As promised at the Word stand at Cornbury, the Elvis interview conducted before the gig (in Claridges, it transpires) is in the Sept edition. Only two pages long (boring old Noel Gallagher gets front cover and several more pages), but nice and feisty. It's divided into six sections. In the first he talks of the fan from the Kenwood gig who died on July 7 and contrasts it with the 'anonymous' deaths in Iraq, and talks of being in a stunning mosque in Istanbul the day before, the rest are fairly self-explanatory. Word isn't available online, but is worth investing in, and the sample CD is interesting as ever.
Cynicism makes people do desperate things
Music was not better before
Never get your teeth fixed
Regret is between you and your confessor
You're at your peak after 50
Never write an autobiography
Elvis Word interview
-
Otis Westinghouse
- Posts: 8856
- Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 3:32 pm
- Location: The theatre of dreams
Elvis Word interview
Last edited by Otis Westinghouse on Sat Aug 06, 2005 9:04 am, edited 1 time in total.
There's more to life than books, you know, but not much more
http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/
' In this months issue: An extraordinary interview with Noel Gallagher on the man, his life and his brother. Elvis Costello, Siouxsie Sioux, KT Tunstall, Richard Dreyfuss, The Pixies and Bananarama. Word of mouth CD: Richard Thompson, Stereo MC's, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Hal, Ladytron, Alfie, Baxter Dury, Juliet, Griffin House, Hayseed Dixie, The Boy Least Likely to and Lord Kitchener.'
' In this months issue: An extraordinary interview with Noel Gallagher on the man, his life and his brother. Elvis Costello, Siouxsie Sioux, KT Tunstall, Richard Dreyfuss, The Pixies and Bananarama. Word of mouth CD: Richard Thompson, Stereo MC's, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Hal, Ladytron, Alfie, Baxter Dury, Juliet, Griffin House, Hayseed Dixie, The Boy Least Likely to and Lord Kitchener.'
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martinfoyle
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- Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 5:24 pm
- Location: Dublin, Ireland
- Contact:
Finally got around to reading this, and it is worth tracking down, the text will be presented here once the issues shelf/newstand life is over. What most interests me is whatever music he's listening to at present. This time he discusses The Zutons album and, I kid you not, 7Teen by The Regents. Eclectic as always.
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Otis Westinghouse
- Posts: 8856
- Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 3:32 pm
- Location: The theatre of dreams
Since the follow up issue of Word is on sale ,
here's the text of the Costello interview that was in
the last issue.
------------------------------------------------------
“NEVER GET YOUR TEETH FIXED”
ELVIS COSTELLO — gap-toothed songbird, ruthless
self-critic, big
thinker — offers advice for others hearing life’s
half-time whistle
Interview by SYLVIA PATTERSON
AN ADMIRER CALLED, rather wonderfully, Burke Smith
spots Elvis Costello in the farthest corner of the bar
in Claridges and offers to buy our boy a drink. “I
don’t mean to be an imposing American,” he says, “it’s
just there’s so few legends alive ...“ Embarrassed but
gracious, Elvis accepts the drink (Evian), agrees to a
camera-phone photo and settles back in his Seat. He
swears he didn’t hear the word legend. “Well at least
it wasn’t ‘you bastard, you wrote that song!” he
smiles. “It’s not the worst thing in the world, is it?
A photo is only a couple of seconds of your life...”
Fifty-one this August, he remains unmistakably Elvis:
amber-brown, rectangular glasses, black shirt, tie and
suit, golden charm of the Irish three-leaf clover
around his neck. Nearing the end of an 11-month global
tour, he’s “exhausted” but playing on as ever, tonight
at the Cornbury Festival in Oxfordshire where, to his
obvious disappointment, he’ll miss the opening act,
The Ukulele Orchestra Of Great Britain.
Twenty-eight years since his first album My Aim Is
True, he remains the outsider’s outsider, the
staggeringly prolific, uncompromising maverick who
continues to paint outside his own and everyone else’s
box, a man who is currently writing “supposedly an
opera” about Hans Christian Anderson for the Royal
Danish Opera. He’s also contracted to write a book, “a
sort of fiction” (he won’t elaborate). “That’s why I’m
no good at this,” he points at the tape-recorder,
“because I’m putting everything into all that.”
Famously dismissive of Costello nostalgists, he’s
finally succumbed to a heritage DVD, The Right
Spectacle, 27 videos, 70 minutes of archive TV footage
and sleeve-notes now re-written by himself. This he
describes as “a humorous parting gift for an audience
which predominantly has a nostalgic view of what I do.
Which I don’t share. I was mortified by the original
sleevenotes. They were blindingly fulsome and
exaggerated in their praise. They couldn’t be truthful
in the way I could be because I know where the
mistakes are.”
Later on he signs a fraying sleeve of his 1982
masterpiece Imperial Bedroom for me. “I love this
picture,” he blinks, gazing at the Picasso-inspired
art-work, “I have this painting at home.” He writes an
inscription: ‘To Sylvia. What is she?’ Much better
than ‘Sylvia’s Mother Said’... “I bet you’ve had ‘em
all. I had to put up with ‘Declan McManus?
Any relation to the wrestler Mick?’ all the time when
I was growing up.”
He now lives in New York with his third wife, jazz
singer Diane Krall. A hermetically-sealed private
entity and compulsive talker, he’ll launch
spontaneously into a eulogy to Charlie Mingus that’ll
prove impossible to redirect. Almost all of his world
is viewed through the prism of music. Alarmingly, he
says he has no hard-won wisdom. “I’ve never had any.
There’s no wisdom to impart. I’m lucky if I get from
one end of the day to the other without messing up.
Same as everybody.”
Perhaps it’s the unavoidable gloom that’s currently
settled upon London, the city of his birth. This
interview takes place only three days after the
terrorist bombings that took over 50 lives.
“CYNICISM MAKES PEOPLE DO DESPERATE THINGS”
“I was reading the paper this morning, they were doing
profiles of some of the missing people after the
London bombings and I suddenly saw my name in it. A
girl who was missing was at our Kenwood show, and her
sister was saying ‘my last contact with her was a
friend saying she’d had a lovely time there’ and
that’s always the way these things happen. In Iraq, 20
people were killed yesterday and we don’t examine the
death of people in Iraq because they’re not our kin.
But they are. And until we do, it will keep happening.
I was standing in a mosque in Istanbul yesterday
morning looking at the unbelievable beauty of that
building thinking ‘there’s no hierarchical expression
here, there’s no vengeful fear-making deity expressed
in human form, there’s awe-inspiring beauty as an
expression of belief— and, to my mind, benevolent’.
And somebody, somewhere, has taken hold of that out of
absolute desperation of any other way to strike back
and, worse th’an that, you get people in imitation who
take that idea on as if it were a philosophy, where
it’s really a dead-end. I’ve never been cynical in my
life. I’ve been sceptical since I was young and it’s
different from cynicism. Cynicism is what makes people
do desperate, end-of-the-line things. American foreign
policy is a huge cynicism. I wish leaders had more
vision, but they don’t because they’re corporate
people.”
“MUSIC WAS NOT ‘BETTER BEFORE"
“There was bad stuff then and good stuff then. We’ve
always said the best stuff’s at the margins and it’s
always been, whether it’s Jacobean music or music from
the ‘30s. If you go into a regional art gallery and
look at Renaissance paintings you’ll find that in
some, the noses were out of proportion. They weren’t
all masters. The reason why we love those great pieces
is because they’re the best version of it. You
remember the best things about music that you first
loved and think it was all golden, but actually, if
you could transport yourself back, what made those
songs so exceptional is they appeared against a
backdrop of mediocrity That would be true of 1978.
What makes 17 by The Regents such a great record is
its strange angle to almost everything else, even
things it was near. We were at Glastonbury and The
Zutons played before us and I thought they were great.
I got their record. I thought, ‘I can’t even figure
out what they’re referring to, it’s all bits that
don’t fit together,’ and that’s good. It’s like
they’ve made it all out of found objects and that’s
all rock and roll generally is. Some records are just
small. They don’t have to dominate the world.”
“NEVER GET YOUR TEETH FIXED”
“I look like I’ve been dragged through a hedge
backwards but I wear suits because I’ve just never
felt like a t-shirt kind of guy. Since I was 18. A
t-shirt is something to sleep in on a cold winter’s
night. When you haven’t got your Winceyette pyjamas.
Suits aren’t a fashion thing. I’d never have my teeth
fixed though. The gap in the middle is probably a
crucial part of the sound of my voice. It’s supposed
to indicate sensuality? Really? Well, there’s a few
other singers with gaps in their teeth — Ray Davies,
Madonna. That’s actually a contradiction. Madonna’s a
dancer, not a singer. She’s a very good song and dance
woman, but it’s about the whole package and what you
can persuade people to believe.”
“REGRET IS BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR CONFESSOR”
“I don’t see marriage in any overview and it’s never
pre-conceived. You live the life you’re living at the
moment you’re living it. Regret is between you and
your confessor, whoever that is. I didn’t have any
idea I’d have to go through two divorces and I have no
wise thing to propose about that. I only know what I
feel right now and the feeling I have about the past.
I’m not about to break into I Will Survive. I’m doing
a lot of things and I always say I mustn’t work so
much. Obviously my wife and I both do similar jobs,
we’re both on tour and it’s great to have a rendezvous
in Shanghai or somewhere. Sounds like an endless date!
But it’s very romantic. I always had a deep scepticism
about award shows but I met my wife at The Grammies.
Now you can’t keep me away from them!”
“YOU’RE AT YOUR PEAK AFTER 50”
“In almost every walk of life, the years between 50
and 70 are seen to be the peak years of any
professional career. The only way that would be
ludicrous in rock and roll would be if you had
juvenile lyrics that you were still parroting despite
patently not being the age to sing them. But that’s
never been a problem I’ve had. I always wrote songs
that if anything were olderheaded. I had no problem
with turning 50. Verdi wrote an opera when he was 8o.
You become less rigid with age. There’s a lot of
absolutism in youth which is not necessarily a bad
thing if it protects you from dropping a standard, but
if it cuts you off to imaginative possibilities
because you’re afraid of the way it’ll make you look,
then that’s something you can only learn in time. But
sometimes self-consciousness is good. It marks you out
from other people. Most musicians that have been any
good have looked freakish in a certain light and
individual in another, depending on how generous
you’re feeling.”
“NEVER WRITE AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY”
“I’ve been approached since 1978 for an autobiography
and I don’t want to because it’s boring and
self-serving. And it’s a self-involving line of work
anyway. I’ve been approached on numerous occasions for
access for a biography and always denied that too.
There’s been a bunch of unofficial ones and I usually
speed-read them to see whether there’s anything
inappropriate with regard to my family, or any misuse
of copyrighted material which I’d have a strong
opinion about. Other than that, they’re entitled to
their opinions. But I’m not interested in people’s
opinions. Really, genuinely, I’m not. Somebody who
would take money to try and unlock the key to your
work, it’s not very likely to work if I’m not going to
collaborate with them. So that’s always going be a
disaster. There’s a huge mistake in thinking that
gathering a lot of facts gives insight. You have to
know how to interpret evidence. I haven’t, as yet,
read anything that came much closer than saying I work
a lot and maybe I’m not always a nice person. Hey,
guess what? That’s most people. We all believe we’re
doing the best we can and sometimes we fuck up. I’ve
done it more publicly because I do, partly, a public
job. There isn’t one line of the most damning review
I’ve ever had that I haven’t said to myself five
hundred times worse. And that’s why I’m good at what I
do. And I’m not afraid to say that I’m good at what I
do. Because I know I’m very very very self-critical.
But I’m fortunate in many ways. I do a job I love and
it wouldn’t really add up to a lot on its own. I have
a good family and a wonderful life. That’s a lot of
things other people don’t have. You just have to
remind yourself not to be so bloody self-absorbed.”
THE RIGHT SPECTACLE — THE VERY BEST OF ELVIS COSTELLO
VIDEOS is out on September 5
here's the text of the Costello interview that was in
the last issue.
------------------------------------------------------
“NEVER GET YOUR TEETH FIXED”
ELVIS COSTELLO — gap-toothed songbird, ruthless
self-critic, big
thinker — offers advice for others hearing life’s
half-time whistle
Interview by SYLVIA PATTERSON
AN ADMIRER CALLED, rather wonderfully, Burke Smith
spots Elvis Costello in the farthest corner of the bar
in Claridges and offers to buy our boy a drink. “I
don’t mean to be an imposing American,” he says, “it’s
just there’s so few legends alive ...“ Embarrassed but
gracious, Elvis accepts the drink (Evian), agrees to a
camera-phone photo and settles back in his Seat. He
swears he didn’t hear the word legend. “Well at least
it wasn’t ‘you bastard, you wrote that song!” he
smiles. “It’s not the worst thing in the world, is it?
A photo is only a couple of seconds of your life...”
Fifty-one this August, he remains unmistakably Elvis:
amber-brown, rectangular glasses, black shirt, tie and
suit, golden charm of the Irish three-leaf clover
around his neck. Nearing the end of an 11-month global
tour, he’s “exhausted” but playing on as ever, tonight
at the Cornbury Festival in Oxfordshire where, to his
obvious disappointment, he’ll miss the opening act,
The Ukulele Orchestra Of Great Britain.
Twenty-eight years since his first album My Aim Is
True, he remains the outsider’s outsider, the
staggeringly prolific, uncompromising maverick who
continues to paint outside his own and everyone else’s
box, a man who is currently writing “supposedly an
opera” about Hans Christian Anderson for the Royal
Danish Opera. He’s also contracted to write a book, “a
sort of fiction” (he won’t elaborate). “That’s why I’m
no good at this,” he points at the tape-recorder,
“because I’m putting everything into all that.”
Famously dismissive of Costello nostalgists, he’s
finally succumbed to a heritage DVD, The Right
Spectacle, 27 videos, 70 minutes of archive TV footage
and sleeve-notes now re-written by himself. This he
describes as “a humorous parting gift for an audience
which predominantly has a nostalgic view of what I do.
Which I don’t share. I was mortified by the original
sleevenotes. They were blindingly fulsome and
exaggerated in their praise. They couldn’t be truthful
in the way I could be because I know where the
mistakes are.”
Later on he signs a fraying sleeve of his 1982
masterpiece Imperial Bedroom for me. “I love this
picture,” he blinks, gazing at the Picasso-inspired
art-work, “I have this painting at home.” He writes an
inscription: ‘To Sylvia. What is she?’ Much better
than ‘Sylvia’s Mother Said’... “I bet you’ve had ‘em
all. I had to put up with ‘Declan McManus?
Any relation to the wrestler Mick?’ all the time when
I was growing up.”
He now lives in New York with his third wife, jazz
singer Diane Krall. A hermetically-sealed private
entity and compulsive talker, he’ll launch
spontaneously into a eulogy to Charlie Mingus that’ll
prove impossible to redirect. Almost all of his world
is viewed through the prism of music. Alarmingly, he
says he has no hard-won wisdom. “I’ve never had any.
There’s no wisdom to impart. I’m lucky if I get from
one end of the day to the other without messing up.
Same as everybody.”
Perhaps it’s the unavoidable gloom that’s currently
settled upon London, the city of his birth. This
interview takes place only three days after the
terrorist bombings that took over 50 lives.
“CYNICISM MAKES PEOPLE DO DESPERATE THINGS”
“I was reading the paper this morning, they were doing
profiles of some of the missing people after the
London bombings and I suddenly saw my name in it. A
girl who was missing was at our Kenwood show, and her
sister was saying ‘my last contact with her was a
friend saying she’d had a lovely time there’ and
that’s always the way these things happen. In Iraq, 20
people were killed yesterday and we don’t examine the
death of people in Iraq because they’re not our kin.
But they are. And until we do, it will keep happening.
I was standing in a mosque in Istanbul yesterday
morning looking at the unbelievable beauty of that
building thinking ‘there’s no hierarchical expression
here, there’s no vengeful fear-making deity expressed
in human form, there’s awe-inspiring beauty as an
expression of belief— and, to my mind, benevolent’.
And somebody, somewhere, has taken hold of that out of
absolute desperation of any other way to strike back
and, worse th’an that, you get people in imitation who
take that idea on as if it were a philosophy, where
it’s really a dead-end. I’ve never been cynical in my
life. I’ve been sceptical since I was young and it’s
different from cynicism. Cynicism is what makes people
do desperate, end-of-the-line things. American foreign
policy is a huge cynicism. I wish leaders had more
vision, but they don’t because they’re corporate
people.”
“MUSIC WAS NOT ‘BETTER BEFORE"
“There was bad stuff then and good stuff then. We’ve
always said the best stuff’s at the margins and it’s
always been, whether it’s Jacobean music or music from
the ‘30s. If you go into a regional art gallery and
look at Renaissance paintings you’ll find that in
some, the noses were out of proportion. They weren’t
all masters. The reason why we love those great pieces
is because they’re the best version of it. You
remember the best things about music that you first
loved and think it was all golden, but actually, if
you could transport yourself back, what made those
songs so exceptional is they appeared against a
backdrop of mediocrity That would be true of 1978.
What makes 17 by The Regents such a great record is
its strange angle to almost everything else, even
things it was near. We were at Glastonbury and The
Zutons played before us and I thought they were great.
I got their record. I thought, ‘I can’t even figure
out what they’re referring to, it’s all bits that
don’t fit together,’ and that’s good. It’s like
they’ve made it all out of found objects and that’s
all rock and roll generally is. Some records are just
small. They don’t have to dominate the world.”
“NEVER GET YOUR TEETH FIXED”
“I look like I’ve been dragged through a hedge
backwards but I wear suits because I’ve just never
felt like a t-shirt kind of guy. Since I was 18. A
t-shirt is something to sleep in on a cold winter’s
night. When you haven’t got your Winceyette pyjamas.
Suits aren’t a fashion thing. I’d never have my teeth
fixed though. The gap in the middle is probably a
crucial part of the sound of my voice. It’s supposed
to indicate sensuality? Really? Well, there’s a few
other singers with gaps in their teeth — Ray Davies,
Madonna. That’s actually a contradiction. Madonna’s a
dancer, not a singer. She’s a very good song and dance
woman, but it’s about the whole package and what you
can persuade people to believe.”
“REGRET IS BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR CONFESSOR”
“I don’t see marriage in any overview and it’s never
pre-conceived. You live the life you’re living at the
moment you’re living it. Regret is between you and
your confessor, whoever that is. I didn’t have any
idea I’d have to go through two divorces and I have no
wise thing to propose about that. I only know what I
feel right now and the feeling I have about the past.
I’m not about to break into I Will Survive. I’m doing
a lot of things and I always say I mustn’t work so
much. Obviously my wife and I both do similar jobs,
we’re both on tour and it’s great to have a rendezvous
in Shanghai or somewhere. Sounds like an endless date!
But it’s very romantic. I always had a deep scepticism
about award shows but I met my wife at The Grammies.
Now you can’t keep me away from them!”
“YOU’RE AT YOUR PEAK AFTER 50”
“In almost every walk of life, the years between 50
and 70 are seen to be the peak years of any
professional career. The only way that would be
ludicrous in rock and roll would be if you had
juvenile lyrics that you were still parroting despite
patently not being the age to sing them. But that’s
never been a problem I’ve had. I always wrote songs
that if anything were olderheaded. I had no problem
with turning 50. Verdi wrote an opera when he was 8o.
You become less rigid with age. There’s a lot of
absolutism in youth which is not necessarily a bad
thing if it protects you from dropping a standard, but
if it cuts you off to imaginative possibilities
because you’re afraid of the way it’ll make you look,
then that’s something you can only learn in time. But
sometimes self-consciousness is good. It marks you out
from other people. Most musicians that have been any
good have looked freakish in a certain light and
individual in another, depending on how generous
you’re feeling.”
“NEVER WRITE AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY”
“I’ve been approached since 1978 for an autobiography
and I don’t want to because it’s boring and
self-serving. And it’s a self-involving line of work
anyway. I’ve been approached on numerous occasions for
access for a biography and always denied that too.
There’s been a bunch of unofficial ones and I usually
speed-read them to see whether there’s anything
inappropriate with regard to my family, or any misuse
of copyrighted material which I’d have a strong
opinion about. Other than that, they’re entitled to
their opinions. But I’m not interested in people’s
opinions. Really, genuinely, I’m not. Somebody who
would take money to try and unlock the key to your
work, it’s not very likely to work if I’m not going to
collaborate with them. So that’s always going be a
disaster. There’s a huge mistake in thinking that
gathering a lot of facts gives insight. You have to
know how to interpret evidence. I haven’t, as yet,
read anything that came much closer than saying I work
a lot and maybe I’m not always a nice person. Hey,
guess what? That’s most people. We all believe we’re
doing the best we can and sometimes we fuck up. I’ve
done it more publicly because I do, partly, a public
job. There isn’t one line of the most damning review
I’ve ever had that I haven’t said to myself five
hundred times worse. And that’s why I’m good at what I
do. And I’m not afraid to say that I’m good at what I
do. Because I know I’m very very very self-critical.
But I’m fortunate in many ways. I do a job I love and
it wouldn’t really add up to a lot on its own. I have
a good family and a wonderful life. That’s a lot of
things other people don’t have. You just have to
remind yourself not to be so bloody self-absorbed.”
THE RIGHT SPECTACLE — THE VERY BEST OF ELVIS COSTELLO
VIDEOS is out on September 5
EC has said similar things before, but I thought the following was worth repeating...
"A girl who was missing was at our Kenwood show, and her sister was saying ‘my last contact with her was a friend saying she’d had a lovely time there’ and that’s always the way these things happen. In Iraq, 20 people were killed yesterday and we don’t examine the death of people in Iraq because they’re not our kin. But they are. And until we do, it will keep happening."
The inability the value the lives of people who do not immediately remind us of ourselves -- if there were such a thing as original sin, that might be it.
"A girl who was missing was at our Kenwood show, and her sister was saying ‘my last contact with her was a friend saying she’d had a lovely time there’ and that’s always the way these things happen. In Iraq, 20 people were killed yesterday and we don’t examine the death of people in Iraq because they’re not our kin. But they are. And until we do, it will keep happening."
The inability the value the lives of people who do not immediately remind us of ourselves -- if there were such a thing as original sin, that might be it.
http://www.forwardtoyesterday.com -- Where "hopelessly dated" is a compliment!
Madonna seems to accept Elvis' words of wisdom -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features ... 35,00.html
( extract)
OMM: Elvis Costello said that the worst thing would be to read something by an influential critic and then let it affect what you do. So if they don't like a particular direction you're going in, you think, 'Well, maybe I shouldn't be doing it'. And then you realise: why on earth is this guy deciding my career path?
M: Exactly. You have this inner struggle within yourself all the time, this pendulum that swings between you caring [what people think] and not caring. It's not important, but on the other hand the media is something that affects a lot of people, so you're constantly trying to strike a balance between respecting something and not caring about it. Let's talk about economics: I know there's a lot of competition in the world of magazines and newspapers and we have to make headlines and be sensational and sell, and saying bad things about me is going to sell more papers than writing good things about me.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features ... 35,00.html
( extract)
OMM: Elvis Costello said that the worst thing would be to read something by an influential critic and then let it affect what you do. So if they don't like a particular direction you're going in, you think, 'Well, maybe I shouldn't be doing it'. And then you realise: why on earth is this guy deciding my career path?
M: Exactly. You have this inner struggle within yourself all the time, this pendulum that swings between you caring [what people think] and not caring. It's not important, but on the other hand the media is something that affects a lot of people, so you're constantly trying to strike a balance between respecting something and not caring about it. Let's talk about economics: I know there's a lot of competition in the world of magazines and newspapers and we have to make headlines and be sensational and sell, and saying bad things about me is going to sell more papers than writing good things about me.
-
miss buenos aires
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