Mojo, June 1996

Bibliography   72 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 UK & Ireland weeklies UK & Ireland magazines UK & Ireland newspapers US newspapers US rock magazines US music magazines US magazines US alternative weeklies European magazines European newspapers Canada  •  Mexico  •  Asia Australia  •  New Zealand South America  •  Africa Blogs  •  Fanzines  •  Books Online publications — The Elvis Costello Interview Paul Du Noyer Back with his old band The Attractions, resuming the connection that he established on 1994's Brutal Youth album, Elvis Costello has a new album called All This Useless Beauty. Save for the faint beginnings of another beard — albeit a less insane one than the thing he was sporting circa Mighty Like A Rose — he looks remarkably like the young man who promised us, nearly two decades ago, that his Aim was True. And so it was — but is it Still? With every curve and corner of his career so far he has been a man who has followed his own star. And to hell with anyone who can't keep up. On the one hand, he's an excel-lent talker when it comes to other people's music. It's like a conversation with your best-informed and most opinionated mate. If you can't remember, say, that Philippe Wynne was the singer of The Detroit Spinners, or that Kiko is an album by Los Lobos, then he'll leave you floundering. But on the subject of his own work, Costello's steely resolve is obvious. Questions are stripped down am] pulled apart for any signs of woolly thinking. If he wore a placard around his neck, it would say: "No fools suffered here." But it's an exhilarating ride. "We're going through this weird period, no" he says, at one point, "where kitsch music from the '70s is being revered, and the same theories are being erected around it as music that really deserves that treatment. But of lt means that much to the person, I'm not going to argue about the relative merits of The Rubettes or whatever. It's just silly. I know the sort of music I like. "I've got this party game I play with my friends — 'Songs Elvis should have recorded if he'd lived.' It's fantastic when you get going, it can go on for hours. There's some crackers. Any of mine? I doubt it. But what about "I'm On Fire" by Bruce Springsteen? Or, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" — that would be the equivalent of American Trilogy, his big philosophical moment. It's a real shame. 1 was listening to Hendrix the other day and thinking, God, he would only be 53. I like the live records of Hendrix. The studio couldn't contain him because his imagination was way above the technology." With that familiar, unblinking stare, Costello rips into anyone too lazy to match the same exacting standards he applies to what he does. He might profess to be tolerant of The Rubettes, but I believe he likes disagreement and despises consensus — even the consensus-of-two that people usually aim for in conversation. At the same time, he'll suddenly announce, after a passionate defence of his cv, that he'd really like to destroy his entire back catalogue. That's the sign of a man with some confidence in his front catalogue. His untiring output continues to make other performers look like work-shy part-timers. You find him chipping-in to tribute albums and multi-artist compilations practically every week. The only subjects that soften his manner — apart, perhaps, from Liverpool FC — are his collaborations with the artists he grew up idolising, such as Burt Bacharach and Paul McCartney, or a select group of newer people including Aimee Mann and The Brodsky Quartet. He loves to work and he never stops. "Yesterday I finished another track, which will probably come out on a B-side, called "Almost Ideal Eyes." It's about a guy my age seeing some young hippy girl who's gone to the supermarket to buy her hippy clothes and hippy philosophy. He thinks, Hang on, my life's flashing before my eyes — and I didn't even die! It's just what happens when you live as long as I have — it's not such a terribly long time, I'm 42 this year. But it amuses me that flared trousers have come back. Who'd have ever thought?" Is the idea of All This Useless Beauty to gather up songs you've had for a while, including some things written for other people? Well, even though I wrote them, in some cases I'd given them away or written them with someone else in mind... But I didn't want them to sound like a series of impersonations. It's not a Bobby Davro record. That's why I'm telling people: "It's not about where these songs have been, it's where they're going." I wrote them, they belong to me, even if some of them were written for other singers. I don't like the easy definitions of what a record is about. You've got to give a little bit more of your time and take a listen, then decide. Life's not that easy. You told me you had about 30 songs to consider. How did you settle on the final 12? I fancied singing them. Some of them are the best songs I've ever written. And it's not like it's a bunch of outtakes, because they're new versions. We took them on the road, played five nights in New York, playing 12 new songs a night. So we did these carnival-type posters for the audience, saying, "Stand back in amazement as they whip these songs into shape like so many wicked lions!" I've had a long time with some of these songs - the title track is five years old. I've had time to think about why I want to sing them, and what they mean to me. For instance, "Distorted Angel" is a fleeting memory of a childhood experience. ["Strange things seem to occur, somewhere behind the nursery door."] You know, when children are at birthday parties and take their clothes off. I can't really remember it, I was only about eight, but I just mixed it together with thoughts I had about being brought up Catholic. But there are so many wrist-slitting, hand-wringing songs written by over-earnest Christian Brothers-taught children, I thought I'd better watch my step! I tried to record it as a rock 'n' roll song, but it just blew the meaning out the window. Now I have Philippe Wynne [of The Detroit Spinners] in my head when I sing it. I don't think I can sound like him, but when I did "Alison," that was my "Ghetto Child" take. It's nothing to do with the content of the song but how you're going to get that content over. What kind of riff am I going to borrow? Noel Gallagher talks about it all the time. He's making a routine about how blatant he is. I have a lot of time for their records. I like the wind-up aspect of that group. I like wind-up aspects anywhere. So there are still a lot of songs lying around? Experience has told me that it's better to invent a world where certain songs live, and invite people in to have a look around. As The Juliet Letters did. That worked for those people who got it. The people who went along with us saw that it wasn't a high art concept, to be endured. It was actually about heart and soul matters like all the other things I've tried to write. Here, there were other songs that could live in a similarly different world. And rather than push them into this record, ending up with something that reminded people of Spike rather than an Attractions record... That would be pointless, because I've already made Spike and Mighty Like A Rose and I don't need to make them again. Not that I don't like them - I like them very much - but I've done the thing of having a lot of diverse styles on one record. I will record those other songs, but I've got some arrangements of them which are not like anything else I've ever recorded. I want to do them properly. I'll take time to learn what I need to learn. Are your songs for other people "bespoke"? Are they written to request? Sometimes. I might have a vague idea that somebody was recording so I'd send them something. Most songs that I write are requests. Some songs on my past albums were written with other people in mind, not that they knew anything about it. It was just an exercise to get the idea out of my head - if I was asked to write this for Curtis Mayfield, how would I do it? "Just A Memory," not a very well known song [off the New Amsterdam EP], I wrote with Dusty Springfield in mind and she ended up recording it. I had nothing to do with that, somebody must have recognised in it what I heard when I was writing it. That's happened two or three times: Chet Baker did "Almost Blue" [from Imperial Bedroom] on the some basis. George Jones did "Stranger In The House." That was fantastic - people write demos in their bedroom and imagine what it would be like for somebody they admire to sing it. I've been lucky. I haven't had many covers but the quality has been high. One of the best covers I've had was Tasmin Archer's "All Grown Up," because she was much more tender with the subject than I had been. I'd pushed it over the edge and lost intensity by making it too accusative. She found more sympathy for the subject. When you submit a song, is it nerve-racking as you wait for the response? Yes, it is like a tailor - you get the style right but the arms might be on the short side. I find I might over-estimate people's ability to respond to what I think is a strength in my writing. Usually, people say there's a lot of words in my songs and that makes them a mouthful. I've had a lot of practice at singing a lot of words in a short space of time. But some singers are uncomfortable with that and if they feel it's rushing them they won't hear the quality. So the song can founder on it. When you write for other people you make yourself much clearer. Not everybody understands your own peculiar logic. And I think that helps the clarity of this album. The lyrics of this album seem fairly concise. I think the lyrics have been more concise for some time now. People writing about them in newspapers have tended to soy the same things about them, because I don't think they've been listening very hard. You'd be hard pushed to go back to the last record where it wasn't clear what I was saying, maybe 10 years or more. The title of "Complicated Shadows" is a good figure of speech for moral ambiguity. Did you write that with Johnny Cash in mind? It also has The Attractions at their noisiest. It was very much in the Cash mould, and I could envision him doing it. It turned out it wasn't the kind of song he wanted. So I said, "Well, we've got to do it because I want to do the words." Our treatment seemed to work because of the brutality of the idea. If you go out there saying, "I know what's right," you'd better be right. It describes that dilemma of taking justice into your own hands. We see it in the people in the West Country who kidnapped some local hooligan and beat him up, or in the LA riots. But that's not what it's 'about'. These songs are not 'about' things which lie beyond the reach of the actual words. You know how people say, these days, "This song is about my inner child..."? Well, where is it in the text? You're just saying that afterwards because you read it in a book. These songs are about what the song is about. Are your songs about what you mean by them? Or are they about what the listener understands by them? They're both. It doesn't cease to be what it's about for me. I'm pretty clear about what I mean by them, but that doesn't mean that every single word conveys its meaning. Once they're out, I get all kinds of wild interpretations and I'm always glad to hear them. The wilder the better, frankly. "Shipbuilding is about two lovers in a boat." Great! From an American perspective, what would they know about the circumstances of that text? Fine, it doesn't bother me. When I write for other people, if they have a picture that makes the words work for them, then they can sing it that way. You listen to June Tabor, a woman, sing "All This Useless Beauty" and she invests the bridge with much more anger than I do. She spits out the words. People would think she was the one who could caress this melody, and I'm the one who's supposed to spit out the bile. Yet here I am singing it more reflectively. Doesn't mean she's wrong. As you're with The Attractions again, I take it you were satisfied with your reunion on Brutal Youth? It's not an exam they have to pass. They're great players, their other work aside from me proves that. Pete [Thomas] and Steve [Nieve] played behind a lot of good people, even doing TV shows. And Pete's played on what I'd say was one of the best records mode in the post 20 years - Kiko [by Los Lobos]. None of them needs me in order to work. It's a question of whether it has a spark to it. Anyone who imagines it's going to be like 1978 is kidding themselves. It isn't. That's the way it should be. We know how to make a noise, but I don't want to just make a noise, because we did all that. The thrill we all get from that kind of music is terrific and I hope I never tire of it completely. But I would have tired of it seriously if I'd been doing it non-stop for 20 years. Plus I would have been deaf. We play very loud. I remember the vibe when Paul Weller went on at the lost Glastonbury that we did. I hadn't realised how this wave of affection had returned for him. He went on in late afternoon as the sun was going down and it was reminiscent of that genial, fuzzy vibe that people had tried to get together for a field in Wigan in 1972, pissing rain at Bickershaw. But this was a beautiful afternoon and, truthfully, being the closing band at a festival is not the most relaxing thing. You've got to deliver your own paced show and a final crescendo for the whole day. And the peak had come with Weller's music which was so genial and easy-going. We needn't have played. We played like we were strapped to the wings of a 747. We were like Led Zeppelin. It was horrible and I hated it. I'll never play a festival again unless I have to. I do like the idea that people got to see The Attractions again. Those that cared. I don't think most people are sentimental about that group as individuals, like they were about The Beatles. They're more likely to be sentimental about specific songs or performances. People have affection for them as players, but not as personalities, because they don't know who they are. They don't really know who I am, either. And I'd like to keep it that way. They only think they know. I believe you wrote "Why Can't A Man Stand Alone" for Sam Moore, of Sam & Dave? That's right. I'd sung with him before and you couldn't hear a note I sang - and I am very loud. He had such a powerful voice. That's what Sam & Dave was about, that competitive singing. I thought that he could make the song righteous. Its words are for real, for me. I feel trapped in a class and a skin and a country, and I don't like being defined like that. I don't think any of us are any the better for it. "You Bowed Down," another track, has already been recorded by Roger McGuinn. Yet your version is more Byrds-like than his. He sang it beautifully, but the arrangement was very straightened out by the producer. It had the potential for him to go into space on, his great talent in The Byrds. That was a big reason for me wanting to re-record the song. We tried doing a Sonic Youth version of it, but it didn't work, it wanted to have a 12-string on it. When I was rehearsing My Aim Is True with Clover, musicians never know the titles of songs when you're first doing them, they know them by a riff. They'd soy, "Let's do that Byrds one again" for "The Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes." Remainder of article to come... Mojo, No. 31, June 1996 Paul Du Noyer interviews Elvis Costello. Images Photos by Lorenzo Agius. Pages 46 and 47. Pages 48 and 49. Pages 50 and 51. Cover.

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