Elvis Costello
Appearances
Fresh Air
Best Of: 50 Years Of SNL Musical Guests / Black History Through Blues
Here's Elvis Costello. In the dress rehearsal, we did a song that was on my first album, but I thought it sounded a little too slow. It was a medium tempo song and I didn't think it was exciting enough. And I realized the show is live. We can do anything we want.
Fresh Air
Best Of: 50 Years Of SNL Musical Guests / Black History Through Blues
As we finished the song, the initial reaction in the moment was, I think we better get out of here. Somewhere in it, somebody said in anger, you'll never work on American television again. But the idea I was banned from television is nonsense.
Fresh Air
Questlove Digs Into 50 years Of 'SNL' Musical Hits (And Misses)
Here's Elvis Costello. In the dress rehearsal, we did a song that was on my first album, but I thought it sounded a little too slow. It was a medium-tempo song, and I didn't think it was exciting enough. And I realized, this show is live. We can do anything we want.
Fresh Air
Questlove Digs Into 50 years Of 'SNL' Musical Hits (And Misses)
Calling Mr. Oswald with a swastika, that do-do-do's, I'll bake on some wafers. I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen, there's no reason to do this song here.
Fresh Air
Questlove Digs Into 50 years Of 'SNL' Musical Hits (And Misses)
All of this stuff, it builds up in legend in the retelling. But I didn't come out there to give a political lecture. You know, I came out to kind of shake it up.
Fresh Air
Questlove Digs Into 50 years Of 'SNL' Musical Hits (And Misses)
As we finished the song, the initial reaction in the moment was, I think we better get out of here. Somewhere in it, somebody said in anger, you'll never work on American television again. But the idea I was banned from television is nonsense.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
It's not supposed to do anything other. I said in the note that I put up with it, you know, console installation.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
Amuse or irritate I'll take any of those reactions, but the simplest thing to say about it is the things that we are so rightly enraged about We see as in just we see dividing as we see Summoning up like almost like a madness of of passion it's all happened before and Here are the songs to prove it most of those examples of a lot of the same issues
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
Costello's newest album, Hey Clockface, is out this month, and it was largely recorded before the pandemic. I spoke with him as he sat outside his house near the harbor in Vancouver, British Columbia, which is why you might even hear a foghorn in the background. I wonder how you approach new music like that.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
Did you honestly think you'd be talking to, I don't know, you know, I didn't think I'd be talking with my 13-year-old sons about a lynching in 2020. Those are the same things that I was hearing reported on the news at their age in England that very BBC, you know, terrible sort of outrageous happened in Mississippi today, you know, and sort of. I never thought I'd be any of that.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
But it isn't even sadly about that one event or what transpired since. It's how do you get there and how do you keep getting there? And that's where songs come in because they remind you, we keep getting there, you know? And on this, say this new record, there's a song called We're All Cowards Now. The name of the song is not You're All Cowards Now. The name of the song is We.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
I'm including myself in that. Because, you know, it takes, let's face it, it takes a lot more courage to love than it does to hate. It just does.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
Elvis Costello, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure talking to you.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
It has been a pleasure talking with you, David, as always. You stay well and of good heart.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
You too. You too. And you give me so, so many years and so much pleasure and so many varieties. I just can't begin to tell you. Thank you. Thank you. Elvis Costello. His new record, Hey Clock Face, is out this month. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Thanks so much for joining us today. See you next time.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
If you feel that a new album must have either a new sound, a new thematic approach, how do you approach that idea of a new record?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
Well, about 2010, I told people I was going to concentrate on live performance. I think that was coming to terms with the fact that the model that we had lived by for the previous years was no longer in existence. That was you made a record and then you went out on the road and you played the music of that album folded into your general repertoire.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
sometime around then, maybe it was the way the record world itself was changing, that stopped happening. And so I put my work into first the revival of the Spectacular Spinning Songbook because it put all of my songs in play and left them to chance, literally. Then I was completing this book I'd been working on for a long time. I started to feel as if everything was about
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
using what you had and adding into it, and you could change the focus. You were no longer worried about, oh, I've got to play the hit single, you know?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
Although, on the other hand, even the casual Elvis Costello listener, not the committed fan, Has 34 albums that you can sample and move around in.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
No, you know what? I'm completely at ease with the balance between the old and the new. There's another way of looking at streaming is it's radio with all the unpleasant talking taken out.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
Don't put me out of business here.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
And it's not an advertising man's idea of what the playlist should be. It's the listener's idea of what the playlist should be in the most cases.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
Well, you've recorded a new album, and you talk about the story of an album. How do you view the story of Hey Clockface? Hey Clockface, the title track is deriving from Fats Waller. You're nobody's nostalgist, but you're drawing on a musical history. You're writing about time, which seems to be a big theme in this record.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
Well, let me start at the top. I mean, it was distinctly an outlandish adventure one cannot imagine now. It began with me leaving early for a tour in Britain and getting on a plane and flying, you know, do you remember that? Flying to Helsinki, somewhere where I literally don't know anybody. They don't know me so well. I found a little studio there that intrigued me.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
I went in there with the songs in my head rather than any kind of demo form. I knew the nature of those particular songs. They needed to be brought to life in a moment and not worked at. I couldn't rehearse them with my band. I just had to start playing. And that approach freed me. Like they literally came into existence in the moment I made them.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
And I had a young engineer who was very, very adept at the modern era of digital editing, which allowed me to do things that, you know, would have been impossible. So I would disagree that you can't get music of feeling and drive out of this technology. I went from there after three days to Paris. And here's another unimaginable scene for you.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
30 people gathered in an apartment in Paris celebrating Steve Naive, my piano player of 43 years, you know, my colleague. my friend, celebrating both his birthday and receiving his French passport, a group of people kissing each other and eating cake off each other's plate, raising their glasses and singing La Marseillaise. I mean, can you imagine the danger we were in, you know?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
Is the idea to get the existing music that's in your head down on wax, as it were, or is the idea to give them an idea and then go from there?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
No, I mean, I knew how these songs should feel, and obviously I had no way of knowing that combination of instrumentalists would be quite as vivid as the recordings from Paris turned out to be. We then went and did a tour of England, you know, with the Impostors. We opened up in Liverpool in the dance hall where my mother used to dance when she was a young woman in the late 40s.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
She was at the gig. She's 92 now.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
I'm putting my crew, most of all my crew really, because they do all the close handling work, my crew, my band, and the audience in some kind of harm's way.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
This must be killing you. This must be killing you and your wife who are performing musicians, who bring so much joy to people who are in the seats hearing things live.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
Well, you know, we came into the wings at the Hammersmith Apollo, and I knew in my heart, I hadn't told anybody, but I knew in my heart there probably wasn't going to be another show on that tour. I slept on that feeling and made the decision the next day because the Canadian border was about to be shut, and I knew I had to get home to my family, but...
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
You know, I came into the wings and said, okay, guys, you know, we better make this one count. We're going to end with peace, love, and understanding as we often do. But let's play Hurry Down Doomsday, The Bugs Are Taken Over, which we hardly ever play. And, you know, I could see people in the front row go, oh, yeah, you think you're very funny, don't you?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
You know, but they knew why we were doing it, because at that point we were trying to chase away shadows.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
A week later, the prime minister was in the ICU, so it didn't sound so comical then.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
But nobody knew those things. How do you envision the future? When do you think that you're back? I mean, you don't have any more of a beat on the news than anybody else, but for a musician, it's got to be different.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
I suddenly realized that I hadn't spent... Now, at this point, I've never spent this amount of uninterrupted time with my 13-year-old sons since they were three months old. We are... Sharing every day, it's beautiful. You know, I can't complain about that. But, you know, our work, our livelihood does require us to go and play shows.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
So there is a wishful pencil mark in the diary of next year and we'll see where we are when we get there.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. When rock and roll emerged in the days of Little Richard and Chuck Berry, Elvis and the Beatles, no one thought about long careers, the way a musician's work might evolve over time. But that was then. Now there are careers that are 40, 50 years long. Elvis Costello has been on the scene since the mid-70s, a leader of the new wave.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
And wound up killing 20, 30,000 people or so before it was over with.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
Some years ago, Nick Palmgarten spent a lot of time with you for a profile in the New Yorker. And the subject came up of character, a character that a musician might play, especially in his or her youth. And you said this, even people who we take to be the real deal did it. They made up a character for themselves and you had to have an act.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
There's some artistry attributed to rock and roll where it's supposed to be more authentic than show business. I don't really hold to that.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
Now we all, those of us of a certain age, remember you, we're about the same age, as a certain kind of figure who exploded onto the music scene and both visually as well as musically and projected a certain character, a certain temperament as well as the music itself. How do you view that now?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
Well, I was 22 when I made my first record, you know, so if there hadn't been some changes made by now, there would be something badly wrong, you know.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
You also never ask a doctor, like, if you have something wrong with you, and you go, doctor, I've got this problem with my hip, like, before you put that, before you operate on me, can I just ask you how you felt about your vocation in medicine when you were a medical student? Whoever asked that of a doctor? They never ask it.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
They only ask it of artists to somehow, because there's this implication that you've betrayed some sacred trust. You know, things you say in interviews when you're 23 are not catechism that you have to repeat for the rest of your life. There's some things more often said to get somebody off your back.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
I've never had a master plan, but I think we've... When I was a little kid, rock and roll was a new thing.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
There was no such thing as long careers anymore.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
No. Well, it was supposed to be this juvenile delinquent music. And frankly, I didn't know anything about rock and roll when I was a kid. Because my parents listened to Dizzy Gillespie and Frank Sinatra and Elle Fitzgerald and Nat Cole and Stan Kenton and heaven knows what else. You know, Duke Ellington. They didn't care about rock and roll. That was kind of crude.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
And I'm kind of with them on some of that, apart from Little Richard.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
Now, your father was a singer. He was a trumpet player. Uh-huh. And we've got a track from the group that he played with, Joe Lawson, the orchestra. And let's listen to him singing At Last in 1969. Oh, wow.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
You know, my dad started out, here my mother ran clubs in that same, you know, almost evangelical way when there's a new style of music arriving from overseas on records, which were very scarce and expensive and difficult to get. My father went, and mother were both went to London in the early 50s and my dad played around the jazz scene.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
I guess when I came along, he did what a lot of jazz musicians realize is necessary. He got a job that paid better as a singer. So then he was in a commercial dance band, and that's how he came to sing this song associated with Glenn Miller. When he's singing At Last There, it has no reference to Etta James. That was a cover.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
But since then, he's led a vital and brilliant career of experiment and variation. And I've been following it all along.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
That is a note-for-note transcription of the Glenn Miller recording of that last one.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
Well, we also dug up one of the earliest recordings of you, where you're singing backup vocals for your dad. It's the theme music for a soda company. I think it's called Secret Lemonade Drinker.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
It's wonderful, yeah. We're doing the background voices on it. It was my first paid recording session.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
Well, here's the weird thing, isn't it, about the Elvis name is my dad is affecting this Elvis inflection. Exactly. He's a very good mimic and he could do comic mimicry like that. And that's why I had such a rich record collection, because every week you would get given a stack of hit parade singles because this dance band just played the hit parade.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
It's hard for Americans to understand, but we didn't have the 24 hour pop radio that you all had. And everything was decoded through a series of other interpretations. So you would hear these very bizarre versions of The Four Tops or The Who played by a Glenn Miller-style swing band with a guy who was – A really elderly guy who was like 35. You know, my dad was about 35 when he was doing this.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
You know, it seemed really weird, but that was the way I saw music first. I would go to the dance hall with him on a Saturday afternoon. I'd go to the radio broadcast when school schedule would allow it. which was get there at 8 in the morning and watch a bunch of musicians smoke cigarettes and scratch themselves until it was time to go on the BBC and play an hour-long show with guest singers.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
And those guest singers could be anybody from the Hollies to Engelbert Humperdinck. But it was a glimpse, and it took away some of the mystique, but it also made me realize this strange exchange between the mundanity of the workaday job and the magic when the light went on.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
Elvis, you've done a new project called 50 Songs for 50 Days. And these are political songs, a lot of them. What role does music play in politics for you?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
I never think of it as political in the sense because I don't have a manifesto and I don't have a slogan other than I might have the title of the song, but I try to avoid the simplistic slogan nature in songs. I try to always look for the angle that somebody else isn't covering because there's other people doing the other thing really well. It's the same with the heartfelt love song.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
The heartfelt love song is something that other people can carry off. From the get-go, I always thought, well, maybe that's not my job. I don't have the matinee idle looks to carry off that. So maybe I'll go the other way. And that's what I did. And with this, I think of it like an installation. That's the way I referred to it. Like you would do an art installation.