Following the duo shows with Steve, there was a single date with Bill Frisell – a second gig was cancelled at relatively short notice – at the Jahrhunderthalle in Bochum, Germany on 21 May, part of the ‘Century of Song’ series which also saw Frisell performing with Ron Sexsmith. ‘The idea is to feature Elvis’s songs, but then also to play songs that mean something to him, like old standard songs,’ said Frisell beforehand. ‘Knowing him, it could be a huge amount of things to draw from.’ In reality, Elvis rather disappointingly chose to play a set which drew almost exclusively from his own back catalogue and – although Elvis and Frisell were playing with a band, consisting of Ron Miles on trumpet, Jenny Scheinman on violin, Viktor Krauss on bass and Matt Chamberlain on drums – there were heavy echoes of their 1995 Meltdown collaboration in the song choices: ‘Gigi’, ‘Weird Nightmare’, ‘Deep Dead Blue’, ‘Love Field’, even ‘Sweet Pear’. However, in the end it proved to be a triumphant – if slow moving – night of music, featuring a smattering of tracks from North as well as superb versions of ‘Radio Silence’ and ‘Poor Napoleon’.
The onset of summer heralded more characteristically eclectic twists and turns. He returned to Sweet Tea Studios in Mississippi in late May and June to mix the new record with Dennis Herring, and also recorded a fine cameo on the new album by Los Lobos and a scatty version of ‘Let’s Misbehave’ for the soundtrack to the film De-Lovely, in which Elvis – resplendent in white tuxedo and ironic grin – had a small part singing the Cole Porter classic.
More significantly, following shows with Steve and the Metropole Orchestra at the North Sea Jazz Festival in The Hague, on 17 July at Avery Fisher Hall in New York the Il Sogno score was performed in full for the first time, played by the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra, the same ensemble who had previously recorded Philip Glass’s acclaimed Low Symphony. The landmark performance was the last of three New York concerts showcasing the strafing diversity of Elvis’s music: alongside Il Sogno, the Metropole Orchestra were featured on the thirteenth and The Imposters on the fifteenth. The concerts with The Imposters looked forwards, a taster for a proposed full-blown tour to promote the new record, slated for towards the end of the year. The inclusion of orchestral shows with the Metropole was more of a backwards glance, the result of Elvis’s nagging sensation that he hadn’t really toured the North material as extensively or as sympathetically as he could have, despite the fact that many felt the songs had benefited from the stripped-down duo arrangements.
The performance of Il Sogno in New York was particularly satisfying, a prelude to the long-delayed release of the studio recording of Elvis’s score made by the LSO in 2002 in Abbey Road. The recording of Il Sogno had finally been scheduled to come out in September 2004, released simultaneously alongside the new Imposters record. It was called The Delivery Man.
Also on the schedule was The Secret Arias, a chamber opera which Elvis had written especially for the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen. Part of a series of works commissioned to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Danish story-teller Hans Christian Andersen in 2005, the opera explored Andersen’s infatuation with Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind. Doubtless there were already half-a-dozen other projects in stages somewhere between a seed in his brain and active pre-planning. However, as a marker of precisely where Elvis Costello was in 2004, the twin release of rock ’n’ roll and orchestral works was as accurate a barometer as anything ever could be. As always with Elvis, it was difficult to predict where he might be in a year’s time. It would probably be somewhere interesting, a road worth following him down. His sometime collaborator Richard Harvey concedes that Elvis has ‘a quarter eye on posterity’, and there remains a sense that he is an artist whose almost pathological eclectism and fearsome drive was born of – and thereafter has been partially driven by – a keen awareness of his own legacy, a desire to ensure that his musical obituary will be as monolithic and far-reaching as humanly possible. That said, one should never underestimate his genuine love of music.
As Elvis turned fifty in August 2004, there appeared to be no blunting of the appetite for musical discovery which had driven him through a professional career now approaching a tenure of three decades, with almost unfathomable twists and turns. A complex character, as contradictory in his impulses and desires as any true artist worth their salt must be; as driven, controlling and frequently as coldly calculated as the breadth of his ambition demanded, Elvis had pushed himself and those around him harder than most to get to this place – a place where he could follow the never-ceasing music in his head to wherever it led, a place where the boundaries disappeared.
‘I have to go with what’s true to me, and I think the smart people appreciate and respect that I’m doing it for sincere reasons and that I’m not being perverse,’ he said in 2003. ‘I really believe that it’s all the result of curiosity and love. There’s a time in life for Hoagy Carmichael. There’s a time in life for Claude Debussy. There’s a time in life for Jerry Lee Lewis. There’s a time in life for Destiny’s Child. All of these things have their moment.’19
Notes and Sources
Unless otherwise credited in the text or below, all quotations are drawn from the author’s interviews, conducted between August 2002 and April 2004. All footnotes are denoted by an * and are listed within the text at the bottom of each page, except in the Prologue, where the sole footnote comes at the end.
PROLOGUE: ‘Drunken Talk Isn’t Meant To Be Printed in the Paper’
1. NME, 27 January 1979
2. Uncut, June 1997
3. Rolling Stone, July 1982
CHAPTER ONE
1. ASCAP Awards, 20 May 2003
2. quoted in Let Them All Talk, by Brian Hinton (Sanctuary, 1999)
3. Letter to Rolling Stone, 1979
4. Rolling Stone, 11 November 1999
5. BBC Radio One interview with Simon Mayo, 10 November 1994
6. The Observer, 18 July 1999
7. The Face, August 1983
8. BBC Radio One documentary, 29 February 1992
9. Rolling Stone, 11 November 1999
10. ibid
11. The Face, August 1983
12. BBC Radio One documentary, 29 February 1992
13. Melody Maker, 13 May 1989
14. The Times, 2 March 2002
15. Record Collector, September 1995
16. Rolling Stone, 11 November 1999
17. Folk Roots, July 1989
18. Liverpool: Wondrous Place, by Paul Du Noyer (Virgin, 2002)
19. Folk Roots, July, 1989
20. The Face, August 1983
21. Liverpool: Wondrous Place, by Paul Du Noyer (Virgin, 2002)
22. ibid
23. ibid
24. Folk Roots, July 1989
25. Across The Great Divide, by Barney Hoskyns (Pimlico, 2003)
26. Vanity Fair, November 2000
27. Folk Roots, July 1989
28. BBC Radio One documentary, 29 February 1992
29. ibid
30. Folk Roots, July 1989
31. The Face, August 1983
32. Folk Roots, July 1989
CHAPTER TWO
1. Across The Great Divide, by Barney Hoskyns (Pimlico, 2003)
2. Record Collector, September 1995
3. ibid
4. BBC Radio One documentary, 29 February 1992
5. ibid
6. The Face, August 1983
7. NME, 27 August 1977
8. Trouser Press, December 1977
9. BBC Radio One documentary, 29 February 1992
10. Melody Maker, 25 June 1977
11. BBC Radio One documentary, 29 February 1992
CHAPTER THREE
1. Melody Maker, 25 June 1977
2. Folk Roots, July 1989
3. Melody Maker, 25 June 1977
4. Record Collector, September 1995
5. My Aim Is True, CD notes.
6. Record Collector, September 1995
7. My Aim Is True, CD notes.
8. ibid
9. ibid
10. NME, 27 August 1977
11. BBC Radio One documentary, 29 February 1992
12. ibid
13. ibid
14. My Aim Is True, CD notes
15. The Dark Stuff, by Nick Kent (Da Capo Press, 1994)
16. ibid.
17. BBC Radio One documentary, 29 February 1992
18. Trouser Press, December 1977
19. Record Collector, September 1995
CHAPTER FOUR
1. Melody Maker, 25 June 1977
2. BBC Radio One documentary, 29 February 1992
3. Interview with author, August 2002
4. Record Collector, September 1995
5. The Face, August, 1983
6. BBC Radio One documentary, 29 February 1992
7. My Aim Is True, CD notes/Trouser Press, December 1977
8. NME, 27 August 1977
9. Sex & Drugs & Rock ’n’ Roll: The Life Of Ian Dury, by Richard Balls (Omnibus, 2000)
10. Village Voice, 29 March 2000
11. NME, 27 January 1979
12. The Independent, 25 June 1995
13. ibid.
14. NME, 27 January 1979
15. NME, 27 August 1977
16. NME, 27 January 1979
17. Tom Snyder TV Show, 1981
18. This Year’s Model, CD notes
CHAPTER FIVE
1. Record Collector, September 1995
2. GQ, April 1994
3. The Guardian, 30 August 2003
4. GQ, April 1994
5. MOJO, October 2003
6. NME, 18 March 1978
7. BBC Radio One documentary, 7 March 1992
8. NME, 30 October 1982
9. Rebel Heart, by Bebe Buell with Victor Bockris (St Martin’s Griffin, 2001)
10. Armed Forces, CD notes
11. Record Collector, September 1995
12. Rebel Heart, by Bebe Buell with Victor Bockris (St Martin’s Griffin, 2001)
13. NME, 30 October 1982
14. BBC Radio One documentary, 29 February 1992
15. Record Collector, September 1995
16. Rebel Heart, by Bebe Buell with Victor Bockris (St Martin’s Griffin, 2001)
17. Associated Press, 7 October 2003
18. Armed Forces, CD notes
19. BBC Radio One documentary, 7 March 1992
20. MOJO, October 2003
21. ibid
CHAPTER SIX
1. Rolling Stone, 17 May 1979
2. ibid
3. ibid
4. ibid
5. ibid
6. BBC Radio One documentary, 7 March 1992
7. Rolling Stone, July 1982
8. NME, 9 July 1979
9. NME, 30 October 1982
10. Rebel Heart, by Bebe Buell with Victor Bockris (St Martin’s Griffin, 2001)
11. Get Happy!! CD notes
12. Uncut, July 1998
13. Record Collector, September 1995
14. ibid
15. The Face, August 1983
16. BBC Radio One documentary, 7 March 1992
17. ibid
18. NME, 30 October 1982
CHAPTER SEVEN
1. Interview with author, August 2002
2. Record Collector, September 1995
3. Trust, CD notes
4. ibid
5. The Face, August 1983
6. Almost Blue CD notes
7. Record Collector, September 1995
8. Melody Maker, 13 May 1989
9. The South Bank Show, London Weekend Television, first broadcast November 1981
10. ibid
11. ibid
12. ibid
13. ibid
14. Girls Girls Girls CD notes
15. The Face, August 1983
CHAPTER EIGHT
1. Record Collector, September 1995
2. Interview with Maureen Droney, Mix-online, October 2003
3. BBC Radio One documentary, 7 March 1992
4. Grammy Magazine, 19 February 2003
5. Imperial Bedroom, CD notes
6. NME, 30 October 1982
7. ibid
8. Rock Lives: Profiles and Interviews, by Timothy White (Henry Holt and Co., 1990)
9. Record Collector, September 1995
10. Interview with David Jensen, GLR, 21 July 1983
11. Record Collector, September 1995
12. Punch The Clock, CD notes
13. Interview with David Jensen, GLR, 21 July 1983
14. Chet Baker: Deep In A Dream, by James Gavin (Chatto and Windus, 2002)
15. NME, 8 October 1983
16. Punch The Clock, CD notes
CHAPTER NINE
1. Rebel Heart, by Bebe Buell with Victor Bockris (St Martin’s Griffin, 2001)
2. Hot Press, 1987
3. Goodbye Cruel World, CD notes
4. BBC Radio One Documentary, 7 March 1992
5. Record Collector, September 1995
6. ibid
7. Rebel Heart, by Bebe Buell with Victor Bockris (St Martin’s Griffin, 2001)
8. ibid
9. Record Collector, September 1995
10. Hot Press, 14 December 1984
11. Melody Maker, 1 March 1986
12. ibid
13. ibid
14. BBC Radio One documentary, 14 March 1992
15. Pete Thomas, ibid
16. Record Collector, September 1995
17. BBC Radio One documentary, 14 March 1992
18. Rolling Stone, Issue 471, 1986
19. NME, March 1986
20. The Independent On Sunday, 31 January 1988
CHAPTER TEN
1. Blood & Chocolate CD notes
2. BBC Radio One documentary, 14 March 1992
3. ibid
4. Mix, 1 May 1999
5. The Independent On Sunday, 31 January 1988
6. The Pogues: The Lost Decade, by Ann Scanlon (Omnibus, 1988)
7. Melody Maker, 13 May 1989
8. Blood & Chocolate CD notes
9. LA Times, 4 October 1986
10. Blood & Chocolate CD notes
11. BBC Radio One documentary, 14 March 1992
12. ibid
13. New York Observer, 16 August 1999
14. Blood & Chocolate CD notes
CHAPTER ELEVEN
1. Folk Roots, July 1989
2. BBC Radio One interview, 1989
3. New York Times, 8 February 1989
4. BBC Radio One documentary, 21 March 1992
5. Chicago Tribune, 11 June 1989
6. Interview with Michel Lavidiere
7. ibid
8. Hot Press, March 1989
9. Melody Maker, 13 May 1989
10. Spike CD notes
11. Quoted in ECIS, April 1990 issue
12. NME, 18 February 1999
13. Sunday Times, 11 June 1995
14. The Dark Stuff, by Nick Kent (Da Capo Press, 1994)
15. Aberdeen Evening Express, 4 May 1988
16. The Times, 2 March 2002
CHAPTER TWELVE
1. The Times, 13 March 1993
2. Mighty Like A Rose CD notes
3. Kojak Variety CD notes
4. Creem, 1991
5. Mighty Like A Rose CD notes
6. Daily Telegraph, 15 March 2001
7. Time Out, June 1991
8. Record Collector, October 1995
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
1. The Guardian, 15 January 1993
2. Q, March 1993
3. ibid
4. Q, April 1994
5. Q, March 1993
6. Hot Press, April 1994
7. Guardian, 15 January 1993
8. Times, 13 March 1993
9. Independent, 20 June 1995
10. Guardian, 15 January 1993
11. Mix, 1 May 1999
12. Interview with author, August 2002
13. ibid
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
1. New Yor
k Observer, 16 August 1999
2. Brutal Youth CD notes
3. Independent, 24 February 1994
4. New York Observer, 16 August 1999
5. Brutal Youth CD notes
6. Guardian, 21 June 1994
7. Interview on BBC World Service, November 1994
8. NME, 20 May 1995
9. The Times, 28 June 1995
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
1. Arena, July/August 1995
2. Entertainment Weekly, spring 1996
3. All This Useless Beauty CD notes
4. A Year With Swollen Appendices, by Brian Eno (Faber & Faber, 1996)
5. The Big Issue, 1 December 1997
6. ibid
7. Associated Press, 19 December 1997
8. The Independent, 28 October 1997
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
1. Q, February 1998
2. Irish Times, 4 April 1998
3. Independent, 26 June 1997
4. LA Times, 12 April 1998
5. Electric Ballroom Radio Show, 24 March 1998
6. Guardian, 19 September 1998
7. BPI newswire, 30 January 1998
8. Interview with Francesco Calazzo, printed in Beyond Belief, March 1997
9. Interview with Damon Coward, Bologna, printed in Beyond Belief, October 2000
10. Woodstock.com
11. Associated Press, 29 October 1998
12. Guardian, 19 September 1998
13. amazon.com, 6 October 1998
Complicated Shadows Page 43