Performing Songwriter, January 1999: Difference between revisions
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<center><h3> The | <center><h3> The distinctive core of Elvis Costello </h3></center> | ||
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<center> Robert Wilonsky </center> | <center> Robert Wilonsky </center> | ||
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{{Bibliography text}} | {{Bibliography text}} | ||
Elvis Costello (born Declan MacManus) has spent the better part of the 1990s trying to outrun his past, to escape those old photos of a pigeon-toed, knock-kneed punk staring down the world through Buddy Holly rims as he sang those old songs about "revenge and guilt." For a while, he refused to play the old favorites, deleted "Alison" and "Watching the Detectives" and "Pump It Up" and "Radio, Radio" from his sets. Instead, he performed songs from 1989's ''Spike'' and '91's ''Mighty Like a Rose'', and audiences found no pleasure in such claustrophobic, bitter songs as "So Like Candy," "All Grown Up," the cacophonous "Hurry Down Doomsday," even "Veronica," the closest thing he has had to a hit in the U.S. in a decade. They scoffed when he appeared on magazine covers with Jerry Garcia, looking so much like the Grateful Dead leader you couldn't tell the two apart. The faithful felt betrayed. | |||
Elvis Costello (born Declan MacManus) has spent the better part of the 1990s trying to outrun his past, to escape those old photos of a pigeon-toed, knock-kneed punk staring down the world through Buddy Holly rims as he sang those old songs about "revenge and guilt." For a while, he refused to play the old favorites, deleted "Alison" and "Watching the Detectives" and "Pump It Up" and "Radio Radio" from his sets. Instead, he performed songs from 1989's ''Spike'' and '91's ''Mighty Like a Rose'', and audiences found no pleasure in such claustrophobic, bitter songs as "So Like Candy" | |||
Which didn't bother Costello so much. He stopped playing rock and roll for a long while, recording in 1993 a strings-and-vocals album with the Brodsky Quartet; titled ''The Juliet Letters'', it was a subtle, lovely triumph — and it remains among the poorest-selling of all his records, and the most reviled by even his staunchest admirers and apologists. He would also, in time, record a track with the Jazz Passengers, another with the gospel-singing angels of the Fairfield Four, and appear as vocalist on John Harle's classical gem ''Terror + Magnificence''. He showed up on MTV singing George Gershwin with Tony Bennett, recorded a live import-only album with jazz guitarist Bill Frisell that featured a song by Charles Mingus and a cover of "Gigi," and joined mezzo-soprano Anne Sophie van Otter on a Swedish stage. | Which didn't bother Costello so much. He stopped playing rock and roll for a long while, recording in 1993 a strings-and-vocals album with the Brodsky Quartet; titled ''The Juliet Letters'', it was a subtle, lovely triumph — and it remains among the poorest-selling of all his records, and the most reviled by even his staunchest admirers and apologists. He would also, in time, record a track with the Jazz Passengers, another with the gospel-singing angels of the Fairfield Four, and appear as vocalist on John Harle's classical gem ''Terror + Magnificence''. He showed up on MTV singing George Gershwin with Tony Bennett, recorded a live import-only album with jazz guitarist Bill Frisell that featured a song by Charles Mingus and a cover of "Gigi," and joined mezzo-soprano Anne Sophie van Otter on a Swedish stage. | ||
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''It always seemed to me that you would have preferred to have been Cole Porter and Frank Sinatra... | ''It always seemed to me that you would have preferred to have been Cole Porter and Frank Sinatra... | ||
Absolutely, if only you could be! What a sex life you would have had! But no, | Absolutely, if only you could be! What a sex life you would have had! But no, I don't ever want to be somebody else. But to be perfectly honest, and this may be a more fashionable thing to say but it hasn't been in the past, I certainly don't think music begins and ends with rock and roll. It never did. | ||
''It has always surprised me when people refer to you as a rock and roll artist, as though you're one thing and nothing else, forever locked in that cage. Certainly rock, punk, whatever, is part of your body of work, but with Almost Blue and the Brodsky Quartet album and the collaborations with John Harle and the Chieftains and Charles Brown and Chet Baker, it seems that your palette is as big as music itself. | ''It has always surprised me when people refer to you as a rock and roll artist, as though you're one thing and nothing else, forever locked in that cage. Certainly rock, punk, whatever, is part of your body of work, but with Almost Blue and the Brodsky Quartet album and the collaborations with John Harle and the Chieftains and Charles Brown and Chet Baker, it seems that your palette is as big as music itself. | ||
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''Do you even have the desire to make a so-called rock record again, something like Brutal Youth or its many predecessors? | ''Do you even have the desire to make a so-called rock record again, something like Brutal Youth or its many predecessors? | ||
I didn't think Brutal Youth was like anything that had been done before. I was aware that the basic musical premise was those four guys playing in a studio together, using very little or no additional orchestration and just a few instruments we may not have had access to initially. There was a tremendous difference in age and experience that went between that record and Blood | I didn't think ''Brutal Youth'' was like anything that had been done before. I was aware that the basic musical premise was those four guys playing in a studio together, using very little or no additional orchestration and just a few instruments we may not have had access to initially. There was a tremendous difference in age and experience that went between that record and ''Blood & Chocolate'', and ''Blood & Chocolate'' and the first record we made together. It was like checking it out against the blueprint, going back and saying, "Let's have a look at the blueprint, let's see if we can get another sort of building out of it." And we did, and it's a good record. The good things about it were perhaps some of the more ambitious songs, and we carried that idea over into ''All This Useless Beauty''. | ||
And I would have liked to have seen that group make a very successful record. I thought that record could have been All This Useless Beauty, but the political climate in the record industry was such that there was more or less chaos, and there was no will on Warner Brothers' part to get behind it. And at that point, I just lost all confidence in them and extracted myself from the deal. Since then, I've given up managing myself. It's very tiring to be arguing with record executives about things you can't control, because they have a secret agenda and they have to answer to people who own them who run their company, who want the company to fit into a corporate plan that nobody understands — certainly nobody in the creative world of music understands. | And I would have liked to have seen that group make a very successful record. I thought that record could have been ''All This Useless Beauty'', but the political climate in the record industry was such that there was more or less chaos, and there was no will on Warner Brothers' part to get behind it. And at that point, I just lost all confidence in them and extracted myself from the deal. Since then, I've given up managing myself. It's very tiring to be arguing with record executives about things you can't control, because they have a secret agenda and they have to answer to people who own them who run their company, who want the company to fit into a corporate plan that nobody understands — certainly nobody in the creative world of music understands. | ||
''What do you hope to get out of Painted from Memory? What are your expectations of it, for lack of a better word? | ''What do you hope to get out of Painted from Memory? What are your expectations of it, for lack of a better word? | ||
I don't have any particular illusions about it; it won't outsell Thriller. But I see no reason why it can't reach a wide audience. If people hear it, they generally like it. That's been the impression so far. But it's like, what's the problem? They're great songs, I'm singing well, it's got some great arrangements. It's just a matter of hearing it. | I don't have any particular illusions about it; it won't outsell ''Thriller''. But I see no reason why it can't reach a wide audience. If people hear it, they generally like it. That's been the impression so far. But it's like, what's the problem? They're great songs, I'm singing well, it's got some great arrangements. It's just a matter of hearing it. | ||
The degree to which there are other impulses in the business, where we know what good music is, and then there's impulse to sell a lot of things, things that are a lot more controllable and you can discard. You watch [The MTV Music Video Awards], and you can't find anything of consequence. If that's the best that the business can provide, then we're really in trouble. But we're not, because there's lots of great musicians all around. They're just not on that program. The agenda that they proposed on the award show really illustrated the redundancy of the agenda. | The degree to which there are other impulses in the business, where we know what good music is, and then there's impulse to sell a lot of things, things that are a lot more controllable and you can discard. You watch [The MTV Music Video Awards], and you can't find anything of consequence. If that's the best that the business can provide, then we're really in trouble. But we're not, because there's lots of great musicians all around. They're just not on that program. The agenda that they proposed on the award show really illustrated the redundancy of the agenda. | ||
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''What's funny is I don't think people realize the Beatles covered him. | ''What's funny is I don't think people realize the Beatles covered him. | ||
Yes, and what about "It's For You" | Yes, and what about "It's For You," that Cilla Black performed and McCartney wrote. Where did that come from? It didn't come out of thin air. It's very obviously him synthesizing something he's heard just immediately before. I think that's related to it as well. | ||
''When it was first announced that you two were working together on "God Give Me Strength," I thought something like this was appropriate and maybe even inevitable. After all, not only had you covered "I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself" and other of his songs, but even a song like "Alison" sounds very much like a Burt and Hal David song. | ''When it was first announced that you two were working together on "God Give Me Strength," I thought something like this was appropriate and maybe even inevitable. After all, not only had you covered "I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself" and other of his songs, but even a song like "Alison" sounds very much like a Burt and Hal David song. | ||
Actually, I was trying to write "Ghetto Child." Musically, I was trying to write "Ghetto Child," and I've often got a blueprint of the song. I think the thing that's important when you do use a model or a blueprint or even just straight-out kind of borrow something — it's usually good if you've got a very contradicting idea. It's no good if I had written a song with the tune of "Alison" that was called "Slum Child | Actually, I was trying to write "Ghetto Child." Musically, I was trying to write "Ghetto Child," and I've often got a blueprint of the song. I think the thing that's important when you do use a model or a blueprint or even just straight-out kind of borrow something — it's usually good if you've got a very contradicting idea. It's no good if I had written a song with the tune of "Alison" that was called "Slum Child," or something, and it was kind of almost the same lyrical idea as well. If you are going to borrow a nuance of music, you have to just use it as a blueprint and then use it to power a completely different thought, and that's something that has been lost on some of the more shameless magpies of today. | ||
There's no doubt that over the years I have referred to him. There's always been different little references or just tiny suggestions of his influences that would be invisible to anybody without being tipped off to it, I'm sure. It's been in the background. I won't say it's a dominant thing, but it's been an underlying thread. I was very lucky. I'm 44, and I've grown up in a very rich time of music, and particularly in the 1960s. People romanticize it very much, particularly the latter few years, but the early few years were just an amazing sound coming at you all the time with all these different events and ideas. | There's no doubt that over the years I have referred to him. There's always been different little references or just tiny suggestions of his influences that would be invisible to anybody without being tipped off to it, I'm sure. It's been in the background. I won't say it's a dominant thing, but it's been an underlying thread. I was very lucky. I'm 44, and I've grown up in a very rich time of music, and particularly in the 1960s. People romanticize it very much, particularly the latter few years, but the early few years were just an amazing sound coming at you all the time with all these different events and ideas. | ||
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''A few months ago, Bacharach and I were discussing what it was like to work with you. He mentioned how initially, the process was intriguing to him, because he was working for the first time with someone who wrote music as well as lyrics. | ''A few months ago, Bacharach and I were discussing what it was like to work with you. He mentioned how initially, the process was intriguing to him, because he was working for the first time with someone who wrote music as well as lyrics. | ||
It never occurred to me that — with the few exceptions with Carole Bayer Sager and Neil Diamond — he hadn't really gotten into this in a really big way before. And that must have been strange. It didn't really occur to me, and I don't think it occurred to [music supervisor] Karen Rachtman and [director] | It never occurred to me that — with the few exceptions with Carole Bayer Sager and Neil Diamond — he hadn't really gotten into this in a really big way before. And that must have been strange. It didn't really occur to me, and I don't think it occurred to [music supervisor] Karen Rachtman and [director] Allison Anders, when they invited us to work together, that it would necessarily work out being a music collaboration as well as a music-and-words collaboration. They perhaps thought I would just act as lyricist to Burt's tune. But given the very, very tight deadline we had, whoever began "God Give Me Strength" was just whoever had the first idea. Bear in mind that I was already working on contributions to ''Grace of My Heart''. I had already written a song, so I was perhaps in the rhythm of the film a bit more than Burt. | ||
I had read the script some time before. He was still absorbing the materials when I had presented him with the first opening statement of the song. And his response to that was so instantaneous I think we found ourselves writing as music collaborators before we had time to think about whether that was a good idea or not. I just assumed we should write as musicians also. I didn't want to be limited to just words. I would have been proud to try and do that, but I felt that there was more to be had of it by trying to push one another in different ways, and I think it took until we got into the room to really explore that properly. I'm sure he must have said something along those lines. | I had read the script some time before. He was still absorbing the materials when I had presented him with the first opening statement of the song. And his response to that was so instantaneous I think we found ourselves writing as music collaborators before we had time to think about whether that was a good idea or not. I just assumed we should write as musicians also. I didn't want to be limited to just words. I would have been proud to try and do that, but I felt that there was more to be had of it by trying to push one another in different ways, and I think it took until we got into the room to really explore that properly. I'm sure he must have said something along those lines. | ||
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''But certainly you've been headed in that direction for a while. I think of the record you made with the Brodsky Quartet as the beginning of that notion — it's lyrically dense, but driven less by the words than the music surrounding the lyrics. | ''But certainly you've been headed in that direction for a while. I think of the record you made with the Brodsky Quartet as the beginning of that notion — it's lyrically dense, but driven less by the words than the music surrounding the lyrics. | ||
It's been coming for a while. Obviously, I've experimented a lot in the early part of this decade with some very experimental ways to construct records, where the drums came on last and all these different funny combinations of instruments were combined to create all sorts of dramatic effects | It's been coming for a while. Obviously, I've experimented a lot in the early part of this decade with some very experimental ways to construct records, where the drums came on last and all these different funny combinations of instruments were combined to create all sorts of dramatic effects I thought — I hoped dramatically — sometimes successfully, sometimes chaotically, and sometimes leaving very little room for the voice. It consequently gave the impression of claustrophobia and confusion to people in a few instances. | ||
But it is a necessary part of just finding out what you want or what you're capable of. I have no sense of apology or regret about any of those records. There are some great things on Spike and Mighty Like a Rose, and some things I can entirely understand why they bewildered people. More the kind of cumulative effect of all of them together on one album is the thing. The Brodsky Quartet record was a big surprise, because it lacked any of the sounds people were used to hearing around my voice, and some people from the classical world that came to it from the quartet playing may have found difficulty accepting the quality of my voice in that context. Even some people who knew me from pop records perhaps agree with that (laughs). | But it is a necessary part of just finding out what you want or what you're capable of. I have no sense of apology or regret about any of those records. There are some great things on ''Spike'' and ''Mighty Like a Rose'', and some things I can entirely understand why they bewildered people. More the kind of cumulative effect of all of them together on one album is the thing. The Brodsky Quartet record was a big surprise, because it lacked any of the sounds people were used to hearing around my voice, and some people from the classical world that came to it from the quartet playing may have found difficulty accepting the quality of my voice in that context. Even some people who knew me from pop records perhaps agree with that (laughs). | ||
They were human stories that were just shaped unusually. They didn't have to obey consistent beats, and I learned a lot about what I could do with my voice in different contexts and how to blend with other kinds of sounds. Since then, I have worked with a number of different ensembles — Mingus Big Band, the Jazz Passengers, John Harle, and all the time singing in conjunction with all kinds of instruments. Although this record with Burt is much more of a pop record, because it does have consistent rhythm — albeit a very subtle use of rhythm most of the time — the blending of the voice with natural instruments as opposed to cacophonous, willfully distorted sounds and combining that with clear, quite sparse lyrics is a different world to a lot of things I started out with. I'm not saying it's better or that it's a new religion — it's just different. At another time I may favor the more deliberately oblique because there are great effects to be achieved with those ways to proceed. It just really depends on what you're trying to do. There are so many different ways to skin a cat, as they say. | They were human stories that were just shaped unusually. They didn't have to obey consistent beats, and I learned a lot about what I could do with my voice in different contexts and how to blend with other kinds of sounds. Since then, I have worked with a number of different ensembles — Mingus Big Band, the Jazz Passengers, John Harle, and all the time singing in conjunction with all kinds of instruments. Although this record with Burt is much more of a pop record, because it does have consistent rhythm — albeit a very subtle use of rhythm most of the time — the blending of the voice with natural instruments as opposed to cacophonous, willfully distorted sounds and combining that with clear, quite sparse lyrics is a different world to a lot of things I started out with. I'm not saying it's better or that it's a new religion — it's just different. At another time I may favor the more deliberately oblique because there are great effects to be achieved with those ways to proceed. It just really depends on what you're trying to do. There are so many different ways to skin a cat, as they say. | ||
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''It seems that with these two projects — first the songs written with McCartney, now this album with Bacharach — that in some ways, you're sort of the lost collaborator these guys have been missing for a while. You most often work alone, whereas these two men are best known for what they've done with partners: McCartney with Lennon, Bacharach with Hal David. Do you think you provided them with the "other half" they had been missing for a while? | ''It seems that with these two projects — first the songs written with McCartney, now this album with Bacharach — that in some ways, you're sort of the lost collaborator these guys have been missing for a while. You most often work alone, whereas these two men are best known for what they've done with partners: McCartney with Lennon, Bacharach with Hal David. Do you think you provided them with the "other half" they had been missing for a while? | ||
Funny enough, with Burt I don't think we ever discussed motivation at all. The only time I ever heard him talk about it was the times he would illustrate a point about something with an anecdote. He's not a great one for reminiscence. I think I heard more about his musical career in the course of being interviewed together. I don't think he mentioned Dietrich but once maybe in the whole time we were working together until we were interviewed by German Rolling Stone, and then we were obliged to talk about her for 45 minutes and then really answer the questions. I don't know. That's a question you would have to ask them. | Funny enough, with Burt I don't think we ever discussed motivation at all. The only time I ever heard him talk about it was the times he would illustrate a point about something with an anecdote. He's not a great one for reminiscence. I think I heard more about his musical career in the course of being interviewed together. I don't think he mentioned Dietrich but once maybe in the whole time we were working together until we were interviewed by German ''Rolling Stone'', and then we were obliged to talk about her for 45 minutes and then really answer the questions. I don't know. That's a question you would have to ask them. | ||
I don't get a sense that that's what I'm bringing. I don't think that there's this gaping hole in their lives that has to be filled by a collaborator any more than I feel like my life is now complete by working with them. I have written with a number of different people, some of them really, really famous songwriters. For that matter, I wrote with Carole King last year. It sounds like I'm going through my favorite songwriters. But we just met and wrote this lovely song, and we're just looking for the occasion to put it out, and it would be somewhat confusing for it to come out in the midst of me working with Burt Bacharach. | I don't get a sense that that's what I'm bringing. I don't think that there's this gaping hole in their lives that has to be filled by a collaborator any more than I feel like my life is now complete by working with them. I have written with a number of different people, some of them really, really famous songwriters. For that matter, I wrote with Carole King last year. It sounds like I'm going through my favorite songwriters. But we just met and wrote this lovely song, and we're just looking for the occasion to put it out, and it would be somewhat confusing for it to come out in the midst of me working with Burt Bacharach. | ||
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''Is that a sentiment you're familiar with? After all, there was also a time when you, too, wouldn't perform many of the older fan favorites during concerts. | ''Is that a sentiment you're familiar with? After all, there was also a time when you, too, wouldn't perform many of the older fan favorites during concerts. | ||
I just do it all the time, and then I go back and I find a new way of doing an old song. I have these two things going on: One is this quite grand-scale accompaniment of this album, at its peak and at the crescendo, and the second is the more intimate form of performance with Steve Nieve. We are in an ongoing collaboration, both writing and performing together, since the Attractions no longer exists. Steve and I toured for All This Useless Beauty, and we've played in Japan, in Norway, in the Dominican Republic just this year, plus we did a tour of Italian classical venues. We happened to be booked by a classical promoter, who was looking to expand beyond classical repertoire. We were put into opera houses and very beautiful halls, and the great virtue of them was that we wanted to sing songs that usually get left out of the rock set, because they are too delicate to stand that kind of dynamic. | I just do it all the time, and then I go back and I find a new way of doing an old song. I have these two things going on: One is this quite grand-scale accompaniment of this album, at its peak and at the crescendo, and the second is the more intimate form of performance with Steve Nieve. We are in an ongoing collaboration, both writing and performing together, since the Attractions no longer exists. Steve and I toured for ''All This Useless Beauty'', and we've played in Japan, in Norway, in the Dominican Republic just this year, plus we did a tour of Italian classical venues. We happened to be booked by a classical promoter, who was looking to expand beyond classical repertoire. We were put into opera houses and very beautiful halls, and the great virtue of them was that we wanted to sing songs that usually get left out of the rock set, because they are too delicate to stand that kind of dynamic. | ||
And we were singing some nights without amplification some parts of the show. We could sing things like "O Mistress Mine" from the John Harle record, "Birds Will Still Be Singing" from The Juliet Letters, and still have "Watching the Detectives" but have it done in a kind of very bare way. It was kind of an art-song set, truthfully, but it had a lot of humor, it had a lot of heart to it, and it was closer to the mix of devices and feelings that were in The Juliet Letters and that | And we were singing some nights without amplification some parts of the show. We could sing things like "O Mistress Mine" from the John Harle record, "Birds Will Still Be Singing" from ''The Juliet Letters'', and still have "Watching the Detectives" but have it done in a kind of very bare way. It was kind of an art-song set, truthfully, but it had a lot of humor, it had a lot of heart to it, and it was closer to the mix of devices and feelings that were in ''The Juliet Letters'' and that I think is in these records with Burt. It's kind of more grown up, not just going for effect all the time, trying to dig into the songs and really interpret them. I find it much easier to do older songs that way. Since going back to the stage with Steve in that format, and of course with no agenda, we range all over the place, from 1977 to the year 2007, when we do our song cycle about Mars. | ||
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{{Bibliography images}} | {{Bibliography images}} | ||
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<br><small>Cover.</small> | <br><small>Cover.</small> | ||
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<br><small>Photos.</small> | <br><small>Photos.</small> | ||
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==External links== | ==External links== | ||
*[http://performingsongwriter.com/ PerformingSongwriter.com] | *[http://performingsongwriter.com/ PerformingSongwriter.com] | ||
*[http://www.elviscostello.info/articles/o-q/performing_songwriter.990101.html elviscostello.info] | *[http://www.elviscostello.info/articles/o-q/performing_songwriter.990101.html elviscostello.info{{t}}][http://www.elviscostello.info/articles/o-q/performing_songwriter.990101a.html {{t}}] | ||
{{DEFAULTSORT:Performing Songwriter 1999-01-00}} | {{DEFAULTSORT:Performing Songwriter 1999-01-00}} |
Latest revision as of 01:34, 27 October 2019
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