Pitchfork, October 11, 2018

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An Ode to Elvis Costello’s Stellar Backing Bands, the Attractions and the Imposters


Tyler Wilcox

With Elvis Costello and the Imposters’ first new LP in over a decade out this week, our Invisible Hits column celebrates his longtime backing bands with standout performance clips from over the years.

Many of rock’s most beloved songwriters come packaged with equally great backing bands: Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. We think Elvis Costello and the Attractions deserve a place in this pantheon, too. It’s almost impossible to imagine Costello’s best work—albums like This Year’s Model, Armed Forces, and Imperial Bedroom — without Steve Nieve’s dazzling keyboard, Pete Thomas’ superhuman drumming, and Bruce Thomas’ imaginative basslines.

After Costello’s seemingly irreparable bust-up with the latter Thomas in the mid-1990s, the Attractions called it quits. But the band’s spirit lives on in his current band the Imposters, featuring Nieve, Pete Thomas, and replacement bassist Davey Faragher. This week, Costello and the Imposters will release Look Now, their first new LP in over a decade, so it’s a perfect time to look back at the Attractions’ legacy via some choice live rarities from over the years.

Early Attractions

The Attractions came together in the wake of Costello’s debut 1977 LP, My Aim Is True, which featured the songwriter backed up by the West Coast country-rock group Clover (which would later morph into Huey Lewis and the News, of all things). Nieve, Thomas, and Thomas (no relation between those two) quickly dispensed with some of the more middle-of-the-road elements that their predecessors brought to the table, replacing them with a minimal, hard-edged sound befitting the burgeoning punk scene in England at the time. One of the earliest clips of Elvis with the Attractions, captured in the summer of ’77 in a tiny Liverpool club, includes a tense rendition of “Watching the Detectives,” which finds the common ground between reggae, the Clash, and Crazy Horse. A few months later, the band was in front of a television audience of millions on “Saturday Night Live,” playing an electrifying rendition of the then-unreleased “Radio Radio,” instead of the agreed-upon “Less Than Zero.” The stunt got Costello banned from the show for more than a decade, but has since become a legendary “SNL” moment, worthy of re-creation alongside the Beastie Boys.

The remainder of the 1970s were an astonishing blur of activity, as Elvis and the Attractions crisscrossed Europe and the U.S. multiple times, stopping only to record two classic studio LPs, This Year’s Model and Armed Forces. For a look at the band at the peak of its early onstage powers, check out their sweaty 1978 appearance on the German TV show “Rockpalast” or this bootleg from a Lehigh University gig the following year, both of which blaze with an almost scary intensity. Their lifestyle was nearly as highly charged as the live shows—and it began to take its toll. Costello set the scene in his 2015 memoir, Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink: “Armed Forces had been out only just over a week, and I was already planning the next record and the song after the next and the one after that, but a few people were starting to remark on how drained and listless we could suddenly seem onstage. We could crank ourselves up all we wanted, but no amount of green light trained on our green faces could really disguise it.”

Genre Excursions in the 1980s

Costello and the Attractions didn’t exactly slow down when the ’80s rolled around. Instead, they went about proving that they were much more than a high-energy new wave combo. The first half of the decade is packed with daring left-turns. A groovy Peel Session from 1980 showcases tunes from Get Happy!!, which made the band’s previously implied love of Motown, ska, and Northern Soul much more explicit. Costello’s obsession with country music came to the fore a year later with Almost Blue, recorded with the Attractions in Nashville; the BBC’s revealing documentary of the LP’s making is essential viewing.

Costello’s ambitions just seemed to grow with each passing year. Later in ’81, he and the Attractions donned evening wear to join the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall for a lush cover of Gram Parsons’ “Hot Burrito #1” (renamed here as “I’m Your Toy”), a dramatic performance that’s about as far from punk as you could get. A few months later, the band appeared on “Late Night With David Letterman,” delivering a flawless “Man Out of Time” that showed off their Beatle-esque way with a melody. Then, in 1983, they scored a genuine hit with “Everyday I Write the Book,” a buoyant-but-bittersweet soul-pop song; a live-in-the-studio clip of the Attractions, joined by the British vocal group Afrodiziak, is absolutely delightful—and suggests that at this point, the band was capable of pretty much anything. Even a Prince cover: At a freewheeling L.A. show in ’86, the Attractions tried out a feisty version of “Pop Life.”

Makeups and Breakups

After a decade of almost nonstop work, Costello put the Attractions on the shelf in 1987 and embarked on a series of ever-more eclectic projects, including collaborations with the Brodsky Quartet (a classical ensemble), New Orleans music pioneer Allen Toussaint, avant-guitarist Marc Ribot, and some guy named Paul McCartney. But he brought it all back home in 1994 with Brutal Youth, reuniting with his erstwhile band for a record that, at its high points, harkens back to the Attractions’ glory days. No track did this better than the lead-off single “13 Steps Lead Down,” which debuted live with a hopped-up appearance on “Letterman,” complete with a callback to “Radio Radio.” The band’s onstage chemistry remained intact over the next two years of touring, but long-simmering tensions between Costello and Bruce Thomas came to a head, and Elvis finally gave the bassist his walking papers in 1996.

Elvis remained simpatico with Steve Nieve, however. Some of his most successful work in the 1990s can be found on live recordings of the duo in stripped-down acoustic mode, Nieve providing elegant accompaniment to a host of winningly re-arranged Costello originals, including a devastating rendering of “All This Useless Beauty.” “I genuinely love his music and love working with him,” Nieve told Mojo in 2015. “I’ve worked with a lot of different people, and he’s one of the few who’s prepared to take a bit of a risk. Nothing is ever the same, he doesn’t like doing the same set twice. Quite often we go out onstage to play he’ll do the first three things on the set list and then... off he goes.”

Enter the Imposters

After several years spent following his wandering muse (which led him to Burt Bacharach and Anne Sofie von Otter), Costello got back in an Attractions frame of mind in 2002, cheekily rebranding the Bruce-less band as the Imposters. Whatever they were called, the core of Costello, Nieve, and Pete Thomas remained a powerhouse live act. Check out a raging, 10-and-a-half-minute version of “I Want You” taped at the Time Festival in Rio de Janeiro. The Imposters provide a chillingly steady backdrop for Costello’s unhinged vocal and guitar (the mid-song interpolation of Neil Young’s “Down By the River” is an inspired touch, too).

Characteristically, Costello has bounced around plenty in the past decade (including a bluegrass record and a collaboration with the Roots), but the Imposters have remained his steadiest live backing group. The songwriter canceled several tour dates earlier this summer in order to recover from a cancer-related surgery, but he showed up with the Imposters at last month’s Riot Fest looking and sounding fit as a fiddle. Opening with a rollicking “Pump It Up,” one of the very first songs the Attractions recorded, the set is a testament to Costello and co.’s continuing vitality. They may not be riled-up young men anymore, but they’re still capable of summoning up a thrilling racket.


Tags: The AttractionsThe ImpostersLook NowNeil YoungBruce SpringsteenThe E Street BandTom Petty and The HeartbreakersThis Year's ModelArmed ForcesImperial BedroomSteve NievePete ThomasBruce ThomasDavey FaragherMy Aim Is TrueCloverHuey Lewis and The NewsEric'sWatching The DetectivesThe ClashCrazy HorseSaturday Night LiveRadio, RadioLess Than ZeroBeastie BoysRockpalastLehigh UniversityUnfaithful Music & Disappearing InkJohn PeelGet Happy!!Almost BlueThe South Bank ShowRoyal Philharmonic OrchestraRoyal Albert HallGram ParsonsI'm Your ToyLate Night With David LettermanMan Out Of TimeThe BeatlesEveryday I Write The BookAfrodiziakPrincePop LifeThe Brodsky QuartetAllen ToussaintMarc RibotPaul McCartneyBrutal Youth13 Steps Lead DownTV 1994-04-01 David LettermanAll This Useless Beauty (song)MojoBurt BacharachAnne Sofie von OtterI Want YouTIM FestivalDown By The RiverThe RootsRiot FestPump It Up

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Pitchfork, October 11, 2018


Tyler Wilcox celebrates Elvis' backing bands.

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Photo credit:Keith Morris
Photo credit: Keith Morris

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