Elvis Costello? His aim is still true
Chris Serico • The Journal News • April 8, 2010 • AP Photo/Chris Pizzello
While rock legend Elvis Costello has wowed thousands of sold-out arenas leading up to next week’s solo gig at Purchase College, his first one-man show didn’t exactly pump up the crowd.
As a 13-year-old in England, he debuted his act at a church-basement folk show that starred Ewan MacColl, the composer of “The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face.”
“I got up there with my acoustic guitar and a little song I wrote,” recalls Costello, 55. “I looked up, and there (MacColl) was, asleep. It was a great day. It does stick in the mind, that kind of thing.”
Because the Attractions’ frontman has played with everyone from Paul McCartney to the Beastie Boys — and occasionally accompanied by a full orchestra — it’ll be a rarity when Costello takes the stage alone at Purchase for an April 15 fundraiser to benefit Open Door Family Medical Centers in Westchester.
“Solo performances tend to be the most diverse, in terms of repertoire, because I have the freedom to change without worrying about whether anybody remembers an arrangement,” says Costello, a 2003 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee.
“Well-known tunes are shown in a different light when I play them solo, because that was usually how they were written; you take a song like ‘Veronica,’ or something like that, and you play it exactly as it was written before the arrangement of the recording came into play. And then you might play something that might be a less well-known song from the past, but one that thrives on live performance. And then it fosters an opportunity to play a brand new song.”
Costello’s eclectic career has spanned more than three decades. With roots in punk, he’s a groundbreaking, shape-shifting hit-maker in new wave (“Radio, Radio”), rock (“What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding?”) and country (“Complicated Shadows”). He earned Oscar and Grammy nominations for co-writing “Scarlet Tide,” which appears on the soundtrack of 2003’s “Cold Mountain.”
He’s even a closet comedian, playing the straight man on TV and in films for Conan O’Brien, Stephen Colbert, Mike Myers and Sacha Baron Cohen. “I’m not sure you’d get everybody to agree that I have any comedic talent,” he says, deadpan. “I’ve always liked comedy. I suppose musicians interested in acting … (are) straight hair and curly hair; those who have straight hair always want curly hair and vice-versa. It’s no more than that. I don’t harbor any sort of delusion that I really am an unrecognized thespian talent.”
But when Open Door pursued him for his musical abilities, the cause piqued his interest.
“I could quite literally say I wouldn’t be here today were it not for the fact that there was accessible health care (in England), with all the flaws — and no one pretends it’s a perfect system,” he says. “My parents’ and grandparents’ generation, being working-class people, did not have that. There are members of my family who lived shorter lives than they might have done, because they couldn’t get it.”
Founded in 1972, Open Door has Ossining, Port Chester, Sleepy Hollow and Mount Kisco branches providing medical and dental care, as well as school-based health centers and social services to low-income county residents. Funded by local, state and federal grants as well as private foundations and individual donations, Open Door treated 41,000 patients — including 13,482 children — last year alone.
“They’re sort of the folks who are behind the scenes, whether they’re mowing lawns, whether they’re washing dishes in restaurants, whether they’re babysitting (or) housekeeping,” says Lindsay Farrell, Open Door’s president. “Those are the folks that we care for, by in large, in our facilities. We believe that they’re getting some of the highest-quality primary care available in Westchester.”
While politicians and their constituents debate White House health-care initiatives, the bespectacled singer from across the pond doesn’t see why there’s so much resistance in America.
“The fact that situation exists, in an apparently civilized country, is a disgrace,” Costello adds. “And the fact that it’s often played for financial and political gain is also a disgrace.”
Strong opinions are nothing new to Costello. As the musical guest for a 1977 episode of “Saturday Night Live,” he famously interrupted his song “Less Than Zero” in favor of “Radio, Radio,” his scathing indictment of the radio industry’s limited musical spectrum. Yet, what once was rage has mellowed.
“I haven’t thought about radio in so many years,” he admits. “The landscape’s changed so much, you could argue that with satellite radio you have ultimate choice, as you do if you would choose to see the Internet that way. The circumstances are a little different, but there are stations all over the country that continue to try and be original, and play music that they love.”
Scarsdale’s Jimmy Fink, a veteran disc jockey, plays Costello’s music regularly on 107.1 The Peak. He’s also member of Open Door’s board of directors, and for Costello’s show he’ll serve as emcee, a role he’s fulfilled for every Open Door concert fundraiser since 2004.
“What a great songwriter he is,” Fink says. “One of the things that I like most about Elvis is his diversity, in terms of the different people that he’s worked with over time. I mean, it stretches from George Strait to Paul McCartney to Burt Bacharach to Fall Out Boy; it’s just all over the place. … There are so many artists who sort of shy away from going in one direction or another, but Elvis doesn’t seem to have any fear about doing that.”
Farrell, Open Door’s president, says she was thrilled to land Costello for the annual fundraiser, whose previous musical guests have included Joan Osborne and the B-52s.
“People who come and attend the concert are supporting Open Door, so they’re making a gift to us,” Farrell says, “but hopefully we’re giving a gift back to them.”
Q&A with Elvis Costello
In your Sundance talk and music TV show “Spectacle,” you’re the interviewer. What’s it like being on the other side?
I think they’re more like conversations than interviews, really. They never feel like an interrogation, where the participants are unwilling — and that can be the case if people don’t give thought to their questions coming in.
Who was the inspiration for “Alison”?
It would be kind of foolhardy of me now to try and recall all the circumstances in which a song, which is 35 or 34 years old now. I could be guilty of saying something, with the benefit of hindsight, that sounded like the thing that people wanted to hear. I don’t even recall what I’ve said over the years, except that I believe that I saw a look in somebody’s eye that kind of created the whole story, that suggested the whole story of the song. …
You use your personal experiences to give sort of a foundation to what you’re writing and performing, without necessarily indulging and just setting your diary to music.
What do you hope your legacy is?
I have no concept of legacy. I really, genuinely don’t. When you’re gone, you’re gone and, I mean, I’m not looking forward to that day. I assume that you just want to leave as clean a trail as possible for those that survive you so that it isn’t a kind of burden to them. But other than that, I don’t care. I mean, for myself, I don’t care. I don’t care about awards and stuff and words that are attached to your name to describe you after a period of endurance in the business … . It’s only someone’s opinion, you know. Somewhere else, where they’ve never heard of you, they don’t care. So, if you go around carrying yourself like that, then you’re in for a big disappointment somewhere.
