Elvis in Ireland, Sept 1984

Pretty self-explanatory
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johnfoyle
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Elvis in Ireland, Sept 1984

Post by johnfoyle »

As per past exercises, I'm researching Elvis' shows in Ireland on their 30th anniversary , arriving this year at the ones which include the Dublin show where I first saw Elvis 'live'. The big gap in all accounts of the shows - in Belfast, Galway & Dublin - is the Galway one, not a scrape of information has appeared . I'm hoping to start put that right tomorrow morning in the National Library here in Dublin by looking through the Galway newspapers from that time.

In the past I've posted stuff here at around the anniversary time. Sometimes it has lead to people responding with further information, memorabilia etc. So if anyone here has anything regarding these dates , please get in touch.


1984-09-27 Belfast

http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... 27_Belfast

1984-09-28 Galway

http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... -28_Galway


1984-09-29 Dublin

http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... -29_Dublin



Thanks in anticipation!
johnfoyle
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Re: Elvis in Ireland, Sept 1984

Post by johnfoyle »

Good start!

I got a Galway review ( at wiki link above) and a few more leads to follow up.





I also found out why The Irish Times didn't have a review of the Dublin show -

Image


Joe reviewed a 1983 show -

http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... ne_7,_1983
sulky lad
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Re: Elvis in Ireland, Sept 1984

Post by sulky lad »

Bit of a petulant response by the Dublin reviewer but a great one from Galway . So how come you or Martin never went to Galway or captured a recording of this great sounding gig, John. ? :wink:
PS I do have the full interview from 1991 , I 'll try and link up a scanner this week and send it to you !
johnfoyle
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Re: Elvis in Ireland, Sept 1984

Post by johnfoyle »

Which '91 interview?
sulky lad
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Re: Elvis in Ireland, Sept 1984

Post by sulky lad »

The one you emailed me about !!
johnfoyle
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Re: Elvis in Ireland, Sept 1984

Post by johnfoyle »

Oh right - that one ! :oops: I thought it might relate to this particular topic.
Ulster Boy
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Re: Elvis in Ireland, Sept 1984

Post by Ulster Boy »

I was at the Belfast show. I have a local newspaper review somewhere, I'll try and find it and post it up
johnfoyle
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Re: Elvis in Ireland, Sept 1984

Post by johnfoyle »

Great, thanks!
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veronicacostello
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Re: Elvis in Ireland, Sept 1984

Post by veronicacostello »

Can we get a "thumbs up" button on here somehow?

Thanks for posting!
johnfoyle
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Re: Elvis in Ireland, Sept 1984

Post by johnfoyle »

My pleasure! More reviews are now at the Belfast & Dublin links.
johnfoyle
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Re: Elvis in Ireland, Sept 1984

Post by johnfoyle »

Following up that note in the Irish Times about why they didn't have a review , today I got a e-mail from Joe Breen , the reviewer supposedly didn't have a good enough view of the Dublin show -

God John, that's a weird one - no memory of it at all. Who was the promoter? There were issues about access with promoters but really cannot recall ever not reviewing a gig because I had a bad seat! Sounds very precious at this remove. Even more strange is the fact that I cannot remember the event, despite it being highly unusual. As for the gig itself - I read Tony O'Brien's review; he must have had a better seat - I have no memory of it. Sorry.
johnfoyle
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Re: Elvis in Ireland, Sept 1984

Post by johnfoyle »

I told Joe Breen about the promoter & the Pogues doing support (their first Dublin show) and it refreshed his memory -

Ah yes. Asgard was now crime writer Paul Charles's company and we'd had less than a meeting of minds a couple of times. And yes I remember the Pogues with Cait on bass - I wasn't sure about them initially if I remember correctly. I do remember where I was sitting - smack up against a huge speaker cabinet to the left which obscured the stage. EC was great but I was so pissed off by what I construed was a deliberate act that I took my stand. Totally forgot about it until you reminded me.
johnfoyle
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Re: Elvis in Ireland, Sept 1984

Post by johnfoyle »

Image

http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... -29_Dublin



Thirty years ago today I first saw Elvis Costello in concert.

At the National Stadium , Dublin I thought the show was great. Seeing that intense personae for real brought to life a catalogue of music that I had been enjoying for years. Looking back it's now clear that I was seeing a well rehearsed routine, the mighty Attractions doing what they had been doing for about seven years and doing it very well. It was also their last gasp , Elvis having just met two people, Cait O'Riordan and T Bone Burnett, who would change and bring a whole different emphasis to his life and career, more or less setting a trajectory he has followed ever since.

When Elvis last played Dublin in 1983 I couldn't go mainly because I was doing the Leaving Cert, final exams for school. With honours in only history and English I hadn't enough points for third level education. I was given the option of finding a job within a short period of time or repeating the Leaving. A friend was giving up a summer job in a department store and put in word for me and I got the job , setting me on my own career trajectory!

In September '84 I was working and going to a lot of films, plays and concerts, something that continues. I used write about them at length in letters to my Uncle Eddie in America, letters he kept & were returned to me after his death in 2004. In early October I told him about Elvis' show -

' Martin & myself arrived around 7.30. Taking our seats - block c, row f - we immediately spotted Steve Nieve chatting to the people at the sound desk....He exited stagewards at about 7.45. The support group The Pogues stumbled on stage at around 8....They started in London pubs and showed this as they smoked and drank their way through a set of raucous songs. Their output is classified Celtabillly since it involves a mix of Irish trad and rockabilly.

They deserted the stage at 8.35. Roadies cleared the bottles and glasses and at 8.45 Elvis appeared. The next two hours were pure joy. Though not in great form - he had to take a ten minute break to 'restore' his voice - the songs were the thing. He premiered one item which had, as has been put, a 'termination vibe' , a very depressing ditty about there being ' nothing to grow up for anymore. He put it over in his solo format ie. just him and his guitar. The rest of the time it was very loud. '


I also submitted some comments to the Elvis Costello Information Service fanzine, where they appeared in the Dec.'84 issue ( yes, the mind boggles that we would happily months for details of show, as opposed to the mere minutes that elapse before we may read them now).

Image

Researching these Irish shows hasn't uncovered much more than what was in the print publications at the time , no big new piece of information, mainly because there really wasn't much more to tell.

There's little more to tell beyond the thought that a interesting aspect of the shows was the comparison between the raw, ramshackle performance of The Pogues and the more seasoned headliners. Carol Clerk ( 1954 - 2010) put together the most comprehensive account of this in her book about Shane and co., ' Pogue Mahone: Kiss My Arse ' Omnibus Press (2006).

Here's an extract -


"Elvis was taking a bit of a risk" says Philip Chevron with delicious understatement.

The Pogues were forging a formidable reputation: they were hailed as the wildest bunch in town, a boozing, brawling band of outlaws whose presence on any tour could only spell trouble.

It wasn't wholly their fault that, even then, they had been caricatured decisively by their supporters in the weekly music papers. Not all of the members were excessive drinkers, and they were by no means the only outfit in the hedonistic Eighties to fly the flag conspicuously for the right to party — and also, in MacGowan's case,
the right to make a choice that was rooted in his own background and in the example of the great Irish writers and poets for whom alcohol was the key to inspiration and vision. It's possible to argue that The Pogues were singled out for special treatment due to the "Paddy factor". Yes, they drank, but so did lots of other bands, and it wasn't a problem — yet — for anyone.

At the same time, MacGowan, Cait O'Riordan and Spider Stacy were capable of sustained intoxication and riotous behaviour. They were unapologetic about it, with Shane typically insisting that it didn't matter what journalists wrote about the group as long as they were writing something. O'Riordan, quoted in Ann Scanlon's book The Lost Decade, said: "I just drank steadily for about two years. I never even thought about not drinking, so all I remember is getting horribly drunk."

For sure, Andrew Ranken and James Fearnley had chaotic moments too. And it's undeniable that a large part of The Pogues' appeal was the whiff of the bar-room wafting through their lyrics, the irrepressible gallop of their up-tempos and the teardrops in their ballads.

"Irish popular music is guts, balls and feet music," MacGowan once told an interviewer. "It's frenetic dance music or it's impossibly sad, slow music."

What finer accompaniment than a drop of the hard stuff? You would've had to be mad, back then, to think of experiencing The Pogues in a state of sobriety.This was all about fun and celebration.The people in the audiences were just as drunk, many of them drunker than the band.

Which wasn't the Costello vibe at all. Elvis had come to prominence in the late Seventies as a star of the new wave, an angry young man with a biting tongue. Although he didn't preach sobriety, he carried himself in a manner that suggested he had little time for frivolity and he deliberately distanced himself from the music press, creating
an aloof, tetchy persona that was encouraged by his quick-tempered manager Jake Riviera. Inquiries into Costello's past were met with stony faced silence and the threat of a thumping. Now his career was temporarily in the doldrums with Goodbye Cruel World, an album that both the critics and Costello himself disliked when it was released in the summer of1984, although it nevertheless made the Top 10. He was falling out with The Attractions*, he was hanging with a new musical collaborator, T-Bone Burnett, and he had recently returned to his interest in folk music, which tallied nicely with his meeting The Pogues. All the same, at least one member of the band privately believes that they would never have been invited to join the tour had it not been for Elvis's growing infatuation with Cait O'Riordan.

But it wasn't Elvis Costello who gave The Pogues a hard time when they took to the road together at the end of September 1984. It was his road crew.

Jem Finer: "We were all really naïve. When we turned up for the first concert in Belfast, Elvis's crew were saying, 'You're going to have to pay us £15 each to do your sound and move your gear offstage.' I thought,`Oh my God, that's all the money gone already: We sorted it out eventually."

"Everybody was very high on the idea of being on the road," recalls Darryl Hunt. "It was all a bit naughty. We used to invariably turn up late to soundchecks and get told off by Elvis's crew. It was like being back at school in a football team, getting hauled in by the master in charge of sports and told that if you don't turn up on time,
you'll have to do extra revision. We didn't know rock'n'roll worked like that."

James Fearnley adds: "Elvis had a soundman called The Bishop. His crew were great, but this soundman seemed to wield quite a lot of authority. He just took a disliking to us. When it came time to do a soundcheck, it wasn't guaranteed we were going to get one. He'd down tools and say, 'Everybody has to go and have their dinner now.' Oftentimes we'd be left with Flakey, the roadie who took pity on us and helped us set up.

"For the longest time, doing gigs was problematic for many of us, not knowing the difference between onstage sound and front-of-house sound. That's how technically wet behind the ears we were. I think we were reasonable to assume we'd get some sort of help wiring all the stuff up and making it sound like something.This Bishop guy didn't want that so we ganged up on him backstage one evening. We were very angry. We pinned him up against a wall and said, `We can't tolerate this any more: It did get better after that."

Aside from the arguments over money and sound, Costello's road crew had other reasons to be infuriated by the support band.

"I think we caused quite a lot of trouble," remarks Andrew Ranken. "We were threatened with getting thrown off the tour on at least two occasions. In Portsmouth [October 7] there was a bit of a fracas in our dressing room and some bottles ended up being thrown out of the window and nearly landing on the heads of the crew who were loading Elvis's truck." This escapade has been attributed to Cait.

"Then there was another time in Bournemouth," carries on Andrew. "Jem was wearing his duster coat. He'd filled the pockets with sand off the beach and he'd made little holes in the pockets.Wherever he walked, he left this trail of sand which then got into all Elvis's effects pedals."

It probably didn't help the harmony of the operation, either, that The Pogues insisted on raiding the road crew's alcohol supplies from Costello's dressing room whenever possible.

"Elvis was a complete gentleman, which was just as well:' says Ranken. "He managed to smooth things over and he kept us on the tour. At the end, he presented us with a supermarket trolley full of booze. Very magnanimous. It didn't go amiss."

Eventually, the Costello crew came to tolerate and then befriend their travelling companions. "Initially they thought we were a bunch of oiks but then they saw the point. We were there because Elvis had invited us. It settled down and they seemed to like us," remembers Finer.

Spider Stacy comments: "I got the distinct impression that the crew thought Elvis's band were up their own arses. They were very, very serious, The Attractions, whereas we didn't really care. I think they enjoyed having us around."

For The Pogues, the tour began in the manner in which it would continue. The first part of the journey involved a ferry trip from Holyhead in Wales to Dun Laoghaire, just outside Dublin. They would spend a night in the city and then travel north, across the border, to Belfast for the opening gig at the Ulster Hall."We missed the ferry
cos it took about an hour to get Shane out of his flat in Cromer Street," remembers Spider.The problems of moving MacGowan from A to B would become an important consideration in Pogues tour management from then on.

It was the first time that they'd been on the road properly and they were in high spirits, cooped up together for the best part of five weeks in a hired transit with Darryl Hunt at the wheel. Hunt had brought along some tapes, and all of the band remember with great affection the compilation of Irish music he'd made especially for the
tour and the rowdy singalongs that it induced. Another favourite, particularly with Hunt and MacGowan, was a tape of Them, the Sixties R&B/soul/garage band led byVan Morrison.Also popular was Darryl's "serious" reggae selection, covering everything from ska to dub.

"There was a very particular feel to that tour, which was like no other," reveals Spider. "It was a kind of drunken odyssey. The seven of us just bouncing around in this little van listening to Brendan Shine and The Dubliners, all the Irish stuff on this cassette of Darryl's... Driving around Ireland was a real laugh. I'd never been there before. It was very exciting."

Stan Brennan, still carrying out voluntary managerial duties for The Pogues, was unable to join the tour full-time because of his commitment to the record shops, although he showed up for the gigs in Ireland. The band received a terrific response in Belfast and, the next day, piled into the van bound for Galway.

"That was a mad little journey," says Stacy. "We stopped off in Killashandra, County Cavan. All the others went to a pub to get soup and stuff, and James and 1 went to another pub to get away from everybody else, just to have a drink, and we got chatting with the landlord. He was asking us what instruments we played and he said his
daughter played the tin whistle. She came downstairs and they got me to play something. I played the theme tune from The Year Of The French, a TV programme I'd seen about the '98 Uprising [which involved French military efforts to help the Irish Rebellion in 1798]. She then reeled off some incredible thing, and it turned out she'd been the under-18 all-Ireland champion whistle player. I thought that was a bit unfair. Meanwhile, the others were up the road drinking a lake of Irish coffee."

The Pogues arrived in Galway to find that their gear was missing, due to a loading error in Belfast. In its place was a flight case belonging to an orchestra from Northern Ireland. The show went on, however, with the band playing electric equipment borrowed from Elvis and The Attractions.

They were reunited with their own instruments in Dublin, where different problems arose. The National Stadium felt cold and damp, and the Costello fans took their time trickling into the auditorium. The Pogues were also worried about the prospect of bringing their anarchic brand of Irish music to Dublin.

"We didn't know whether people would think we were taking the piss or not," says Jem Finer. In the event, says Stan Brennan, "The people of Dublin were very welcoming, if a bit nonplussed by things like Waxie's Dargle' at a thousand miles an hour."

The Pogues then sailed back across the Irish Sea to begin the month of dates on the British mainland, with the itinerary including a weekly Monday-night residency at the London Hammersmith Palais.This particularly benefited Jem, who was anxious not to have to spend long periods away from Marcia and their young daughter Ella.

The first Hammersmith gig marked a turning point in the tour. "We'd decided unilaterally that we weren't going to shave for the whole time," explains James Fearnley. "But we all bottled out when we got to the Palais. We all shaved because it was an important gig."

One escapade followed another as the band drove the length and breadth of the country. "I can remember Spider having a piss on the carpet in the lobby of the hotel in Leeds and Elvis getting into trouble about it cos he was staying in the hotel and we weren't," grins Darryl. On that night, while Costello was being told off by staff at the plush Dragonara,The Pogues were slumming it in a gay temperance hotel. They themselves, via the Stiff press office, were responsible for untrue newspaper stories that as a result of an early-hours drinking session, they had been banned from every temperance hotel in the country.

Some of the tour anecdotes have passed into Pogues legend even if various members recall the events slightly differently and others don't remember them at all. The gig at Loughborough University was one such occasion, and it all began with James Fearnley taking inspiration from Shane MacGowan.

Says James: "He's so committed to meeting life in the face - go into the bar and drink 15 pints of beer. It made me want to do it. We'd all met in Yates's Wine Lodge. We were drinking port for breakfast and I remember driving to Loughborough with my head out the window, just drinking it all in, the air, the fields and everything. 'Streams Of Whiskey' has got that down. It's really, really nice to get that feeling."

"Then James and I kind of blew up the dressing room at the university," says Spider, taking up the story. "It was James's fault. We'd bought a lot of fireworks in Nottingham, and all these bottles of white port and madeira from Yates's Wine Lodge. We drove to Loughborough. James started letting off fireworks in the dressing room, and I had to get into the act. I think I threw one at Shane, and I think he responded by throwing the contents of a bottle of port at me, which missed. I found myself kneeling astride him with a tin whistle raised in my hand about to drive it through his eyeball intohis brain. That's Yates's Wine Lodge for you."

After the gig, The Pogues tumbled into the van for the 17-mile drive back to their hotel in Nottingham. "Earlier that day, there'd been some argument about whether a tomato was a fruit or a vegetable, and they got very angry with each other," says Darryl Hunt, who may or may not be talking metaphorically.

James Fearnley remembers that shortly into the journey, there was "a lot of shouting — big shouting, this was". He believes the band members had been yelling at MacGowan about his drinking. Other sources say that Shane and Spider had become unbearably loud and obnoxious.Whatever happened, Jem Finer asked Darryl to stop the van.

Says Fearnley: "Jem said, 'I can't take this any more. I'm off,' and he just jumped ship.We went into a panic about it because there he was, not in the bus, walking in the middle of fucking nowhere in the middle of the night."

Minutes later, Spider also decided to get out of the van and take his chances walking to Nottingham. He ended up stumbling in the dark into a ditch full of nettles.

Oddly, Finer remembers Stacy's walk-out but not his own. "I'm not denying it," he says, evenly. "There were certainly lots of times I felt sick to the back teeth with the whole thing."

"We went up the road quite a way," recalls Hunt. "But we did go back and pick them up after about half an hour."


The Costello tour was vitally important to The Pogues. Not only did it offer the experience of playing in major venues, but also it built on the buzz already happening on the streets and in the press, and it introduced them to large crowds of people who hadn't necessarily heard their material. Touring insisted upon a certain discipline, a daily routine, and the music became tighter, more intuitive, as the weeks went by. Generally, they went down extremely well, which was a great encouragement.

"The Elvis tour was what really kicked things off," says Andrew Ranken.

"It was a very good experience to play so much," notes Jem. "It really got us round the country. I suppose if you're in a band and trying to make a go of it, it's a dream come true to get that sort of opportunity."

"It was crucial," says Darryl. "It transformed The Pogues from being a band that just played in London pubs for a few pints of beer into something that had more ambition. It seemed to focus everything."

Costello — already nicknamed "Uncle Brian" - was usually gracious towards his support band, and he turned out not to be quite the inveterate cynic of his reputation. "He tried hard to be the cool customer," remarks Hunt. "I think that was a persona he developed in the early days when he was with Stiff. People try to be something they
think the audience want to see. But underneath it all, that wasn't Elvis's true personality. He was actually a softer, gentler person who liked to be involved in discussion and express himself a bit. He was fun. He had a little portable TV that we could watch the live football on, on a Sunday. He did hang about with us quite a bit as well, more so before the tour. Once we went on the road he became more 'professional'. He was just a bit of a pop star. But he was very decent. He offered to waive the lights and PA costs because we had no money."

"I suppose he had his ups and downs," says Jem of Costello, "but he was pretty accommodating and sociable on the whole."

"Elvis was fine," declares Spider. "He was busy ensnaring Cait or she was busy ensnaring him. They were very matey."

Costello and Cait had seemingly formed a relationship before the tour began, and it blossomed when they were on the road. Despite their early attempts to keep things "under cover", as Andrew puts it, the band weren't fooled. Before long, the couple became more openly affectionate. At this stage, no one could have foreseen the divisive implications of the partnership, and The Pogues' reactions varied from indifference to an amused acceptance and an occasional curiosity.

Jem Finer pulls no punches: "Cait made a beeline for Elvis, but then she did to anyone who was famous. He was the most famous person around. He seemed to enjoy her attentions."

James Fearnley: "Elvis seemed to be dead nice, although there was a lot of bizarre behaviour which could illustrate the relationship between him and Cait. The last show of that tour was in Norwich, and Cait and Elvis had to part for a time*. I don't know if any commitment had been made, one to the other. I think Cait wanted to send a message of some kind, so she shaved all her hair off, down to her skin, except for a crown of long, black hair on the top. It was like Ernie from Sesame Street. It was really, really strange. We couldn't let her onstage looking like that, so we insisted she wrap her head in some kind of turban.There was some sort of message in her being shorn. Something was going on, and it was definitely to do with Elvis."

This was also noted by The Attractions, who thought Cait an unusual girl and nicknamed her Beryl, after The Topper's cartoon tearaway Beryl The Peril.They joked openly about O'Riordan, and how much younger she was than Elvis**. Outraged at this perceived disrespect towards himself and Cait, Costello's already frosty relations with his
band became glacial, and he would drop them completely within a couple of years.

Attractions bass player Bruce Thomas told Costello biographer Graeme Thomson: "She [Cait] was very like Elvis. Intense, volatile, pretty cerebral. I went in the room and she was shaving her head, she had all these little razor nicks all over her scalp, and she carried a teddy bear all the time."
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Re: Elvis in Ireland, Sept 1984

Post by Neil. »

Interesting piece, John - ta!
johnfoyle
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Re: Elvis in Ireland, Sept 1984

Post by johnfoyle »

Brendan Duffy , who reviewed the 1984 Galway show -

http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... er_4,_1984

............... has noticed that the review is up on wiki.

Now going by his Irish name , Breandán Ó Dubthaigh , he posted on f/book-

It's been 32 years since Mr. Costello came to play in Galway. Back then he got a write-up in the local paper from some journalism school dropout...


I commented -

The Pogues supported that night but you don't mention them. Subsequent accounts say they had to play with instruments borrowed from the Attractions because their own had gone astray after the show the night before in Belfast. As regards Elvis's show , Elvis said in a interview with Tom Dunne on Newstalk a few weeks ago that he remembered the Galway '84 show because his keyboardist, Steve Nieve, fell off the stage at one point. Does that ring any bells with you ?


He replied -

I missed the Pogues myself that night. I don't remember Steve Nieve falling off stage but I do recall that towards the end of the night Pete Thomas kept throwing drumsticks at him, which he caught deftly (and on the beat) every time! Nieve was introduced on stage as "Maurice Worm" (which was also how he was credited on the Goodbye Cruel World album).

Got to have been one of the best gigs I was ever at; apart from EC's own obvious brilliance the Attractions were an amazing live band in their own right. After the gig some friends & I were having a post-mortem drink in the old Banba Hotel, Costello and the band came in but couldn't get served because they were "underage" (mar dhea).
johnfoyle
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Re: Elvis in Ireland, Sept 1984

Post by johnfoyle »

When I first saw Elvis, in Dublin in September 1984, the ECIS fanzine used only an extract from a review Martin Foyle and I wrote. I found our original notes today -

http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... -29_Dublin

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We entered the Stadium from damp wintery streets to find Steve Nieve passing the time with the sound desk operators. He departed backstage at 7.45 and the support group The Pogues took the stage at 8.05. After a raucous ½ hour set they left to allow roadies to clear the beer bottles etc. before Elvis and co. appeared at 8.45.

After [a] loud ‘Hello’ they belted into Sour Milk Cow Blues. It was immediately obvious that Elvis’ voice wasn’t in great condition. A lot of echo was used to attempt to mask this but it (‘which’ suggested Martin as a rewrite above this) was highlighted by a slow version of Flame In Town. A few more songs were competently done before the group left the stage at about 9.20 and the lights came on. Someone appeared to tell us that they would be back in about 10 minutes once Elvis had refreshed (‘treated’) his throat.

This lull was greeted with loud comments, mainly about the crowd handling by the bouncers who were very efficient. This was understandable since this is usually a boxing venue.

Elvis remedied this rather tense situation by reappearing promptly after 10 minutes, apologising, saying that a ‘little more heat’ was needed to ‘help’ his voice and could we all come up to the stage? After a brisk charge everything got more pleasant. ( a line I started and crossed out , unfinished ‘I managed to get within about six feet of the stage and what ensued ‘)

After Home Truth the first new composition appeared. ‘And I Hope You’re Happy Now’ was introduced as ‘something we’ll be recording next week, you’re the first people to hear it.’ (‘All I remember of it was that it had a steady back beat and it could be ‘) It was a good loud ( ‘upbeat’) song the lyric of which I cannot recall.

Two songs later another new song (to me anyway) Young Boy Blues , which was introduced as having been learnt in Australia. Again, I can’t remember much of it; (‘I have to repeatedly hear a tune before it sinks in’). The set, including The Byrds ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Star’, was finished with Alison. A point of interest here was the alteration – with suitable gesticulation – of the line ‘ When I hear the silly things that you say’ to ‘ ….. I say’ . It also had a new last verse which conditions did not allow me transcribe. Elvis then did a short solo set. Short in that it was composed of two songs , Peace In Our Time , with Withered And Died guitar riffs, preceded by an unintroduced new (again to me) piece which , from tonal emphasis, might be called Grow Up Anymore. This set was marred , maybe even shortened , by a loud mouthed member of the audience who kept shouting ‘Billy Bragg’.

The Attractions then retook the stage for performances of Shipbuilding , Oliver’s Army and Pump It Up. This last mentioned was interrupted (‘mixed with’) (it that’s the word) by a song which I didn’t recognise and crediting of band members before finishing the song and the concert. We left the show quite happy to find out that Elvis meant it when he said he would be back soon ; a poster at the door advertised a solo show in Dublin on November the 17th.
emotional_fascism076
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Re: Elvis in Ireland, Sept 1984

Post by emotional_fascism076 »

Its great reading these reviews. I was just starting to listen to EC at that time.
Who on earth is tapping at the window?
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