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Bring a stranger to an Elvis Costello concert and the first thing he'll want to do is laugh.
Here comes Elvis bounding on the stage, looking typically nerdish. His guitar is slung over one shoulder of a dumpy charcoal-grey suit. The bookworm eyeglasses are in place, giving range of depth to an already high forehead. He looks like Woody Allen auditioning for The Buddy Holly Story. But wait before you laugh: still invisible, under contemptuous lips that seem puckered by lemon, there lurks a set of fangs.
Elvis Costello looks funny, but brother is be dangerous!
Not a macho teen singer who scored with all the chicks in high school, Costello holds no illusions today. He is a working-class realist and he bears the grudges of a hard, young life.
Costello scalds his enemies — everyone from radio programmers to fashion girls — in a style that, as one critic put it, makes you want to jump, not dance.
He sings in a nasal snarl over a primal rock 'n' roll base, supplied by a fine three-piece band called the Attractions and the hard-nosed production of Nick Lowe. His songwriting style is early Dylanesque, filled with bits of spoonerized imagery like "grip-like vise" and "it's the death that's worse than fate."
On the basis of just three albums — My Aim Is True, This Year's Model and Armed Forces — Costello has come to be accepted as the most skilled musical performer to emerge since Springsteen.
But sometimes Costello gets his enemies confused.
On his current tour, which was supposed to endear him to heartland America, Costello has let the alienation in his lyrics engulf his stage behavior.
On the West Coast, he performed 45-minute sets, and then had his sound technicians drive out the encore-cheering crowds by sending an unpleasant high-volume treble through the speakers. In the Midwest, he dedicated his vituperative "Radio, Radio" to the radio station that sponsored his show, and later engaged in a bit of fisticuffs with members of Steve Stills' touring band.
Elvis Costello might be looking to conquer America, but he wants to do it on his own terms.
Even as details of EC's barnstorming hijinks poured into the Philadelphia area, 6,000 tickets for his two Tower Theater shows went on sale, and 6,000 tickets were sold. The crowd at Saturday night's performance (which included a sizable number of punks) was whistling and hollering from the moment Elvis bounded on stage, rumpled suit and all.
With the audience already on its feet, Elvis felt snappy and just could not crab out. Varying between cool detachment and furious intensity, he performed 16 songs and returned for two encores. Only once did he use his microphone to give the audience the bird.
The set was not predictable. Only five songs came from the recent Armed Forces album, and Costello smartly mixed in material previously unreleased or available only on British imports. (Unfortunately, Costello barred all photographic equipment from the Tower.)
Costello, as usual, granted no interviews. His stock excuse is that "nobody paid attention to me before," but it is likely that Costello wants to avoid comparisons between the situations in his songs and the facts of his personal life.
A few things are known about his background. He was born Declan Patrick McManus 24 years ago in London. His father was a jazz trumpeter in cabarets. Costello went to work as a computer technician after high school and lived in a dreary flat in Acton, moonlighting as a musician. His breakthrough came during a street-corner audition for visiting CBS Records executives. (The stage name was adopted before the other Elvis died.)
Costello also is married and a father, but don't ask him about it. "Lip service is all you'll ever get from me," as the song goes.
But, of course, Costello is simply trying to confuse his enemies, real and imagined. And the most revelatory moment at Saturday's concert occurred during the tortured love song "Alison."
When Costello began repeating the climactic line "My aim is true," he was not singing with confidence or snottiness or any of the other attitudes you'd expect from a man who distances himself as a social watcher, a man who thinks he's come too far to be hurt any more.
No, Elvis was singing "My aim is true" as a call for reassurance. Elvis Costello, after all this time, wanted to know if we think he's hitting the bull's-eye.
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