Switched on Pop - 32 Albums in, Elvis Costello is Just Getting Started

Episode Date: January 25, 2022

Elvis Costello burst onto the music scene in 1977 with the album My Aim Is True. Songs like “Alison” established him as a powerful new voice in rock. His next album, This Year’s Model, introduced hits like “Pump it Up,” which has resounded through stadiums and arenas across the country ever since.  From then on he released album after album, decade after decade, becoming a force to be reckoned with in pop music. Now, Costello has released his 32nd studio album, The Boy Named If, and it's a kaleidoscopic journey through many of the sounds and styles that he's experimented with over the years. We spoke with Elvis about his wrong notes and open-ended lyrics, his much-publicized defense of Olivia Rodrigo, and why he turned down working with Adele Songs Discussed: Elvis Costello - Farewell, OK, Magnificent Hurt, Alison, Pump It Up Richie Barrett - Some Other Guy Olivia Rodrigo - Brutal Chuck Berry - Too Much Monkey Business Bob Dylan - Subterranean Homesick Blues Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to Switched-on Pop. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. Elvis Costello burst onto the music scene in 1977 with the album, My Aim is True. Songs like Allison established him as a powerful new voice in rock. His next album, This Year's Model, featured hits like Pump It Up, which continues to resound through, stadiums and arenas across the country. From then on, he released album after album decade after decade, becoming a force to be reckoned with in pop music. As a kid, his angular melodies and hyperliterate lyrics were in constant rotation in my household and his sounds shaped my own musical sensibilities in a profound way. Now, Elvis has released his 30-second studio album, The Boy Named If, and it's a kaleidoscopic

journey through so many of the sounds and styles that he's experimented with over the years. The album's title track showcases a slow burning tension. And on Paint the Red Rose Blue, Costello reveals one of his most moving ballads. There's also plenty of references to classic rock and roll here, as on The Death of Magic Thinking, which seems to channel the classic Bow Diddle Beattie beat. If Costello's band, the Impostor sounds like a well-seasoned unit on this track, that's because they've been playing together for decades with Steve Neve on organ, Davy Farragher on bass and Pete Thomas on drums,

powering through the entirety of this most recent release. I spoke with Elvis Costello about his wrong notes and gap-tooth attitude Olivia Rodriguez and the anxiety of influence, why he turned down Adele, and how to confront your past to help you grow as an artist. Here's our conversation. Elvis Costello, welcome to Switch on Pop. It's a pleasure to be with you.

I'm really looking forward to discussing your new album, The Boy Named If, and let's begin at the beginning with the very first track from the boy named if this is farewell okay you're sure that we're in

2020 we're in Hamburg it's coming through the speaker here over the airwaves and it sounds like an AM radio which is really strange so I like that that it sounds like that because obviously that kind of rhythm is an old-fashioned rhythm

not many people use but the other night I was I did a what I called a pirate radio show from the basement of a record shop in Smithdowne Road, Liverpool, where my mother is from. And I was three and a half hours playing whatever I felt like and nobody could stop me.

It wasn't like being on the BBC. And I did all kinds of crazy things where I played records at the wrong speed. I was trying to do everything myself. And the second to last track I played was some other guy. Some of the guy now I was taking my love. which is a song from 1962, written by Jerry Lieber,

Mike Stoller, and another gentleman, maybe Richie Barrett, the guy that recorded it, and it was immediately picked up by the groups in Liverpool. You know, obviously, I think a lot of people, before you had the internet, if you could get hold of a record nobody else had heard, you could pass it off as your own song. That was a good trick.

So a great group from Liverpool called Big, did a killer version of it. The Beatles had it in their repertoire but never recorded it. I always held that the rhythm as kind of like the root of... It's like Liverpool rock and roll because when you hear the Ritchie Barrett version, it doesn't sound like that, it sounds like what I say by Ray Charles.

Tell you, Mama, tell you Paul, I'm gonna send you back to Arkansas. Oh, yes, man. So the beat groups, because they didn't have pianos, for the most part, put that kind of little chanky rhythm into it. So I thought when it was time to put that back in a song, I've used it only a handful of times. And what better than to open a record with a song that says, farewell, okay? Farewell, okay? You know, whichever way you want to say it. You mentioned hearing a little bit of Hamburg listening back to this.

I'm assuming that it's a reference to the Beatles' early years. A Beatles had a few of the other groups went over and when you think about it, probably how they got so good because they played five sets a night, you know, and the drunken sailors and God knows what, you know. When you read about those times, we didn't get to do that kind of apprenticeship. I played around clubs in Liverpool in the early 70s with my pal Allen in a group. And then I went to London to try and get my, you know, get my songs recorded because I didn't really think I was going to be a singer.

Not because I didn't think I could sing good, but because of look at my face, I'm not a pop star. You know, like they were all golden-haired kind of, you know, open shirt, the navel kind of rock stars in those days in tight Saturday. Right, right. Or velvet flares were very popular in those days, and I didn't look very good in any of that. And, you know, my mother worked in a biscuit factory, which didn't help. And so a song like this is sort of like what I would have been playing, if I'd had the opportunity to play five sets a night,

you would have wanted this rhythm for sure, you know. I love that. This song starts in a rather indelible way. I'd love if we could just listen once again, just to the first assault of electric guitar that begins this track. Well, it's coming from a key you're not expecting for a kickoff. It's in C. And I'm playing this.

You know, I think Chuck Berry had this thing where, you know, Chuck Barry is supposed to have learned to play the guitar before he learned to tune it. Like, he tuned it his own way initially. Right. And I don't know how much that influenced the way he heard it. If you listen to a lot of Chuck Berry's guitar, particularly he plays up the neck a little bit, it's strictly speaking not in tune,

but it's out of tune in a most fantastic way. Like a ring in a bell, because bells do not ring exactly consonant. Right, right. There's this thing going like this. And a lot of Chuck Berry's signatures are like him pulling the strings, and that's what makes them so impossible to copy. because good guitar players can't do it.

I think the closest Keith Richards, but nobody plays like Chuck Berry did. So from a musical point of view, without being a learned, I never did any study. I learned everything by ear. I didn't even learn to write music down until I was 40, so I didn't know the names of the chords I was playing.

I just knew they sounded good. And when you get like a clanging chord like this, which as you say, strictly speaking, it's augmented chord, I never thought about what chord it is. It's just this shape that makes a nice noise. and I still approach music that way. Even though I can write orchestrations,

I've deliberately never learned the guitar in a methodical way. So you can still come up with surprises. By withholding knowledge, you can still surprise yourself. You know, Paul McCartney famously didn't want to learn to write down music because he thought it might inhibit the flow of melody. Well, heaven knows, if you've written some of the tunes that he's written, you wouldn't want to mess with that, would you? Right.

Those brash chords that kick off Fair Well, Okay, point to a larger theme I sometimes hear in your work, this attraction to those, to dissonance, to the wrong notes, to the out of tune. It's something I'd love to keep in our back pocket as we continue this conversation. But now I'd love to move to the treatment of lyrics in this song by skipping ahead to the bridge section of Fairwell.

well, okay. This whole song takes place in a dance hall. I try to write a short story to a company, which kind of filled it out a little bit, but it's really all about the tumult and the chaos of a dance hall. When I listen to it, it represents, I think, one of the things I gravitate towards in your songs, which is that there's an incredible degree of specificity when we take this last quatrain. I can't get the stain off my hands ever.

since from the fake marble pillar past a curtain of chint, a splatter of steps on a chalk floor pattern, a trim of black lace on a hem of red satin. See, I'm combining two things that didn't happen at the same time. Right. Because when they used to do

Bormum dancing, where people had more space to move around, they would put French chalk down on the wooden floor, so the dancer's feet slid around. Well, they didn't do that when I was playing in dance halls. What was on the floor was probably disgusting. It was probably, you know,

I dread to think, you know, it was certainly spilt beer and sometimes worse, you know. So I was, it's a slightly romantic fantasy, the chalk floor patterns, I was seeing in my mind like, literally like a footprint that's been made in a chalk floor

pattern. Right, right. And then a trim of a black lace and a hymn around satin. Well, I used to go with my father when I was seven years old at the dance hall on a Saturday afternoon when the ballroom dancers would be practicing and they'd be doing all these Pasadobles and tangos and striking these poses. And they weren't dressed up in their real fine clothes.

But somehow I always imagined them the way they appeared in pictures of ballroom dancers with the satin and lace and sort of sexy looking kind of. They all wore those very tightly fitted things. And the guys would all be looked like Matadors. You know, they was like, for a young man, it was all very confusing. And I think it probably set me off down a track into kind of all sorts of stuff. that I shouldn't have been thinking about. I live to tell this tale.

Your interpretation is so different from mine because I, for whatever reason, immediately thought of a chalk outline that would... Oh, well, you've taken it on a whole... That's later in the evening. I did write that line in a few other songs, but a chalk outline. Right, right.

And it's a testament to how detailed the lyrics are, but also how... obscure they are around the edges a little bit. I can leave some room for the imagination, as you've done. You imagine something slightly different. Exactly. Leaving space for the imagination of the listener is all the more important. I've increasingly trying to resist the temptation to have the last word.

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Well, I think if you play that kind of baseline, you know, that was the line I heard, and when you have Davey Farragher playing in your band, he plays anything that's a groove thing with so much, you know, he plays the simple pattern that other people would just be plotting on those notes. It's a very interesting thing that goes on

between Pete and David's a push-pull, like a lot of great rhythm sections. There's like somebody's playing behind, somebody's playing, pushing slightly. Now, we never had that agreement in the early band. There were times when we just magically locked into a thing, which made the attractions, like some of those records sound very furious and certainly groovy in their own way. Well, you've channeled that ferocity in your music

to an unerring success, I think. Over time, I've found sometimes it's right to go with theatrical reader, and sometimes you just want to downplay like a movie actor does, and don't do that. Otherwise, everything gets like super like underlined. Right. You have to take more than one approach.

Sometimes you let some warmth resonance into your voice. Other times you tighten it up. It depends on what the song is and what's a story. This particular song is that almost painful thrill of desire you want something so bad it hurts. I mean, that's not a mystery story. You know, it's a... I tried to say, well, I did this storybook version of the record

with my illustrations. I thought, what's going to represent Magnificent Her? And I drew a couple on a roller coaster upside down with their hair

all sticking up and all their money and their rings falling off their fingers because in that moment of desire and, you know, all allegiance,

all common sense, gravity even comes into question. And I just wanted because I try and make the music sound like that. And then when we get to the chorus, you know, you go somewhere like

more its attitude in the verse and melody in the chorus. You know, there's a sort of lift into the chorus, and then we're in a different world. Yeah. Let's listen to that chorus and maybe pay particular attention to one of my favorite aspects of this song, which is the way you sing the title phrase.

It's not magnificent hurt. It's magnificent dot, dot, dot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hurt. Here it is. Where you make you feel magnificent, add the hurt later. You don't notice it until later. It's so magnificent you're not hurting. It's such a surprising moment to hear the title phrase of the song in this way that you don't expect.

And which plays off the kind of antonymic quality of those two words, magnificent hurt. You know, people will sometimes say, what do you mean by that? like going right back to one of the first songs to kind of register with a wider audience of Allison I know this world is killing you all is this a murder ballad it really isn't anything to do with violence that song I never would

I wrote it as a tragedy because it's the recognition that the lack of faithfulness and the lack of the dream of love being constant would be that's the world is everything. And you say the singer's part in that world.

If you'd build a world together and then you'd pull that world apart, then that's what I meant by that. And beyond that, I don't want to be too specific because it takes away what other people might read in. But one thing it definitely isn't about is murder. There's one other part of the song that really tickles me, and that's the instrumental section. Yes.

which is another example of these angular, wrong, dissonant notes. Let's listen to that. That's a good example of putting your fingers anywhere and making it good. How could you have a song called Magnificent Her and play a beautiful melodic solo? It wouldn't make sense. I don't often take solos as two on this record, which is actually two more than on almost every other record I've made. Certainly, I haven't played a solo on. 20 years, I don't think on a record.

So I don't really think of myself as an expressive guitar player. The solo that's on, whatever, I can't give you anything but love, is probably the closest to an emotional solo that I've ever played on a record, that where I'm playing the feeling of the line before. This one

is descriptive, right? It's descriptive music. That's like, okay, we're on the rollercoast upside down. All our rings are falling off of our fingers. The money's falling out of our pockets. We're going to crash. We're all going to die. What's it sound like? that's it you know and in that moment of madness you get this little thing there are moments that not for their technical proficiency but for their appropriateness to the moment and i think

that is what makes the solo and magnificent hurt succeed it's so i just had to transcribe it because it's so it sounds like uh stravinsky or something well thank you in all of these things are just keeping your ears open to, and sometimes very simple forms can be, can be that liberation, you know, to a whole new form. The territorial nature of it can be very odd, when people are, you know, are sort of, forget, sort of like I've invented this thing

that's never been imagined. And so it depends on how much music you've listened to. Because to me, I'm hearing it, like, I've heard it lots of times, you know. So don't be quite so proud about it, because it was enough to write it and feel it. You don't need to have invented it. Talking about the cascading and circular nature of musical influence and exchange

makes me want to pivot back to this year's model and maybe gives us an opportunity to talk about one of these kind of dilemmas that you were describing, the anxiety of influence. when Olivia Rodriguez released her album Sauer and the track Bruttle in 2021. It's brutal out of here. Many listeners commented on a perceived similarity between that song and pump it up from 1978's this year's model. And you responded with a sentiment very much in keeping with. what you've just been telling me now.

You know, I don't often get involved in dialogue online, but this sort of took me by surprise this thing. Because I had heard Olivier Rodriguez's first hit, and I'd seen her perform on some television show, and she sounded like, well, that's recognizably a real story that happened to somebody. And what, you know, that's really good. She had a lot of presence.

And then I then, so I was perhaps curious to hear what was next, and what was next was the album. And then I started to see this, my name, which suddenly started from here. That was unexpected, you know. I mean, I honestly was approached at one point. I don't know whether she knew about it, but for instance, a long, long time ago,

I was approached by a music publisher to consider entering into collaboration with an artist that they had who had made a record as a teenager and was just trying to make her, was writing her second record and they thought it would be a good idea if I kind of collaborated on it.

And my honest response, and I think this was still one I would take, was that I felt there was something wrong with me in my, I don't know how old I would have been, maybe late fifth, getting involved with trying to imagine what the reality was for a person who was 20. There's a difference between me imagining or me relating in the boy named if,

what I remember, what I see, what I held in my heart, what I learned from the next experience in my life, and in the life of all the people I love and people I've shared time with, but different, somebody had never even met, it would be hugely presumptuous. And that's how I didn't manage to write any of Adele's second record. Now, of course, you know, I think if I had ever told my publisher that that was happening, they would have had me taken out and shot, you know. But we didn't know that that was what was going to happen. And I've met Adele, and we've never even talked about it.

I don't even think she knew they made that inquiry, I'm sure. It didn't come from her. It came from somebody who thought, how do we put these pieces together? So when I saw this letter from this young man who was indignant on my behalf, I wrote to him personally, and I said, look, this is fine with me, Billy.

This is how rock and roll works. You take the broken pieces of another thrill and make it a brand new toy. That's what I did. And honestly, like I mentioned, Chuck Berry, is not a very obvious influence on my work, but there is a continuity going back to records in the 20s

of quick fire delivery whatever to rhythm. Too Much Monkey Business was a song I loved when I was, of all Chapbury's records, I love too much monkey business. Sales me talking to me trying to run me up a creek say you buy it, go on tried, you pay me next week.

I don't think it's inconceivable that Bob Dylan had not heard that song when he wrote So right to Brennan, How's It Was It. John is in the basement Mixing up the medicine I'm on the pavement Thinking about the government

The man in a trench coat badge I've laid off It's also inconceivable That I'd never heard On Subtranhing Homestip Blues When I wrote Poppet up You know, for me to take issue With Olivia Rodriguez Floating some lines over a rhythm

Which is shared in a whole bunch of songs Before and since You know Would just be idiotic What happened next was quite curious because people started to say, she's ripped off the rope traders who were this fairly ghastly Australian disco band

who flat out stole Pump It Up From us. I don't mind saying, come down and try and sue me about that. They actually took our rhythm track, put it through a filter, and then claimed to have replayed it. So they only had to clear the composition, not the original recording.

but it was so transparently our original track with a few other things laid on. That was annoying. But that was a very long time ago and I thought, that song will be forgotten and my song won't be. So what's the point of giving them some publicity?

So I had to treat it all with a sense of humor. Here's a thing, pump it up. What's the riff? Or is it? What's the riff that, or is it the drumbeat? Ah. You know, is a drumbeat, which is one of my many attempts to get Pete to play going to a go-go on the drums. I've said, play like going to a go-go.

Of course, it's not even the same sort of feel at all, but that's why the Tom's are there, because he's rationalising the fact that now. Now, the baseline is, I think, from, I think Bruce said it was from one of Elvis's late records, maybe even burning love. You know, that syncopated baseline, I don't do, he's jumping a run. round. So you've got, Steve is stabbing. This is what I'm saying. We're not really playing like a conventional rhythm session. It's like three different rhythm patterns going on that just happened to lock. It's by the way a first take. So we played it. I wrote it three days before we did

it. I wrote it on a fire escape in Newcastle. Played it the next night and the final night of our first theatre tour and it seemed to go well. We're in the studio four days later and we're it and I know it was the first take because I broke a string in the last few bars and you can hear the guitar go a little out of tune. You know, hearing your reflection now and reading that tweet you had in response to this, I think the reason people reacted very, very powerfully to that because I think it was not what many people expected. Well, that makes me want to ask, there's a way that this music for you.

from your past keeps on surging into our culture today, whether it's in a reference on Olivia Rodriguez record, or whether it's the re-recording of this year's model with a crew of Spanish language music all-stars from Sebastian Yatra to Juanez to Raquel Sophia and Fuego. What do you think allows you to have such an open and welcoming relationship to material that is from such an earlier part of your career? Because I feel like many musicians have a complicated relationship with their early music. They want to be associated with more than that. They want to move past that. They want to not be dragged down by that legacy.

But you seem to embrace it. What allows you to do that? Well, it's something I've come to appreciate as time has gone on. I didn't have that attitude. You know, Linda Ronstadt recorded my song, Alice, and although it was never released as a single, it was on an album that sold, I think, 4 million copies. That's a lot of records, you know.

It made the money that allowed us to put gas in the bus for the first few years before we got ourselves started. One of the reasons that I've been able to remain to keep an open mind is what I am, I guess, curious about what's happening next, rather than sticking with it. Because I grew up around show, business as a kid, I watched my father's career, I'm very wary of the concept of beloved entertainer.

You know, I even put that as a subtitle of one of my records. The idea of somebody, well, you know this guy from that, when he sang that one back in 1935, and you loved him then and you loved him today. And I really got to be honest. I said this thing the other day. If I fell under a bus while I was in London last week, the BBC would play all the Alva Zami or She. They have, you know, only one of which I wrote.

Now they would probably only play she. Maybe good year for the roses, neither of which I wrote. They don't know the other 590 songs or something I wrote, you know. The way I feel about all of this is put the pass down if it doesn't serve you. If it does serve you, use it. You put your weight on your back foot when you make a jump forward, don't you? Have you ever jumped off your both feet together? You never do that.

take a step back leap you know that is if you do that in music then you're going to take some stuff with you or value maybe you'll drop few things out of your pocket like the people on the magnificent her roller coaster and you won't miss them you know I honestly feel that way I think

because you can always pick up the guitar again and maybe when you pick it up it's new Elvis Costello thank you so much for joining us today thank you it's been a real pleasure thank you love your piano playing on those things I can't believe you You just casually played that solo, that's good here, aren't you. Thanks.

That's a fun, fun challenge for me. Bye, bye. Switchon Pop is produced by me, Nate Sloan, and my erstwhile partner, Charlie Harding. Our engineer is Brandon McFarland, or an editor, is Jolie Myers, Abby Bardah's community management, and Iris Gottlieb is our extraordinary illustrator. Our executive producers are Nishat. Curwa and Hana Rosen. We're a production of

Vulture and a proud member of the Vox Media Podcast Network. You can find more episodes of our show anywhere you get podcasts and you can talk to us on Twitter and Instagram at Switched on Pop. Stay tuned because next Tuesday we are going to break down how Lynn Manuel Miranda's. We don't talk about Bruno from the Enkanto soundtrack

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