Sounds, March 1, 1986: Difference between revisions
m (formatting) |
(add more transcribed text) |
||
Line 73: | Line 73: | ||
“I considered it, but you have to understand the folk-singer prejudice that exists. People expect it to sound like something else. It’s very hard to make a record with very few instruments on it these days. People associate it with another time, and they don’t really listen to the record at all. The minute certain people hear any kind of country inflection on the record, they won’t listen to the song at all. It’s as if it’s a mortal sin. | “I considered it, but you have to understand the folk-singer prejudice that exists. People expect it to sound like something else. It’s very hard to make a record with very few instruments on it these days. People associate it with another time, and they don’t really listen to the record at all. The minute certain people hear any kind of country inflection on the record, they won’t listen to the song at all. It’s as if it’s a mortal sin. | ||
“Like | “Like ‘[[Our Little Angel]]’ – the chorus sounds like it might have come out of a country song, but the verse doesn’t. They’re ''my songs''. I borrowed some mannerisms from some traditional styles of music, but they’re my songs. Nobody else could have written them.” | ||
“I think | Costello speaks a truth that might be harsh for himself. Out of the simple materials of verse and chorus and language, he’s carved this closed-off brilliance . For all its clarity and mastery of the form, ‘''King Of America''’ doesn’t seem like something you make friends with. Only when he has fun, in the record’s two covers, does the fist unclench. | ||
“I think ‘[[Eisenhower Blues]]’ is hilarious. My records often have little traps for critics to step into, and that’s one – I was waiting for someone to go , Here we go, the English blues revival, or something. That’s one of the joys of this not entirely comfortable relationship I have with the music press. Interviewers and reviewers want their prejudices confirmed. They’ve framed questions in such a way that it’s impossible to answer without subscribing to their prejudice.” | |||
He grins his messy smile and perches his head on one side. | He grins his messy smile and perches his head on one side. | ||
Line 83: | Line 84: | ||
“Eisenhower Blues” is just fun, especially this year. I could have written a very heavy song about the retrogressive moral and political aspects of America, but I’d rather get drunk and sing ‘Eisenhower Blues’ just for a laff. And it swings. I’d dance to it in my personal disco.” | “Eisenhower Blues” is just fun, especially this year. I could have written a very heavy song about the retrogressive moral and political aspects of America, but I’d rather get drunk and sing ‘Eisenhower Blues’ just for a laff. And it swings. I’d dance to it in my personal disco.” | ||
WHEN SONGS are so literate – so full of words – we inevitably read a lot into and out of them. | |||
It’s an absorbing game, going through Costello’s records: with every character either naked or armed to the teeth with morals and worse, every phrase loaded, it’s sublime guesswork as to whether ‘he’ is in there. Except, every so often, it’s as though Costello pauses in his dismantling of vicilvsation and something personal comes out. | |||
On the phantasmic ‘''Imperial Bedroom''’, it happened when you got to ‘''Almost Blue''’. In ‘''King Of America''’, it happens – perhaps – when you reach ‘[[I'll Wear It Proudly|I’ll Wear It Proudly]]’. | |||
“Well, to some extent. It’s not so much as I’m standing aside in the other songs and then it’s personal – that could just be the most personal moment. It’s up to you how you react to the way I write. ‘I’ll Wear It Proudly’ is the most open, unqualified love song I’ve ever written. What’s the big surprise about that being the most personal thing? You’re not seeing mirages. But to someone else, it might be a different moment. Otherwise it might as well be a 12-incher with one song on it.” | |||
Perhaps it’s rather easy for this Elvis to be angry, passionate, bursting with well-chosen venom. | |||
“Is it? You tell me. Could you have written this album?” | |||
No, I don’t write songs. | |||
“I turn it on and off, but I don’t want to waste my anger on things that are unworthy. I’d end up like those people who walk round with carrier bags on their heads yelling at traffic. What’s the point of that?” | |||
No point. But we’re impaled again on our image of Elvis Costello, fashioned as far back as ‘[[Miracle Man]]’ and ‘[[Less Than Zero]]’. So when a change – or at least a refocusing, a quick sharpening – is manifested in ‘''King Of America''’, what do we do? | |||
“It’s just there. The songs are what they appear to be.” | |||
And maybe we’re obliged to interpret them just so. The slowness, the laziness of rock writing and plain rock interpretation is crystallised in Costello: he’s always “savage”, always “bitter”, always “railing” against something. Or so most of the ‘KOM’ reviews would have it. No wonder we get hung up on the “death of Elvis”. But Declan can’t be bothered to care. | |||
“This is the critical conceit. Most people make up their own minds – they don’t give a damn about what you like. Nobody cares that much about the critical perspective. It’s just information. Your feelings are important to you, but – it’s just records, just music.” | |||
Ah, I supposed this isn’t what we want to hear from a man who pushes words and music around with such angry care and attention. | |||
“You’re saying that that critical perception of what I do is limited to a few things. Well, that’s the critic’s fault. I consciously left the negative emotions off this record – which isn’t to say I don’t have them. I have a reputation for writing those sort of songs, something really spiteful. I have written quite a lot like that, and in the context of this album it would have drawn attention away from ‘I’ll Wear It Proudly’, which is a kind of song I’ve never written before. | |||
“I might make two and a half more records this year,” he says calmly. “Two albums and one little album. I’ve got 75 per cent of the material. I’ve got an entire album’s worth of material I’m going to record next month, and another half an album I could do in the autumn, plus another small thing I’ll be contributing to. So I don’t know when I’ll play live again. I certainly won’t play for three-and-a-half-hours any more. I’ll probably play for 20 or 30 minutes and do like I did when I started, just play the eight songs that seemed like the most important matter of life and death that night. | |||
“I think live shows and records should be more of an event. This record is an event – I don’t give a damn if it sells millions, but I’d like it to. I can’t afford to make at least one of the records I want to make until I sell millions of records. It would be too expensive. This one was expensive.” | |||
How much money does he make? | |||
“I’ve no idea.” | |||
That what I say, too. The rich man’s answer. | |||
“I’m not rich. I’m not poor, either.” | |||
{{cx}} | {{cx}} | ||
Revision as of 15:22, 21 August 2015
|