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In only a year's time, Elvis Costello has emerged from the depths of the punk underground to carve out a place for himself in the front rank of the New Wave bands. He has managed to fuse the hard-driving Fifties rhythms with lyrics that are full of acid observations of contemporary life.
Looking more like Woody Allen than an angry young working class toughie, Elvis destroys the awkwardly lovable image his appearance suggests the moment he struts up to the microphone. Backed by a three-piece band, he launches into what sounds like a blast from the past, a la Chuck Berry. But the words have an urgency that is compelling. He will not lull us into California dreamin', or Rocky Mountain highs. We cannot turn off our minds and escape into disco fever, either.
Elvis favors short songs that compress the gut emotions of rage, revenge and frustration into three minutes of terrifying intensity. One tune follows another without a break until the audience is wiped out by this human dynamo. His songs are full of satiric observations on "civilized" life today. "Radio, Radio" takes a jab at the way Top 40 stations, with their middle-of-the-road hits, have strangled pop expression:
"The radio is in the hands
Of such a lot of fools
Trying to anesthetize
The way you feel."
"Welcome To The Working Week" is Costello's comment on the doomed blue-collar hero. His attitude recalls the Rolling Stones' "Salt of the Earth" and "Factory Girl."
"Welcome to the working week
Oh, I know it don't thrill you
I hope it don't kill you."
Indeed, Elvis' roots go even farther back, to the elegant irony of the Kinks and the anarchistic frenzy of The Who. Costello will not admit to being influenced by others, nor is he trying to influence anyone else. He says, "I don't attempt to express their feelings. I only write about the way I feel. I mean, I'm not an arbitrator of public taste or opinion. I don't have a following of people who are waiting for my next word. I hope I never have that kind of following. People should be waiting for their own next word. Not mine."
Elvis has come a long way from his life as Declan Patrick MacManus, computer programmer. Only twenty-three, he has been writing songs for nine years. The product of a broken home, he grew up in a rather depressing section of London. The name "Elvis" was chosen as a tribute to Presley, and the "Costello" was an old family name. He got his act together, and forced people to listen to it, to the point of staging a street corner serenade outside the hotel where some record company executives were staying. It got him arrested, but it also got him a contract with Columbia Records. Hits like "Alison" and "Less Than Zero" soon followed, and an album, My Aim Is True.
He has the spirit of a true punk. Commenting on his U.S. tour, Elvis observed, "I ... hate the Americans because they've got so much and they do so little with it." Why did he prefer Chicago to the other cities he played here? Because "People were rude, you know? People on the West Coast were so nice it was driving me mad. If one more person said 'Have a nice day!', I thought I might kill him."
A natural-born iconoclast, Elvis is not even impressed by his own success: "There are a lot of people who should be successful. If ability had anything to do with success then there would be a whole lot of obscure people who'd be famous, and there would be a lot of famous people who'd be lingering in obscurity."
Right now, it is enough for him just to be living out all his rock star fantasies. Elvis leaves the interpretations to the critics: "The minute you become self conscious about what you're doing or start analyzing it, it's all over. I choose not to explain it I don't want to be successful no that I get a lot of money and retire... I'm just interested is playing."
Elvis Costello whose latest LP is called This Year's Model, is on the move — catch him if you can.
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