He lifts the receiver in southwestern Canada. Costello's home after yet another well attended tour in the U.S. and allows sincerely happy interest in their music. A diverse collection of songs that range from young - angry - man -pop via speeded blue-eyed -soul, stinging country music, tv series , music and Americana for Burt Bacharach collaborations, piano jazz, bumpy New Orleans R & B, bluegrass and symphonic ballet pieces.
Your vibrato and London dialect is verging on the only thing that has persisted in your music.
- Yes , but I have not actually lived in London for the last 25 years, it has been Ireland and later New York and Vancouver that I now live in an alternating pattern, he points out. I travel a lot, just like my wife (jazz artist Diana Krall, DN's note.), And just trying to be sure to be there for our sons. I thrive best where we all gathered, I am not a nationalistic person.
His songbook he interprets both now together with his band The Imposters and solo.
- I try to guess which songs are most effective and the audience might expect, but also songs that I think got a little neglected. Performing them alone makes it possible for people to really hear them, he says. But sentimentality is nothing that govern my song choice. I want to avoid my concerts is emerging as a ritual, I want to surprise both me and the audience.
Do your early hits feel like a backpack ?
- No, not at all actually, they've aged well. And it probably has to do with that I never wrote any typical teenage lyrics, I was older than that when I debuted. A song like "(The angels wanna wear my) Red Shoes " is on one level a straight pop song about romance and disappointment, but on another it is about aging and mortality, that time passes too quickly - which is of course the feelings that one can have at 22, as I was when I wrote it, but also that old. It evokes feelings in me today as well, he says, adding that it also applies to his constant ballad "Alison ". " Shipbuilding" of 1982, however - Costello's beautiful, Chet Baker accompanied, protest song against the war industry and the Falklands War - thought he would quickly lose its relevance.
- But there will be always new generations who are affected by war, which makes the song even sadder and motivates me to continue to sing.
Is the restlessness that caused you to try so many different genres of music ?
- Nah , restlessness ... rather curiosity , though it is not the whole truth. When people want to insult one so they say that it is " vain " , that would seem important when doing music for a ballet or a string quartet. But vanity would not be enough to carry out such a demanding project , he says , and suddenly loudly interrupted by his five-year- son - he has two - that requires attention is obscure. Costello senior clarifies that he "can not talk, not right now, you'll have to wait a bit." Costello junior reiterates its difficult to interpret these requirements, a new no, bristles and then march away angrily screaming on the other side of the handset.
- Oh , well , you probably know how these kinds of negotiations is ... Anyway , the knowledge I have received from all these different music projects , I have been able to avail myself of in order to make simpler forms of music more vital.
What inspires you the most right now ?
- My father's 78 rpm . There are all sorts of music that I have completely missed in the original form , he says, is once again interrupted by Costello junior who once again is informed that his father talking on the phone .
- ... What strikes me is the immediacy of those magical old records . The musicians had no chance at that time to redo or add anything . It would be recorded had to be done directly in the studio, in the moment , whether it was Louis Armstrong, Stravinsky or Little Richard .
Have you seen Edward Gillans documentary "Desperate man blues" on the 78 - collector Joe Bussard and his 25,000 records?
- Yes , yes! It is fantastic. I know Joe, he came to one of my concerts , explaining that there has been no good music since 1929 (laughs). Then he sat in the sixth row when I was on stage with Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and performed the music in a very crazy arrangement, but I saw that he actually stomped pace ...
Are listening on stenkaksmusiken affected your song writing ?
- Yes, it can be heard in some of the songs that I've written recently, especially rhythmically. But that does not mean they are nostalgi, he said , stressing that " the music was not at all better before."
- When I play the songs for the audience in Stockholm , it's not a backward-looking to a different era , but something is happening there and then
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