{"id":1607,"date":"2020-05-19T08:31:47","date_gmt":"2020-05-19T07:31:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/?p=1607"},"modified":"2020-05-19T08:37:36","modified_gmt":"2020-05-19T07:37:36","slug":"costello-by-andrew-moorhouse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/2020\/05\/19\/costello-by-andrew-moorhouse\/","title":{"rendered":"COSTELLO by Andrew Moorhouse"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

COSTELLO by Andrew Moorhouse<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Late in 1978 a pal brought a new LP into the house for us to listen to. The cover showed a geeky looking guy in a charity shop suit and polka dot shirt behind a fancy camera on a tripod. The image says that he\u2019s looking at you, he\u2019s not asking you to shout a carefree \u2018SEX\u2019 to get you to smile, he\u2019s serious, he wants to capture you as you really are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Side one starts to turn. The stylus slots into place and there\u2019s nowhere to hide. An, initially, unaccompanied voice snarls \u201cI don\u2019t want to kiss you, I don\u2019t want to touch, I don\u2019t want to see you \u2018cause I don\u2019t miss you that much\u201d and you\u2019re gripped. Or, at least I was. Gripped then and gripped by the words and music of Elvis Costello for the next 30 odd years. The record I was listening to, and which I quickly bought in Bradley\u2019s Records at the end of The Walk in Rochdale and carried round town without a bag making the cover visible to show just how \u2018with it\u2019 I was, was \u2018This Year\u2019s Model\u2019.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My days of thinking that Bowie was \u2018the one\u2019 (I\u2019d even resorted to the leather jacket and a haircut \u2018inspired\u2019 by the sleeve shot of \u2018Heroes\u2019) were over. It was Elvis now. This Year\u2019s Model was Costello\u2019s second long player. I\u2019d missed his first \u2018My Aim is True\u2019 when it came out, I\u2019d even missed hearing his song \u2018Alison\u2019 (which, in time, became a very important song for me) when pop pickers failed to hear its unique take on lovelorn loneliness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This Year\u2019s Model, recorded with the newly formed Attractions, was certainly a furious record. Costello says it was inspired by The Rolling Stones\u2019 Aftermath. My Aim is True had been produced by Nick \u2018Basher\u2019 Lowe in a dirt cheap studio and Elvis had been backed by a West Coast country influenced band called \u2018Clover\u2019. But My Aim is True had a song called \u2018I\u2019m Not Angry\u2019 the playing of which made its title more than a little disingenuous.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I first saw Costello in concert in January 1979 at Oldham Civic Hall where he was supported by John Cooper Clarke (left). It was, without doubt, the most thrilling thing I\u2019d seen in my tender years. The set list was taken from his new LP \u2018Armed Forces\u2019 but he also included some of the earlier songs that, by that time, I knew so well. Armed Forces included what was to be his biggest hit \u2018Oliver\u2019s Army\u2019 a song written during a visit to Belfast about colonial misadventures and, in these early days of Thatcher, the \u2018opportunities afforded\u2019 by the military for the unemployed boys of the Mersey, the Thames and the Tyne, with not much in the way of other choices. A serious subject but with a joyous tune inspired by, believe it or not, ABBA\u2019s \u2018Dancing Queen\u2019.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d become hooked. He toured constantly and I went to see him wherever I could. I remember three consecutive nights in Manchester, Sheffield and Leicester. I started going back stage after the show with him and he\u2019d recognise me and we\u2019d chat. On stage he was all anger, a newspaper interview had portrayed him as driven by \u2018revenge and guilt\u2019, talking to him after the shows he was gracious, thankful, affable, welcoming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In those early days of his career I\u2019d read interviews with him in which he spoke generously of other songwriters and singers, John Prine, Al Green, Dusty Springfield, Cole Porter, Ann Peebles, Gram Parsons, Billie Holiday, George Jones, Louis Armstrong And Ella Fitzgerald\u2019s duets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In concert amid the fury he\u2019d introduce a song saying \u201cThis song was written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David\u201d and do a wonderful version of \u2018I Just Don\u2019t Know What to Do With Myself\u201d, or sing Percy Mayfield\u2019s \u2018Danger Zone\u2019, or Prefab Sprout\u2019s \u2018Cruel\u2019, or open a show by singing Randy Crawford\u2019s \u2018One Day I\u2019ll Fly Away\u2019, or presage his own \u2018King Horse\u2019 with a couple of verses of The O\u2019Jays \u2018Backstabbers\u2019, or finish his own \u2018Alison\u2019 with a sequence of songs like \u2018Your Cheatin\u2019 Heart\u2019 or \u2018The Tracks of My Tears\u2019 or \u2018He\u2019ll Have to Go\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Costello provided my musical education. If he mentioned a band, or singer or songwriter I\u2019d give them a go, sometimes I shared his love, sometimes not but I recognised and appreciated his generosity in sharing his enthusiasms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

His education had come from his mum who ran a record department in one of the big Liverpool department stores and had an encyclopedic knowledge of jazz, classical and the early 60\u2019s \u2018beat combo\u2019 records. She also took her young son to the symphonic concerts at the Liverpool Philharmonic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Elvis\u2019 dad, Ross McManus, was a singer with the Joe Loss Band (writing that makes me think of my nan who was fond of saying \u2018Joe Loss and his brother Dead Loss\u2019) who was required to learn the hits of the day to perform with the Band. Ross used to bring home many records including acetates of the early Beatles\u2019 singles. Ross also played the trumpet and, in the early 90\u2019s when the band no longer existed, he\u2019d tour the Working Man\u2019s Club circuit singing songs and playing his trumpet. I was lucky to see him at the Wellfield Club in Rochdale in the early\/mid nineties when he sang a number of his son\u2019s songs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ross and the Joe Loss Band had performed at the Royal Variety show in the 1963 when the Beatles were on the bill as was Marlene Dietrich who was accompanied by Burt Bacharach. Ross took Elvis (then just Declan, his birth name) along to see the show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Costello\u2019s enthusiasm for music has lead him to make records across many styles, the Stax and Atlantic Records influenced \u2018Get happy!!\u2019, the country covers record \u2018Almost Blue\u2019, the late night jazz of \u2018North\u2019, the classical score, \u2018Il Sogno\u2019 he wrote for \u2018Midsummer\u2019s Night\u2019s Dream\u2019, the Great American Songbook LP, written with Burt Bacharach, \u2018Painted From Memory\u2019, the New Orleans influenced \u2018The River in Reverse\u2019 written with Alain Toussaint, the \u2018trip-hop\u2019 of \u2018Wise Up Ghost\u2019. All the records have many things to recommend them. Some, I believe, are essential for any serious listener to music. These are the top five in my opinion;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get Happy!! (1980) – Written at a time of deep disgust with himself and the behaviours brought about by the demands of \u2018pop stardom\u2019 it contains 20 concise and consistently excellent soul records including the quite wonderful \u2018mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa\u2019 self- punishment of Riot Act. In Elvis\u2019 words \u2018A record to dance to but you wouldn\u2019t want to live there\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The King of America (1986) (left) – magnificent songwriting with some glorious songs. \u2018Indoor Fireworks\u2019, \u2018Poisoned Rose\u2019, \u2018I\u2019ll Wear it Proudly\u2019, \u2018American Without Tears\u2019. Costello was accompanied by musicians including three members of Elvis Presley\u2019s Taking Care of Business (TCB) Band (more significantly for Costello, Ron Tutt, Glen D Hardin and James Burton had also backed Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris). Playing stand up bass on a number of tracks was Earl Brown who\u2019d played in both Duke Ellington\u2019s and Dizzy Gillespie\u2019s bands and had married Ella Fitzgerald. On drums was Earl Palmer who played with, amongst other great names, Little Richard, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke and Frank Sinatra.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imperial Bedroom (1982) – recorded in London with the Beatles\u2019 engineer Geoff Emerick producing and with a little help from George Martin the first track \u2018Beyond Belief\u2019 lives up to its title. Imperial Bedroom covers a very wide range of musical styles. Costello\u2019s lyrical genius and musical understanding are beautifully combined – \u2018Man Out of Time\u2019 is another piece a splendid self-disgust, \u2018Almost Blue\u2019, a song that Sinatra should have done at the peak of his powers, \u2018Town Cryer\u2019, a lyric worthy of Smokey Robinson with a soaring string arrangement to complement it.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This Year\u2019s Model (1978) – as exciting a record as you could wish to hear. Pete Thomas\u2019 drumming on \u2018Lipstick Vogue\u2019 is miraculous. Still thrilling 40 odd years later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Delivery Man (2008) – recorded in Oxford Mississippi not far from the crossroads where Robert Johnson sold his soul to Mephistopheles this is a swampy mixture of country\/soul with high points including The Judgement, written for Solomon Burke, \u2018There\u2019s a Story in your Voice\u2019, a duet with an apparently half-cut Lucinda Williams and \u2018Either Side of the Same Town\u2019 written with Jerry Ragavoy and for Howard Tate who was going through hard times.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Recommended Reading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Costello\u2019s autobiography \u2018Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink\u2019 is a fantastic read. The sections on his dad\u2019s passing are marvellously and very movingly written.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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