Like some frantic salesman, Declan Patrick Aloysius Macmanus, as these days Elvis Costello prefers to call himself, has been everywhere these last two weeks, busily promoting his new LP, King Of America. The day we met, he'd just returned from a hectic whirl of interviews in New York: he complained, understandably, of tiredness, although there was not much fatigue evident in the energy and enthusiasm with which he approached the three and a half hours of our conversation. The next few days would be similarly devoted to the selling of the new album. For someone usually so shy of interrogation, it's been an unprecedented flurry of public explanation.
The cause has been worthwhile, however. King Of America is a resounding return to form and probably his most compelling and assured record in five years. Like Get Happy!! whose emotional frankness it recalls, King Of America reaches us after an unsettled year for its author. Get Happy!! appeared in the wake of the infamous Costello-Bonnie Bramlett-Stephen Stills brawl in Columbus, Ohio, from which Costello emerged in the eyes of the sanctimonious American press as a sinsister bigot, with the commercial momentum of his career severely interrupted by the ensuing, vindictive backlash. King Of America arrives after a period of similar turmoil. Following the critical and commercial failure of Goodbye Cruel World in 1984, Costello had suspended The Attractions, toured only as a solo act, usually with the American songwriter T-Bone Burnett for company and support. He has produced The Pogues and The Big Heat; he has been involved in the score of Julien Temple's Absolute Beginners; he and T-Bone released "The Peoples' Limousine" under the name of The Coward Brothers; he appeared on Eurythmics' Be Yourself Tonight and made a memorable appearance at Live Aid. Mostly, though, he's kept his head down and in his absence, as it were, rumours began to swarm; he had become an alcoholic; he was creatively bankrupt; he'd stopped writing songs, he couldn't write any songs; his private life was in several stages of turmoil; he was going through a painful divorce.
According to the NME, the final authentication of these rumours was provided by the release of
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