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In 1977, Elvis Costello emerged in London as one of the unquestioned originals of modern pop music. Just twenty-two when he released his first album, My Aim Is True, he seemed master of every rock 'n' roll move. No punk in terms of craft, he rode the punk wave because he communicated a more authentic bitterness.
In 1982, Costello remains known almost solely through his music - and the scandalous "Ray Charles" incident. Aside from a 1981 appearance on Tom Snyder's "Tomorrow" show, Costello has not sat down for a comprehensive interview with an American journalist until this summer. With the release of his eighth album, "Imperial Bedroom," Costello and his band the Attractions, opened an American tour this July 14 at Santa Cruz. Four days later we met for a conversation. Costello was serious about the situation, but very much at ease. (Elvis Costello appears tomorrow at Philadelphia's JFK Stadium.)
Q. Declan McManus was born in London in 1955 and grew up there. For his last two years of secondary school he moved to Liverpool to live with his mother, by that time divorced from his father, Ross McManus, a big-band singer and solo performer.
A. I graduated from secondary school in 1973. It was the first year of 1 million unemployed in England. I was very lucky to get a job. I got a job as a computer operator.
I had something of an ambition to be a professional musician. I was writing my own songs - dreadful songs.
I stuck out the first computer job for about six months; as the same time, I got into a job in Liverpool - that's where I met Nick Lowe, just before I came to London in '74.
Q. What was the beginning of your life as a fan?
A. My father was with Joe Loss - the English Glenn Miller. He was with him from about 1953 to 1968, and then he went solo; his instrument is trumpet but he's a singer.
The first records I ever owned were "Please Please Me," and "The Folksinger" by John Leyton.
I was just into singles - the Kinks, the Who, Motown. The one kind of music I didn't like was rock'n'roll - as a distinct (classic) form.
I was never very taken with psychedelic music. When I went to live in Liverpooll I discovered everyone was still into acid rock - and I used to hide my Otis Redding records when friends came round.
I actually "saw the light" when I was already playing - coming back to London, seeing a lot of groups, Nick Lowe and the Brinsleys, pub-rock groups. In London I discovered all the music I liked secretly was what was great fun in a bar.
In England, now, there's a prejudice against that era, the pre-punk era; I'd much rather go and see NRBQ playing in a bar than I would the most illustrious of our punk groups, because I don't think they have anything to do with anything. They're horrible - and phony, and dishonest.
Q. McManus made a guitar-and-vocal demo and hawked his songs to record companies. The one that responded was Jake Riviera and Dave Robinson's Stiff label.
A. On the first demo tape I sent to Stiff there were only two or three songs that ended up on My Aim Is True. There were a lot of raw songs with a lot of chords. They came out convoluted.
That exactly coincided with punk. But I was working - I didn't have the money to go to the Roxy and see what the bands were doing: The Clash, the Pistols.
Then I started listening to the records that were coming out, because I'd got this snobbish attitude: so little of any worth had come out for a few years. When the first punk records came out, I suddenly started thinking: “Hang on - this is something a little bit different.”
I wrote a lot of songs in the summer of 1977: “Welcome to the Working Week,” “Red Shoes,” “Alison”, “Waiting For The End Of The World.”
Q. Your first single was “Less Than Zero.” When did you write that?
A. Earlier in the year. I saw a program with Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British fascist movement of the ‘30s. There he was on TV, saying, “No, I’m not anti-Semitic.”
Q. This was when the National Front and the British Movement were recruiting with great success.
A. They were the same old bastards, like Colin Jordan that kept reappearing and denying they had any fascist overtones. They’re really sick people. If there wasn’t a danger that some people would take them seriously, you’d feel sorry for them. But you can’t. There are people gullible enough and there are enough problems. You can point fingers and say, “These are the people who are the source of your problems: it’s the black people, “It’s the same as saying, “It’s the Jews…” I’m English, but my ancestry is Irish, and they used to say the same about the Irish. We cut the first singles without any impact. My immediate reaction was, “Well maybe I haven’t got it.”
Q. You had picked your name well before that?
A. I hadn’t picked it at all. Jake picked it. It was just a marketing scheme.
With “My Aim Is True,” Costello stepped out as a major figure in British music; the American release of the LP on CBS, a brilliant appearance on “Saturday Night Live,” and his first tour with the Attractions, brought an even more fierce response in the U.S. He and the Attractions followed a remarkable first year with “This Year’s Model,” and a tour far more confident than the one that had preceded it. In 1979 Costello offered perhaps his most ambitious record “Armed Forces” During Costello’s 1979 tour, one night in a bar in Columbus Ohio, at odds with Bonnie Bramlett and other members of the Stephen Stills Band, he suddenly denounced Ray Charles as “a blind, ignorant nigger.” Bramlett decked him; the incident quickly made the papers, and the resulting scandal forced a New York press conference where he tried to explain himself. This, from a man who, at some risk, had taken on the National Front with “Night Rally,” and appeared at Rock Against Racism concerts.
Q. What happened?
A. It’s become a terrible thing hanging over my head – it’s horrible to work hard for a long time and find that what you’re best known for is something as idiotic as… this…
What actually happened was this: we were in the bar – Bruce Thomas and I – after the show. And we were very drunk. And we started into what you’d probably call joshing. Gentle jibes between the two camps of the Stills Band and us. It developed as it got drunker and drunker into a nastier and nastier argument. And I suppose that in the drunkenness, my contempt for them was exaggerated beyond my real contempt for them. But they just seemed in some way to typify a lot of things I thought were wrong with American music.
Q. Things such as what?
A. Insincerity, dishonesty – musical dishonesty.
Q. But now we’re trying to talk about what it was really about.
A. What it was about was that I said the most outrageous thing I could possibly say to them – that I knew would anger them more than anything else. That’s why I don’t want to get into why I felt so affronted by them, because that’s not important.
Q. With the press conference in New York, the situation reminded me of nothing so much as the “We’re more popular than Jesus” blowup with the Beatles.
A. It had approximately the same effect on our career. The minute the story was published, records were taken off playlists. About 120 death threats – or threats of violence. I had armed bodyguards for the last part of that tour.
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