Q, March 1989: Difference between revisions
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"It's not a long lay-off by most people's standards," says Elvis, referring to the two-and-a-half year interval that separates his previous album, ''[[Blood And Chocolate]]'', from the new one, entitled ''[[Spike]]'' which is about to come out. "Actually it's a fairly conventional lay-off. But I'd done 10 years. My parole came up." | "It's not a long lay-off by most people's standards," says Elvis, referring to the two-and-a-half year interval that separates his previous album, ''[[Blood & Chocolate|Blood And Chocolate]]'', from the new one, entitled ''[[Spike]]'' which is about to come out. "Actually it's a fairly conventional lay-off. But I'd done 10 years. My parole came up." | ||
Stubbly but fit-looking, lean and somewhat dashing in his black designer overcoat and fancy-clasped tie, the 1989 version of Elvis Costello is striding — at a very brisk clip — across the windy expanse of London's Hyde Park, over the way from the office of his record company. An honest old wooden bench presents itself, and our man suggests (he has a pretty pleasant, quaintly courteous manner about him) that if it's not too cold for me, then perhaps we might sit and do the interview right here? | Stubbly but fit-looking, lean and somewhat dashing in his black designer overcoat and fancy-clasped tie, the 1989 version of Elvis Costello is striding — at a very brisk clip — across the windy expanse of London's Hyde Park, over the way from the office of his record company. An honest old wooden bench presents itself, and our man suggests (he has a pretty pleasant, quaintly courteous manner about him) that if it's not too cold for me, then perhaps we might sit and do the interview right here? | ||
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The actual title, ''Spike'', is slightly by way of tribute to Spike Jones, the American singer whose band, The City Slickers, made a series of novelty records in the 1940s that earned him the name The King Of Corn. "On the very last night we were listening to the album, and I noticed there were some comical noises, some deliberately humorous music on the record. And out of the blue I said, This sounds like Spike Jones! So I thought, let's call it Spike, one-word title, people will remember it." | The actual title, ''Spike'', is slightly by way of tribute to Spike Jones, the American singer whose band, The City Slickers, made a series of novelty records in the 1940s that earned him the name The King Of Corn. "On the very last night we were listening to the album, and I noticed there were some comical noises, some deliberately humorous music on the record. And out of the blue I said, This sounds like Spike Jones! So I thought, let's call it Spike, one-word title, people will remember it." | ||
Probably the most varied set of songs, in terms of lyrical scope and musical style, that Costello's ever come up with, Spike has him teamed once more with T-Bone Burnett (who produced King Of America) though Burnett's role this time around appears to have been more as mentor and consultant; Costello's chief co-producer was engineer Kevin Killen. The variety in the tracks is reflected in Spike's far-flung selection of recording locations - Dublin, New Orleans, Hollywood and London - and in the enormous, shifting roster of musicians taking part, who include Roger McGuinn, Paul McCartney, Allen Toussaint, Chrissie Hynde, Jim Keltner and many more. | Probably the most varied set of songs, in terms of lyrical scope and musical style, that Costello's ever come up with, Spike has him teamed once more with [[T Bone Burnett|T-Bone Burnett]] (who produced ''[[King Of America]]'') though Burnett's role this time around appears to have been more as mentor and consultant; Costello's chief co-producer was engineer [[Kevin Killen]]. The variety in the tracks is reflected in Spike's far-flung selection of recording locations - Dublin, New Orleans, Hollywood and London - and in the enormous, shifting roster of musicians taking part, who include [[Roger McGuinn]], [[Paul McCartney]], [[Allen Toussaint]], [[Chrissie Hynde]], [[Jim Keltner]] and many more. | ||
Still, two-and-a-half years is two-and-a-half years. So what has he been doing all this time? | Still, two-and-a-half years is two-and-a-half years. So what has he been doing all this time? | ||
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"So I've done a lot of things, but they haven't all been big career moves. But I've never seen it like that. Since I came off the road as a routine thing - album/tour, album/tour - it frees you to do a lot of things which you want to do because they're interesting. And if they don't shoot to the top of the charts that doesn't necessarily mean they're inferior; often the best stuff you do is those little side things. | "So I've done a lot of things, but they haven't all been big career moves. But I've never seen it like that. Since I came off the road as a routine thing - album/tour, album/tour - it frees you to do a lot of things which you want to do because they're interesting. And if they don't shoot to the top of the charts that doesn't necessarily mean they're inferior; often the best stuff you do is those little side things. | ||
"It's what I do. In that time I had a couple of holidays, which is probably two more than I had in the previous l0 years. I went to Greenland last summer. I went to Italy at Easter. I don't really like holidays much, I find them boring. I like places, but I don't like being a tourist, because I fucking hate tourists here. So I don't like feeling that way myself. | |||
I'm not a workaholic, driven by this crazy urge to do anything that comes my way. I'm fairly selective, I turn down a lot of things, high profile shows, big tours that I didn't think were right, and 'cause' things where I'm not sure about people's motives." | |||
Ever since his second album, 1978's ''[[This Year's Model]]'', Costello has of course worked with The Attractions: [[Steve Nieve]] on keyboards, [[Pete Thomas]] on drums and [[Bruce Thomas]] on bass. In 1986 he broke the pattern by making ''King Of America'' with T-Bone Burnett and a wide cast of musicians, reuniting with the old line-up later that year for ''Blood And Chocolate''. But apart from an appearance by Pete Thomas on the extensive list of player credits, the newest album doesn't feature The Attractions at all, whether singly or together. How do things stand between Costello and the old gang? | |||
"Well, after the amount of records we did, our average was pretty good as a band. We did one pretty duff album and that's just down to whether you like country music (the ''Almost Blue'' set, recorded in Nashville in 1981). That wasn't really an Attractions record. I'm not sure that everyone was 100 per cent into it, but everyone did it. It's just where it lies really; we'll have to have a good reason to get back together, I don't see us getting back together to do a nostalgia tour. | |||
"History gets eaten up so quickly nowadays, people can get nostalgic about 1977, you get seriously worried about being dug up yourself. It's like archaeology, they find these little fragments of what was happening and they piece it back together, but it's never quite the way it was when you were actually there. | |||
"So there's not much point us getting together just to do old stuff, and they're not playing as a band on the new record, so for the time being until we get back and do something else together we won't be going out on tour. Pete plays on the record, but with no disrespect to Steve he sees Elvis and the Attractions differently to me. And he didn't see being what he regarded as a sideman on a record as what he wanted to do. I said I wanted to do some cuts with the four of us, and he was the one that really stopped it, because he said he either wanted to play on the whole record or ... so the door's open to him, if we come up with a good idea. | |||
"But obviously that was a little disappointing because he does do sessions, he plays with that idiot ''Jonathan Ross'' every Friday. I don't see the difference between playing on somebody else's record and playing on mine really. But he has a different view of it, like it's a 'band', like we're [[The Rolling Stones]] or something. I don't see it that way, I think we're individuals. | |||
Therefore we disagree, but I don't think there's any animosity. You'd have to ask them, really; they might fucking hate me!" | |||
I'm really concerned with what the songs are about most of the time, and with getting that over, and some of the time I'm so into the lyric of the song and the way I'm singing it that I'm not always paying attention to what everybody else is playing. And therefore I sometimes end up being dissatisfied with the cumulative effect of the track. So on the record, although the lyrics are what I work on a lot, and there's some quite serious songs, I really tried to make the music serve it in a different way to what I did in the past. Usually the music had just been a commentary that suited the mood, like ''Blood And Chocolate'' had a certain kind of attitude all the way through, ''King Of America'' had everything staying out of the way of the voice. Whereas this one has a lot more interaction between the lyric and the music. | |||
"I'd say overall it was a simpler record to understand, lyrically. There are more story songs, more third-person songs, therefore it's the opposite thing to that conflict of meaning when you're writing about yourself, and other people have to get inside you." | |||
I suggest to him that if one were to look for a contrast between the style of Costello's songs in the late '80s, and those of the late '70s, there's a trend away from material saying "Look at me", towards songs that simply say "Look at this". He more or less agrees, but appears wary of applying theoretical overviews to his work. | |||
"I did variations on the same thing for 10 years with a few exceptions, a lot of songs from a personal perspective. Now it's just turned out this way, and I've no idea why. I've never done much self-psychoanalysis. It's just a bunch of songs. Some of them have serious subjects, but I'm not doing 'important work' the way some people seem to think they are, I'm just writing fucking songs." | |||
''Spike'', though, does confirm another distinct development in his lyrical approach, away from the compulsive word-play (occasionally a touch too busy and contrived) towards a more controlled and sparser method, where words are put to work, rather than to play. | |||
"Yeah, but I think I've been doing that for a long time but nobody seemed to notice! You see, new artists come up, and people are very interested in them, and if you've been around for a while, it's like when people get very old and they're still around. They had Bertrand Russell's obituary on file for years - I think he wrote his first one himself - and when you get old like that, it's like they go to the file for the opinion about you. In pop music 10 years is really old, so some journalists are maybe a little lazy and they go to the file, Oh what does this guy do? It's another fucking record by him, Four-Eyes. And they write the same review. | |||
"It's quite disappointing because you feel that criticism is unfair. I don't do that any more. I did it at first, it was just the way I wrote, and then I got a little bit cute with it and then I stopped doing it. Nobody seemed to notice! Fuck 'em. So I'd say that was true of the last couple of records, but more so of this one." | |||
Two songs on ''Spike'' are collaborations with Paul McCartney: there's "[[Veronica]]," a kind of Merseybeat romp (on which McCartney plays bass) whose verse parts could almost be The Fourmost under Beatle influence; and "[[Pads, Paws And Claws]]," a fractured and scatty jazz-rockabilly hybrid. How did this partnership come about? | |||
"I just got a phone call, would I come in and have a chat about writing some songs. So I went down to the studio and he had a track with some spaces in the lyrics and I filled in the blanks. And the two songs on this album aren't the best 50/50 representation of how we write together, because I took in this couple of songs - here's some I made earlier! - that I'd been working on and hadn't finished yet, and said Can we work on these? And that way we got to know how we worked, and went on and wrote other songs, which are intended for his records, so there's not much point talking about them yet because I don't know which ones, if any, are going on the album. | |||
"But these two are quite different and some people will go, Well, that doesn't sound much like Paul McCartney. Well, that's mainly because it was more like a craft job, finishing them off together, so that way I got to know a bit about the way he wrote. Apart from "[[The People's Limousine|People's Limousine]]" with T-Bone - which we literally just wrote in the back of a car driving through Italy, like a song you'd make up if you were all drunk and sitting on a bus - I've never really sat down with anybody to seriously write some songs. | |||
"And inevitably there was a bit of, Fuckin' hell it's Paul McCartney, he's written loads of famous songs. And you're a little bit, not on your guard, but you need to know what he thinks about songs, not necessarily what he thinks about anything else. So you're still to hear the ones that are proper McCartney/MacManus songs. | |||
"He's very practical about songwriting, very formal, funnily enough. People sometimes say he seems to dash them off, but that's not really true. If you don't like what he's singing about, if you think the sentiments are not tough enough or something, then that's a personal thing. I wouldn't say this holds true for every song he's ever written but when we sat down together he wouldn't have any sloppy bits in there. That was interesting." | |||
It's possibly an odd collaboration in the sense that McCartney is usually perceived as a "sweet" writer, while you're thought of as edgier, more abrasive. | |||
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Revision as of 23:21, 13 April 2013
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