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June 15, 2018, is was not a night that Elvis Costello will forget in a hurry. He was opening his UK tour at Nottingham's Royal Concert Hall, scene of several triumphant performances in the past. But this time something wasn't right.
Having just had a (successful) cancer operation, he'd taken a short break before returning to the fray. As the gig progressed, however, he realised he hadn't given himself enough time to recover.
"To be completely honest with you I was trying to keep this whole matter — as I think is my right — completely to myself," he tells me on the phone from Vancouver, where he lives with his wife, pianist and singer Diana Krall, and their two sons.
"Doctors' advice was that this one surgery would take care of the matter and it did indeed.
"The truth of it was I miscalculated how long it would take me to get my strength back and the Nottingham show — which was the opening night of that run — was one of the more frightening shows I'd ever played because I had literally no idea whether I could get from beginning to end.
"It was a mortifying, terrifying experience and if anybody thought less of me for my performance that night I wouldn't be surprised because it surprised me that I completed it."
In the immediate aftermath, though, he regarded it as a one-off.
"About a week later I played a show in Edinburgh and I thought 'Oh — now my strength has returned.' The very next night in Newcastle, my strength completely left me in the middle of the show and it was at that point I made plans to curtail the tour and take the rest and regain my strength.
"It was just a matter of mistimed recovery not ill health. Nothing else has been as difficult as that first show in Nottingham."
Now he's determined to give a great performance when he brings his Just Trust tour to the Royal Concert Hall on March 2.
"It matters a lot emotionally to me. I recently played a show at Porchester just outside of New York, which was the venue I played the night before I received my cancer diagnosis so you can imagine how much it meant to me to stand on that stage again and have the best night imaginable.
"So if we are not able to have the best show you've ever seen in Nottingham on that night it won't be anything to do with my lack of will to get there because when you chase away the shadows from these experiences that we all have — I'm not unique in having this, sadly, I have friends who've gone through much worse, some of whom are no longer with us — but going back to the place where something particularly difficult happened is extremely good for your morale and your soul, to get back and do what you do at the highest level."
And he warns: "People seeking evidence of my frailty should attempt to do what I do and see how long they stay on their feet."
Despite the traumatic bout of ill health, at 65 Costello is hardly taking things easy. In a career spanning 42 years, he's released more than 30 albums, produced records for other artists, written with artists including Paul McCartney, Burt Bacharach, Bob Dylan and Carole King and written pieces for string quartet, soundtracks and orchestral ballet music, as well as writing an acclaimed memoir, 2015's Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink.
He even won a Grammy for the audiobook — and he was back in the limelight on Sunday night when he took the Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album for his magnificent 2018 record Look Now.
An elaborate, sophisticated album — featuring new collaborations with Bacharach and King, the powerful backing of his backing band The Imposters and his own lush orchestrations — Look Now combines the lavish melodicism of past classics like Imperial Bedroom with fresh maturity and a novel run of songs from female perspectives.
"I went into the studio with a very clear idea of what I wanted. We'd made great preparations for it — not extensive rehearsals, just prepared how it would be. I'd orchestrated a lot of the record in advance.
I knew the orchestrations were going to be key parts of the performance so when the band started to play we knew exactly how powerfully they should play, how much space they should take up, where they should leave spaces so that it didn't become a confusing picture.
"Now, of course, I couldn't have achieved that earlier — I wouldn't have had the skills or the insight how to do it — but I love the records I made when I was making a mess. They're just part of the process of learning.
"Now, if I were to record tomorrow, I'd almost certainly go in with the opposite approach to Look Now and just turn the machine on and start playing because you don't want to repeat anything.
"It's not like I'm gradually trying to become sophisticated and organised. Those songs — I know because I'd attempted to record a couple of them before — on Look Now would not benefit from a brutal or one-take kind of approach. They just wouldn't. They weren't that kind of song.
"And that's why there's a future, you know, because nothing is ever the last word on music. Music goes on and on, it resonates on and if it's any good at all it sticks in the heart, in the mind, in the memory."
The shows are where his mind is now. The Imposters feature keyboard player Steve Nieve and drummer Pete Thomas from The Attractions plus bassist Davey Faragher and singers Briana Lee and Kitten Kuroi. He thinks it's the best band he's ever had.
"Three of us have worked together for the best part of 40 years and everything we do is exciting — our new record, the concerts — and we have great cohorts in Davey Faragher, who has now played with us 20 years nearly, and Kitten and Briana, who are singing with us, have been singing with us for about three years.
A couple of times I've just gone into something and I've just looked to Kitten and Briana and they know from the look in my eye what I'm about to do. And that makes the feeling of it so thrilling because we suddenly pull an arrangement out of thin air.
"Other times we'll really work on the vocal parts — vocal arrangements being something that were completely absent from the Attractions' live performances but a very big feature of albums like Armed Forces and Imperial Bedroom and a few others — so to have that ability is really changing everything and gives us so much more of a range of songs to draw from."
With a vast range of songs rehearsed and ready to go, he frequently changes the setlist, adapting to different venues.
"Different songs can take you different places. Recently, we were in St. Augustine in Florida where the temptation to learn 'I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine' by Bob Dylan to play it only that night on the tour was just too great.
"Whether it mattered to anybody that we did that I don't know but that's maybe an extreme example of reacting to the moment.
"I haven't counted how many songs [we know] but I know I've just sent a list of another ten to everybody to consider that we maybe listen to and think about how we would play that can make the combinations a little bit more unique for this UK run.
"You're coming to hear somebody do something in the moment which is what makes it thrilling. It makes it exciting for us and hopefully for the audience. The knowledge of the songs means we can change maybe six songs a night and still we're not risking the whole thing seeming incoherent."
He adds: "People remark on the cost of tickets for modern concerts. Try buying a ticket for a West End show! Try buying a ticket for a football match and tell me that we're expensive!
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