "Painted From Memory." It's a ballad about an artist who paints a portrait of his ex-lover only to imagine, jealously "those eyes, they smile for someone else." Mr Costello brought the song to life. It was raw. It was great So this record store basement may not have been the hippest room in town, but you know what, I can't help that. It's not my responsibility. I've done what I feel is right and responsible. I can't deal with fanatical people. Like anybody who's written a lot of songs about specific feelings, I've had funny mail, and I've had people whose behavior would border on stalking. And who would think it? I'm not exactly Mr Pinup. And yet people get the strangest notions in their heads, and sometimes you're dealing with genuine sadness motivated by really deeply held feelings. But you can't denigrate your own life. There are other people I care about – my wife and my family – whose privacy has to be respected. Otherwise I can get ugly."

Mr Costello's voice is a craggy thick expressive instrument. On Painted From Memory, it leaps out of the lovely Bacharach musical trappings like an intruder. That's a leftover from the old punk-New Wave days. That music's unifying principle was that passion beats technical virtuosity every time.

"I know that when I get into the upper register, I create a sound which for some people is a thrill and for other people my be something they don't want to hear," he said. But we're going to go there because that's where the excitement and the drama lies."

The image Mr Costello concocted for himself from 1977 through 1979 was a powerful piece of rock-and-roll marketing that was seen as authentic at the time. His real name was Declan McManus. His father was Ross McManus, a trumpet player and bandleader who played the hits of the day in clubs and on British radio. His mother worked in a record store. So Declan McManus grew up in London and Liverpool well versed in pop and jazz. Starting in……

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But Declan McManus paid a price for becoming Elvis Costello. Because during his 1979 U.S. tour he ended up in a barroom argument with members of Stephen Stills' band. In response he made racist remarks about Ray Charles and James Brown. His barroom opponents went to the press with the tale and Mr Costello's new album, the fast-selling Armed Forces, was pulled from radio. Fans picketed his shows and he left the country in disgrace, even after making apologies to the press.

Throughout the 80's Elvis Costello tried to escape the Elvis name….

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McManus. So by making records in a variety of different genres – a practice he continued through the 90's to the point where he even made a string quartet album (The Juliet Letters) – he was paradoxically true to himself. When you come from a musical family (Grandpa played professionally too ) it's perhaps less of a pose to play in whatever style strikes you.

Cracks in the Elvis Costello armor began to show as early as 1977 when he played the Burt Bacharach/Hal David song "I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself" in concert. That made him a New Wave heretic. Then, in writing his radio hit "Accidents Will Happen," he used Bacharach-David's "Anyone Who Had A Heart" as a model. And his live renditions of his signature ballad "Alison" owe as much to Frank Sinatra as they do to punk intensity.

"I'm sure some people won't believe this," he said into the phone, "but my mother tells me one of the first words I ever said was "skin," because I was requesting that song "I've Got You Under My Skin." So literally my whole life I've listened to Sinatra – but as you get older, you understand what he's singing about. It's the same with Burt. I didn't understand the meaning, the musical implications of "Anyone Who Had A Heart" but I sure as hell understand it now. "

Maybe the real end of Elvis Costello came in 1996. He released a gorgeous full album, All This Useless Beauty, but it tanked commercially, debuting in the Billboard charts at No. 53 and then falling out of sight. That same year he released a five-CD live set, Costello & Nieve...


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New York Observer, October 12, 1998


Jim Windolf profiles Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach.

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1998-10-12 New York Observer page 21 clipping 01.jpg
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