|
Elvis Costello worked with McCartney on the Flowers in the Dirt album, as well as several tracks on his own Spike. They co-wrote a number of songs, including their respective hits, "Veronica" and "My Brave Face." A Beatles fan since the start and a sharp student of rock 'n' roll, Costello is articulate on the subject of Paul McCartney. "There's no denying that he has a way of sort of defending himself by being charming and smiling and thumbs up and all the bit," Costello says. "I said once that I thought he should try to step from behind that, at least insofar as the music was concerned. We actually had a heart-to-heart about whether it was possible to have a personality in songs, regardless of what you need to get you through the day when you have to go and meet people and things are expected of you.
"Most people in show business develop some way of fending off unwelcome intrusions. It can be by making yourself enigmatic and elusive, like Dylan. Or you do like McCartney does and come head-on at people and almost shock them by how personable you are. In a smaller, confined space where that defense is not necessary, it can become an obstacle. But I never felt when we were writing that it was there. The minute the two of us were in a room together it disappeared completely. His professional face would return sometimes when he was bored. I think that's just a question of the unbelievable trip that he's been on. And I don't think that's a harsh criticism at all. As I have my own sort of armor of that nature, I'd be throwing stones at a glass house if I were to say there's something the matter with that. But there was never any distance when we were writing."
One odd turn the McCartney/Costello songwriting collaborations took was that Elvis had to push Paul to use composing techniques made popular by the Beatles. "It got sort of comical, "Costello says. "It was 'Here we go again.' Once we got over the initial surprise that writing together worked so easily, the thing was not to go down cliched roads. A lot of the descending lines which people hear and say 'Oh, that's a Beatles thing' were actually mine. I learned guitar by learning Beatles songs, and working with him brought it out. Working with Paul, when you've actually got him there singing harmony, those little turns are almost irresistible. Like in the bridge of 'My Brave Face' or in the structure of 'You Want Her Too.' There was a point where he might have thought, 'Hang on, this is getting a bit parodyish.' But what I thought I could add — it's not like he needs a lot of help to write songs — was the little friction that is creative, and to get him to refer to the musical vocabulary that is second nature to me from Beatle music. You'd think it would be even more second nature to him. After all, he thought it up to begin with! But in Wings it was never referred to.
"After the first solo album, McCartney, he never referred to any Beatles language. It's quite amazing, it's quite unique really. The only parallel I can think of in pop music is Richard Rodgers. He had two distinct styles, one with Hart and one with Hammerstein. It isn't just that the lyrics changed, the melodies changed as well. And McCartney did it without a partner! Quite an amazing thing. That's not to say that all of the songs he wrote with Wings were as good as the best of the Beatles, but it's quite an achievement to dispense with a whole musical vocabulary and come up with another one. A musicologist would give you credit for that.'
"Elvis was very good for me in that respect," McCartney agrees. "I think I probably would have kept a little more of the Beatles' musical vocabulary — 'cause I was certainly interested in it — but a number of people said, 'Oh, he'll churn all the Beatles shit out!' So I purposely dug my heels in and said, 'Oh will I? We'll see about that!'
"But after all that time it was good to have someone like Elvis say, 'Yeah, but you know, you're alright. You've proved you can do the other, and it's cool. We could do this. It was nice when you did that.' He got me to get the old Hofner bass out. Elvis is very that way, he doesn't care if things are a tiny bit out of tune and stuff. Like me. Again, the Beatles had that primitive innocence. In the Beatles, whenever we heard anything out of tune we'd say, 'Ooo, it sounds like a fairground — it sounds great! "Ooo, honky-tonk piano out of tune!' In fact I picked up a guitar the other day and it was wildly out of tune, but I was in an angry mood, and you know, guitar's a very therapeutic instrument. You can go off in a room and kind of cry with your guitar. I've written a lot of songs that way. I happened to pick up this guitar that was totally out of tune and, man, I was really into it, I loved it! I was too angry to tune it." McCartney mimes thrashing the guitar and shouting, "Fuck! Yeah! Sure! One more fucking time!' 1 was just screaming. Now I know it's out of tune. That's the only difference. But at least I don't reject it.
"Elvis' point is interesting. I suppose that after the Beatles you couldn't just go and become the Heatles. The thing with Wings was, I certainly couldn't just go out and become a pale copy of the Beatles. Our stuff was too strong for that. Anyway there were millions of 'new Beatles.' Everyone was being that anyway. So it was down to, well, let's just go back to the beginning again, let's just go back to the little tour with the van, go back to our roots, we'll get 'Lucille' out of the packing case again.
|
