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Elvis Costello keeps us guessing
Tuesday, July 22, 2003

The Associated Press, File / Elvis Costello, who's in Edmonton on Wednesday, finds him sandwiching arena gigs between appearances at folk, blues and jazz festivals. The Journal, File / Costello, circa 1995 Opening guest: Sondre Lerche
With: Steve Nieve
When: Wednesday, 8 p.m.
Where: Jubilee Auditorium
Tickets: $49 and $55 (plus service charges) at TicketMaster

If there's one thing Elvis Costello's followers can predict, it's that their predictions will usually be wrong. From straight-ahead rock to challenging string-quartet arrangements to pop collaborations with Burt Bacharach, the singer has restlessly pursued new ground with almost every project.

Wednesday night, Costello plays a gig at Edmonton's Jubilee Auditorium with keyboard player Steve Nieve, prior to an appearance Thursday at the Calgary Folk Festival. He has already played the Montreal Jazz and Ottawa Blues festivals on this same Canadian spin.

"That pretty much says everything about definitions and what I'm about," said Costello, 48.

What unites Costello's work is the quality of his songwriting. Over the course of a 26-year career, even his weakest material has shown clever craftsmanship. His best is the stuff of full-on inspiration. Costello would be the first to admit that not all his efforts have been stellar: this is, after all, the man who began the liner notes to the reissue of Goodbye Cruel World (1984) by congratulating the reader for buying his worst album.

Still, there's a minimum standard.

"I've never yet gone into the studio without songs," he said. "You'd be surprised how many people do that. They say 'We're going to make a record,' and the very last thing they thought to do is write any material. They sort of try and will it into existence -- particularly if they've got strong personalities. They might even have instrumental signature sounds. In a lot of minds, that's enough to make a record. But it doesn't do it for me."

Further evidence of consistency can be found in the reissues of Costello's back catalogue that started coming out two years ago, each supplemented by a full disc of bonus material related to the sessions. This Year's Model (1978), Brutal Youth (1994) and Spike (1989) are among the albums that have been rehauled so far.

"Part of the possibility of the process of reissuing them is that people may hear them afresh," Costello said. "Certain fashions of the time may prejudice people's ears to a record on its first release. A little down the road, the intentions become a little clearer on review -- maybe not to me, but to the listener. I always knew what I was doing."

Even the angry young man of the punk-rock era doesn't seem entirely foreign to his older self, Costello said.

"I still sing some of the songs from even my earliest records, but they're transformed somewhat by the passage of time --- hopefully not in a bad way," he said.

In a recent appearance as guest host of The Late Show With David Letterman, a witty and self-confident Costello bantered with Kim Cattrall and Eddie Izzard, revealing a flair for on-camera comedy that few expected. "I don't see myself as a talk-show host, but some sort of musical thing on television -- I could certainly handle that," he said. "I've always known I could do it. Nobody ever really thought to give me a chance."

For now, the immediate concern is live performance. "I kick myself when I think about people that I might have seen if I'd been a little less lazy and got out. The best place to hear music these days is in concert."

And, of course, expect the unexpected. "A lot of music is pretty much all the same: it kind of comes out of a big sausage machine. We try to keep things from being too predictable."

The Montreal Gazette

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THE MANY FACES OF ELVIS

- Cowboy Elvis -- In interviews for his first record, Costello listed Gram Parsons and George Jones as his major influences. He proved his sincerity in 1981, when he released the Nashville homage, Almost Blue. Last year, Costello collaborated with roots country artist Lucinda Williams.

- The belligerent drunk -- At a Holiday Inn in Columbus, Ohio, in 1979, Costello got into a drunken battle with musician Stephen Stills about the worth of the flower-power generation as opposed to the punk generation. When Costello made a racial slur against Ray Charles and called him "blind" and "ignorant," Stills decided it was all right to hit a man with glasses. The resulting publicity was a nightmare for Costello, who held a news conference apologizing for his remarks. Costello was almost certainly not a racist. He's participated in Rock Against Racism and Ray Charles later stuck up for Costello, saying: "Drunken talk isn't meant to be printed in the paper."

- The producer -- Costello produced The Pogues second album, Rum, Sodomy & the Lash in 1985. Costello's love affair with the Celtic punk band came to fruition a year later when he divorced his first wife, Mary Costello, and married Pogues bassist Cait O'Riordan. "We're the Sonny and Cher of the '80s," Costello announced, "and I'm Cher."

- The unlikely stud -- While he was married to Mary, Costello began an affair with Playboy playmate and notorious rock groupie Bebe Buell, who would eventually give birth to Steven Tyler's love child, actress Liv Tyler. Recently, 48-year-old Costello made headlines when he split up with O'Riordan, his wife of 16 years, and took up with the smouldering Canadian jazz diva Diana Krall. Krall and Costello are now engaged to be married.

- The many aliases of Elvis -- For his 1986 album, Blood and Chocolate, Costello took on the role of Napoleon Dynamite, the tormented narrator of the record. For King of America, also released that year, he briefly reverted to his birth name. For 1989's Spike, he became the Beloved Entertainer. In 1985, he performed briefly as a duo with acclaimed producer- singer/songwriter T-Bone Burnett.

- The Pop-lite balladeer -- In 1998, Costello recorded the album, Painted
>From Memory, with easy-listening maestro Burt Bacharach. Costello also
appeared with Bacharach in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, performing the sentimental I'll Never Fall In Love Again.

- The classical artist -- In the early 1990s Costello got bored with rock and threw himself head-on into the world of classical music. In 1993, he recorded The Juliet Letters with the famed Brodsky Quartet. He's reportedly working with the quartet again on his latest album, North, which will be released Sept. 23.

Calgary Herald

Ran with fact box "The Many Faces of Elvis", which has been appended to this story.