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How the twit took over:
Elvis Costello's master plan
John Milward
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Elvis Costello's recent one-two punch of Chicago marked his emergence as a bona fide rock star. but there's difference between him and other guitar-toting tycoons: he can a:lint-Taft his platinum-plus success and still remain angry. This seeming schizophrenia arises from the fact that he is both the most musically gifted and lyrically deft singer-songwriter to survive the punk New Wave movement, and a bespectacled little twit manipulating a master plan. This second contention isn't lust idle paranoia -- a dominant theme in Costello's songs is fascism, both in its political and romantic manifestations. (His new album was almost called Emotional Fascism.) In songs like "This Year's Girl" and "Radio Radio," he notes similar dictatorial tendencies in pop culture and music, taking particular care in the latter to "bite the hand that feeds" the aspiring rocker, the radio. Given this dog-eat-dog view of the world, it's possible to see Costello's zealously antiestablishment assault on the rock biz as a devilishly clever promotional device.
Consider the evidence: in a little over two years, Costello has released three albums to extraordinarily widespread critical hosannas and an almost-instant audience of 200,000-plus; he has gained reasonable FM airplay and great second-hand notoriety from Linda Ronstadt's version or his "Alison"; with the already-gold Armed Forces, he seems on the verge of a major platinum breakthrough (if it's not this album, it'll likely be the next). Beyond the unquestionably fine albums, his rise to fame has been characterized by
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Remaining text and scanner-error corrections to come...
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Chicago Reader, March 22, 1979
John Milward profiles EC and reports on his concerts Saturday, March 10, 1979, Aragon Ballroom, Chicago, and Wednesday, March 14, 1979, Park West, Chicago.
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Clipping.
Photo by Paul Natkin.
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