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Imagine the scene: an ordinary Thursday morning at the Maker, drowsy hacks slumped like sacks over their typewriters, twitching occasionally to the formidable charm of the new Orange Juice single which had just then come through the window. The telephone rang; it was someone for the Assistant Editor...
"Hello, it's Elvis."
"Who?"
"Elvis Costello. I've got a record for you. I'll be around at the office at four. See you then."
This was surely some devious Riviera-inspired scam designed to wind up the hack, we thought. Then Elvis strolled through the door looking lean, healthy and determined. Costello and the Ass Ed took a walk, settled in a local coffee shop and got down to cases.
Costello explained that F-Beat was currently being "relocated," an army of lawyers was even now haggling over the small print on a variety of new contracts. The release of the new Costello LP had thus been delayed, until June or July: this had forced the postponement of the Attractions' projected summer tour of this fast decaying island. Cheesed to the eyelids with these protracted negotiations, Elvis was looking for action.
"I just wanted something out," he said, stirring his coffee with a vigorous twist. "Literally, at three o' clock yesterday afternoon, I decided to put this out."
He handed over a white label acetate of a song called "Pills And Soap." It was credited to The Imposter and it would be released within days, he said, on the IMP label, distributed through Demon, a subsidiary of F-Beat.
"I just realised that we had this label at our disposal and it was virtually laying dormant, just being used for reissues. I thought, 'let's use it.'" He called Andrew Lauder, who controls the Demon catalogue, wanted to know just how quickly the record could be turned around: Lauder told him he could get it in the shops within a week; Elvis told him they were in business.
By the time you read this, "Pills And Soap" should be on the racks in a limited edition of 15,000 copies, with no chance, according to Costello, of a reprint.
Costello was eager to make clear that this single was to be regarded as a one-off, not as any kind of trailer for the new album. Produced by Elvis and Colin Fairley (with whom EC produced a collection of tracks before Christmas for the Bluebells' still unreleased debut album), "Pills And Soap" was premiered at the Attractions' December shows at the Albert Hall, when a demo of the tune was used as an introductory tape to the group's performance.
The version to be released now is only slightly revised and features only Elvis and Steve Nieve, Costello's voice set against the latter's piano (supported by synthetic handclaps and a drum machine) in a style reminiscent of "Shot With His Own Gun": this song, however, takes the Costello croon from Tin Pan Alley to desolation row, with an ominous lyric that matches the social concern of "Shipbuilding" and the political comment of "Night Rally," "New Lace Sleeves" and, even more specifically, "Big Sister's Clothes."
"I don't want to make a big deal out of this," Costello insisted repeatedly, but even the most superficial assessment of the song's savage lyric reveals it to be a forcefully appropriate statement for a country on the verge of an election that might return Thatcher's government to office, thus virtually ensuring the kind of bleak future the song so convincingly projects... "there are ashtrays of emotion, with the fag-ends of the aristocracy," he sings at one point, "what would you say, what would you do / children and animals, two by two / give me the needle, give me the rope / gonna melt them down for pills and soap..."
A singularly powerful piece, as Paul Strange will no doubt confirm in this week's singles column, it's Costello at his most venomously articulate after the botched-up casualness of "Party Party" and the vague affectations of much of Imperial Bedroom.
Inevitably, Elvis wouldn't be drawn into discussing the song in detail, and was evasive, too, about the new album, which has been produced by Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley, the Madness production team: Elvis was keen to dispel any thought that they might have whisked the Attractions off to any exotic location for the recording, as they did not so long ago with Madness.
"It was done in London," he said. "We're not really the kind of people who like to spend too much time in the sun."
He was more forthcoming, though, on the subject of Robert Wyatt's "Shipbuilding" and could barely conceal his pleasure at the thought of it actually cracking the Top 30; he was eagerly looking forward to a potential appearance on TOTP to promote it: a band featuring Langer, Bedders from Madness, Any Trouble's new drummer and himself, were already on stand-by, he said, tossing in the aside that he'd written the lyric for Langer's melody in ten minutes in a hotel room in Sydney after weeks of deliberating over the general theme.
"It just popped into my head. We were out there, the Falklands thing was raging on and it suddenly struck me that we might be building all these warships to send out to the South Atlantic. I mean, what a way to counter unemployment... as soon as I had the idea, I had the song."
And with that, he was off: on his way to the Virgin Megastore to see if he could pick up a copy of the new Blasters album.
A break from the usual routine, at the very least...
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