It was all rather more contrived than many might have imagined. The context, of course, was punk, which for all its claims at having no boundaries was as strict and unforgiving in its membership rites as any other social or musical movement. Elvis’s style of both dress and music, his background and tastes, were in reality far removed from the punk ethic, but he saw that this was not the time to be singing country ballads in Great Britain.
The plight of Clover had not been lost on him: superb musicians who could write, record and perform their own music to an exceptional standard, they had wilted in the hothouse environment of the UK – and more specifically London – in the summer of 1976 and the eighteen months that followed. ‘All those qualities were the worst thing [Clover] could have had going for them then,’ he said. ‘I could see that.’15 As such, he allowed himself to be swept along in the slipstream of punk and kept his more ambitious musical ideas in check until he had established himself. ‘There was a whole bunch of things I could have done even back then. However, I tailored my songs and style very purposefully because I knew which way the prevailing winds were blowing. I was shrewder than most people.’16
A telling admission, but nothing particularly new. Bob Dylan had jumped on the ‘protest’ bandwagon in the early ’60s to gain a foothold in the music business, courtesy of a highly conservative folk scene he instinctively knew he would outgrow and outlast. Declan was merely doing the same, sophisticated enough to realise that punk was far too narrow to hold him, yet astute enough to know that it gave him the perfect opportunity to make his mark.
Later, he reasoned, he could do what he really wanted to do, but for the time being, if people were going to get excited about a seething young man in glasses ramming tales of inadequacy, ‘revenge and guilt’ down their throats, then he would give them what they wanted. It almost backfired, to the point where it would later take him all his creative energy to try and shake off the image. Like Woody Allen’s more benign cinematic creation, the grudge-bearing, bespectacled nerd on a losing streak was a winner from the start, but would prove rather more difficult to set in reverse.
* * *
With Declan’s debut single, ‘Less Than Zero’ b/w ‘Radio Sweetheart’, scheduled for release on 25 March 1977, both Robinson and Riviera took the view that D.P. Costello was too prosaic a name for their new Stiff protégé. The label already had a reputation for marketing nous, taking pride in Sptheir sloganeering and gimmicky advertising ruses. Their principal slogan – ‘If It Ain’t Stiff It Ain’t Worth A Fuck’ – was a fairly straightforward statement of intent regarding the unapologetic, swaggering manner in which the label presented itself, while others such as ‘We’re Not The Same, You’re Not The Same’ tapped into the timely thirst for a paradoxical sense of ‘collective individuality’.
Declan also enjoyed that side of the label, the product of heavily fuelled get-togethers at Alexander Street. Now Stiff went to work on him. The legend states that the change of name took place during a drunken meeting in a restaurant on the Fulham Road early in 1977, although John Ciambotti recalls Jake Riviera bursting into the studio and shouting ‘Elvis! That’s it. Elvis!’, which is at least a nice story, albeit one from the Vincente Minelli school of narrative.
Whatever the exact circumstances, the idea was a piece of quintessential Riviera inspiration/idiocy. It was risky. ‘I was amazed that [Declan] took it,’ admits Dave Robinson. ‘He was keen to get going, and it would seem looking back that he committed himself to the idea of it, so he accepted everything. He felt Jake and I or some combination of the two knew everything and he would do what we wanted.’
‘Jake and Dave would come at you like good-cop, bad-cop,’ Declan recalled. ‘“This’ll be great”, Jake just said,“We’re going to call you Elvis. Ha ha ha ha!”. And I thought it was just one of these mad things that would pass off, and of course it didn’t. Then it became a matter of honour as to whether we could carry it off.’17
In March 1977, Elvis Presley was still alive and nobody had any idea at that time that he was so ill; to many, he was still the reigning ‘King of Rock ’n’ Roll’. Within a few months Presley would be dead, his demise bizarrely coming within weeks of the release of My Aim Is True. Then, Costello’s name came to inherit a harder edge, and also embodied a little more the mood of the zeitgeist.
But all this was merely luck. At the time it occurred, the change from Declan to Elvis represented some of the less inventive aspects of the punk era: a juvenile jab at shocking the establishment which could be traced directly back to the Sex Pistols and myriad other, more jokey punk acts. Declan taking on the name of Elvis rendered the multi-faceted arrogance so obvious in his music bluntly explicit rather than cunningly implicit. It could have gone badly wrong.
Some people had huge problems with the name. Charlie Gillett for one was appalled, and claims it took him a long time to say the name aloud without it leaving a bitter taste in his mouth; while both John McFee and John Ciambotti thought Declan would ‘get stoned’ if he toured America. Other people just found it funny. The fledgling Boomtown Rats handed their demo tape into Stiff in early ’77 and met Dave Robinson, who introduced Declan to the band, at the same time telling them they were changing his name to Elvis. ‘We all went, “fucking hell!”,’ recalls Bob Geldof. ‘Everyone started pissing themselves, and we went [sarcastically], “Oh! That’s good!”.’
In the US, some journalists felt it was disrespectful, especially after Presley’s death, and Declan even felt the need to offer a rare explanation: ‘It wasn’t meant as an insult to Elvis Presley,’ he said towards the end of 1977. ‘It’s unfortunate if anyone thinks we’re having a go at him in any way.’18 However, he was not immune to the sense of drama the name provoked. It simply stopped people dead in their tracks. ‘It meant people would pause just that little bit longer,’ he said. ‘“He can’t be called that! He is called that!” By that time, they’d noticed me more than the bloke called Joe Smith.’19
To complete the striking picture, Declan was now decked out in tight thrift shop suit jackets, turned-up jeans, and big, Buddy Holly-style spectacles. It was a cartoon caricature of his existing look, with everything blown up large for effect. He already wore glasses, but they were discreet and rimless rather than black-framed and oversized; there are pictures of Declan from 1974 with his jeans turned up, but now he turned them up six inches rather than two. He had always been physically slightly awkward; now he was gawky and comically knock-kneed.
Dave Robinson takes the plaudits for the exaggerated glasses. ‘I said “Can you try these on?” So he put them on, he was wearing some funny grey suit, we looked at him and thought “Elvis Costello!” And he didn’t tell us to fuck off, he just said, OK. I remember thinking, “Have we made a big mistake here or what?”.’ Ian Gomm of Brinsley Schwarz recalls walking into the Stiff office in Alexander Street and meeting Declan ‘flying out of the door’ on his way out. ‘He was wearing these stupid glasses. Jake was behind him, shouting: “And don’t fucking take them off!”.’
At the age of twenty-two, Elvis Costello was born.
PART TWO
Don’t Come Any Closer,
Don’t Come Any Nearer
Chapter Four
1977–78
ELVIS COSTELLO MADE HIS LIVE DEBUT with two short, unscheduled guest slots supporting The Rumour at London’s Nashville Rooms on Friday, 27 and Saturday, 28 May. The acoustic guitar had gone, regarded as a relic of the D.P. days; instead, he backed himself with the crisp, biting tones of a Fender electric. Nattily turned out in shades, jacket, waistcoat and loosened tie, over the two nights Elvis played urgent solo sets which included ‘Red Shoes’, ‘Waiting For The End Of The World’, ‘Mystery Dance’, ‘Hoover Factory’ and ‘I’m Not Angry’.
The gigs provided the only break in a long, frustrating lull in proceedings following the adrenalin rush of making My Aim Is True. The release of ‘Less Than Zero’ in March 1977 was intended to herald the imminent launch of the album, but the
record was delayed until the end of July while Stiff resolved a dispute with Island over a distribution deal that the two labels were finalising.
In the meantime, a further two singles were released to proclaim Elvis’s talents to the world, but the world wasn’t necessarily interested. Like their predecessor, both ‘Alison’ and ‘Red Shoes’ failed to do any business in the charts or on mainstream radio, despite their obvious strengths. Elvis’s career effectively remained on hold. He was still trudging into Elizabeth Arden every day to earn a living, trooping back to Whitton in the evening to be with his wife and two-year-old son.
The feeling of being left in limbo brought his desire to get going bubbling somewhere close to boiling point. He remained in occasional touch with some of his Flip City friends, and they noticed a definite gear change in his attitude when they all attended a gig at Kingston Polytechnic. ‘He turned up with the drainpipe jeans and the jacket and the stupid black glasses, and by then you could tell,’ says Steve Hazelhurst. ‘The attitude was: “Yeah, I’m Elvis now. Hiya, but no thank you”.’
However, progress was being made. The shows at the Nashville Rooms had marked the beginnings of a print media buzz that rapidly built up a considerable head of steam. ‘The very wonderful Elvis Costello spells Major New Talent,’ raved Allan Jones’ review in Melody Maker. ‘You’d better believe it.’ Others had admired the singles and been highly impressed by advance copies of the album.
The hiatus had another positive side-effect: it gave Elvis the chance to write. By the time of My Aim Is True’s release in the summer of 1977, much of the follow-up record had already been written. ‘He was writing two songs a minute,’ says Dave Robinson. ‘He never stopped. He drove everyone potty around him. He was driven, just totally and utterly fixated.’
Elvis revisted old Flip City and D.P. Costello songs such as ‘Radio Soul’ and ‘Cheap Reward’, moulding them into ‘Radio, Radio’ and ‘Lip Service’. ‘He was such a cannibal,’ says Robinson, ‘that he cannibalised his own stuff.’ He dusted down ‘Living In Paradise’ and stripped it of its country flavour, and added several more: ‘Crawling To The USA’, ‘The Beat’, ‘Lipstick Vogue’, ‘Night Rally’, ‘No Action’, ‘Watching The Detectives’, ‘(I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea’ and ‘Less Than Zero (Dallas Version)’24 were all written around this time, an extraordinarily focused period of creativity.
Perhaps most crucially of all, the delay gave Elvis the time to get a band together. Clover had done a laudable job on My Aim Is True, especially considering the time constraints and the fact that they had their own career to worry about, but their laid-back look and polished sound would have set Elvis back to square one had he used them as his permanent backing band. ‘I would have been happy to do it, but I don’t think it was ever really a serious consideration,’ says John McFee. Elvis was astute enough to know he needed something considerably sharper and harder behind him, more attuned to the mood of the times. And preferably with shorter hair.
With Elvis keen to keep the guitars down to one – ‘there’ll be no fucking soloists in my band’,1 he decreed – he opted for providing all the parts himself, dispensing with the need for a lead guitarist. The sound would be filled out with bass, drums and keyboards.
The drum stool had already been claimed by Pete Thomas, who had been playing with John Stewart in Los Angeles ever since the demise of Chilli Willi and The Red Hot Peppers in 1975. Now he was coming home. Ostensibly, Pete was returning to Britain to join ex-Dr Feelgood guitarist Wilko Johnson’s new band. In reality, Jake – Dr Feelgood’s former tour manager – merely used Johnson as a means of getting another record company to pay for Thomas’s flight back to the UK. In a piece of classic Riviera audacity, within a week he had poached the lanky drummer for Elvis’s new band. So much for pub-rock loyalties.
Just a couple of weeks older than Elvis, Pete was an inspired choice, unshowy but ruthlessly rhythmic, as comfortable sitting back and keeping time on ‘Alison’ as laying down the pounding pulse of ‘Lipstick Vogue’. Thomas was – and remains – one of the few great ‘song’ drummers around, with a genuine love and instinctive understanding of how best to complement the nuances of great writing. He has even been known to ask for the lyrics of a song before recording a session, emphatically not standard practice for a drummer. In his humour, appetites and penchant for partying, however, Pete was much closer to the standard stereotype, and would become the chief source of mischief in the band.
On 4 June a small advert for a big band appeared in the back pages of Melody Maker: ‘Stiff Records Require Organist/Synthesizer Player and Bass Player – both able to sing for rocking pop combo. Must be broad-minded. Young or old.’ Bass player Bruce Thomas was broad-minded enough, old-ish, and was certainly interested. He recalls Elvis taking a typically hands-on approach to the selection procedure: ‘I remember ringing up for the audition, and the girl who answered the phone [Stiff secretary Suzanne Spiro, whom Thomas would later marry] said hello. And then this other voice came over the line: “Who are your favourite bands?” “Well, um, Graham Parker and Steely Dan.” “Get rid of him!” But thankfully the secretary said, “Oh no, give him a chance! He sounds quite nice”.’
Despite Elvis’s terse interventions, Bruce Thomas got his chance. Born in Stockton on Tees on 14 August, 1948 and unrelated to Pete, Bruce was a full six years older than Elvis and had a wealth of professional experience, both on the road and in the studio. He had been part of future Free vocalist Paul Rodgers’ earliest band, The Roadrunners, in 1967, before playing with numerous groups, including Village and country rockers Quiver, whom he left in 1973 when they joined forces with The Sutherland Brothers. Bruce then turned to session work, playing for the likes of Ian Matthews, Al Stewart and Bridget St John and touring and recording as part of Baz and Moonrider in 1974 and 1975.
Although a cursory glance at his age and CV – not to mention his flares and earth shoes – placed Bruce firmly on the wrong side of the all-important hippy/punk divide, his attitude was not at all ‘peace and love’. By nature, he was a temperamental type: moody, sensitive, often quick to take offence and slow to forgive, with a famously sharp wit that frequently turned venomous after a couple of drinks. His bass guitar had been known to fly towards the object of his frustration, but musically he was right on the money. A superbly melodic bassist with an inventive style which roamed genres and octaves, his playing possessed the kind of personality, presence and intuition which someone as adventurous and eclectic as Elvis needed.
The auditions took place in June at a small rehearsal space in Putney. Pete Thomas was not yet ready to take up his seat behind the drums, and instead Elvis used the rhythm section from The Rumour: Steve Goulding and Andrew Bodnar.
A veteran of the myriad tricks of the audition process, Bruce Thomas had bought and learned the early Costello singles to maximise his initial impact, but came a little unstuck when the rehearsal band started playing newly penned numbers such as ‘No Action’ and ‘Watching The Detectives’. All in all, though, he found the songs easier to get to grips with than the man who had written them. ‘Elvis was intense,’ he recalls. ‘Sweaty. Wouldn’t make eye contact. Ungrounded. Very up in the air. All the energy was going up. Curt.’
It would often be a difficult relationship, but Elvis knew a great bass player when he heard one. It’s probable that he was also swayed in his decision by the testimony of Pete Thomas, who had loved Bruce’s earlier band Quiver and had been a frequent visitor backstage after their shows.
‘Pete had his drum kit set up exactly like the Quiver drummer,’ says Bruce Thomas. ‘He once told me he saw me getting out of a taxi in west London with a guitar case, going into a takeaway to get some food and getting back into the cab. He thought that was the coolest thing he had ever seen. That was the defining moment when he decided he wanted to be a musician! So Pete kind of said, “I want to play with this guy”, which is probably what got me in.’
The final piece in the jigsaw came in the eccentric
form of Stephen Nason, a nineteen-year-old, classically trained piano player from the Royal College of Music who had absolutely no experience playing rock or pop music. Born in the suburbs of London in early 1958, Nason proudly boasted of his love for Alice Cooper and little else, and initally thought he was auditioning for an Elvis Presley tribute group. According to legend, he got the job because he drank a bottle of sherry at the audition and fell asleep on the floor. ‘Steve was a fucking nutter,’ sighs Dave Robinson. ‘You could tell he would fit in perfectly.’
Elvis now had his band, but they needed bedding in. Typically, he couldn’t wait. Straight after the auditions, he cut two new songs – ‘Watching The Detectives’ and ‘No Action’ – with the rehearsal group of Bodnar and Goulding, with Nick Lowe producing.
‘Watching The Detectives’ had been written after prolonged, caffeine-fuelled exposure to The Clash’s eponymous debut album, listening to it again and again until this menacing confection appeared. Recorded quickly in Pathway with just drums, bass and echoing, reverbed guitar, Steve Nason – or Steve Nieve, as he had by then been christened – would later add piano and organ overdubs before its release as an autumn single.
The song was a departure – or perhaps more accurately, a new starting point – for Elvis, owing more than a little of its rhythmic structure to reggae. He later claimed it was his ‘first real record,’2 an assessment which may have been unduly tough on Clover and My Aim Is True, but accurately captured the shift away from the derivative, Anglo-American country-rock peddled by the likes of Brinsley Schwarz and Graham Parker, towards a more contemporary, British style of urban paranoia. The latter came much closer to matching the ever-present sense of threat in Elvis’s lyrics, not to mention the sound constantly swirling around in his head.
Complicated Shadows Page 9