Rolling Stone, May 17, 1979: Difference between revisions
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Des Brown, a snake-hipped, expressionless man who serves as Elvis Costello's tour-manager, is prowling in a downtown club called [[Concert 1979-04-01 New York (3rd show)|Great Guildersleeves]] as his sweating boss bellies up to the mikestand to sing the twenty fifth song in tonight's three club, [[April 1|April Fool's Day]] marathon. After watching Costello play six sets in four days I find Brown's movements more diverting than the stage show. He is playing his nightly game of Search and Destroy the Film. The drill is as routine as Brown's speed and determination can make it: scan the crowd for the dull glint of chrome, knife through the packed mass, snatch the camera. "He's got to make people believe that he can go crazy any minute," says a technician from a band that toured with Costello. "He can." | Des Brown, a snake-hipped, expressionless man who serves as Elvis Costello's tour-manager, is prowling in a downtown club called [[Concert 1979-04-01 New York (3rd show)|Great Guildersleeves]] as his sweating boss bellies up to the mikestand to sing the twenty-fifth song in tonight's three club, [[April 1|April Fool's Day]] marathon. After watching Costello play six sets in four days I find Brown's movements more diverting than the stage show. He is playing his nightly game of Search and Destroy the Film. The drill is as routine as Brown's speed and determination can make it: scan the crowd for the dull glint of chrome, knife through the packed mass, snatch the camera. "He's got to make people believe that he can go crazy any minute," says a technician from a band that toured with Costello. "He can." | ||
Brown has a sneaky strong, steeplechaser's build. He wears a white shirt with finger-tip sized polka-dots and sports one day's growth of stubble that looks | Brown has a sneaky strong, steeplechaser's build. He wears a white shirt with finger-tip sized polka-dots and sports one day's growth of stubble that looks velvety in the dim club. I watch him from ten, fifteen feet away; if the chill in his eyes isn't enough to hush up the victimized photographer, the house bouncers are only too eager to pitch in with the tour's squad of roadies (some in green fatigues, others in plainclothes distinguishable by their no picket (?) boots). | ||
There are two extra heavies tonight; Costello has been getting death threats since last week, when word leaked out that he called [[Ray Charles]] "nothing but a blind arrogant nigger" in a spitting mad [[:Category:Columbus incident|bar-room argument]] with singer [[Bonnie Bramlett]]. The bodyguards stand by the stage near two Hell's Angels who flank Brown while he pops open cameras and rips tape out of cassettes. | There are two extra heavies tonight; Costello has been getting death threats since last week, when word leaked out that he called [[Ray Charles]] "nothing but a blind arrogant nigger" in a spitting mad [[:Category:Columbus incident|bar-room argument]] with singer [[Bonnie Bramlett]]. The bodyguards stand by the stage near two Hell's Angels who flank Brown while he pops open cameras and rips tape out of cassettes. | ||
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"The only reason I wrote that about it was that Jake threatened to do me bodily injury if I did," said Marcus, who reported the encounter in ''New West Magazine''. "Jake's just a little thug. His commercial strategy has always been, "We don't need you" and it's a perfectly decent strategy. The concert was meant as an insult and performed as such, and people caught on. When I came out they were jumping up and down in the balconies. An hour late people tried to break into the box office." Then, after a few days of peace, there was an outburst in [[Concert 1979-03-06 St. Louis|St. Louis]]. | "The only reason I wrote that about it was that Jake threatened to do me bodily injury if I did," said Marcus, who reported the encounter in ''New West Magazine''. "Jake's just a little thug. His commercial strategy has always been, "We don't need you" and it's a perfectly decent strategy. The concert was meant as an insult and performed as such, and people caught on. When I came out they were jumping up and down in the balconies. An hour late people tried to break into the box office." Then, after a few days of peace, there was an outburst in [[Concert 1979-03-06 St. Louis|St. Louis]]. | ||
Elvis, playing before 3000-plus fans at the Kiel Opera House, did his usual slam-bang set, hardly pausing for applause. The staff of radio station KSHE, St. Louis' dominant FM outlet and the one that Costello's label, Columbia Records, had chosen as the unofficial concert sponsor, was shocked when Costello dedicated his first encore, "Accidents Will Happen," by sending it out to "all the boys at radio station KADI." Apparently, someone had told Elvis that KSHE had been ignoring his albums on their playlist, while the rival KADI was playing his tunes. "But we'd been playing the key cuts of all three albums in heavy rotation to support the show," complained a KSHE spokesman later. Little matter - Elvis plowed on, introducing "[[Radio, Radio]]" with: "Now I want to dedicate this song to all the local bastard radio stations that don't play our songs... and to KSHE!" Costello's albums went from "heavy rotation" to no rotation on KSHE until four days later, when Alan Frey, who | Elvis, playing before 3000-plus fans at the Kiel Opera House, did his usual slam-bang set, hardly pausing for applause. The staff of radio station KSHE, St. Louis' dominant FM outlet and the one that Costello's label, Columbia Records, had chosen as the unofficial concert sponsor, was shocked when Costello dedicated his first encore, "Accidents Will Happen," by sending it out to "all the boys at radio station KADI." Apparently, someone had told Elvis that KSHE had been ignoring his albums on their playlist, while the rival KADI was playing his tunes. "But we'd been playing the key cuts of all three albums in heavy rotation to support the show," complained a KSHE spokesman later. Little matter - Elvis plowed on, introducing "[[Radio, Radio]]" with: "Now I want to dedicate this song to all the local bastard radio stations that don't play our songs... and to KSHE!" Costello's albums went from "heavy rotation" to no rotation on KSHE until four days later, when Alan Frey, who heads Elvis' U.S. management company (A.R.S.E) called up to make amends. | ||
In questioning people about Elvis Costello during his 1978 tour, I kept hearing the word, kid. "He's really still a kid," people would say of the twenty-two year old. And one could forgive a lot from this knock-kneed, squinty-eyed wonder who wrote songs that (as Marcus and others pointed out) took our own sins, from imperialism to narcissism, and paraded them before us in all their shabby selfishness. The guy was clawing his own flesh, too. Couldn't we forgive him as he insulted us?" | In questioning people about Elvis Costello during his 1978 tour, I kept hearing the word, kid. "He's really still a kid," people would say of the twenty-two year old. And one could forgive a lot from this knock-kneed, squinty-eyed wonder who wrote songs that (as Marcus and others pointed out) took our own sins, from imperialism to narcissism, and paraded them before us in all their shabby selfishness. The guy was clawing his own flesh, too. Couldn't we forgive him as he insulted us?" | ||
We could have forgiven a lot. But after a distressingly routine set in [[Concert 1979-03-15 Columbus|Columbus]], Ohio, Costello went out and got drunk, and - in an outburst that all his piety and wit will never cancel a word of - he delivered his now-famous slur | We could have forgiven a lot. But after a distressingly routine set in [[Concert 1979-03-15 Columbus|Columbus]], Ohio, Costello went out and got drunk, and - in an outburst that all his piety and wit will never cancel a word of - he delivered his now-famous slur on Ray Charles and called James Brown "a jive-ass nigger." He said plenty more, railing against the American nation ("a fucked country") and its various customs, curiosities, and entertainers. But with that one horrible, six-letter epithet, whether it came out of the air or from his heart, he fed himself to the wolves. | ||
In [[Concert 1979-03-29 Boston|Boston]], two weeks after the Columbus incident and three days before Gildersleeves, the Costello camp has sent ripples of obstinate wrath out from their zealously guarded dressing room, and some swine strongman at the Orpheum Theater refuses to go back there and find my contact so I can enter the hall. Have I raced out to LaGuardia Airport for the shuttle flight, rented a gas-sucking Mercury and checked into a hotel room on the same floor as Riviera Global Enterprises to stand panting in the Boston drizzle with my ear set against a bolted door? The scalpers are gone, and not one of the big hall's guardian wants to make a few bucks for himself by looking the other way for one lousy second. | In [[Concert 1979-03-29 Boston|Boston]], two weeks after the Columbus incident and three days before Gildersleeves, the Costello camp has sent ripples of obstinate wrath out from their zealously guarded dressing room, and some swine strongman at the Orpheum Theater refuses to go back there and find my contact so I can enter the hall. Have I raced out to LaGuardia Airport for the shuttle flight, rented a gas-sucking Mercury and checked into a hotel room on the same floor as Riviera Global Enterprises to stand panting in the Boston drizzle with my ear set against a bolted door? The scalpers are gone, and not one of the big hall's guardian wants to make a few bucks for himself by looking the other way for one lousy second. | ||
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He plugs the two previous albums ("This is a song off our first album, called ''My Aim Is True''; it's called "[[Alison]]"), but without the kind of defensiveness that made him blurt out "and you better fucking clap" when he brought Lowe on to do "[[Heart Of The City|Heart of the City]]" at a 1977 press showcase at the [[Concert 1977-12-15 New York|Ukranian Ballroom]] in Manhattan. On "Alison", which became the band's meal ticket when Linda Ronstadt covered it, he seems to be pulling out all the stops that are left in him after wheezing through the songs hundreds of times. His gestures are familiar - the left hand creeping slowly along his brow, then temple, then distractedly fingering his horn-rimmed spectacles as he leans on the mike in his trademark pigeon-toed stance. | He plugs the two previous albums ("This is a song off our first album, called ''My Aim Is True''; it's called "[[Alison]]"), but without the kind of defensiveness that made him blurt out "and you better fucking clap" when he brought Lowe on to do "[[Heart Of The City|Heart of the City]]" at a 1977 press showcase at the [[Concert 1977-12-15 New York|Ukranian Ballroom]] in Manhattan. On "Alison", which became the band's meal ticket when Linda Ronstadt covered it, he seems to be pulling out all the stops that are left in him after wheezing through the songs hundreds of times. His gestures are familiar - the left hand creeping slowly along his brow, then temple, then distractedly fingering his horn-rimmed spectacles as he leans on the mike in his trademark pigeon-toed stance. | ||
The crowd had risen without prompting as Elvis finished "[[Hand In Hand]]," but when he segues from the pounding end of "[[Lipstick Vogue]]" into "[[Watching The Detectives|Watching the Detectives]]" and the lights go up full before dimming to spooky, funhouse green, they _scream_. Oddly, there are large numbers of pubescent girls present, and they now bolt for the stage. After slowly opening his hand to say "It only took my | The crowd had risen without prompting as Elvis finished "[[Hand In Hand]]," but when he segues from the pounding end of "[[Lipstick Vogue]]" into "[[Watching The Detectives|Watching the Detectives]]" and the lights go up full before dimming to spooky, funhouse green, they _scream_. Oddly, there are large numbers of pubescent girls present, and they now bolt for the stage. After slowly opening his hand to say "It only took my little fingers to..." Elvis cocks an ear to the audience, and they shout "blow you away" like prize pupils. Elvis fairly spits out "mu-sack radio" on "Radio Radio," he dedicates the song to WBCN-FM, a station whose staff had walked off when the owner threatened to change the format. "They had the guts to strike," says Elvis. | ||
In Boston, Elvis has bloomed, and the two encores the audience calls him out for are "[[Mystery Dance]]" and "[[You Belong To Me|You belong to Me]]." "You... do... belong.... to... me...," he recites as the Attractions bring the show to an end in a wash of chords. Nobody in the Orpheum is denying it. | In Boston, Elvis has bloomed, and the two encores the audience calls him out for are "[[Mystery Dance]]" and "[[You Belong To Me|You belong to Me]]." "You... do... belong.... to... me...," he recites as the Attractions bring the show to an end in a wash of chords. Nobody in the Orpheum is denying it. | ||
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News of the Ray Charles incident, which Riviera would label "a drunken barroom idiocy," had spread far and wide. Within the week, Elvis had called a New York press conference and now, on the fourteenth floor of CBS corporate headquarters the day after his Boston concert, he tries to deflect the accusations that he is a racist. | News of the Ray Charles incident, which Riviera would label "a drunken barroom idiocy," had spread far and wide. Within the week, Elvis had called a New York press conference and now, on the fourteenth floor of CBS corporate headquarters the day after his Boston concert, he tries to deflect the accusations that he is a racist. | ||
Backed into apologizing, Elvis seems an odd mixture of the feisty and the humble as he faces the press. Steeling himself against a slight case of "the shakes" (and wearing a small lapel button that says DESIRE ME) he explains, "it became necessary for me to outrage these people | Backed into apologizing, Elvis seems an odd mixture of the feisty and the humble as he faces the press. Steeling himself against a slight case of "the shakes" (and wearing a small lapel button that says DESIRE ME) he explains, "it became necessary for me to outrage these people [Bonnie Bramlett, [[Stephen Stills]] and their entourage] with the most offensive and obnoxious remarks I could muster to bring the argument to a swift conclusion and rid myself of their presence." | ||
Something disarmingly droll in Costello's manner almost lulls his questioners into sleep. The Village Voice's Richard Goldstein, though, yelps him down: "You made yourself unavailable. We couldn't reach you. You blame it on the press. We tried. It was you! It was you!" Critic [[Robert Christgau]] asks if Elvis was afraid to really apologize "because it's not your style." | Something disarmingly droll in Costello's manner almost lulls his questioners into sleep. The Village Voice's Richard Goldstein, though, yelps him down: "You made yourself unavailable. We couldn't reach you. You blame it on the press. We tried. It was you! It was you!" Critic [[Robert Christgau]] asks if Elvis was afraid to really apologize "because it's not your style." |
Revision as of 16:01, 29 April 2013
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