Spin, May 1989: Difference between revisions
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<center><h3> The man who would be king </h3></center> | <center><h3> The man who would be king </h3></center> | ||
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<center> Christian Logan Wright </center> | <center> Christian Logan Wright </center> | ||
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'''At 33, Elvis Costello is the most important songwriter of his generation. Through 12 years of setting smokescreens, he's done his best to hide this. He's been a punk, a joker, a riddler and a brilliant mistake. But we'll always think of him as Elvis. | |||
{{Bibliography text}} | {{Bibliography text}} | ||
Elvis Costello bursts into the Park Avenue hotel suite mumbling "Hello," looking back over his shoulder to make sure his wife Cait O'Riordan is still following him. Her face hidden by a mass of dark hair, she looks only at him. He peers over the rim of this year's glasses and, taking laughably large, flat-footed steps, approaches, hand extended. "Careful," he says. "I might give you a shock." | Elvis Costello bursts into the Park Avenue hotel suite mumbling "Hello," looking back over his shoulder to make sure his wife Cait O'Riordan is still following him. Her face hidden by a mass of dark hair, she looks only at him. He peers over the rim of this year's glasses and, taking laughably large, flat-footed steps, approaches, hand extended. "Careful," he says. "I might give you a shock." | ||
Born August 25, 1955, the son of a jazz trumpeter, Declan Patrick MacManus grew up in working-class Liverpool, where he read the music weeklies because he couldn't afford to go to shows. In 1977, a 22-year-old malcontent with a wife, a kid, and an album's worth of songs recorded on sick days away from his computer job, he went to London and played in the street outside a CBS Records convention, hoping to get signed to a major label. | Born August 25, 1955, the son of a jazz trumpeter, Declan Patrick MacManus grew up in working-class Liverpool, where he read the music weeklies because he couldn't afford to go to shows. In 1977, a 22-year-old malcontent with a wife, a kid, and an album's worth of songs recorded on sick days away from his computer job, he went to London and played in the street outside a CBS Records convention, hoping to get signed to a major label. | ||
He released ''My Aim Is True'', checkerboard cover framing a hostile geek calling himself Elvis Costello (he got the name late one night, drunk off his head in a pub, from manager | He released ''My Aim Is True'', checkerboard cover framing a hostile geek calling himself Elvis Costello (he got the name late one night, drunk off his head in a pub, from manager Jake Riviera) and spitting things like, ''"Why do you have to say that there's always someone who can do it better than I can."'' The stage was set; the script boiled with dissatisfaction, sexual insecurity, political atrocity, the rage of a passionate boy in complacent company; and the actor was well-suited. | ||
There's a table in the corner of the hotel suite with coffee and Perrier water on it. Elvis and Cait are fooling around, whispering to each other; she pours some Perrier water on him and giggles while he says, "Oh, that's a very rock 'n' roll thing to do." They moon about like they've got a secret. Elvis takes his coffee black and sits down on the end of the sofa. Cait, in an over-sized black sweater covering her four-month stomach, curls up at the other end, sniggering through the pages of a paperback novel, never saying a word. | There's a table in the corner of the hotel suite with coffee and Perrier water on it. Elvis and Cait are fooling around, whispering to each other; she pours some Perrier water on him and giggles while he says, "Oh, that's a very rock 'n' roll thing to do." They moon about like they've got a secret. Elvis takes his coffee black and sits down on the end of the sofa. Cait, in an over-sized black sweater covering her four-month stomach, curls up at the other end, sniggering through the pages of a paperback novel, never saying a word. | ||
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''But, but... | ''But, but... | ||
I don't want to read a book about Prince. I want to listen to one of his records. I want to listen to Duke Ellington, I don't want to analyze him. The only point to all of this is just to tell people where to go and get it, it's like a signpost, the rest of it's just nonsense. I really do believe that. I can't agree with it. It's just wacky. | I don't want to read a book about Prince. I want to listen to one of his records. I want to ''listen'' to Duke Ellington, I don't want to analyze him. The only point to all of this is just to tell people where to go and get it, it's like a signpost, the rest of it's just nonsense. I really do believe that. I can't agree with it. It's just wacky. | ||
''On Spike you worked with a lot of people: Paul McCartney, Chrissie Hynde, Alien Toussaint. Has anyone ever turned you down on a project? | ''On Spike you worked with a lot of people: Paul McCartney, Chrissie Hynde, Alien Toussaint. Has anyone ever turned you down on a project? | ||
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''When working with other people on a song, like "Deep Dark Truthful Mirror," which is full of surreal, non-sequitur images, has anyone directly involved ever questioned the lyrics? | ''When working with other people on a song, like "Deep Dark Truthful Mirror," which is full of surreal, non-sequitur images, has anyone directly involved ever questioned the lyrics? | ||
No. I showed everybody the lyrics and I explained it in simple terms. I used to just put lyrics down and say, "The hell with whether people think this is stupid, because I'm taking a chance here by saying something in a strange way." But with "Deep Dark Truthful Mirror," I demystified the lyric by explaining very, very simplistically, so there was absolutely no ambiguity in the meaning of it. I said, "Here's a drunk guy, he's on his way home, he won't go home, he's chasing something that isn't there. He won't admit his problem and he starts to hallucinate." It's a simple thing. Now, if I wrote that on the sleeve it would take away some of the mystery, and stop people from going, "Well what the hell does it mean, 'butterfly drinks a turtle's tears'?" You know, "Jesus wept, he felt abandoned." | No. I showed everybody the lyrics and I explained it in simple terms. I used to just put lyrics down and say, "The hell with whether people think this is stupid, because I'm taking a chance here by saying something in a strange way." But with "Deep Dark Truthful Mirror," I demystified the lyric by explaining very, very simplistically, so there was absolutely no ambiguity in the meaning of it. I said, "Here's a drunk guy, he's on his way home, he won't go home, he's chasing something that isn't there. He won't admit his problem and he starts to hallucinate." It's a simple thing. Now, if I wrote that on the sleeve it would take away some of the mystery, and stop people from going, "Well what the hell does it mean, <i>'butterfly drinks a turtle's tears'</i>?" You know, ''"Jesus wept, he felt abandoned."'' | ||
You have to leave space in the room for people's imagination to run around in. I make no apology for using those images, 'cause they're very striking. I mean, what am I supposed to have? A voice that goes [whispering with hands cupped round his mouth], "And then he started to hallucinate." Wouldn't that spoil it? Isn't that kind of treating people like children? | You have to leave space in the room for people's imagination to run around in. I make no apology for using those images, 'cause they're very striking. I mean, what am I supposed to have? A voice that goes [whispering with hands cupped round his mouth], "And then he started to hallucinate." Wouldn't that spoil it? Isn't that kind of treating people like children? | ||
But sometimes when you've got the musicians who are concentrating on the musical interpretation of it, you have to explain it in the most simplistic terms so it's not hidden to anybody. You have to be slightly disparaging about your own lyric so the music can really do its job. | But sometimes when you've got the musicians who are concentrating on the musical interpretation of it, you have to explain it in the most simplistic terms so it's not hidden to anybody. You have to be slightly disparaging about your own lyric so the music can really do its job. | ||
Say with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, they don't enter until the first chorus. The guy is marching down and down this chord sequence; it's quite literal. And just at the point where he's at the most down point in each verse they enter like somebody picking him up again off the floor. They have the effect to my ears of sounding like they're picking this guy up, but only to look at his own reflection. And then in the last verse, where the hallucinations begin, they start to wind through the chords and do all these slurs: they slide between the chords. That's using the music in a visual way. I do see these things when we're arranging stuff. They've got such a — rich isn't the right word — such a grainy sound that it makes it not easy to understand, but easy to feel what's happening. Which is probably better than understanding it completely literally, | Say with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, they don't enter until the first chorus. The guy is marching down and down this chord sequence; it's quite literal. And just at the point where he's at the most down point in each verse they enter like somebody picking him up again off the floor. They have the effect to my ears of sounding like they're picking this guy up, but only to look at his own reflection. And then in the last verse, where the hallucinations begin, they start to wind through the chords and do all these slurs: they slide between the chords. That's using the music in a visual way. I do see these things when we're arranging stuff. They've got such a — rich isn't the right word — such a grainy sound that it makes it not easy to understand, but easy to feel what's happening. Which is probably better than understanding it completely literally, because it isn't literal. It's hallucination. | ||
''What do you think is the most a song can accomplish? | ''What do you think is the most a song can accomplish? | ||
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''Yes. Why write them? | ''Yes. Why write them? | ||
I've no idea. The most? I've no idea. "The Stars and Stripes Forever" really gets people going. So does "The Red Flag," so did "Faith of Our Father" or pop records, really I don't know. Sociologists will point at certain songs and say, "This changed the world, 'Rock Around The Clock' changed the world." | I've no idea. The most? I've no idea. "The Stars and Stripes Forever" really gets people going. So does "The Red Flag," so did "Faith of Our Father" or pop records, really I don't know. Sociologists will point at certain songs and say, "This changed the world, 'Rock Around The Clock' changed the world." "I Wanna Hold Your Hand." And then other people in their own little area will swear blind that some little folk singer that's going round now has changed the world, or Public Enemy has changed the world. | ||
I produced "Free Nelson Mandela" by Special AKA. That achieved ''something'' because it actually increased the size of the Anti-Apartheid Movement in England. That record came out of the blue. It didn't come out of a firmament of opinion about apartheid, it was just Jerry Dammers's act of will to put the song together. He printed the address of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, and it really did cause a big influx of letters and inquiries about the matter. Now, it hasn't achieved its objective because that would appear to be to free Nelson Mandela. But it did achieve something which maybe in the long run will be a tiny little like boomblock. | |||
The arrogance of pop music is that you can do everything in one gesture, like Live Aid or the Mandela "Freedomfest" or the Amnesty tour. What happens is the bandwagon leaves town and the problem remains. That's the sad thing. Live Aid saved some people one year for them to starve the next. I'm not saying we shouldn't do the things, 'cause they help put the information out, but we shouldn't kid ourselves. | The arrogance of pop music is that you can do everything in one gesture, like Live Aid or the Mandela "Freedomfest" or the Amnesty tour. What happens is the bandwagon leaves town and the problem remains. That's the sad thing. Live Aid saved some people one year for them to starve the next. I'm not saying we shouldn't do the things, 'cause they help put the information out, but we shouldn't kid ourselves. | ||
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''It seems to me that you've never been intentionally obscure in your writing, but you've been often misunderstood. Have you ever thought, after writing a lyric, "This will definitely be misconstrued," and gone ahead with it anyway? | ''It seems to me that you've never been intentionally obscure in your writing, but you've been often misunderstood. Have you ever thought, after writing a lyric, "This will definitely be misconstrued," and gone ahead with it anyway? | ||
No. [pause] No, I can't of any occasion where I've really been thinking that people are going to misconstrue it. That would be kind of strange to do that. I acknowledge the limitations of songs and still take risks within those limitations, more than I did a few years ago where I just went ahead and did it anyway and just hoped for the best. Some of the songs that I think are good songs but aren't good records on Goodbye Cruel World, or are pretty good records on Imperial Bedroom, are the most experimental lyrics that I've written — like attempting to use lyrics where not everything is clear and that [clarity] isn't the | No. [pause] No, I can't of any occasion where I've really been thinking that people are going to misconstrue it. That would be kind of strange to do that. I acknowledge the limitations of songs and still take risks within those limitations, more than I did a few years ago where I just went ahead and did it anyway and just hoped for the best. Some of the songs that I think are good songs but aren't good records on ''Goodbye Cruel World'', or are pretty good records on ''Imperial Bedroom'', are the most experimental lyrics that I've written — like attempting to use lyrics where not everything is clear and that [clarity] isn't the intention. They're deliberately out of focus. I just did it without worrying about whether it worked or not. I suppose as you get a little bit more experience you start to be able to get like a song like "Satellite," where it's a very big story and, like a writer that writes a story would do an outline, you start to become more aware of the technical limitations of songs. And then willfully go ahead and try to put something into a song which really is too big to be in a song. But I think it's worth the risk because if you put enough information and enough images in to tell the story to your own satisfaction, a listener — one that's prepared to listen for six minutes, you know, but there aren't too many — can get the whole story; it's all there to be put together. Or they can make an even better story out of it because they've got their own imagination. | ||
Talking about it always makes it sound much duller. Describing making a record is never as much fun as it is to do it. 'Cause you have this high-wire act going on: "Are we gonna fall off at any moment?" Same with writing a song. You've no idea when you start whether you're gonna get it done unless it's something very very simple and very definite like a "Let Him Dangle" type song. Where you've got a story, you've got to get that information across, and you don't need lots of ambiguity, lots of clever phrasing of the subject, you need to say it. Or like "Tramp the Dirt Down," which you mentioned at the beginning, where it just comes out as a reaction to the way you feel about something and there's nothing much you can do about it. You don't try and balance it up and make it a nice reasonable argument. I don't want it to be a nice fucking argument, I want it to be horrible. I don't even want it to be anything. It just is. Some things just are. | Talking about it always makes it sound much duller. Describing making a record is never as much fun as it is to do it. 'Cause you have this high-wire act going on: "Are we gonna fall off at any moment?" Same with writing a song. You've no idea when you start whether you're gonna get it done unless it's something very very simple and very definite like a "Let Him Dangle" type song. Where you've got a story, you've got to get that information across, and you don't need lots of ambiguity, lots of clever phrasing of the subject, you need to say it. Or like "Tramp the Dirt Down," which you mentioned at the beginning, where it just comes out as a reaction to the way you feel about something and there's nothing much you can do about it. You don't try and balance it up and make it a nice reasonable argument. I don't want it to be a nice fucking argument, I want it to be horrible. I don't even want it to be anything. It just is. Some things just are. | ||
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''Does it make you happy, what you do? | ''Does it make you happy, what you do? | ||
Yeah! I'm having a ball. It's better than being down a mine. I went for a job as an Admiralty Chart Corrector, the first job I ever went for. Do you know what that is? They have these government offices and they get all the charts off ships and you get tracings from the Admiralty, the naval authority, and you have to lay them over the charts of the waterways, and if there's been any new wrecks or any changes in the | Yeah! I'm having a ball. It's better than being down a mine. I went for a job as an Admiralty Chart Corrector, the first job I ever went for. Do you know what that is? They have these government offices and they get all the charts off ships and you get tracings from the Admiralty, the naval authority, and you have to lay them over the charts of the waterways, and if there's been any new wrecks or any changes in the sandbanks or the passages you have to trace them over. Fortunately, 'cause my handwriting is so bad, because I'm left-handed, I didn't get the job. I could still be in this Dickensian office in Liverpool. Then I got a job in computers, I could still be doing that. I used to work in a bank, they used to give me a whistle and say, "When they deliver the money, you stand outside and if there's a robbery you blow the whistle." Now, who do you think they shoot first in a bank robbery? | ||
''The whistle blower. | ''The whistle blower. | ||
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Yeah [laughs], what do you think? This is not all that hard. This is actually very easy, this job. And sometimes it's monotonous: touring can be monotonous and people start to feel very sorry for themselves. It's better than working for anyone is what I think. | Yeah [laughs], what do you think? This is not all that hard. This is actually very easy, this job. And sometimes it's monotonous: touring can be monotonous and people start to feel very sorry for themselves. It's better than working for anyone is what I think. | ||
I see making records as separate from selling records. I don't feel that my job is over, really, in terms of this record. Like tonight I'm going on television to sing a song from it, then we're going on tour, and we'll play some of the songs. And right now we're talking about what would hopefully be some sort of signpost towards the record, to get people interested. Beyond that it serves no other meaning, except it fills up a magazine, which in itself should be some kind of entertainment, I suppose. When I used to buy them that's what they were. I didn't think it was philosophy. | I see making records as separate from selling records. I don't feel that my job is over, really, in terms of this record. Like tonight I'm going on television to sing a song from it, then we're going on tour, and we'll play some of the songs. And right now we're talking about what would hopefully be some sort of signpost towards the record, to get people interested. Beyond that it serves no other meaning, except it fills up a magazine, which in itself should be some kind of entertainment, I suppose. When I used to buy them that's what they were. I didn't think it was philosophy. | ||
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{{Bibliography images}} | {{Bibliography images}} | ||
[[image:1989-05-00 Spin cover.jpg| | [[image:1989-05-00 Spin cover.jpg|360px|border]] | ||
<br><small> | <br><small>Photo by [[Christopher Kehoe]].</small> | ||
[[image:1989-05-00 Spin page 44.jpg|x220px|border]][[image:1989-05-00 Spin page 45.jpg|x220px|border]] | |||
<br><small>Page scans.</small> | |||
[[image:1989-05-00 Spin | [[image:1989-05-00 Spin page 46.jpg|x220px|border]][[image:1989-05-00 Spin page 49.jpg|x220px|border]] | ||
<br><small> | <br><small>Page scans.</small> | ||
[[image:1989-05-00 Spin page 93.jpg|x220px|border]] | |||
<br><small>Page scan.</small> | |||
<small>Contents page photo by [[Christopher Kehoe]].</small><br> | |||
[[image:1989-05-00 Spin photo 01 ck.jpg|360px|border]] | |||
<small>Photo by [[Laura Levine]].</small><br> | |||
[[image:1989-05-00 Spin photo 02 ll.jpg|360px|border]] | |||
{{Bibliography notes footer}} | {{Bibliography notes footer}} | ||
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==External links== | ==External links== | ||
*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_(magazine) Wikipedia: Spin magazine] | *[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_(magazine) Wikipedia: Spin magazine] | ||
*[https://www.spin.com/featured/elvis-costello-spike-may-1989-cover-story-the-man-who-would-be-king/ Spin.com] | |||
*[http://www.elviscostello.info/articles/s/sp8905a.html elviscostello.info] | *[http://www.elviscostello.info/articles/s/sp8905a.html elviscostello.info] | ||
*[http://www.lauralevine.com/photography/gallery.php LauraLevine.com] | |||
{{DEFAULTSORT:Spin 1989-05-00}} | |||
[[Category:Bibliography 1989 | [[Category:Bibliography]] | ||
[[Category:Bibliography 1989]] | |||
[[Category:Spin| Spin 1989-05-00]] | [[Category:Spin| Spin 1989-05-00]] | ||
[[Category:Magazine articles | [[Category:Magazine articles]] | ||
[[Category:Interviews | [[Category:Interviews]] | ||
[[Category:1989 interviews]] |
Revision as of 19:38, 26 November 2019
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