London Times, March 2, 2002: Difference between revisions
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"Actually" he says, with barely suppressed devilment, "I did have a furious row with someone from TV in America-they were doing a short feature on Burt Bacharach. I didn't really want to fit this into my day but it was Burt. The line of questioning was "Burt is king of cheese and you come out of punk rock, so how did you guys get together?" I said, Excuse me, you are starting from a prelude that I completely disagree with." He said it again, and I said, 'There's no way we can have this conversation.' After he asked it a fourth time I threw him out because it seemed so insulting to Burt. I thought, 'You are showing extreme ignorance of this guy's work." | "Actually" he says, with barely suppressed devilment, "I did have a furious row with someone from TV in America-they were doing a short feature on Burt Bacharach. I didn't really want to fit this into my day but it was Burt. The line of questioning was "Burt is king of cheese and you come out of punk rock, so how did you guys get together?" I said, Excuse me, you are starting from a prelude that I completely disagree with." He said it again, and I said, 'There's no way we can have this conversation.' After he asked it a fourth time I threw him out because it seemed so insulting to Burt. I thought, 'You are showing extreme ignorance of this guy's work." | ||
Both the question and the anger it provoked are understandable. It doesn't take a musicologist to see that Bacharach and Costello each have a flair for the skewed melody the clever way of giving the ear what it doesn't quite expect. In this respect their mutual interest was unsurprising. Yet they have supplied different constituencies — easy listening and not-so-easy listening. In fact, one of the problems of early Costello was that the voice which sounded so sullen, tender and bruised over the three-minute dash of 4 single such as | Both the question and the anger it provoked are understandable. It doesn't take a musicologist to see that Bacharach and Costello each have a flair for the skewed melody the clever way of giving the ear what it doesn't quite expect. In this respect their mutual interest was unsurprising. Yet they have supplied different constituencies — easy listening and not-so-easy listening. In fact, one of the problems of early Costello was that the voice which sounded so sullen, tender and bruised over the three-minute dash of <!-- 4 --> a single such as "Oliver's Army" or "Alison" could become thin and overwrought in the course of a whole album. | ||
As a writer he was always pushing the construction off songs far beyond the few chords which were enough for many of his contemporaries. There's a colossal tension in him, a very productive one, between the scripted and the aural ways, the formal and the throwaway, the lettered and the unlettered. It probably touches every area of his life, and it certainly influences the way in which he writes his popular and his less accessible music. Bacharach's good opinion of him is like gold, and he flashes it without apology. | As a writer he was always pushing the construction off songs far beyond the few chords which were enough for many of his contemporaries. There's a colossal tension in him, a very productive one, between the scripted and the aural ways, the formal and the throwaway, the lettered and the unlettered. It probably touches every area of his life, and it certainly influences the way in which he writes his popular and his less accessible music. Bacharach's good opinion of him is like gold, and he flashes it without apology. | ||
"I don't like people to be unaware of the fact that I wrote the music with him as well as the words (on the 1998 album Painted from Memory). Each of the songs had a different proportion, but the material we brought to the piano may even have been a lithe in my favour. After the career he's had, he was willing to open himself up to a full-blooded collaboration, which was largely unprecedented. He had written one or two songs with other people, such as Neil Diamond, but nothing like to this extent. And people like this TV guy still want to talk about him smooth, me rough. But I threw him out, so he got what he came for, because he ran into this 1977 guy! But, really, I don't have many arguments. If we're going to get angry, let's get angry about real tings, like politics." OK. Apart from the Manic Street Preachers, or Pulp, there aren't many big-selling bands doing social effusion songs, let alone giving the Government an earful. Five years in, they must be fair game. Blunkett rhymes with flunk it, Blair with yeah. What's everyone waiting for? | "I don't like people to be unaware of the fact that I wrote the music with him as well as the words (on the 1998 album ''Painted from Memory''). Each of the songs had a different proportion, but the material we brought to the piano may even have been a lithe in my favour. After the career he's had, he was willing to open himself up to a full-blooded collaboration, which was largely unprecedented. He had written one or two songs with other people, such as Neil Diamond, but nothing like to this extent. And people like this TV guy still want to talk about him smooth, me rough. But I threw him out, so he got what he came for, because he ran into this 1977 guy! But, really, I don't have many arguments. If we're going to get angry, let's get angry about real tings, like politics." OK. Apart from the Manic Street Preachers, or Pulp, there aren't many big-selling bands doing social effusion songs, let alone giving the Government an earful. Five years in, they must be fair game. Blunkett rhymes with flunk it, Blair with yeah. What's everyone waiting for? | ||
"The Eighties were very clearly defined" he says. "Either you made the music celebrating the greed culture, or you didn't. You were either part of the problem or part of the. . . not solution, but dissent. Very few songs actually changed anything. The only one I can think of that really influenced events was Free Nelson Mandella. That gave energy to a movement. It showed how a bold, bald sloganising song can work . . . I've never been one for making big broad statements that are easily picked up. People make the inference that because you've written so-called political songs — I never said they were — there's something lacking if you don't then follow them up. | "The Eighties were very clearly defined" he says. "Either you made the music celebrating the greed culture, or you didn't. You were either part of the problem or part of the. . . not solution, but dissent. Very few songs actually changed anything. The only one I can think of that really influenced events was Free Nelson Mandella. That gave energy to a movement. It showed how a bold, bald sloganising song can work . . . I've never been one for making big broad statements that are easily picked up. People make the inference that because you've written so-called political songs — I never said they were — there's something lacking if you don't then follow them up. | ||
"There's more than one kind of political song. It's a childish kind of impulse to blame the 'They'. | "There's more than one kind of political song. It's a childish kind of impulse to blame the 'They'. I've done this myself. This 'They' really means the part of you that allows particular things to happen." | ||
All this is delivered in his distinctive London-and-Liverpool accent. He was born in Paddington but later moved up to Birkenhead (he has strong views on the Robbie | All this is delivered in his distinctive London-and-Liverpool accent. He was born in Paddington but later moved up to Birkenhead (he has strong views on the Robbie Fowler's transfer to Leeds). He's 47 now and was just 23 when his first album, ''My Aim Is True'', was released to instant rapture. He talks at full tilt, doesn't need questions to keep him going, and sometimes treats them rather as a joyrider treats a sleeping policeman. For assertive fluency he's up there with, well, Mrs Thatcher. He doesn't smoke or drink. Used to drink, but gave it up and said it was no big deal. | ||
There is a first Mrs Costello, who is in the strange position of retaining her ex-husband's stage name, and a 27-year-old musician son, Matthew, from that marriage. There is also a band of brothers, or half-brothers, from Costello's father's second marriage. Ruari, Ronan, Liam and Kieran MacMmus, all in their twenties, play in a London band called Riverway. Costello's judgement is on the line; about five years ago they asked him for his opinion of them and he said they would be ready in five years. | There is a first Mrs Costello, who is in the strange position of retaining her ex-husband's stage name, and a 27-year-old musician son, Matthew, from that marriage. There is also a band of brothers, or half-brothers, from Costello's father's second marriage. Ruari, Ronan, Liam and Kieran MacMmus, all in their twenties, play in a London band called Riverway. Costello's judgement is on the line; about five years ago they asked him for his opinion of them and he said they would be ready in five years. | ||
He looks content and prosperous. You wouldn't say fat — particularly not in front of him — but when you compare him with the cover of ''This | He looks content and prosperous. You wouldn't say fat — particularly not in front of him — but when you compare him with the cover of ''This Year's Model'' (1978) he a matrioshka. Unscrew him at the waist and you would find the earlier, smaller versions going back through the decades — the ''Spike'' model of 1989, the ''Get Happy!!'' one of 1980 — all tile way to the weird and scrawny Seventies original with his twisty legs and nerd specs. | ||
Considering he absorbs so many diverse styles, you might have expected to find more evidence of Irish music in his output. After all, the best of it belongs to a tradition in which there is not the same schism between supposedly high and supposedly low art as there is in England. For good measure, his great grandfather was born in Dungannon, his grandfather was a travelling Irish musician, and his father, Ross MacManus, is a singer and former bandleader. | Considering he absorbs so many diverse styles, you might have expected to find more evidence of Irish music in his output. After all, the best of it belongs to a tradition in which there is not the same schism between supposedly high and supposedly low art as there is in England. For good measure, his great grandfather was born in Dungannon, his grandfather was a travelling Irish musician, and his father, Ross MacManus, is a singer and former bandleader. | ||
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"I do think there is a lot of it [stereotyping] going on. English people know little of this country and what they gave to the world. They (English people) are still patronising and demeaning. It's not as though it's all perfect here. There's an influential and tolerated class of businessmen and politicians — which is most of them and it's not very admirable — who have worked out a deal with another authority, that of Europe, which maintains their place in the scheme of tidings. There are obviously benefits here, but if you go out to the middle of the country or further west, you can see that it hasn't been shared out properly. | "I do think there is a lot of it [stereotyping] going on. English people know little of this country and what they gave to the world. They (English people) are still patronising and demeaning. It's not as though it's all perfect here. There's an influential and tolerated class of businessmen and politicians — which is most of them and it's not very admirable — who have worked out a deal with another authority, that of Europe, which maintains their place in the scheme of tidings. There are obviously benefits here, but if you go out to the middle of the country or further west, you can see that it hasn't been shared out properly. | ||
"People assume the worst of politics and business, think that they are up to no good and that there is some weird compromise. Every day the papers are full of scandal and inquiries. So, although the country is said to be doing well, it's at the expense of this. It goes on everywhere. France, Spain, Italy all have versions of it, but the UK | "People assume the worst of politics and business, think that they are up to no good and that there is some weird compromise. Every day the papers are full of scandal and inquiries. So, although the country is said to be doing well, it's at the expense of this. It goes on everywhere. France, Spain, Italy all have versions of it, but the UK doesn't. There it's like, 'Well that's what you'd expect from them." | ||
"Anyway, that's my experience of Dublin as an observer. I like it. I think it's a brake on some more oppressive and claustrophobic authority building up in the governing class, which naturally induces big business. It raises questions about the moral foundation of the governing class. But it's different in the UK, specially the president. Sanctimonious and laughable. That's why I don't live there any more. I didn't like the generalissimo (Mrs Thatcher) any more than I like the president of the new, undeclared republic. Let's have one (a republic), but let's come out and say it, and have someone with grace like Mary Robinson going round and standing up to dictators and telling them off. What a thing. Fantastic." | "Anyway, that's my experience of Dublin as an observer. I like it. I think it's a brake on some more oppressive and claustrophobic authority building up in the governing class, which naturally induces big business. It raises questions about the moral foundation of the governing class. But it's different in the UK, specially the president. Sanctimonious and laughable. That's why I don't live there any more. I didn't like the generalissimo (Mrs Thatcher) any more than I like the president of the new, undeclared republic. Let's have one (a republic), but let's come out and say it, and have someone with grace like Mary Robinson going round and standing up to dictators and telling them off. What a thing. Fantastic." | ||
Later this year he plans to collaborate with director Neil LaBute on a film project, and is appearing in The | Later this year he plans to collaborate with director Neil LaBute on a film project, and is appearing in ''The Simpsons''. After the touring with the songs on his new CD, ''When I Was Cruel'', Costello's orchestral score for a ballet adaptation of ''A{{nb}}Midsummer Night's Dream'' will be recorded by Deutsche Grammophon, with Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. This is not a work that has evolved through a pop star's single melody line being fleshed into a full score by classically trained professionals. Through hard work and a good ear that hears "vertically" through the stave, he has been able to pencil-out a 200-page score himself. He says by the end he was able to write 60-piece arrangements straight out of his head. | ||
This is an intriguing place to find a rock 'n' roll star with a history of rebellion. No less so when he explains what happened to him as a boy. It was simple really, although perplexing at the time. He couldn't understand the link between the treble and bass staves. No one explained to him that they were part of a continuum, joined by the alto stave, but that the alto stave was left out as it was generally only used by viola players. "It was the separation that threw me',' he says. "I gave up music for 30 years. I could sing, so I sang in the school choir, but then my voice got too loud and they threw me out. I became an altar boy because of the solemn face, but I got thrown out at 14 for laughing. Because the priest used to mumble everything except the church plate takings. | This is an intriguing place to find a rock 'n' roll star with a history of rebellion. No less so when he explains what happened to him as a boy. It was simple really, although perplexing at the time. He couldn't understand the link between the treble and bass staves. No one explained to him that they were part of a continuum, joined by the alto stave, but that the alto stave was left out as it was generally only used by viola players. "It was the separation that threw me',' he says. "I gave up music for 30 years. I could sing, so I sang in the school choir, but then my voice got too loud and they threw me out. I became an altar boy because of the solemn face, but I got thrown out at 14 for laughing. Because the priest used to mumble everything except the church plate takings. | ||
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{{cx}} | {{cx}} | ||
'''Elvis Costello's new single, "Tear Off Your Own Head (It's | '''Elvis Costello's new single, "Tear Off Your Own Head (It's a Doll Revolution)," is released on April 8, the album ''When I Was Cruel'' is released on April 15, both on Mercury. Elvis Costello plays London's Astoria on April 16. | ||
Copyright Times Newspapers Ltd, 2002. | Copyright Times Newspapers Ltd, 2002. | ||
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{{Bibliography notes}} | {{Bibliography notes}} | ||
{{Bibliography next | |||
|prev = London Times, May 12, 2001 | |||
|next = London Times, September 22, 2002 | |||
}} | |||
'''The Times Magazine, March 2, 2002 | '''The Times Magazine, March 2, 2002 | ||
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Revision as of 03:45, 6 July 2021
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