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The first time I met Elvis Costello was backstage after the Leeds Stiffs show, October '77.
Armed only with a Pentax for collateral, I went over to him and asked him to say cheese. He was happy to oblige; head tilted, glasses re-positioned, arms seemingly double-crossed, the entire pose was just so. "Too much, Elvis," I said. "How about something different over by the door?" Elvis said "Sure," went over to the door, and posed the same way.
He still poses the same way. Nothing has changed, except now he doesn't allow cameras to prove it.
Context: Far and away this country's most important alive-and-well performing musician, how can you blame Elvis for his manager's excesses? How can you blame Elvis when you see the guy you work with being kicked off stage for daring to attempt to photo Four Eyes?
Radioactively big, unavailable for interview, and no longer willing to put his photogenicity to the test, Blameless Elvis is well-aware that his is no ordinary talent. So aware, in fact, that his clinically methodical, dogged march to The Top, in search of a new mystique and toward the global syndication of his genius, is beginning to smack of pathos, not to mention deja vu. (This is one guy who's been reading too many Dylan biographies.)
Of course, Costello and The Attractions put in another unconditionally guaranteed performance here. As a modern music combo, they proved once again that they are peerless. It mattered little that Costello's huge repertoire of memorable classics was needlessly hurried, many of his songs' subtle nuances sacrificed because of his apparently obsessive desire to impress.
Opening with "Goon Squad" — in retrospect, very probably the concert's aesthetic highlight — Elvis went on to pace the set mechanically, obviously (a skill no doubt acquired in America), the serious stuff being inaugurated with "Oliver's Army." This, along with "Senior Service" (given a reggae treatment, grafted into "Detectives") was approached more deliberately and caringly. Even so, Costello dispensed with the "Dancing Queen" jolliness of the recorded "Oliver's Army" in favour of cool (and the Elvis of '77 would have had the forethought and the decency to have revised the lyrics to include the name of the local river).
And while the band's application was invariably impeccable (especially on "Green Shirt" and "The Beat") and often ingenious, it was self-evident that Costello was leaving the music on auto-pilot, more concerned with perfecting aspects of his stage presence than delivering with what we used to call "feeling."
"This Year's Girl," "Big Boys" and "Big Tears" (originally a throwaway B side) were all thrown away in Costello's apparent rush to get to Coventry. From there on in, there were no surprises. "You Belong To Me" and "Pump It Up" ended the scheduled set with total audience endorsement, but the encores — "Chelsea" and "Radio, Radio" — were, respectively, lifeless and frenetic. Both the lyrical quality and the essential dynamic of the recorded version of the latter were negated, swamped by the band's mental stampede for the way out.
It was rock 'n' roll, and the punters who were lucky enough to get tickets could have wanted no more — except more of the same. But the Costello Masterplan, chronicled so well on Model and Armed Forces is neither consolidated nor enhanced through live performance. Costello's virtuosity is verified, his ego is superficially fulfilled, but for Costello, these are the small-potato facets of Achievement.
For the record, this is no backlash, if only because (thankfully) there can never be an effective backlash against someone whose talent is not arguable. The criticism voiced by Costellologists (count me in) can only flatter Costello's single-mindedness, and reinforce his vision and sense of self-importance.
Costello has already begun to dominate the rock epoch which he helped to create, but the best is yet to come: when he learns to straighten out his public image, the world will be up for grabs.
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