"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."
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?
And why not? Costello's return to album-style activity marks a welcome addition to what must count in most people's estimation as one of the most enjoyable catalogues of British music. (Enjoyable but not, according to Elvis, "important": he even toyed with the notion of calling this LP More Important Work, to debunk precisely that idea.)
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.
Still, two-and-a-half years is two-and-a-half years. So what has he been doing all this time?
"It's not like I've been on holiday for two years. I've been doing other things. Gigs have been pretty thin on the ground, but I played at Glastonbury last summer, did the Shetlands Festival. I did a solo tour in America, of colleges, which was a good laugh. And then Cait (O'Riordan, his wife, the former bass player of The Pogues whose second LP, Rum, Sodomy And The Lash he produced in '85) got a part in this film The Courier so we went to live in Dublin for three months while she was doing that. I did the incidental music for the film, and that's where I started to write a lot of the new songs.
"We had a couple of rooms in this hotel and I just worked in there, maybe going out to wander round a bit. So out of that came half the songs on this record. Then I planned a tour in the southern states of America, Japan and Australia, with The Confederates, just put together with whoever was available. And we had a good run, but going on the road with people you don't have a continuous relationship which is quite difficult, because by the time you've really got it happening, it's over.
"So it was a year of doing things that I enjoyed, that weren't really much to do with promotion. I thought, You don't have to be promoting an album, you can just play for the hell of it. And then I got the enquiry about working with Paul McCartney so I had a few sessions of doing that. I had a writing thing I did with Ruben Blades (New York-based master of modern Latin music), all little things but they all take up time, stopping off here and there. I did a couple of 'mail order' songs as it were, where I got commissions, wrote some lyrics for Aimee Mann of 'Til Tuesday (their second album is due for imminent UK release), wrote a song for Roy Orbison's album.
"You get the offers and they're interesting things to do. I don't do anything with tremendous commercial ambition, sometimes it's just a challenge or really fun to do. Also, to be mercenary about it, I was biding my time for my Columbia deal to run out so that I could get a better deal worked out for the world. (Columbia has up until now been his label in the US, but around the world his work has been scatttered between numerous labels. He's had several different deals in the UK alone, though his back catalogue has now reverted to Demon, the company run by his manager Jake Riviera. From this year onwards he's signed worldwide to Warners.)
"Then the album itself, of course, took a lot of organisation; it's not exactly a weekend's work either in planning or recording. I spent the earlier part of the year on the phone asking people if they'd be on it, when they could schedule the time.
"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.
|