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Elvis Costello fans beware: "The Big Wheel," written by Attractions bassist Bruce Thomas, is not a chronicle of the band's career, nor is it just a travelog of the group's tours. Rather, it is a fine autobiography for which Costello and company merely serve as a backdrop. Thomas ventures into literary, philosophical, and metaphysical terrain as easily as he describes a recording session.
"The Big Wheel," written mostly on the road, contains requisite references to Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson. However, the real literary foundation on which it is built is the (amply quoted) work of William Butler Yeats - particularly the Irish poet's fixation with cyclical movement.
Thomas' "big wheel" takes many forms, from the spinning wheels of the band's tour bus, to a collection of "mythical" and real bicycles, to a van
whose tires keep blowing out. But the main cyclical image driving Thomas' book is that of the path of a musician "who discovers that the earth is round and that in reality the traveller's straight course is a circle."
After a world tour with the Attractions, Thomas concludes, "Round and round and round the world we had gone until it had all blurred together .. In every main street I'd ever walked down I had kicked a red can down the gutter: the world had been Coca- Colonized."
Amid these metaphysical observations, the Attractions (and any of Costello's songs or albums, for that matter) go unmentioned by name. The appellations of "the Singer," "the Drummer," and "the Keyboardist" identify the band members.
No one is spared by Thomas' acerbic, venomous pen -least of all Costello, who is portrayed as neurotic, paranoid, and pretentious. Near the
end of the book, after being out of touch with his former band mates for three years, Thomas speaks to drummer Pete Thomas and keyboardist
Steve Nieve, then decides to call Costello, "to see if he's having any luck with his new career as a folk singer."
These jabs don't come off as personal attacks as much as they suggest a necessity on Thomas' part to cast a cynical eye on everything. Fortunately, the author is witty enough to pull it off.
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