Costello, Elvis
Elvis Costello
Singer, songwriter
Early Efforts Showed Deadly “Aim”
“Pop Expressionism” and Road Fatigue
Increasingly Ambitious Songwriting
Accused of “Raiding His Own Catalogue”
Since his arrival on the postpunk scene 17 years ago,” wrote Time magazine critic Guy Garcia in 1994, “Elvis Costello has shown himself to be one of the most prolific and protean songwriters of his generation.” Combining piercing, literate lyrics and an uncompromising attitude with the melodicism and stylistic breadth of classic pop groups like the Beatles, Costello forged a much-imitated style that led the way for a great deal of the “alternative” music that followed.
With his band the Attractions, Costello led the “NewWave” pack into the early 1980s, producing a catalogue of songs to rival almost any other in popular music. His own artistic restlessness, however, would never permit him to settle in one mode for long; reasoning that the Attractions limited his vision, he left the group abruptly in the middle of the decade. He then experimented with country music, soul and avant-garde textures; wrote film scores; produced and wrote for other acts; and even recorded an album with a string quartet before he reunited with the Attractions for 1994’s Brutal Youth. And despite the passage of time, Costello’s articulate fury burned just as brightly. “Costello’s lyrics have always been stuffed with cleverness, frequently overstuffed,” opined Jeffrey Stock of Pulse! “But his genius for melody, evident even in his fast and furious numbers, is what truly sets him apart. Besides Paul McCartney, there is quite simply no one that comes close.”
Name Poked Fun at Stardom
Costello wasn’t born an Elvis. Declan Patrick McManus was born in the mid-1950s in London, England; his father, Ross McManus, worked as a jazz bandleader. Young Declan first heard pop music on the radio and on demonstration records his father received, falling in love with rock and soul at an early age. “I had quite a pleasant childhood, actually,” he recalled in Pulse! Ross left his wife and children, however, and Declan moved to Liverpool with his mother before finishing school. Immediately upon graduating, he went in search of a job and ended up working with computers by day and playing his own songs in local clubs at night. Though McManus later disparaged his early work for its derivative qualities—he was strongly influenced by eclectic American songwriters like John Prine and Lowell George, as well as the great tunesmiths of the jazz era—his earliest demo recordings, from 1974 to 1975, show signs of the lyrical sophistication and melodic invention that brought him acclaim. The recordings surfaced on bootlegs years later before being officially released on the 1993 Rykodisc boxed set 21/2 Years.
For the Record…
Born Declan Patrick McManus, August 25, 1955, in London, England; son of Ross McManus (a bandleader) and Mary (Costello) McManus; married first wife, Mary, 1974 (divorced, c. 1985); married Caitlin O’Riordan (musician and actress), 1986; children: (first marriage) one son.
Worked as computer operator, Elizabeth Arden, London, early 1970s; performed on English club scene, both solo and with group Flip City, early 1970s; signed to Stiff Records, 1976; released debut album My Aim Is True (released in United States on Columbia), 1977; performed with group the Attractions, 1977-86, and intermittently thereafter; produced other artists, 1979—; appeared on various benefit albums and as guest artist on others’ recordings, 1979—; cameo role in film No Surrender, 1986; wrote score for film The Courier, 1988; signed with Warner Bros. and released album Spike, 1989.
Awards: Album of the year, Rolling Stone critics’ poll, 1977, for My Aim Is True; songwriter of the year, Rolling Stone critics’ poll, 1989; best male video, MTV video awards, 1989, for Veronica.
Addresses: Home —London, England, and Dublin, Ireland. Record company —Warner Bros., 3300 Warner Blvd., Burbank, CA 91505; 75 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10019.
After suffering repeated rejections, McManus brought his tape to Stiff Records, one of England’s stalwart supporters of the burgeoning underground scene. It was there that he met songwriter-producer Nick Lowe, who would become a steadfast friend and collaborator; he also met Jake Riviera, who became his manager and gave him his professional name: the “Elvis” poked fun at rock star pretensions, while Costello was the maiden name of the young performer’s mother. Though McManus felt skeptical at first, he followed Riviera’s suggestion; over time the name would strike many listeners as a perfect fit for his musical synthesis.
Early Efforts Showed Deadly “Aim”
The newly-christened Elvis Costello went into the studio with American bar-band survivors Clover and—with two thousand English pounds and in twenty-four hours of recording time—completed an album called My Aim Is True. The title came from a line in the anguished ballad “Alison,” which would become one of Costello’s most popular songs. The album also contains the edgy, reggae-inflected rock of “Watching the Detectives,” buoyant, sardonic pop songs like “(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes,” and “Mystery Dance,” a concise rockabilly lament about sexual confusion.
The album cover of My Aim Is Truesports a photograph that would cement Costello in rock iconography: with spiky hair, horn-rimmed glasses, suit, and gawky stance, he represented a brazen challenge to the ultrasmooth rock superstars of the day. Indeed his “faux nerd” looks, as a Time writer would later call them, gave rise to the witticism—credited to various sources, including rock writer Dave Marsh—that Costello was popular with the critics because he looked like one of them. Released in America on Columbia Records, the album and its creator were hailed on both sides of the Atlantic as major arrivals. My Aim Is True was named album of the year in a Rolling Stone critics’ poll.
Costello then proceeded to assemble the Attractions, which consisted of keyboardist Steve Nieve, bassist Bruce Thomas, and drummer Pete Thomas (no relation); the group joined the “Stiffs Live” tour with label-mates Ian Dury, Wreckless Eric, and others. The group’s barnstorming tour of the United States included a stop at the television program Saturday Night Live, where Costello committed his first Stateside outrage: at the last minute, over the frenzied objections of the staff, he substituted his new song “Radio, Radio”—a scabrous broadside at mainstream programmers—for the scheduled “Less Than Zero.”
Costello’s musical output with the Attractions during this period was astoundingly prolific. The group went into the studio in late 1977 and the following year released This Year’s Model, a collection of ferocious, streamlined songs that departed from the eclecticism and intermittent whimsy of Costello’s debut. The American edition includes “Radio, Radio,” not to mention virulent rockers like “Lipstick Vogue” and “Pump It Up.”
Already certain signature themes were emerging in his songs: sexual misadventures, power struggles in interpersonal relationships, and the tyranny of fashion. And often these conflicts occurred in the vexed realm of speech: “little triggers,” as he sang in the song of the same name, “that you pull with your tongue.” In the words of Creem writer Richard Gehr, Costello’s “earliest records seemed like nothing more than knotty, nerve-jangled expulsions on the mouth and the damage it can do.”
“Pop Expressionism” and Road Fatigue
Eager to avoid the pitfalls of repeating a formula, Costello and the Attractions recorded their next album in 1978; the singer told the compilers of the Rykodisc boxed set that “the sessions took what we regarded as a very extravagant six weeks.” Originally titled Emotional Fascism, the album signalled the beginning of what a Rolling Stone writer would later call his “pop expressionism.” Released as Armed Forces, it demonstrated Costello’s increasingly ambitious songwriting approach and his band’s seemingly unlimited dexterity. The album begins with the symphonic “Accidents Will Happen,” which Costello aficionados generally number among his best songs, and concludes—in the United States version—with Lowe’s sincere, upbeat “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding.” In between fall a panoply of meditations on fascism both emotional and political, from “Green Shirt” and “Oliver’s Army” to the menacing “Goon Squad” and the deceptively bouncy “Two Little Hitlers.” Unfortunately, while on tour in the United States in 1979, Costello gained a reputation as something of a fascist himself, thanks to racist comments he made in an Ohio bar brawl with American rockers Stephen Stills and Bonnie Bramlett. Though he regretted his words and said so publicly on numerous occasions, the fallout of this incident lasted for many years.
It was a time of excess: alcohol and drugs fueled the band’s touring and, to some degree, Costello’s writing. But when the group hit a wall trying to find a sound for the next album, it was downing a few beers in a local pub that gave them their approach. Thus was born the sound of 1980’s Get Happy!!, which bore the stylistic imprint of American soul groups like Stax Records house band Booker T. and the MGs. The good-time feel of the arrangements provided a unique tension with Costello’s typically pun-riddled, multi-layered, and conflict-filled lyrics. Get Happy!! ‘features the galloping “Love for Tender,” the melancholy, Beatlesque “New Amsterdam,” and a cover version of “I Can’t Stand Up for Falling Down”—originally recorded by Stax soul legends Sam and Dave—which was a fair-sized hit in England.
Increasingly Ambitious Songwriting
Next came Trust, which displayed an even greater compositional reach: “Clubland” is a moody, noirish piece with an R&B-influenced refrain, while the stark piano ballad “Shot With His Own Gun” shows the influence of modern composers like Kurt Weill. By this time Costello’s songwriting had captured the fancy of his more commercially successful peers, including singer Linda Ronstadt, who recorded several of his songs; Costello disparaged Ronstadt’s versions, but they indicated that the musical mainstream now saw him as a major songwriter. He, in turn, had begun to refine his talents as producer, working with the English ska band the Specials, among others. He also recorded an album of country standards, Almost Blue.
Costello’s next album, Imperial Bedroom, was a hit with critics; many hailed it as his first masterpiece. Suggesting the sonic grandeur of pop’s greatest moments, its best songs have been compared to the Beatles’ and Beach Boys’ finest work. 1983’s Punch the Clock, meanwhile, opted for a more radio-friendly sound at the expense of its predecessor’s baroque explorations; it yielded the small-scale hit “Everyday I Write the Book,” but also included one of Costello’s most highly regarded compositions, the elegiac “Shipbuilding,” which he co-wrote with Clive Langer and which features a trumpet solo by jazz idol Chet Baker. With their 1984 album Goodbye Cruel World, however, despite the airplay granted the single “The Only Flame in Town”—a duet with blue-eyed soul star Daryl Hall—Costello and the Attractions appeared to be running out of steam.
End of Road for Attractions
Costello worked with the Attractions for part of his next album, King of America, the first recording that identified him as Declan McManus (he added an imaginary second middle name, “Aloysius,” on the sleeve) and his musical enterprise as “The Costello Show.” Mixing roots-based forms like country, rockabilly and folk and including numerous guest artists, the album suggested a new direction for Costello. His personal life took a new direction as well: having left a previous marriage of some thirteen years, he married Cait O’Riordan, former bassist for the band the Pogues, with whom Costello had worked as producer. The two have periodically collaborated as songwriters.
After a return to garage-pop for the album Blood and Chocolate, Costello peremptorily left the Attractions and began to work as a solo artist. “To be honest, I didn’t handle the situation with much grace,” he confessed years later in an Entertainment Weekly interview. “I just sort of announced that I was going, and it wasn’t negotiable. That must have been pretty hurtful after what we’d put in. I guess I got a little arrogant, you know, as I got more confident.” This confidence was no doubt bolstered by the fact that he was invited to collaborate with Paul McCartney, first on a B-side to a single and then on some songs for the former Beatle’s album Flowers in the Dirt. The two also co-wrote some songs that ended up on the first Costello solo album, Spike, which was also his first release on his new label, Warner Bros. Among these is the single “Veronica,” which enjoyed some rotation on MTV; the album also includes Costello’s cabaret-like “God’s Comic.” Spike features guest appearances by Roger McGuinn of the seminal folk-rock band the Byrds, Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, and McCartney himself. In the Rolling Stone Critics’ Awards for 1989, Costello was voted best songwriter.
By the time of his next album, 1991’s Mighty Like a Rose, Costello was adamant that there would be no reunion with his old band. “The divorce is final,” he maintained in Creem.”Costello and the Attractions are history.” As though to embody his break from the past, he sported a new look: long hair, full beard and wire-rim glasses. Mighty includes the McCartney co-composition “So Like Candy”; a Rolling Stone reviewer, despite some reservations, called the album “Costello’s most ambitious and adventurous music in ages.” Bruce Thomas wrote a dishy book about the Attractions’ touring days that never mentioned Costello by name and was generally trashed by critics. “The boring member of the band always writes the book,” Costello himself scoffed in Creem.
Costello appeared on a number of anthologies and tribute albums; he also elected to take a rare—and, to some, commercially misguided—step: recording an album of songs with a string quartet. Based on the letters written over the centuries to the heroine of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the suite of songs were the result of mutual admiration between Costello and the Brodsky Quartet. The resulting album was The Juliet Letters.”We wanted to explore the under-used combination of voice and string quartet, but were anxious to avoid that junkyard named ‘crossover,’” Costello explained in a Warner Bros. publicity release. “This is no more my stab at ‘classical music’ than it is the Brodsky Quartet’s first rock and roll album.” Reviews were mixed; Request magazine’s write-up was typical in its assertion that the album was “neither the transcendent triumph one might have hoped for, nor the embarrassing fiasco one might have feared.”
Costello’s next project resulted after he was contacted by former Transvision Vamp singer Wendy James about writing a song for her solo album; he eventually decided to write an entire album’s worth. Working alone and with O’Riordan, he composed all the songs in a weekend. It was while recording the song demos for her—with Thomas on drums—at Pathway, the tiny London studio where he’d recorded some of his earliest work, that Costello rediscovered the unadorned, scruffy pop sound he’d long since abandoned. James’s album fared poorly, but the project sowed the seeds for the long-forestalled reunion with the Attractions.
Costello contacted Lowe and Nieve, as well as producer Mitchell Froom, and brought in Pete Thomas in play drums. Soon, through Lowe, he met with Bruce Thomas; the two hadn’t spoken in several years, but Bruce played bass on about half the album. Lowe and Costello played bass in the other songs, and soon the vaunted return of the Attractions—and the messy sonic grandeur of the early days—was a reality. The recording, which Costello first wanted to call Idiophone, was released in 1994 as Brutal Youth.”I deliberately made the music crude,” reads a quote from Costello in a Warner Bros, press release. “I know it’s going to offend some people, while others will dig it because it’s very throwaway. Other people are going to be slightly ill at ease with it because it isn’t crafted or something. But it’s a sort of template of how to play like this.”
Accused of “Raiding His Own Catalogue”
He was right; a Rolling Stone writer accused Costello of “raiding his own catalogue,” particularly the 1979 to 1981 material, “reprising both that period’s trademarks and shortcomings,” and tending toward overly busy arrangements. A Spin reviewer called the album’s songs “15 fresh slices of warmed-over genius,” and an Entertainment Weekly writer found the latest tunes “frustrating, metaphor-ridden jigsaw puzzles.”
Chris Willman of the Los Angeles Times, however, declared, “You don’t have to have underrated Costello’s recent work to agree this is his finest album since his last with the Attractions,” and Timothy White called the recording a “magnificent return to form” in his Billboard article. Costello obviously had little concern about reviews. “I got accused by the New York Times of not having a coherent world view,” he told a Pulse! interviewer. “I thought, ‘What do you mean, like [Adolf] Hitler? Or [former U.S. President] George Bush?’”
And just as clearly, Costello would continue to follow his own muse, despite the desires and expectations of his listeners. “I find it amazing that I’ve managed to be making records for 17 years!” he exclaimed to Billboard’s White. He has continued to oppose the hype of the pop world; as he insisted in Creem, “Rock & Roll is a ludicrous response to most things. Most of what goes on is pretty puny, including what I do myself. I fall very short of really great work. Nobody’s that smart.” Yet the trajectory of his own development as an artist caused him to declare—in an Option magazine dialogue with fellow musical maverick Tom Waits—“I don’t believe anybody hasn’t got a voice,” but that “they haven’t found it yet. I believe everybody can write songs in the same way.”
Selected discography
On Columbia
My Aim Is True (includes “Alison,” “Watching the Detectives,” “Red Shoes,” “Mystery Dance,” and “Less Than Zero”), 1977.
This Year’s Model (includes “Radio Radio,” “Lipstick Vogue,” “Pump it Up,” and “Little Triggers”), 1978.
Armed Forces (includes “Accidents Will Happen,” “[What’s So Funny’Bout] Peace, Love and Understanding,” “Green Shirt,” “Oliver’s Army,” “Goon Squad,” and “Two Little Hitlers”), 1978.
Get Happy!! (includes “Love for Tender,” “New Amsterdam,” “Man Called Uncle,” and “I Can’t Stand Up for Falling Down”), 1980.
Taking Liberties, 1980.
Trust (includes “Clubland” and “Shot With His Own Gun”), 1981.
Almost Blue, 1981.
Imperial Bedroom, 1982.
Punch the Clock (includes “Everyday I Write the Book” and “Shipbuilding”), 1983.
Goodbye Cruel World (includes “The Only Flame in Town”), 1984.
The Best of Elvis Costello and the Attractions, 1985.
King of America, 1986.
Blood and Chocolate, 1986.
Girls, Girls, Girls (compilation), 1989.
On Warner Bros
Spike (includes “Veronica” and “God’s Comic”), 1988.
Mighty Like a Rose (includes “So Like Candy”), 1991.
The Juliet Letters, 1993.
Brutal Youth, 1994.
On various labels
Out of Our Idiot (B-sides and unreleased material), Demon, 1987.
The Courier (film score), Virgin, 1988.
2½ Years (four CD boxed set comprising remastered versions of first three albums, unreleased and import material, and concert disc Live at El Mocambo), Rykodisc, 1993.
With other artists
Various, Live Stiffs, Stiff, 1978.
Various, Concert for the People of Kampuchea, Columbia, 1980.
The Coward Brothers (pseudonymous recording with T-Bone Burnett), “The People’s Limousine,” Imp, 1985.
John Hiatt, Warming up to the Ice Age (appears on “Living a Little, Laughing a Little”), Geffen, 1985.
Various, Deadicated (appears on “Ship of Fools”), Arista, 1991.
Various, Weird Nightmare: Meditations on Mingus (appears on “Weird Nightmare”), Columbia, 1992.
Rob Wasserman, Trios (appears on “Put Your Big Toe in the Milk of Human Kindness”), MCA, 1994.
As songwriter
Til Tuesday, Everything’s Different Now (co-wrote “The Other End [of the Telescope]” with Aimee Mann), 1988.
Ruben Blades, Nothing But the Truth, Elektra, 1988.
Paul McCartney, “Back On My Feet” (co-wrote with McCartney), Columbia, 1988.
McCartney, Flowers in the Dirt (co-wrote “My Brave Face,” “You Want Her Too,” “Don’t Be Careless Love” and “That Day Is Done”), Columbia, 1989.
Wendy James, Now Ain’t the Time for Your Tears, Geffen, 1993.
As producer
The Specials, The Specials, 1979.
Squeeze, East Side Story, 1981.
The Special AKA, “Free Nelson Mandela,” 1981.
The Pogues, Rum, Sodomy and the Lash, 1985.
Sources
Books
Contemporary Musicians, Volume 2, Gale, 1989.
Costello, Elvis, A Singing Dictionary ‘(lyrics and sheet music), Plangent Visions, 1980.
Costello, Everyday I Write the Song (Grumbling Appendix to the Singing Dictionary) (lyrics and sheet music), Plangent Visions, 1983.
Gouldstone, David, Elvis Costello: God’s Comic, St. Martin’s, 1989.
Rees, Dafydd, and Luke Crampton, Rock Movers & Shakers, Billboard, 1991.
Stambler, Irwin, Encyclopedia of Pop, Rock & Soul, St. Martin’s, 1989.
Periodicals
Billboard, February 5, 1994; March 12, 1994.
Creem, June 1991.
Details, April 1993.
Entertainment Weekly, March 11, 1994; March 18, 1994.
Los Angeles Times, March 6, 1994; April 15, 1994.
Musician, May 1990; March 1991.
Option, July 1989.
Pulse!, May 1993; April 1994.
Raygun, April 1994.
Request, March 1993.
Rolling Stone, May 16, 1991; March 24, 1994.
Spin, April 1994.
Time, April 11, 1994.
Village Voice, April 5, 1994.
Additional information for this profile was obtained from Warner Bros, publicity materials, 1991-94, and from the liner notes to the 1993 Rykodisc boxed set 2 1/2 Years.
—Simon Glickman
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Costello, Elvis