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Every Day He Writes the Book

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What’s the matter with y’all? The Costello autobio has been available for 16 hours and not a word about it so far.

There’s a Kindle sample up.

It looks proper interesting like (despite a couple of copy-editing howlers, but that’s standard practice for rock ‘n’ pop ‘n’ rollers’ memoirs, it seems).

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  2. Will be getting the physical copy at the weekend. The extracts I have read lead me to believe it will be a great read. Not surprising as he is very erudite and am sure will have some good yarns to spin.

  5. I finished an audiobook yesterday so I was able to start this one on the day it was released. I went for the 18h 40 mins Unabridged version as opposed to the 17h 50m Unabridged version, both available from Audible! I wonder if there’s actually a difference or if one timing is an error.
    I very much enjoyed the first half hour with the attempted impressions although it’s mainly been about his dad and Joe Loss so far. The gusto with which it’s being read is a treat and I hope the enthusiasm sees us all the way to the end.

  6. Just been reading the generous ebook preview, and really enjoying it. For those who do not uterly diskard such things, the deluxe ebook version (at a mere GBP9.51) contains 200 extra illustrations and quite a few extracts from the audiobook. Looks like a natural for the iPad.

  8. An interesting and entertaining short interview on BBC Radio 4 yesterday.
    Apparently David Essex was an inspiration in the way he plays venues everywhere when he tours, not just the big city venues. Also he was offered a panto role, as Captain Hook in Peter Pan, but turned it down. I can picture him as a very good Captain Hook …
    “It was at Christmas, and I like to spend Christmas with my kids.”

    • Yes, I heard that, nice interview, and touched on the Ray Charles incident (there’s a chapter on that.)

      I’m 300 or so pages in, and David Essex appears more than you might expect…

      • I’m an hour into the audiobook now, not reached David Essex yet but enjoying it immensely. I’m struggling with the timeline though, there’s almost no chronology at the moment, it’s hard to know when he’s in London or Liverpool at times, does it start to settle down?

        • No, not really….there’s a very broad chronology but he very much moves backwards and forwards in time, particularly (as expected) to his childhood but also this parents and grandparents’s early years and how particular events sparked certain lyrics.

          So for example, when he first tours America with the Attractions, this leads to memories about his grandfather, Elvis’ love of American music in childhood/early childhood, his father’s relationship with America, his feelings about contemporary American music, musicians he met and so on.

          Half-way through- I think I’m getting a feel for it (or at least a rough picture in my head): perhaps it will make more sense then?

          I think it’s also a biography of his father and so there is a lot of material about their relationship and his father’s career.

  10. Tangent- he has a most impressive knowledge of music, and is no genre snob. Some very perceptive comments about the difference between British and American songs (two ridiculously broad categories, I realise, but it will make sense when you get to that bit of the book).

  15. I never recovered from the Bacharach era, “She” and the vibrato shmatz thing. Loved him before, never been back. I know he’s a good egg but live in fear of him crooning “Georgie Girl” or similar “classic” à la a Northern club singer. Bleaugh.

    • I’d like to think it was because of things like “She” ( “God Give Me Strength” is great) has meant his recent years’ renaissance can take place. Current live incarnation, – solo/Detour and Imposters’ gigs – prove how splendid he is.

      Still the greatest living singer-songwriter, etc.

      Autobiography to be devoured this weekend, between the rugby!

        • Yes. EC is a fine lyricist and a fine tunesmith but not always both at the same time. He’s the primary contemporary exponent of forcing the tune to put the stress on any syllable of a word but the right one. And he’s just done it again in the song he’s given to Darlene Love. It’s called “Forbidden Love”, which should go DUM-di-DUM, but his melody is DUM-di-di-DUM, so it ends up as “FOR-bidd-en LOVE”. Wrong.

          His most notorious (i.e., I don’t like it) example of this is “ship-bill-DING”.

          It drives me nuts (i.e., mildly bothers me) that someone so smart and witty with words should so regularly write ones that – as Sammy Cahn put it – “don’t sing” .

            • Jim Morrison, there’s another one. “Take A longholliday” where he should of sang “take a LOOONG holliday” the great berk. That “long” was crying out to be stressed with a nice long vowel, and he fucked it up. The great steaming berk.

              • See also, “Ali-SUUUUUUUUUUHN”. Or this one from the song I used for the title of this thread: “… and try to KISS me and LAUGH /
                in four or FIVE para-GRAPHS”.

                Why this stuff is important: the one song where he got it dead right turned out to be his biggest hit: “O-li-ver’s AR-my is HERE to STAY /
                O-li-ver’s AR-my are ON their WAY / and I would RA-ther be AN-y-where ELSE / but HERE to-DAY.

                Say it and you’re singing it.

                • While we’re at it it, let’s not forget he’s not truly a singer-songwriter, because he can’t fucking sing. That metallic whine, direct from the adenoids, up through the nose, leaving lungs and vocal cords untroubled. It’s one of the most unmusical sounds in rock, pop n’ roll.

                    • Hendrix always admitted he “couldn’t sing”, but the sound he made wasn’t unmusical. Never strained for a note he knew he couldn’t reach. Unlike dear Declan, who has very fancy notions of his qualifications in that department.

                    • The reply button is missing on some of the posts here so just to set the record straight:

                      Like Twang I loved EC from the second LP (the first not so much) right up to Mighty Like A Rose when the love just… went. That handful of LP’s is sets a high bar and show off his – yes – songwriting ability (or at least a mastery of harmony and structure and all that good stuff).

                      The signs were there though, from Almost Blue. His voice suited the material of his perkier numbers but when he went into Serious Artist mode round about Imperial Bedroom, he was on a slippery slope.

  17. Like most of these books (Clapton, Ronnie, Rod etc) the early days are always the most interesting read, so I expect I’ll enjoy the growing-up years and the Stiff/Radar/F.Beat era more than the “I’m famous, so I can try my hand at any kind of music I fancy and stuff the lot of you” period.

    • Re: books where “the early days are the most interesting read”

      See also:

      – “All the Rage” by Ian McLagan
      “One Train Later” by Andy Summers

      • It’s a common pattern. The Clapton book for example skimmed over the Yardbirds/Mayall/Cream early years in the first third of the book (fascinating), then there was another third covering the early solo years (interesting), followed by the final third which was an endless merry-go-round of infidelity, rehab, drugs, rehab, booze, rehab, celeb mates, model girlfriends (dull)

  18. Mentioned it before, but the great producer, Billy Sherrill, compaired Costello’s ‘singing’ to someone straining at stool. As for his vaunted songwriting, I’d struggle to name any ‘standard’ that he’d written. An irredeemably minor talent, (with sales to match), bafflingly lauded.

    • As usual ianess you are talking through your arse. An ‘irredeemably minor talent’ who continues to sell out shows across North America and the UK and whose book release has been universally well reviewed and wholeheartedly received by not only EC fans but other music fans too. Not sure either that his sales are as meagre as you would have us believe. As for standards what exactly do you define as a standard? He has written several songs that I believe would stand out as classics of their time – by standards are you talking about something like White Christmas or What a wonderful World for example? Were they standards at the time or did they become standards?
      He may not have written any standards. Aside from Lennon and McCartney which other British songwriter has?

  19. Alternatively, a maker of good records filled with interesting songs that give a lot of people a fair amount of pleasure. Granted, he hasn’t written Night and Day or Body and Soul yet, but is anybody expecting him to? But mediocre? No.

    • I’m ambivalent about Elvis. I love his first 4 or 5 LPs and he made some timeless, not to say essential, post punk singles. I’m a real fan of the Stiff era stuff in general. It was a great time to live in London.

      Elvis is a real music fan and the Spectacle TV series he did was mostly excellent. Some of the US-filmed episodes were overly schmaltzy and show biz (ie Smokey Robinson) , but the UK episodes were great, especially the one with Elton where it was just two blokes talking about records for an hour.

      The recordings he did with McCartney was also pretty good. I have a bootleg with 20 or 30 demos from the sessions and it’s great to hear them working together.

      Having said that, I’ve not enjoyed any of EC’s albums for a very long time. But the goodwill from those early years lives on with me.

      Coincidentally I found this LP today. It’s by Elvis’s dad Ross McManus and dates from 1970. The family resemblance is spooky, as is the album title.

      http://i.imgur.com/cLkeXnH.jpg

    • Mike, it’s exactly this: “a maker of good records filled with interesting songs that give a lot of people a fair amount of pleasure”. Not pitiful, then, but not fantastic. Somewhere in the middle. Low expectations duly satisfied, in the British way.

      He hasn’t even written “Where’s The Playground, Susie?” let alone “Night And Day”.

  20. You’ve been out of Blighty too long, HP, in spite of your recent expedition. You’ve forgotten the British talent for understatement. It’s one of our greatest talents. Or so some might say.

  21. Oh I just don’t know where to begin…

    Elvis Costello looms large in my life, and going to see him on the Spike tour when I was 14 has triggered over 26 years of fandom which has occasionally wavered, but never waned. I’ve seen him live about 20 times and have bought enough reissues to have probably funded a small speedboat for him.

    However, I have always been curious about how his brand-recognition outstrips his sales. How is the book being touted as a big deal, when he hasn’t had a top ten hit since 1981 in the UK, and has never placed a song in the US top 20. I have a few thoughts:

    – Elvis, as he wont to tell us, comes from a long line of musicians. This informs his sense of work and graft, he knows that you have to keep moving, accept work, try new things.

    – Elvis is 61 and My Aim Is True is 38. Which would you choose: a three-year career of number one singles or a 38 year career of top 75 albums.

    – Even if EC’s fan base isn’t the biggest, it sure is influential. I watched the whole of his Colbert appearance and it was obvious that Colbert (born 1964) was a huge EC fan. Colbert’s predecessor Dave Letterman had EC on more times that any other musical guest over his 33 years on air. See also EC’s fans on The Simpsons and the leverage that Saturday Night Live performance has given him since 1978. In February SNL had a big celeb-filled 40th anniversary special. Guess who was in the middle of the audience? Guess who played the after party? Connections and fans like these has kept EC going.

    – You mightn’t notice, but EC knows how to rise up and down in popular culture. A manager change here, and an Austin Powers cameo there. His last album, a collaboration with The Roots (influential band, see above!, connected him to Fallon’s hugely popular Tonight Show) gave him his first US top ten album since Get Happy!! and reached some new people. This summer in the US he’s been touring with Steely Dan, again, reaching new people.

    – In a time when dedicated fan bases are giving people like Tom Petty and James Taylor their first US number one albums, it’s good to know that EC was playing to niche fan bases before the collapse of the music industry

    – it’s all about the USA: Every Paul Weller album goes top three in the UK, but I bet he’d like to be as big as EC is in the US.

    – Personal anecdote: by the time he had released The River In Reverse and Secret, Profane & Sugarcane, I thought I was done. I didn’t get any joy from those records. Indeed, one night I did the unthinkable and skip an EC gig and went to see Steely Dan instead. However, I saw him later on solo at Richard Thompson’s Meltdown and thought it was sensational. The subsequent album, National Ransom, is his best of the last 20 years and to my ears, a top 5 EC record. Lesson: never count him out! To anyone in this thread who feels they have drifted away from EC at some point after 1986, you really should give National Ransom a few listens. His guitar playing is stellar on it.

    As for his voice, well, as DFB has said earlier, the vibrato thing is gone. I’d like to think his missus had something to do with that. I can appreciate that EC voice is… uhhhh… singular and not to everyone’s tastes. I recognise that EC is not the singer Smokey Robinson is. EC recognises that too. I also know that EC’s singing affects me in a way that I have never felt from Smokey or Marvin or Otis. Isn’t that the magic of music? It reaches each of us in a different way. One person’s Stradivarius is another person’s accordion. Looking at my record collection with EC, Russell Mael, Randy Newman, eels, I’m aware that I might have a thing for white dudes with distinctive “off beat” voices. I guess I see myself as an off-beat white dude.

    And he hasn’t written a standard? What about Peace Love & Understanding? Wait, what???

    • Great overview Dr J. Randy Newman is a perfect example of a US equivalent of Costello. Has massive critical and popular acclaim not reflected in album sales. Has branched out into film work . An unusual voice that is an acquired taste. An irredeemably meagre talent. Looking forward to seeing him next week.

      • Randy Newman is the perfect US equivalent. He’s nowhere near as great as his fans reckon, either. And he “sings” through an aardvark’s snout, too. But you say his “popular acclaim is not reflected in album sales” – is his audience getting more selective?

        • well that’s a trick opener, not as great as his fans reckon.Your assessment of how great they/we think he is but not stated.

          And then no elaboration.

          As for the voice HP, fuck me, how many good singers have “bad” voices.

        • This conversation is in danger of disappearing up its own fundament. EC and RN are exactly as great as their fans think they are, no more, no less. There is no objective standard. As it happens I don’t think the Beach Boys, Santana or the Monkees are anywhere as great as you think they are. Where does that leave us?

          • Good gracious. And there was me, thinking there was an objective standard by which all acts could be measured! Thanks for putting us straight on that one, Mike!

            Do you think Randy n’ Elv could be persuade into a duets album? I’d love to hear them tackle the Jerome Kern songbook!

              • Yebbut Mike, following your impeccable logic they’re exactly as crap as their detractors reckon, too. No more, no less. So it’s your logic that’s in danger of burrowing up its own fundament. SURELY TO GOD we can accommodate a little dissent here without “fan vapours”? Why do (f’rinstance) EC fans take it so personally? I don’t care if you like The Monkees or not. It’s be a dull old blog if we all sat around nodding our grey old heads in silent agreement, would it not? Eh? Eh?

                EH?

                And anyway, they can’t sing for tooffe.

            • There is an objective standard of sorts, where “standard” is the operative word. A fairly good indication of how significant a songwriter is must surely be how often their work has been covered by other artists. So let’s tally up. Of the hundreds of songs he’s written and recorded, how many have been covered by other major artists who weren’t already mates of his (an important caveat)? The answer seems to be approximately, give or take, er, none at all, no fewer than, er, two, and they were both by the same artist: Linda Ronstadt did “Alison” and “Party Girl” way back when.

              But against that we should note that of the three Top 10 hit singles that Elvis Costello has notched up himself (the last of which was 34 years ago), two were written by other people (“Good Year for the Roses” and “I Can’t Stand Up…”). And, whaddya know, the only other song most people could name that he’s recorded since then – “She” – was a cover as well.

              If ordinary people are only interested in him as a performer when he sings other people’s songs, and other artists aren’t exactly falling over themselves to record the songs he’s written, how do we square that with his allegedly being “the most important songwriter of his generation”?

              (At least Randy Newman wrote the ubiquitous-for-years-now “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” and the one about the Loozyanna flood that Aaron Neville did quite a nice job with. )

              • Leonard Cohen’s songs have been covered by loads of artists, and he’s never had a top 10 single in the UK (or even top 20), and only one in the US – Bird on a Wire in 1969. How does he fit into your theory?

                Whoever it was up there who described EC as ‘the most important songwriter of his generation’ is probably a bit tired of having his arse kicked by now, so can we just agree that EC has written some great songs, some not so good, is a consistently enjoyable performer, a bit of a musical gadfly who gets involved in all sorts of intriguing musical collaborations, some great, some not so great. Isn’t that enough?

                ‘An irredeemably minor talent, (with sales to match), bafflingly lauded.’ Pshaw. And since when were high sales a reliable key to greatness anyway?

                • No, we can’t agree. The outraged response to any criticism of Declan from those who believe, inexplicably and with no evidence to back it up, that he’s the ‘greatest living singer/songwriter’ has a rather teenybop 1D flavour. I’m aware he’s always been an inspirational poster boy for the ugly and angry, but that doesn’t make him, by any stretch of the imagination, a ‘major’ talent. His voice is fucking awful as the truly great Billy Sherrill. He should know, having worked with George Jones. As Archie also points out, his ‘great songs’ have barely been covered. I included the point about sales purely to note that the extravagant (and unwarranted) praise he was being accorded for his supposed achievements were not being matched by any similar level of acclaim from the public.
                  As for Cohen, I’d suggest that Archie’s point is rather conclusively proved by the number of artists who’ve successfully covered Len’s songs.

              • Sorry Archie but I couldn’t leave this. Yours is a well reasoned post except that you have made the cardinal sin of expressing your opinions as fact. If you care to check the very informative wiki site for Elvis Costello you are able to see that (if I have counted them right) 142 of his songs have been covered by other artists. Some of the songs for example Alison and Accidents will happen have been covered by multiple artists. So, and this is something I didn’t quite appreciate the scale of, instead of being covered by next to no-one he has probably been covered by more artists than anyone else around and still performing except for McCartney and maybe Ray Davies. No doubt you won’t own up to your faux pas – why let the truth get in the way of a good story eh?

            • Santana, they wrote loads of standards you know.
              I am a fan of Costello, frankly don’t give a shit whether anyone else likes him or not. I am also not so blinkered that I consider everything he does is great – for example The Juliet Letters is a pile of shit and I detest Deep Dark Truthful mirror. However to describe him as an irredeemably meagre talent is both factually inaccurate in terms of sales and performance attendance and also in terms of his influence on other artists since 1977.

  22. Dr J steps boldly into the breach in defence of the Beloved Entertainer. Hurrah!

    (and I agree absolutely that National Ransom is the stand-out late-period masterpiece).

    • The idea that an artist like Questlove would be as presumptuous or in fact, downright rude as to set such parameters in a professional situation is ludicrous. Their collaboration was born from mutual.admiration and musical respect.

      I’d say that Elvis’ approach live and in the studio changed with the 21st century. When I Was Cruel has none of it and the more ballady ‘North’ also. Its just a lazy critics shorthand based on his last big hit, a cover from a rotten Richard Curtis movie. When he performs that song now it is a far more sensitive delivery. Still hate it thou.

      I think writing the book has cemented that idea in his mind as @drj points out that he is part of a musical family tradition that stretches.back and to the future.

      By the time Billy Sherrill met Elvis, the producer was a washed up, bitter old drunk in a town that he hated and hated him. His, like others opinion, of the worth of EC and his band is of no consequence.

      Besides if you left me, who would I have left to hate?

      I have the audio version (thanks to Audible free trial) and am on holiday when I pick up my book from Elvis signing so am looking forward to reading it at my leisure.

      Judging it by a couple of proof reading mistakes and short extracts – save me from the drone of your advice.

      Maintaining radio silence.from now on (have a podcast to edit)

      • I haven’t judged the book “by a couple of proof-reading mistakes”, but if you want me to, I will. I mentioned them because cock-ups like that betray a will-this-do approach (by his publisher as much if not more than by him) that is shoddy and substandard and amateurish.

        I said the book looks interesting and it does – the writing is absolutely fine – but if the short sample I’ve read is any indication of the rest, such a slapdash approach to presentation has swung it for me. I won’t be shelling out for the rest of it. Life’s too short to invest time and money in something that’s half-baked.

    • true, but I wasn’t taking the piss so don’t get grumpy with me.

      did further research and cant find reference to it anywhere so either he was taking the piss ( likely) or I dreamt it- less ikely

  27. I’m a fan of EC though not in the ‘I could name a single album he’s made in the last 20 years’ kind of way. King of America was a soundtrack to my life for a short while in the mid-eighties. So I like him in the way I like, say, Tom Waits – I haven’t listened to him very much in recent years but I rate him as an artist.

    Much as I like him though I always got the impression from interviews that he was a bit of a pushy, humourless cunt ‘Thatcher blah, blah, blah’. And it also has to be said that King of America is a very depressing, if great, album.

  29. Some posters’ insistent insistence that EC is an overrated non-artiste who sings as badly as your mum sounds like boys making up for a miserable time in the playground back at school.

    I don’t mind what you think and welcome the dissent from orthodoxy but, as ever, there are moments when views become more didactic than interesting.

    FWIW: five or six fantastic early albums that dramatised all my insecurities and horribleness when I was younger. More importantly, they played some blinding gigs at that time. Was anyone else at The Affair in Swindon, the summer of 77?

  32. Pleased (ish – I think!) that my innocent little post a long way above has posted such an amount of debate…

    For what it’s worth, I don’t disagree – though not the same as “I agree” – with the dissenters. I think those of a certain age (i. e. mine) either really like him or don’t, those older will cite Dylan et al, and you youngsters should get some old.

  33. Well, HP, that’s a sweeping statement . I’d take issue with both ‘little’s though. For a while, he was laceratingly harsh on male emotional fascism and the roughshod emotions that some men resort to as they fail to engage in relationships. Men emerge really badly from many of his songs, as they do from Martin Amis novels, for instance, but EC at his best turns such ugliness in to some truthful and (in my book) beautiful rock/pop songs. And then he loses it, just as Updike loses it, Amis, loses it, Scorsese loses it, everyone loses it because we’ve got older and they’ve often said what they need to say. That’s life.

    • In something of a bombshell, we now know that Dec himself refers to his songs as “bitter little songs [for a certain type of creep]”

      Yes, he was making a distinction for pre-Kind Of Blue, but basically we’re on the same page here. How does it feel to be called “a certain type of creep” by the man you love so very much?

      *croons* Me and Elvis, Elvis and me …

  34. Three perhaps four of the best albums ever made (admittedly all of them a long time ago). For someone who can’t really sing he has a great rock n roll voice. Haven’t seen one of his concerts for over ten years but at least four of the many I attended were just stunningly brilliant. He seems to still care passionately about music and still comes across as a thoughtful and intelligent guy.
    However do wish he had stopped releasing albums about 20 years ago – National Ransom would have been a fine comeback album if it hadn’t been preceded by years & years of dross.
    Some dreadful pish being dribbled above – you know who you are.

  37. FWIW – in my own brain where cold winds blow across vast tundras of nothingness there is a little room marked Top 100 Albums. EC is there, The Monkees are not. If only I had the time and skill and biting wit to mock up a spoof album cover to demonstrate this conceit .

  38. If you don’t mind doing the hard work…
    I’m seeing an outside scene shot in Greenland. A small wooden cabin, smoke rising in the ice-blue sky. Through the window we can see Bob, Joni, Jerry, Noah and his Whale and, of course , EC sitting at the table talking, laughing, smoking.
    Huddled outside are the poor frozen figures of Micky, Davy, Mike and the other one who looks like Chandler.
    Why, look – who’s that powering in on a super looking ice-sledge? It’s Ryan with a copy of 1989 under his arm!
    Over to you, Mr S

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