The King of Sneer
The Herald, Glasgow (UK) has a review of the new Costello biography.
Complicated Shadows, The Life and Music of Elvis Costello , Graeme Thomson , Canongate
IT is a stick-on that Declan Patrick MacManus, aka Elvis Costello, will not like this book. There have been other books about the most intriguing musician - and arguably the greatest songwriter - that the punk and new-wave explosion of the 1970s threw up and he didn't like any of them. According to his carefully acknowledged notes and sources, Thomson has interviewed the man only once (from which he gathers but a handful of quotes) and the co-operation the biographer has received has come in equal measure from those believed to be still on the right side of a prickly character and those who are assuredly persona non grata.
Chances are they will all be going in the notorious little black book now. Costello does not like people dabbling in his soul. That's his job.
What the geeky guy with the glasses was doing in the midst of safety-pinned speed-crazed punk rock is a fair question. Thomson has a clearer grasp of British musical history than is usually shorthanded and puts early Costello firmly and fairly at the fag end of pub-rock. There were probably more spiked and studded dudes in the audience (or posing for tourists in Trafalgar Square, or - five years later - hanging around every public space from Akron, Ohio to Auchtermuchty, Fife) than there were on stage in 1977. That's why The Exploited had to be invented.
What Costello got from punk was attitude, a marketable vehicle for his unshakable self-belief. With The Attractions, a trio of musicians without whom his early songs would never have become the classic recordings they are, he produced music of such intensity that live they could pretty much trash any of the thrash-and-burn merchants and still have dynamic control to spare. Then they would play a Damned song or a Bacharach tune for an encore, depending on their leader's whim.
I should declare a fan's interest. It still rankles that I missed the appearance by EC & the Attractions at Paisley Silver Thread on August 30, 1977, because my own band had a gig in a pub on Sauchiehall Street that night. I don't believe I have missed a tour to Scotland since. When they returned to Satellite City in the attic of the old Apollo in 1978 to promote the This Year's Model album (Glasgow's city fathers having relaxed the ban on punk rock within the city limits), it was the end of a beautiful friendship for my mate Colin and his girlfriend, who called off sick. "The only way I wouldn't be here would be if they couldn't get the wheelchair up the stairs," he sneered. We learned sneering from Costello. He was King Sneerer.
Being a Costello fan has been an interesting journey and big ears have been a requirement. Sixties soul? Check. Country music? Check. Protest songs? Check. Chamber music? Check. Jazz? Check.
From the beginning, his clumsy attempts at self-deprecation (not a natural talent) have been to cast himself as a craftsman, a prolific hack whose job is songsmithery. Some of the time that is true. There are plenty of Costello songs where you can see the joins, but even as you prepare to wince on the pun you know is coming with a title like Nothing Clings Like Ivy (on his new album The Delivery Man), you know you will be admiring the way it has been deployed. And for every attention-seeking display piece there is another song of endlessly intriguing depth (Man Out of Time, Deep Dark Truthful Mirror), naked passion (I Want You) or deceptive simplicity (Veronica, Impatience) to restore the balance. Balance?
Such is the diversity of Costello's recent work that spinning plates seems a better analogy.
Having travelled that long road admiring a chap fewer than five years my senior (he was 50 a month ago), it is a little disappointing that Thomson runs out of steam on the recent stuff. He has the bare personal details (the break-up with Cait O'Riordan, to whom, it transpires, he was never quite married, and the recent marriage to Canadian jazz singer Diana Krall), but none of the colour around them. Likewise, there is comparatively little about the creation of the recent work while the genesis of the early albums is fully outlined. The author has done a fine job of researching and reworking material from before his time, but failed to produce the goods when you might have thought it would be easier.
Of course, there are some odd omissions of scams and strategems from the hectic early years, a couple of details of fact with which a trainspotter might quibble, and some downright odd critical judgments in places, but we Costello fans are a diverse bunch. What Thomson has produced, however, is as believable and fair a picture of the man himself as I suspect is actually possible. He'll not like it, though.
Keith Bruce.