CostelloNews.com

COMPLETE ARTICLE:

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/music/article/0,1299,DRMN_54_2109266,00.html

This year's model
Self-effacing Elvis Costello keeps his music fresh

By Mark Brown, Rocky Mountain News
July 16, 2003

When Rhino Records undertook the definitive
remastering of Elvis Costello's vast catalog, they
hired writers to pen the liner notes evaluating his
career.

Costello, widely considered a songwriter rivaled only
by Bob Dylan for sheer output and quality, saw the
drafts and put a stop to it. The problem? The writing
was far too kind.

"It was mortifyingly embarrassing to read the results
- not because the writers were bad, but they wrote
about it all too glowingly," Costello says. The notes,
he decided, "needed to be more humorous and more
critical, so that's the tack I've taken. They
shouldn't be too precious. I enjoy writing them, but I
am writing them if not about a different person, then
a person in a different time of life."

So Costello is merciless on himself, using the liner
notes to skewer myths and set the record straight (six
have been released so far; the next set is due next
month with Trust, Get Happy and Punch the Clock).

"I'm not going to scandalize anybody if I talk about
the background of a record and say 'This was a record
that was recorded on the ends of my nerves' because
that's the truth. The Trust liner notes that are going
to come out are very truthful about the frame of mind
and the physical condition that I was in, emotional
and every other kind of condition," he says with a
rare laugh.

He's looking back while looking forward; last year's
When I Was Cruel was hailed as a great new album in
Costello's canon, and he's already finished the next
album, North, due out in September. Costello plays the Universal Lending Pavilion at the Pepsi Center tonight with The Imposters, the successors to his legendary band The Attractions.

He can be self-effacing, but pity the poor original
liner-note authors. Costello has released consistently
strong albums since day one. He has a number of
classics - My Aim is True, This Year's Model, Imperial
Bedroom - and his latter-day work is almost as strong, including the nearly flawless All This Useless Beauty. He's changed styles and players and genres seemingly effortlessly.

The sheer number of greats who have either cowritten
with him or had him share a stage is staggering:
Dylan, Paul McCartney, Van Morrison, Bruce
Springsteen, Chet Baker, Burt Bacharach and countless
others. He's received virtually every music honor is,
including a March induction into the Rock & Roll Hall
of Fame.

The sheer variety of his live performances in the past
decade has given him new insight into his own work.
Whether touring with Bacharach, the Brodsky Quartet, acoustically with pianist Steve Nieve or in the full band, he's re-examined his songs from all angles. So fans are seeing some of the strongest shows he's ever done.

"I think it's a combination of those things. I've got
a great band and we get along great. We've been
through enough and done enough things that the
tensions of years ago with the Attractions (are
gone)," Costello says, calling from his New York City
home last week hours before headlining at Central
Park.

Indeed, the Imposters are really just the Attractions
with Davey Faragher taking the place of bassist Bruce
Thomas, who simply could not get along with his famous
boss through the years.

"As good as that band was at its best, it stopped
being fun onstage with that combination of people,"
Costello says. "There were people pulling in different directions. It got more and more erratic as time went on and I just couldn't tolerate that. You can always be defeated by bad sound or any number of reasons why a show doesn't work out as you planned. It shouldn't have anything to do with the four people who walk up there."

As for the various side projects, "I was working my
voice quite a bit with the record with Burt Bacharach.
Those songs were right on the edge of my ability,
really," Costello says.

"I definitely developed my voice a lot by singing
those things. Your voice can get like a well-worn reed
that goes into a particular riff very easily but won't
do other things if you don't try to learn other music.
I think that's what happened - I was doing those other
kinds of music with Burt Bacharach, with the Brodsky
Quartet, where the voice was completely exposed."

Part of the change is merely stylistic. When Costello
burst out of England in 1976, he was singing short,
sharp, new-wave/rock songs. It wasn't till years later
when he started developing ballads such as Almost Blue
that fans realized what a singer he was.

"I always had a lot more vocal range than I displayed.
I just found a pocket where my voice worked on those
early songs and heaven knows they seem to do the right
thing," he says. "I'm not going to go on about why I
sang in that manner. But I didn't hold any notes.

"Nobody knew if I had any vocal tone, which I do have.
And as you get older and get physically bigger, you
build up more resonance. You learn from the
experiences of everything you do."

Costello has breathed renewed life into older songs,
whether it's an acoustic version of the early Little
Triggers or especially the 1986 betrayal ballad, I
Want You, which has become increasingly frightening
and paranoid in each performance.

"I'm able to still get inside songs I wrote 25 years
ago. I never play any song from a nostalgic point of
view," he says. "A song is written in a moment of
emotional response. Then you have the task of reliving
it, like an actor does. You have to be completely
believable in the song, otherwise it has no reason to
exist. If you're being a real purist, you'd sing them
once and never again."

Fans who saw his Fillmore show are in for a different
set list at ULP.

"I have to balance it. There are people who would be
very happy if we came out and played nothing but
B-sides from 1978, but there are other people who
don't know you that well that would be bewildered.

"You can't please everyone in the audience. When the
tunes are to the rafters and everybody's standing on
their seats, there's still somebody sitting in the
back saying 'Who let this idiot onstage?' That's human
nature."

When you create such an affecting catalog of work,
problems inevitably come. Costello has had his share
of borderline stalkers, though such fans have waned
over the years.

"I probably don't get it as badly as other people in
terms of the scrutiny of my life. I wouldn't want Bob
Dylan's mail. He's written these beautiful songs and
people project all sorts of crazy things into . . .
them."

Of his own work, he says, "obviously songs are being
taken very much to heart. The danger is there is a
kind of neurosis often seen in sports fans that they
imagine because of their cheering, they kicked the
ball over the goal or into the hoop.

"There is a sort of neurosis where it tips over from
enthusiasm into this kind of sense of ownership and
this odd expression where there's a spurned-lover kind
of reaction when something departs from the mental
picture they have of you."

Brownm@RockyMountainNews.com or (303) 892-2674

Copyright 2003, Rocky Mountain News. All Rights Reserved.