|
One man's fame and fortune has a way of making another man eat his words; all that bread going around makes for a good sandwich. America's NBC network made a veritable buffet of their words recently when they sat Elvis Costello opposite veteran talk-show host Tom Snyder for his second live TV appearance.
The first was on NBC's Saturday Night Live show which Elvis found was not so live when he upset the station by swapping "Radio, Radio" for his scheduled song. They told him, "You'll never work again." And now here he is at one in the morning LA time making a spectacle of himself.
Tom Snyder is an ageing Russell Harty type who guffaws at his own (bad) jokes, leans forward so he can touch his guest intimately while his hairy-caterpillar eyebrows pump up and down like newlyweds with no sense of direction, says "heck" and "golly" and "for pete's sake" a lot and knows absolutely nothing about music. (When Wings were on he had a video of them in action then asked Mrs Linda how long she'd been playing guitar!)
Elvis had been warned about the eyebrows and matched our Tom twitch for twitch, adding a few impromptu ones of his own — he seemed nervous, the old cold-sweat-on-the-forehead bit, but was otherwise sweet, articulate and much funnier than Snyder could ever be — though saying at the end he was disappointed that Tom didn't return the compliment and do his "funny legs." Maybe it was because he wasn't wearing such a snazzy suit as Elv.
"Do you rebel when record companies tell you to do the new product?" asked Tom after Elvis played one of two songs from Trust.
"Well that was before we persuaded them that that isn't the way we work," said Costello with a mysterious smile. "After a little gentle persuasion we've got a much better understanding on those matters now."
After some beating about the bush, Tom brought up the matter of Elvis's "angry young man" image, asking if he'd learned to "channel your energies and not get angry at situations."
"Do I look angry?" said our hero, adding, "to be really straight about it, some of the time it was nerves — that tends to make you more aggressive. Other times it was righteous, particularly when we first came here and we might have just landed from Mars the way people looked at us. We were genuinely trying to put it over forcefully, and the complacency that was in music at that time — which is not to say that it's got any better, because it's not getting better at all — that was the way we felt at the time, and I just want to present a wider picture now.
"So inevitably you get some people say, 'Oooh, you sold out and you've gone mellow' — god no! I don't think that at all. I'm just trying to present a more complete picture because you have 20 years to write your first album and you have six months to write your second one, so I want to present a clearer picture of a person."
"I guess what I'm asking, Mr Costello," Tom leans forward, "is if in the years that you've now been in the business as a big star, you've learned to accept, ah, certain situations and get along with certain kinds of individuals who may want to put an arm around you because of your talent."
"Oh no," says El, "I have no intention of that."
"Have you just matured?"
"What a horrible word that is, 'matured'. I'm not in the business to mature, I don't think. It makes me sound like sort of cheese or something."
More like fine wines, squirms Snyder to Elvis's response of "you flatterer you." Says Tom, it gets him everywhere. Adds Elvis, "Fine wine generally does."
Delving into his past, Tom asks him about computer programming and whether rock is more fun.
Elvis says, "I was actually a computer operator. I was just a button pusher. I can't even work a calculator."
He said he gave it up because "when I actually had to think, it interfered with me reading magazines." And writing songs.
"Was it frustrating?" said Tom.
"Yes," said Elvis. "But it's all very well for me to sit here and be smug about it because I've got a record contract now and I can put out records and if I don't I suppose they send the boys round or something."
He related his tale of going to every record company in England, "including the company that I'm signed with in America and the one I'm signed with in England, and obviously I just didn't present myself — possibly due to the fact that I'm a big fan of those old films where they go in and say" — Al Jolson arms, Bogart voice — "Have I got a song for you! I actually believed you could do that. I'd make these embarrassed executives sit down and I'd get a guitar out and say, 'Well what do you think of this song' and I'd play it to them. They were used to getting demo tapes and then they could put these polite slips in the mail and most of them only got seen by the secretary, and I did actually force a few people to be bored for 20 minutes in between taking phone calls.
"It's particularly embarrassing when you're in the middle of a song and you really think you're convincing the guy when suddenly the phone goes and he goes, 'Yes yes darling, I'll be home around eight, lamb casserole would be great'."
He's got no clout with the 'businessmen' at the record companies so he tells all the kids who give him tapes to 'just keep knocking at the door till you get an answer.'
Tom launched into a sympathetic spiel (he loves to tell his guests "I'm just like you" — even when it's B.B. King!) about how people ask him for jobs, and you and me, Elvis, have enough trouble keeping our jobs.
"I don't actually," says Elvis.
"I'll check with you in 22 years and see how it's going," bitches an upset Tom.
He's asked about his heroes — "A while ago they did a programme called Heroes Of Rock And Roll and that's a contradiction in terms."
He revealed a love for Cole Porter and said, "I think I could work a record player before I could walk. Now I can barely do both at the same time."
And he spoke about his Dad while Tom gushed in an all-American way, "Do you love your pop?"
"I used to play with him sometimes but I could never get in tune," said Elvis. "He plays more dates a year than I do — social clubs and football, soccer, supporters clubs and things like that. He works really hard."
He 'hopes' his pop is proud of him, he tells the ever-probing Snyder, concluding, "If he isn't he hasn't told me. He actually discouraged me from getting into his business," twitching his eyebrows above his glasses furiously a la Tom, while Snyder garbles on about how much fun this was and how he was worried it wouldn't be (this man after all did interview John Lydon on his show not so long ago!)
All in all a very eyebrow performance.
| 
