|
It may be a sign of middle age creeping in, but popular music seems to be producing fewer performers who mix talent and personality. Either one or the other can be found. But genuine characters — of the type the '60s and '70s threw up with an almost monotonous frequency — are rare. Pop music has become safer and more corporate orientated, and the great characters are simply being squeezed out.
Two that have transcended the artlessness of much modern music are Elvis Costello and Morrissey, English songwriters and singers, who have both maintained a great consistency and integrity in the face of the popular musical tide. They would disavow any similarity with the other, but they have many things in common: careers founded on songs about guilt and rejection, a, penchant for upsetting the press, quirky, oddball looks, a vociferous loathing of conservative Britain and Margaret Thatcher in particular, and most importantly, a gift for lyric-writing that ranges from witty and funny to morbid and cynical, and at times, piercingly true.
Not unfairly could they be called the poets of the punk generation, a generation of musicians led by Johnny Rotten's Sex Pistols, who rose up in rage and spitting fury against the apathy of pop music in the late 1970s.
Anglo-Irish Elvis Costello — real name Declan Patrick MacManus, son of a big band singer — was punk's angry young nerd. He emerged in the hothouse atmosphere of Britain's "punk summer," the Queen's Jubilee year of 1977. Earlier, he worked as a computer operator at an Elizabeth Arden cosmetics factory (the "vanity factory" of a Costello song), a job that gave him plenty of time to think and write songs. Looking like Buddy Holly dragged from his fatal air crash, he was the geek out for revenge, wearing black horn-rimmed glasses and singing spiky songs about rejection and impotence. He claimed to carry a little book with the names of the people who had frustrated his career.
His debut album, My Aim Is True, appeared just before Elvis Presley's death, with a sleeve that proclaimed repeatedly that "Elvis is King" (his major first interview with an English newspaper was published on August 16, 1977, the day Presley died). The songs caused a critical sensation. "I don't want to be your lover, I just want to be your victim," he sang.
In December 1978, Costello toured Australia for the first time (he is now on his sixth visit), refusing interviews, playing up a nasty image and provoking a riot at Sydney's Regent Theatre when he and his band, the Attractions, played for less than an hour. The audience of 2,100 ripped out seats and hurled them on to the stage and from the balcony to people below, along with missiles of cans and bottles. Costello explained that he had refused encores because the audience reaction was "too mechanical".
Costello was beginning to make inroads into the more conservative American market until an ugly incident in 1979 at a bar in Columbus, Ohio. He had a fist fight with Stephen Stills of soft rockers Crosby, Stills and Nash. Alleged racist remarks about Ray Charles outraged the "liberal" press, and probably killed off Costello's chances of becoming a big star in America.
Rather more mellow, almost cuddly, Elvis Costello is now in his late 30s. He has made records with such unlikely collaborators as Paul McCartney, Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, and (ironically) members of Elvis Presley's Taking Care of Business band, the sort of people his generation once called boring. Sometimes bearded, his appearance has softened and his Buddy Holly glasses have been replaced by a John Lennon-style pair. He lives in Ireland and is happily married — for a second time — to Cait O'Riordan of the Irish band the Pogues.
He maintains, however, a facility for the sharply observed lyric. His latest album, Mighty Like A Rose, contains a song called "Invasion Hit Parade" which satirises gung-ho American military operations such as the Panama invasion. Costello's highly personal lyrics have always been mixed with withering attacks on the mores of right-wing Britain.
With 15 albums behind him, Costello has established one of the most varied repertoires of any contemporary performer.
His 250 or so recorded songs have covered a gamut of styles, from country to funk, from blues to psychedelic ballads.
Chart success has been limited for most of his career, but like Bob Dylan, his influence extends well beyond that measuring stick.
|
