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New friends for Elvis
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
BY JAY LUSTIG
Star-Ledger Staff
POP/ROCK
When it comes to rock music, the best equivalent of Kevin Bacon, in the "Six Degrees Of ..." department, might be Elvis Costello.
Over the course of his restless, often brilliant career, Costello, 51, has written songs with Burt Bacharach and Paul McCartney, produced albums for the Pogues and Squeeze, and performed with Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and the Beastie Boys. In recent years, he has presented collaborative shows with Emmylou Harris and Los Lobos' David Hidalgo. He was backed by the Dutch orchestra Metropole Orkest on his most recent album, "My Flame Burns Blue"; his upcoming album, "The River In Reverse," teams him with one of the giants of New Orleans R&B, Allen Toussaint.
Yet for his Friday night concert at the Trump Taj Mahal, which is being taped for broadcast on VH1 Classics' "Decades Rock Live!" series, he will welcome, as guests, three younger artists he has never worked with: Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong, Fiona Apple and the band Death Cab For Cutie.
Costello, who will be backed by his regular backing group, the Imposters, for most of the show, says he might have chosen "friends who are contemporaries of mine or even a year or two up on me, but that seemed a little too obvious. I've done a lot of collaborative work in the last 10 or 12 years; to repeat any of those wouldn't be taking advantage of, perhaps, an unusual opportunity. So in the end we decided not to go with people I'd worked with before."
He says he doesn't know any of the guests well and has met only one of them, Armstrong, before. He has talked to them, though, by phone, in preparation for the show, and says he has been encouraged by the songs they want to perform.
"Some of the choices they went for were really surprising, and I think that's good because they're coming at my stuff from different angles," he says, declining to name the songs, as nothing has been finalized. "It seems like they have their heads on straight about what we're trying to do.
"I think we just have to make the most interesting show that we can musically and have some fun. We'll take seriously learning the songs and trying to play them the best we can. But it must be enjoyable to do because we're just doing it for one occasion. If it isn't enjoyable, why are we doing it?"
The show comes in the middle of an extremely busy period of Costello's career. Having released "My Flame Burns Blue" in February, he just wrapped up -- last weekend -- a tour on which he was joined by different orchestras in different cities. The "River In Reverse" album came together hurriedly, after Costello and Toussaint performed together at three post-Katrina benefits in New York (where Costello lives and where Toussaint relocated after the hurricane made his hometown unlivable).
They have presented some other benefits since those initial ones, in September, and performed April 30 at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. After the album's release, on June 6, they will embark on their first actual tour. They're booked at New York's Beacon Theatre July 10 and 11.
Toussaint, 68, is best known as a producer and songwriter. His name has appeared on hits by everyone from Ernie K-Doe (1961's "Mother-In-Law") to Lee Dorsey ("Working in the Coal Mine"), Dr. John ("Right Place Wrong Time"), the Pointer Sisters ("Yes We Can Can") and LaBelle ("Lady Marmalade"). He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998 in the nonperformer category, though he has released many records under his own name.
In the'80s, he did some production and keyboard work for Costello.
"I really valued the collaborations we had," says Costello, "but I hadn't, to my shame, kept up the acquaintance that much. But I was asked to play at a benefit concert by Wynton Marsalis (in September), and I could think of nothing better than to perform with Allen."
Their friendship rekindled, they began talking about making an album together. The finished product features new versions of seven old Toussaint songs (including a taut, intense "On Your Way Down"), plus five new Costello/Toussaint co-compositions and the new, Costello-written title track. Backing throughout is by the Imposters, joined by the Toussaint-arranged Crescent City Horns.
Several songs can be interpreted as direct comments on New Orleans.
On the title track, Costello sings, "There must be something better than this/I don't see how it can get much worse/What do we have to do, to send the river in reverse?"
On "Broken Promise Land," a co-composition, he seethes, "I swore I'd never walk away, until saw this day/It didn't turn out the way we planned/Now I'm living in Broken Promise Land."
"It's not for me to put myself in the place of people from the city," he says. "I was just standing outside it and trying to imagine what that's like, and trying to imagine how you would feel, if nobody was coming to your aid.
"Also, I simply wanted to make a record that celebrated the best things about Allen's writing. It originally started out to be an Allen Toussaint songbook record because I thought that was a record that should exist. And it was a great way for him to go back to work while he was waiting to go home."
They recorded some of the album in Los Angeles and some in New Orleans.
"When we started to plan the record and to write, we didn't know if we could even enter the city," says Costello. "By the time the (songwriting was) completed, it became apparent that we could indeed go to New Orleans.
"Quite apart from anything else, you're given a budget of money from the record company to go and do the work, and I thought it was correct to spend some of that money in the city to show that it could be done. People should go there and do as much work as they can."