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Famous Like Me > Composer > C > Elvis Costello

Profile of Elvis Costello on Famous Like Me

 
Name: Elvis Costello  
   
Also Know As:
   
Date of Birth: 25th August 1954
   
Place of Birth: Paddington, London, England, UK
   
Profession: Composer
 
 
From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia
Declan Patrick Aloysius MacManus, aka Elvis Costello.

Declan Patrick Aloysius MacManus (born August 25, 1954), better known by his stage name, Elvis Costello, is a popular British musician, singer, and songwriter of Irish ancestry. He was an early participant in London's pub rock scene in the mid-1970s, and later became associated with the punk rock and new wave musical genres, before establishing himself as a unique and original voice in the 1980s. His output has been wildly diverse: One critic has written that "Costello, the pop encyclopedia, can reinvent the past in his own image."


Biography

Early Life and Career

MacManus was born in St Mary's Hospital, Paddington in London, living in the area until he was sixteen. With an already musical family (his father, Ross MacManus, sang with Joe Loss), MacManus moved with his mother to Liverpool in 1971. It was there that he formed his first band, Flip City, which had a style very much in the pub rock vein. They lasted until 1975–1976, by which time MacManus was living in London with a wife and child.

MacManus worked a number of dead-end jobs, most famously at a cosmetics firm---immortalized in one of his song lyrics as the "vanity factory"---where he put in time as a data entry clerk. He continued to write songs, and began aggressively looking for a solo recording contract. On the basis of a demo tape, he was signed to Stiff Records. His manager at Stiff, Jake Riviera, suggested a name change, using Elvis Presley's first name and his mother's maiden name to form Elvis Costello.

1970s

Elvis Costello, striking an early pose.

Costello's first album for Stiff My Aim Is True (1977), was a moderate commercial success (No. 14 in the UK and Top 40 in the US) with Costello appearing on the cover in his trademark oversize glasses, bearing a striking resemblance to a [mock?] menacing Buddy Holly. Costello's backing on this first album was provided by American West Coast band Clover, a roots/country-ish outfit who would enjoy more success down the road after changing their name to Huey Lewis and The News. Costello was marketed as a new wave artist or a punk, despite the fact that the album featured the straightforward ballad "Alison" (one of his most enduring songs). The same year, Costello recruited his own, permanent band, The Attractions (Steve Nieve, born Steve Nason, piano; Bruce Thomas, bass guitar; and Pete Thomas, drums (the Thomases are unrelated)). He released his first major hit single, the cinematic "Watching The Detectives," recorded with Nieve, plus Steve Goulding (drums) & Andrew Bodnar (bass), both members of Graham Parker & The Rumour.

Stiff was a new independent UK label, formed to provide an outlet for practioners in the then-burgeoning pub rock scene in London. Its records were initially distributed only in the UK, which meant that Costello's first album and singles were initially available in the US as imports only. The mild splash that these early reords made in the UK did not dampen the young scribe's zeal to promote his own career. In a famous incident, EC was arrested for busking (with a battery-operated electric amp, which the police obviously deemed too loud) outside of a London convention of CBS record executives, "protesting" the fact that no US record company had yet seen fit to release Elvis Costello records in the United States. Either because of or in spite of this (then-) characteristically truculent (cf Bonnie Bramlett incident below) strategy, Elvis ended up signed to CBS (Columbia Records) in the US a few months later.

The picture cover of Radio Radio

In December 1977, Costello and The Attractions appeared on Saturday Night Live. (They were booked as a last minute replacement for The Sex Pistols, who, unimpressed with Saturday Night Live's rebel cachet, declined to appear on what they cosidered a TV show aimed at "boring old hippies.") During the broadcast, Pete Thomas sported a t-shirt that read "Thanks Malc," obviously an ironic tip of the hat to Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren for pulling his band and making way for The Attractions' US TV debut.) During rehearsal, EC and the Attractions played "Less Than Zero" for their second of two songs.(The first was "Watching The Detectives".) But during the live broadcast, Costello played the first few bars of "Less Than Zero," then--much to the shock of the program's producers--stopped, apologized to the audience for doing "this song here", and broke into a spirited rendition of the then-unreleased "Radio, Radio" (despite having been denied permission to play that song because of its anti-corporate message). (Costello has also stated that he thought "Less Than Zero" would not make much sense to American audiences, as its lyric centered around Oswald Mosley, a virulent ultra-right wing British politician not well-known outside the UK.) SNL producer Lorne Michaels was less than delighted at this unilateral retooling of the show's content: it is reported that he spent the entire length of the song standing behind one of the cameras giving Costello the finger. Michaels was furious not only because of Costello's defiance, but also because the unexpected change of repertoire disoriented the director and the cameramen (who had blocked out camera angles for an altogether different number). Just how impromptu (on the band's part) this set change was has never been entirely clear: repeated viewings seem to indicate that The Attractions had a pretty good idea what was coming. Costello was not invited to perform on Saturday Night Live again until 1989. But time evidently healed this particular wound, as years later he was invited (presumably directly or indirectly by Lorne Michaels) to recreate (with the Beastie Boys, no less) this famous moment of anarchy for Saturday Night Live's 25th anniversary special.

Following a whirlwind tour with other Stiff artists (captured on the Live Stiffs album, notable for Costello's recording of the Burt Bacharach/Hal David standard "I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself") the band recorded This Year's Model (1978), a frenetic record filled with raucous energy and Costello's barbed lyrics. Stand-out tracks include the British hit "(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea" and "Lipstick Vogue," on which the rhythm section excels. A tour of the US and Canada also saw the release of the much bootlegged promo-only "Live At The El Mocambo," which finally saw an official release as part of the "2 1/2 Years" box set in 1993.

1979 would arguably see the peak of Costello's commercial success with the release of Armed Forces (originally titled "Emotional Fascism"). Inspired by the constant touring, the band were in fine form and Costello had further honed his lyrical wit, tackling both personal and political. Both the album and the single "Oliver's Army," with a piano hook admittedly borrowed from ABBA's "Dancing Queen," went to No.2 in the UK. Costello also found time in 1979 to produce the debut album for ska band The Specials.

His success in the US was severely bruised, however, when, during a drunken argument with Bonnie Bramlett in a Columbus, Ohio Holiday Inn hotel bar, Costello called James Brown an "ignorant nigger," then upped the ante by pronouncing Ray Charles a "blind, ignorant nigger." (The comments were particularly out of character, as Elvis worked extensively in Britain's "Rock Against Racism" campaign---before and after this interlude.) Bramlett and friends had evidently been baiting Costello with derisive comments about British rock music in general, and "sawed-off Limey"-type comments aimed at him in particular. A contrite Costello apologised at a New York City press conference a few days later, claiming that he had been drunk and had said it only to annoy Bramlett (he succeeded; she punched him). In later explanations, Costello offered that he was just trying to think of the most obnoxoius things he could say to bring the conversation to a swift conclusion---he evidently did not have foresight enough to anticipate that Bramlett would bring his comments to the attention of the press, in an effort to bring his career to an equally swift conclusion! In his liner notes for the expanded version of Get Happy!!, Costello writes he declined an offer to meet Charles some time after the infamous incident: "any apology after all these years would do little more than embarrass everyone present, all I could do was turn my head away with shame and frustration knowing that this was a hand I will probably never shake ... I have also found that guilt is a burden without any statute of limitations." (In this context it is also interesting to note that--perhaps in an act of expiation?---Costello retooled the sound of his next album Get Happy!! to mimic the vibe of a vintage soul record, even down to the mock wear-ring on the front cover of European issues. Those songs from the album performed live before the record's appearance ("High Fidelity" e.g.) had featured in concert typical Attractions-style arrangements far removed from the aggressively uptempo dance beats---which sometimes seemed to jarringly contrast with the lyrics' more dour content---found on their eventual release.)

1980s

Elvis Costello, King of America.

Get Happy!! would thus be the first, and - along with King Of America - possibly most successful, of Costello's many experiments with genres beyond those with which he is normally associated (the single, "I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down" was an old Sam and Dave song, though Costello increased the tempo considerably). The brevity of the songs (20 tracks in about 45 minutes) suited the band's new style (the Thomas' typically melodic rhythm section and Nieve's reasonable impersonation of Booker T Jones) as well as the frantic and stressful conditions under which it was written and recorded, crammed between live dates and fuelled by excessive drinking. Lyrically, the songs are full of Costello's signature wordplay, to the point that he later felt he'd become something of a self-parody and toned it down on later releases.

1981's Trust had a more pop sound, but the overall result was clearly affected by the growing tensions within the band, particularly between Bruce and Pete Thomas. Despite its eclecticism ("Different Finger" had a distinct country feel) and pop hooks, Trust was not a major success and the first album since his debut to generate no hit singles.

Following the commercial disappointment of Trust, Costello took a break from songwriting and the band decamped to Nashville to record Almost Blue, an album of country music cover songs written by the likes of Hank Williams ("Why Don't You Love Me (Like You Used To Do?)"), Merle Haggard ("Tonight The Bottle Let Me Down") and Gram Parsons ("How Much I Lied"). It was not a country-rock album (a la The Byrds or The Eagles), which might have been more palatable to his established audience and to reviewers, but rather an undiluted country album. It received mixed reviews, some of which accused Costello of growing soft. Perhaps in anticipation of the inevitable accusations of apostasy, the first pressings of the record in the UK bore a sticker with the message:

"WARNING: This album contains country & western music and may cause offence to narrow minded listeners".

Almost Blue did spawn a surprise UK hit single in a version of Jerry Chesnut's "Good Year For The Roses."

Imperial Bedroom (1982) marked a much darker, almost baroque sound for Costello, due in large part to the production of Geoff Emerick, famed for engineering several Beatles records. Featuring a superior set of songs - both musically and lyrically - it remains one of his most critically acclaimed records but again failed to produce any hit singles. Costello has said he disliked the marketing pitch for the album, weak ads consisting only of the phrase "Masterpiece?". Imperial Bedroom also featured Costello's song "Almost Blue"; jazz singer and trumpeter Chet Baker would later perform and record a beautifully morose version of this song.

1983 saw another sidetrack with the Pop-Soul of Punch the Clock, featuring female backing vocals (Afrodiziak) and a four piece horn section (The TKO Horns), alongside The Attractions. Clive Langer (who co-produced with Alan Winstanley), provided Costello with a melody which eventually became "Shipbuilding", an oblique and articulate look at the political contradictions of the Falklands War: The controversial military build-up provided jobs for Britain's struggling shipyards. The song featured a striking solo by Chet Baker. (Prior to the release of Costello's own version, an affecting, emotive version of the song was a minor UK hit for former Soft Machine drummer and political activist Robert Wyatt). Equally political was "Pills And Soap" -- a UK hit for Costello himself under the pseudonym of "The Imposter" -- an attack on the changes in British society brought on by Thatcherism, released to coincide with the run-up to the 1983 UK general election. (The electorate were seemingly not swayed.) Punch the Clock also generated an international hit in the single "Everyday I Write the Book," aided by a prophetic music video featuring lookalikes of the Prince and Princess of Wales undergoing domestic strife in a suburban home.

Tensions within the band were beginning to tell, and with Costello starting to feel burnt out he announced his retirement and the disbandment of the group shortly before they were to record Goodbye Cruel World (1984). Costello would later say of this record that they had "got it as wrong as you can in terms of the execution". With a number of poor songs (and even the better songs harmed by murky production), the record was poorly received upon its initial release, and even many ardent Costello fans see Goodbye as his weakest album. Despite the record's poor reputation, a few songs were well-regarded, such as "The Comedians" (later recorded, with rewritten lyrics, by Roy Orbison, and also quoted, in its original version, in Alan Moore's seminal comic series Watchmen). On the album's second single, The Only Flame in Town, Daryl Hall of Hall and Oates shared lead vocals.

Costello's retirement, although short-lived, was accompanied by two compilations, Elvis Costello: The Man in the UK, Europe and Australia and The Best of Elvis Costello and the Attractions in the USA.

In 1985, Costello teamed up with good friend T-Bone Burnett for a single called "The People's Limousine" under the moniker of The Coward Brothers. That year, Costello also produced Rum, Sodomy and the Lash for the punk/folk band the Pogues. It was then that he met his second wife, Pogues bassist Cait O'Riordan.

By 1986, Costello was preparing to make a comeback. Working in the US with Burnett, a band containing a number of Elvis Presley's sidemen (including James Burton and Jerry Scheff), and minor input from the Attractions, he produced King Of America, an acoustic-guitar-driven album with a country sound, augmented by some of his best songs for some time. Around this time he legally changed his name back to Declan MacManus, adding Aloysius as an extra middle name.

The Attractions felt understandably insecure about their indispensability upon perceiving that their boss had cut a new album largely without them, and was planning to undertake a major tour showcasing the King Of America material with his new musical partners. To allay their fears, Costello retooled his upcoming tour to allow for multiple nights in each city; playing one night with The Confederates (James Burton et al.), one night with The Attractions, and one night solo acoustic. In New York City he played five nights in a row! This arrangement put a strain on fans' stamina and wallets, as many wanted to see as many of the permutations available in their area as possible, not just one.

Later that year, he returned to the studio with the Attractions and recorded Blood and Chocolate, which was lauded for a post-punk fervor not heard since 1978's This Year's Model. It also marked the return of producer Nick Lowe, who had produced Costello's first five albums. It is on this album that Costello adopted the alias "Napoleon Dynamite", the name he later attributed to the character of the obnoxious emcee that he played during the vaudeville-style tour to support Blood and Chocolate. (The pseudonym had previously been used in 1982, when the b-side single "Imperial Bedroom" was credited to "Napoleon Dynamite & The Royal Guard".)

In 1987, Costello, with a new contract with Warner Bros., began a long-running songwriting collaboration with Paul McCartney. They wrote a number of songs together, including Costello's "Veronica" and "Pads, Paws and Claws" from Spike (1989) and "So Like Candy" and "Playboy to a Man" from Mighty Like A Rose (1991) and McCartney's "My Brave Face", "Don't Be Careless Love", "That Day Is Done" and "You Want Her Too" from Flowers in the Dirt and "The Lovers That Never Were" and "Mistress and Maid" from Off The Ground. In 1989, he appeared on the HBO special Roy Orbison and Friends, A Black and White Night, which featured his long-time idol Roy Orbison, and was invited back to Saturday Night Live for the first time since 1977.

1990s

Elvis Costello, mid-90s.

In 1991 Costello released the aforementioned Mighty Like A Rose, during which time he infamously grew a long beard.

In 1993, Costello tested the waters of classical music with a critically acclaimed collaboration with the Brodsky Quartet on The Juliet Letters. Costello would return to rock and roll the following year with a project that reunited him with The Attractions, Brutal Youth. An album of cover songs recorded 5 years previously was released in 1995, Kojak Variety, followed in 1996 by an album of songs he had originally written for other artists, All This Useless Beauty. This was the final album of his Warner Bros. contract.

He collaborated with Burt Bacharach in 1996 on a song called "God Give Me Strength" for the movie Grace of My Heart. That collaboration led the pair to write and record an album together, Painted From Memory, released in 1998 under his new contract with Mercury Records.

For the 25th anniversary of Saturday Night Live, Costello was invited to the program, where he re-enacted his abrupt song-switch: This time, however, he interrupted the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage", and they acted as his backing group for "Radio, Radio".

2000 to present

Elvis Costello with wife Diana Krall.

In 2001, Costello was announced as the featured "artist in residence" at UCLA (although he ended up making fewer appearances than expected) and wrote the music for a new ballet. He produced and appeared on an album of songs for opera singer Anne Sofie von Otter, For The Stars.

In 2002 he released a new album, When I Was Cruel, and toured with a new band, the Imposters (the Attractions with a different bass player, Davey Faragher, formerly of Cracker). Costello split with second wife Cait O'Riordan toward the end of the year.

In March 2003, Elvis Costello & The Attractions were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In May, his engagement to Canadian jazz singer and pianist Diana Krall was announced. September saw the release of North, an album of piano-based ballads concerning the breakdown of his former marriage, and his falling in love with Krall. In December, Costello and Krall married at the London estate of Elton John. In 2004, the song "Scarlet Tide" (co-written by Costello and T-Bone Burnett and used in the film Cold Mountain) was nominated for an Academy Award; he performed it at the awards ceremony with Alison Krauss, who also sang the song on the official soundtrack.

In July 2004 Costello's first full-scale orchestral work, Il Sogno, was performed in New York. The work, a ballet after Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, was commissioned by Italian dance troupe Aterballeto, and received critical acclaim from the classical music critics, while being scorned by the popular music press. Whilst composing it, Costello deliberately avoided listening to the previous interpretations by Mendelssohn and Britten in order to ensure his own originality. A range of musical moods and styles are used to represent the different elements of the cast - satirical pomp for the courtiers, jazz for the faeries, and for Bottom a deliberately intrusive "brass band" motif. It was released on CD in September by Deutsche Grammophon.

Costello released another album that same month: The Delivery Man, a rock album recorded in Oxford, Miss. Mainly blues, country, and folk, The Delivery Man received early acclaim as one of Costello's best albums, and continues Elvis' personal quest to release an album on each of Universal's record labels.

Discography

Albums

  1. 1977 - My Aim Is True (UK #14, US #32)
  2. 1978 - This Year's Model (UK #4, US #30)
  3. 1979 - Armed Forces (UK #2, US #10)
  4. 1980 - Get Happy!! (UK #2, US #11)
  5. 1981 - Trust (UK #9, US #28)
  6. 1981 - Almost Blue (UK #7, US #50)
  7. 1982 - Imperial Bedroom (UK #6, US #30)
  8. 1983 - Punch the Clock (UK #3, US #24)
  9. 1984 - Goodbye Cruel World (UK #10, US #35)
  10. 1986 - King of America (UK #11, US #39)
  11. 1986 - Blood and Chocolate (UK #16, US #84)
  12. 1989 - Spike (UK #5, US #32)
  13. 1991 - Mighty Like a Rose (UK #5, US #55)
  14. 1993 - The Juliet Letters (UK #18)
  15. 1994 - Brutal Youth (UK #2, US #34)
  16. 1995 - Kojak Variety (UK #21)
  17. 1996 - All This Useless Beauty (UK #28, US #53)
  18. 1996 - Costello & Nieve
  19. 1998 - Painted from Memory, with Burt Bacharach (UK #32, US #78)
  20. 2002 - When I Was Cruel (US #20)
  21. 2002 - Cruel Smile
  22. 2003 - North (UK #44, US #57, US Traditional Jazz #1)
  23. 2004 - The Delivery Man (US #40)
  24. 2004 - Il Sogno

Collections

  1. 1980 - Taking Liberties
  2. 1980 - Ten Bloody Marys & Ten How's Your Fathers
  3. 1987 - Out of Our Idiot
  4. 1993 - 2½ Years
  5. 1999 - The Very Best Of Elvis Costello (2-CD) (UK #4)
  6. 2003 - Singles, Volume 1
  7. 2003 - Singles, Volume 2
  8. 2003 - Singles, Volume 3

This section is incomplete.

Rhino Reissues

All Costello's studio albums up until 1996 (with the exception, as of this writing, of The Juliet Letters) were reissued from 2001 to 2005 by Rhino Records (which constituted the second set of re-releases after Ryko (US) and Demon (UK) had done so from 1993 to 1995), under the guidance of Mr. Costello himself and featuring, in each case, a bonus disc of b-sides, outtakes, live tracks, alternate versions and/or demos of songs. The sound was remastered for each album and Costello wrote new liner notes about his thoughts on the music and anecdotes from the period when it was recorded.

The Almost Blue and Kojak Variety bonus discs were particularly notable as each contained, essentially, an entire new album's worth of material also performed but either not issued, or released as b-sides on singles originally.

The Get Happy bonus disc was also of note, with 30 additional tracks, bringing the total for the 2-disc set to 50 songs.

Tribute Albums

  1. 1998 - Bespoke Songs, Lost Dogs, Detours & Rendezvous - (various artists)
  2. 2002 - Almost You: The Songs of Elvis Costello - (various artists)
  3. 2003 - The Elvis Costello Songbook - Bonnie Brett
  4. 2004 - A Tribute to Elvis Costello - Patrik Tanner

Singles

Year Title Chart Positions Album
US Hot 100 US Modern Rock
1983 "Everyday I Write the Book" (with The Attractions) #65 - Punch the Clock
1989 "Veronica" - #1 (2 weeks) Spike
1989 "...This Town..." - #4 Spike
1991 "The Other Side of Summer" - #1 (4 weeks) Mighty Like a Rose
1994 "13 Steps Lead Down" - #6 Brutal Youth

Filmography

  • 1979 film debut as 'Earl Manchester' in Americathon
  • 1984 as 'Henry Scully' in UK TV series Scully
  • 1985 as inept magician 'Rosco de Ville' in Alan Bleasdale film No Surrender
  • 1987 as 'Hives the Butler' in Alex Cox film Straight to Hell, starring Joe Strummer and Courtney Love
  • 1997 as himself in Spice World
  • 1999 as himself in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, performing with Burt Bacharach
  • 1999 as himself in 200 Cigarettes
  • 2001 as a public defender and a teacher in Prison Song,
  • 2002 as himself in How I Spent My Strummer Vacation, an episode of The Simpsons
  • 2003 Academy Award nomination for best original song The Scarlet Tide in Cold Mountain.
  • 2003 as 'Ben' in the Frasier episode "Farewell, Nervosa"
  • 2003 as guest host on The Late Show with David Letterman
  • 2004 performing the Cole Porter song "Let's Misbehave" in De-Lovely

This content from Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Elvis Costello