The things I do for this board....
I missed a teeny little bit off the start, for which I apologise. Excuse grammar and spelling - I'm no writer. Btw, anyone else notice how much he says "You know" and "I mean"? It became quite annoying after a while so I edited out a lot of them.
E = You know who
R = Richard Allinson
R: ...He's been making records since 1977, no two of them are alike. Maybe it's just my ears but I don't think any of them are alike....
E: Not particulary
R: And, er.... How are you doing?
E: I'm doing great.
R: I've been listening to your music since then and this is the first time we've met, so if I'm a bit thrilled...
E: That's very nice, it's the first time I've met you too.
*incoherent talking over each other*
R: Listen, this new album is called North, and you famously said a couple of weeks ago, "'Cos that's where I'm headed", that's why it's called North. How far north are we going here?
E: Very far. No, I always get amused by how much people read into a title of a record, you know. North is a place, it's a state of mind, it's as opposed to "That's gone south".
R: Right, okay. Did it take a long time?
E: To write it, no. I wrote it between late September and new year's day of this year, and recording it didn't take a tremendous amount of time; took a little planning, a few experiments. I was in the studio learning how to play the songs & how to sing them, but the recording of it, no - only a few weeks.
R: And is this the biggest number of musicians you've ever worked with on one album?
E: Not really, no. I mean, you could characterise it as having an orchestral dimension, but of course the orchestra actually only appear on 4 or 5 of the songs, and there's just as many songs that are accompanied by piano and bass or piano, bass and drums, or even tracks that are predominantly piano, bass and drums with a small addition of orchestration, so it's er....
R: Yeah, but some people say it's orchestra and it's a sequence and they overdub it.
E: Yeah, and some people when you say orchestra, they hear immediately certain preconceived ideas about it and I think you have to listen to the record to hear how that orchestra is used; it's very spare and the main thing about it it's a vocal record based around piano accompaniment. They're the two key elements.
R: I'm trying to put my ear across it and it begins with a song I'm going to play in a bit called You Left Me In The Dark, the end track is I'm In The
Mood Again. You said you have to listen to what goes on in-between to find out why, and we have, and I reckon it's about the end of one relationship and the emotional and mental journey you go through until you arrive at another one, with all the ache and hurt and stuff. Am I warm?
E: You're close, yeah. I think that it's certainly about finding yourself in a fairly desolate place. However you got there, that's not important, that's not commented upon. It begins with, as you say, You Left Me In The Dark, a fairly bleak song for which I make no apology about it being bleak; I'm not trying to put on a happy face, and then there begins a sort of transition.... I didn't plan it, I didn't preconceive it in this fashion. I started to write and it was only when I took a step back I realised there was a story linking the songs. You can hear it as a kind of transition, therefore somekind of story. But everybody will of course hear it, if they have the patience to listen, differently because their own experience is different.
R: 'Cos you've never struck me as someone who does put on a happy face, but on this album.... in the past you seemed to have been talking about your view of things, but on this album this is just YOU.
E: Certainly I'm in here. I mean I'm not singing songs for the selfish reason of making people look or morbidly consider my life, but so much as to say I know these things to be true, perhaps you do too.
R: Can I play it then?
E: Absolutely.
*YLMITD plays*
R: From the new album, North, it's from Elvis Costello who is on late night Radio 2 with us tonight. It's good to see Steve Nieve on there again.
E: Yeah, well he playes I think very beautifully on this record. Somewhat uncharacteristically in that the restraint, you know, he's really known for
being to invent and decorate and really embellish any musical idea I throw at him. But on this record he recognised the need to play completely with a kind of stillness, and we're supported very well by Peter Erskine and Mike Formanek in the rhythm section, and on other tracks by Brad Jones who's just playing along with Steve where there's no drums at all. So there's a lot of responsibility for Steve and he did a marvellous job.
R: 'Cos he's been with you a long time.
E: We've worked together predominantly for 25 years. There was a period of about 8 years when we didn't work together.
R: Did you fall out with him and then he came back and you shook hands and made up and all that stuff?
E: I never fell out with him, no. I stopped working with The Attractions in 1986 and in the meantime he went on and had a career in television and played on a lot of different records by other artists. I was working with other musicians in that time and then when we reassembled The Attractions for two albums, we in particular made a kind of musical alliance that was different to the band. And in '95 I think it was, we began playing concerts as a duo, just piano, voice and guitar. That's been some of my most enjoyable touring experiences in the last 10 years. I've been with Steve..... we toured nearly the whole of 1999, we're about to start a world tour in that format.
R: Is that when you did the singing without the mic? 'Cos there was a couple of gigs - I didn't see them but I heard about them - and you took the mic away. They weren't obviously big halls but....
E: Well, you can do it in reasonably big halls because I have a pretty loud voice. I did it in the Royal Albert Hall once and people told me it could still be heard, 'cos of course those halls were designed to be sung in unamplified. Part of the problem, particularly in the Royal Albert Hall, is keeping the level of amplification down because the hall defeats you otherwise. So it's not a trick, it's just some way of breaking down... it's all about directness to the audience. In the old days people didn't have a microphone, they really saw it as a human up there singing; there's a lot of things about moderm music that creates a sense of illusion and I'm going the opposite way.
R: Are you quite dogmatic in the studio? Are you in control of the whole thing?
E: I think on this record I needed to be because I heard it a certain way, it is very much the sound inside my head. I wrote all the orchestrations, which is the first time I had done that on record, although I've been writing different kinds of orchestration for concert work for about 8 years, so obviously I've developed a sound that I really like. I co-produced the record, I even stood up on a podium and directed the musicians through the charts - you could call that conducting but I don't know what it looked like. I
wouldn't get a gig conductiong the London Philharmonic or anything, you know.
R: When did that kick in? I don't know about anybody else but I associate you so much with that awful phrase "new wave" in the late 70's. There were certain people that needed a tag put on them and there were certain people who I thought were genuine innovators. You fall into the latter catagory. Then a couple of years ago there you are in Sweden with Anne Sophie Von Otter, playing with orchestras and doing the classicals.
E: Well I wasn't singing classical music, I mean I have an appreciation of classical music and I've got a huge curiosity for many forms of different music and sometimes they play a part in your own writing or they have an influence on your own writing. Obviously in the early 90's I worked with the Brodsky Quartet and that was a big departure to work exclusively with a group without any drums, all of the music was coming from the string quartet. That was what that record was about. Of course it shocked and horrified some people, but as often happens when you make a record that's very different, either from the one before or from what you're perceived to be best known for, even
most talented at - which is just somebody's opinion - you get a very strident, negative reaction. Then 5 years later they're kissing your arse about it, you know. That's kind of been my experience over the last 10 years.
R: You still talking to Tony Parsons, then?! I remember 'cos he was writing for The Telegraph at the time and he just didn't like The Juliet Letters album and it was like....
E: Well, I never DID talk to him! He'd be an example of someone who can at least wield a pen with a degree of talent.
R: It's a bit like do you feel any compulsion to repeat yourself because, as I said at the beginning, I don't think you've done any record that's alike...
E: I don't really. I think that's actually patronising the listeners, to consciously craft a record that repeats something. You can go back to certain blueprints in music, and I have done. The rock and roll combo is a renewable source just as the love song is. It's great to go back from time to time and check in with that blueprint and see what you think you can make. You know, when I made Blood & Chocolatein '86, Brutal Youth in '93/'94 and When I Was Cruel the year before last, you could say that they have some relationship to the combo sound of 4 guys as I started out with, certainly the first Attractions record, This Year's Model, but I didn't feel as though I was trying to recreate anything. I'm really not nostalgic by inclination, I think that must be pretty obvious by now. I also don't care for posterity, which is quite unusual in this line of work, I actually don't care what happens when I'm gone. So I'm just doing the thing now, I'm not changing my religion every time I change musical emphasis or methodology, I'm just doing the thing I believe in most of all at that moment with the inspiration I've got. Honestly, if you don't like it then I can't help you.
R: Yeah. The Stones asked you to support them on a few dates on their American tour.
E: Yeah, only one, actually.
R: Did you enjoy that?
E: I did. You know, I've never seen the Rolling Stones. For one thing a got a good seat in the house...
R: What do you mean, you've never seen the Rolling Stones?!
E: I'd never seen them play. 1972, I took the day off school to go and buy tickets for the Sticky Fingers tour and I got down there and took a look at the queue and I thought the queue was too long, so I went a bought a record with the money instead. So I passed up the chance to see them at their height. They used to be playing down the road when I was a little kid, living in Twickenham, they used to play in the Railway Tavern or whatever it was called... the Railway Hotel in Richmond, but of course I was too young. So they were a kinda local band. The Yardbirds lived in the next street to me.
R: I heard a story that after the gig, Mick actually came up to you and thanked you personally.
E: No, before the show they each came up to me in turn and said Thanks for doing this, and I started to get the feeling that maybe we weren't gonna get paid because, you know, the way they were saying it! When Charlie said Thanks for doing this, man, I thought, "What's going on here?!". No, but they were great, they were really good as well. I didn't have any expectation... I thought Charlie and Keith particularly were fantastic, you know. I really enjoyed the show.
R: We were talking to Keith a few weeks ago and he was in a hotel, just down the road from yours, only for 44 minutes...
E: 44 minutes, yeah...
R: And the room service bill came to 92 quid...
E: Good man!
R: ....plus tip. He had a bottle of vodka, an orange Fanta....and a packet of peanuts!
E: Good man. I think the single most awsome sound I've ever heard on a stage is that guitar when it starts off - it's just fantastic. I mean, I don't play many opening sets, now and again they fit into your schedule. I'm just going to do my third opening show, with Neil Young, and it's great because you get to go and see the show and you play for 40 minutes.... I play for 2 1/2 / 3 hours so if I go and do a 40 minute show, I'm not even getting warmed up. So I've played with Bob Dylan, the Stones and Neil Young. I'm gonna set the standard high! (laughing)
R: 40 minutes is a Neil Young solo, isn't it?!
E: It can be, yeah.
R: How do you tour an album like North? Will you tour it?
E: Yeees. Playing a number of dates in England, er, starting around the 6th October in Glasgow, working our way through Newcastle on the 8th, 10th in Manchester....
R: Now I'm impressed. There are not many artists who know their itinerary.
E: I think I right in saying the 11th at the Royal Festival Hall, and then going to Europe for a number of dates there. This tour will be Steve Nieve and myself. I want to present the songs as they were written rather than the way they are heard on the record. The record is one thing and live performance is another.
R: And presumably new versions of old songs as well?
E: Oh yeah. I haven't decided yet if we will play the North songs in their entirety, because they do make sense as a sequence, but as I didn't conceive them that way I think it's unlikely I'll performe them in one sequence. But I have to say to anyone who's considering coming to the show, if you are coming to hear Oliver's Army then perhaps it's better to stay at home and play the KTEL 78 collection - it's not that kind of concert. I don't wanna make it sound like it's grand, but the songs will be chosen to suit that kind of performance. There's a lot of energy in the show, it doesn't lack pace, it doesn't lack intensity just because there aren't electric guitars.
R: We've seen you with the electric guitars and the rock band and we're looking forward to seeing just you and Steve.
E: I find them among the most intense shows to sing but also the most fun.
R: Can't wait.
E: I can't wait either.
R: I know you don't normally tart yourself around so it's a great pleasure to have you on the show.
E: (laughing) Tart yourself around. I love that!
R: Elvis Costello with us on late night Radio 2. Thank you.
E: Thank you.
*'Still' plays*
Transcript of Allinson show with EC, Mon 29th
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PlaythingOrPet
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verbal gymnastics
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PlaythingOrPet
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verbal gymnastics
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laughingcrow
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verbal gymnastics
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Although you're only described as "someone" by the people who nabbed your translation on elvis-costello.com...verbal gymnastics wrote:You're already famous in our eyes!PlaythingOrPet wrote:Does that make me famous?
No? Okay, then....
Damned cheek if you ask me!
Who’s this kid with his mumbo jumbo?
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PlaythingOrPet
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