|
Perhaps it's because this often tormented singer-songwriter has at last found what he's looking for that he managed to look totally at one with the world. As he sat in an armchair in what is now his usual suite of rooms in a Dublin hotel, he certainly looked at home. Then again, Ireland has played no small part in the making of Elvis Costello's latest — and stunning — collection of songs called Spike.
He wrote most of the 14 songs (13 on the vinyl version) in Dublin. In fact, in this very same hotel, while wife Cait O'Riordan (former bass player with The Pogues whose 1985 album Rum, Sodomy And The Lash Elvis produced) spent three months filming her part in The Courier.
And the album was recorded in Dublin, as well as London, New Orleans and Hollywood. In studio with him was the cream of Irish musicians, put together with some help from the omnipresent Dónal Lunny.
"We started to try to arrange a sort of unique line up," says Elvis. "It's like a hybrid. On the one hand you have Derek Bell (The Chieftains) who's classical. He's a completely unique musician — probably one of the most amazing musicians there is. They're all amazing in their own ways but he's from such an unusual background.
"Then you've got Steve Wickham (ex-Waterboys) who's like a kind of wild player. Then you've got Frankie Gavin (De Dannan) who Dónal introduced me to. Dónal was like the band leader — well, band leader might not be the right description — but he was the one who gave me the kind of opportunity to try out what it would sound like."
The Irish contingent, which also includes Christy Moore and uilleann piper Davy Spillane, plays on "Tramp The Dirt Down," "Miss Macbeth" and "Any King's Shilling." The latter is the oldest on the LP and has been performed live over the last two and a half years. Played solo on stage, I recall it as a folky, slow ballad about warning a soldier not to turn out for duty. It's about his own Irish grandfather who, after the First World War, was posted back to Dublin and was gently warned to keep his head down.
"I don't see it like I'm doing folk music now," he says, adjusting the bug-eye spectacles on his nose. "It's just that I borrowed some of the sounds from traditional music to play to this song and I really think it suits the story and the sound is very appropriate.
"The minute you put the instruments to it, it seemed to come to life and confirmed that we had made the right decision."
Getting Christy Moore to play bodhran on the album turned out to be a wise move. Christy, whether he knew it or not, provided Elvis with a good omen.
"It was nice to have another singer in the room (studio), someone who I admire so much sitting there to your right and he looked over in between takes and it was very reassuring that we were going somewhere. It seemed like there was a particular mood in the room when he arrived.
"That might sound a bit mystical, but he does have a pretty strong feeling and it was like we were complete and could get on with the job. I really appreciated that, I suppose, moral support that he gave me ... 'Any King's Shilling' was the first track we recorded for the album ... so we were hoping for a good start."
Following their work together, Elvis and Christy have decided to perform together at the IRMA awards at the National Concert Hall on Friday, March 10.
Spike is Elvis's twelfth LP and his first proper album in over two years. He is famous for his lyrical style which is sharp, witty, and often sarcastic, if not openly caustic. He has sometimes been criticised for being a little too clever: the complexity of his wordplay can result in the true vision of the song being lost.
The new album is marked by a more direct lyrical approach. He's railing himself in and saying what he means, not what merely sounds good. But if anything, he's just as withering and bitterly honest as he ever was. On the subject of Maggie Thatcher, who he obviously loathes, he doesn't just lament her doings, he takes personal offence and bays for her blood.
"I take it personally and I don't think it's wrong to. It is pretty personal because it affects you personally. It's a mistake to think of politics as a subject you take at school instead of something which affects your life in some way.
"By changing the way people value things, which is what she has achieved in England, this affects you. People think differently and people talk differently."
In the song "Tramp The Dirt Down," he sings of longing for Thatcher's death so that "When they finally put you in the ground / I'll stand on your grave and tramp the dirt down..."
"It was just writing down the most extreme I felt," says Elvis. "I don't like the idea of wishing anybody dead, you know, even her, but I'm an example, I suppose. I like to think I'm a reasonable, controlled person but if this is me — with all the fortunes I've had in life — thinking like this, it says something."
Elvis takes a stand on the issue of hanging, which has resurged in Britain in recent times at the behest of comfortable conservative law and order forces characterised by their position slightly to the right of Genghis Khan. In "Let Him Dangle," he tells the sorry tale of a Derek Bentley, a poor fellow hanged for murder in dubious circumstances.
"It's an example story worth retelling, because every so often, particularly when it suits certain powers, hanging is brought up again to stir things up. Like now."
He says murder is a misfortune for everybody involved but hanging won't reverse that.
"It's a very positive song even though it has to say some brutal things. It was his (Bentley's) sister who asked what kind of a man is a hangman who goes in and shakes a man's hand to calculate his weight? When I read that it was like someone hitting me in the face."
He feels that if people contemplated such a gruesome and macabre thought that they might take_a step back from supporting hanging.
Elvis, who in the past has used many a guise himself, says the album cover, showing the mounted head of a clown, is a send-up of the persona of the entertainer. Around the head, he points out, the legend reads "Spike the entertainer."
"People think that that's his name. But that's an instruction. I think that the beloved entertainer as he sees himself is a fairly nauseating character, I'm not really making a big deal about it. It's a one-off joke. It's only corn flake boxes when it comes down to it. The record has to come in something."
One of the most outstanding songs on Roy Orbison's latest album is a song called "Comedians" which was written by Elvis. A mutual friend, T Bone Burnett, asked him to supply a song for the LP. Elvis also took part in a tribute concert to Orbison, who he admires greatly. On the video of this performance, he says:
"It's a brilliant performance and given how sadly it's ended up it's nice that everybody can see that he wasn't just good in the sixties; he was bloody great now: The record is tremendous as well."
He said that though he had to modify "The Comedians" for the voice of Orbison, he was thinking of The Big O when he originally wrote it. When Orbison agreed to do the song it was the third time it had happened that a song he wrote with somebody in mind was taken up by that person without any doing on Costello's part. The other two people were Dusty Springfield and Johnny Cash.
"It really does make you think that longing for things can make them happen. Dreams can come true."
Watch out, Maggie.
| 
