Accidents/Arizona/ Mexico etc.

Pretty self-explanatory
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johnfoyle
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Accidents/Arizona/ Mexico etc.

Post by johnfoyle »

Elvis has been , over the years , telling variations of this story -

' He had written Accidents and had fallen in love with "quite an attractive taxi driver" in Tucson, Arizona and had asked her to take him to Mexico before deciding about 10 minutes later to turn back ' (from Verbals account of the Paris show in 2014)

The Arizona/Mexico details have appeared in most versions of this story .


Accidents Will Happen was sung on stage for the first time in April 1978 , in London.

http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... -16_London


Elvis , however , first played in Tucson in May 1978


http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php/AZ


Is there an appearance there , pre April '78 , that we have missed ? Maybe a stop over between appearances elsewhere?


Maybe someone here more familiar with U.S. geography and/or travel routes could have a look at the known concerts and see if the latter is a possibility.

1977

http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... raphy_1977


1978

http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... raphy_1978



Back in 2002 , in his liner note for the Rhino reissue of Armed Forces , Elvis wrote -

Most of this record was written in hotel rooms or on a tour bus. I recall working on "Accidents Will Happen" in a stifling motel room in Arizona.


So maybe he was merely rearranging it a bit . I've just listened to that April '78 performance and the lyric is the same. The main difference is that where as the studio version starts with a verse ( 'Oh I just don't know ...'etc.) the April 16th performance begins with the chorus ( 'Accidents...' etc.). He was , however , still starting with the chorus when he sang it at Hollywood High in June '78. Maybe someone here can check a few later outing in '78 to see when it changed to the studio version.

http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... ill_Happen


Maybe by the time he got to Japan in November '78 - has anyone got this bootleg to hand ?

http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... rning_1978




Any thoughts?
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verbal gymnastics
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Re: Accidents/Arizona/ Mexico etc.

Post by verbal gymnastics »

johnfoyle wrote:Elvis has been , over the years , telling variations of this story -

' He had written Accidents and had fallen in love with "quite an attractive taxi driver" in Tucson, Arizona and had asked her to take him to Mexico before deciding about 10 minutes later to turn back ' (from Verbals account of the Paris show in 2014)

...

Any thoughts?
Just one - don't rely on anything I say- even if I was there :lol:
Who’s this kid with his mumbo jumbo?
erey
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Re: Accidents/Arizona/ Mexico etc.

Post by erey »

johnfoyle wrote:Elvis has been , over the years , telling variations of this story -

' He had written Accidents and had fallen in love with "quite an attractive taxi driver" in Tucson, Arizona and had asked her to take him to Mexico before deciding about 10 minutes later to turn back ' (from Verbals account of the Paris show in 2014)

The Arizona/Mexico details have appeared in most versions of this story .


Accidents Will Happen was sung on stage for the first time in April 1978 , in London.

http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... -16_London


Elvis , however , first played in Tucson in May 1978


http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php/AZ


Is there an appearance there , pre April '78 , that we have missed ? Maybe a stop over between appearances elsewhere?


Maybe someone here more familiar with U.S. geography and/or travel routes could have a look at the known concerts and see if the latter is a possibility.
Travelling from Los Angeles (November 19, 1977) to New Orleans (November 23, 1977) might very reasonably take you through Tucson, although at only about 500 miles from LA it seems a bit close for an overnight stop. Also, this would mean "Accidents" was written before TYM was recorded, which seems dubious to me.

Another possible, if less reasonable, route through Tucson might be on the way from Boulder, CO, (February 4, 1978) to Berkeley, CA (February 7, 1978). That's certain doable in the time allotted and Tucson would be just about in the middle of this 1,800-mile trip, but the detour through Tucson would add about 600 miles to any reasonably direct route from Boulder to Berkeley. So this only works they really wanted to go to Tucson for some reason.

In any case, in the memoir, EC is clearly saying he wrote "Accidents" in Tucson, just about a week before he "debuted" it at Hollywood High on June 4, 1978. The account in the memoir has so much detail -- from the hot weather (Tucson is pretty temperate in November and February, but by late May it's regularly getting up around 90 F) to the addresses on the taxi driver's street (her address, oddly, ended in a "1/2" while the neighboring addresses were in the thousands, typical of a sprawling sunbelt city like Tucson) -- that I think it's a safe bet that this is how EC remembers it, whatever the actual facts.

Possibly the audience tape circulating is edited or mislabeled. I notice it also has "Oliver's Army" "debuting" on April 16, also with Steve Nieve accompanying EC. I haven't heard this recording, but isn't the story that EC originally gave "Oliver's Army" a guitar-based arrangement and it wasn't transformed by Steve's piano part until late in the recording of AF? That would have been months later. On the other hand, "Accidents" is listed as the first song played at the Palladium in NYC on May 6, 1978 (http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... rk_(early)). But maybe that's a mistake as well. The Village Voice review of this show mentions a "new song" called "Party Girl" but not "Accidents" (http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... y_15,_1978).

No definitive answer, but based on the evidence so far, I'm tending to go with EC's recollections over the scrupulous accuracy of well-circulated "audience tapes".
Last edited by erey on Wed Oct 18, 2017 5:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
johnfoyle
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Re: Accidents/Arizona/ Mexico etc.

Post by johnfoyle »

The recording of the April '78 show in London , including 'Accidents, seems legit. Bruce Thomas was out of action so the show was started with just Elvis & Steve doing a duo presentation of new songs before Nick Lowe made up the combo to do the rest of the show. Given how chaotic Elvis's life was at the time I'd tend to the theory that Elvis's memory of the time has blurred a bit. The one off , time filling performance in London was forgotten when Elvis focused on the lyric during that torrid time in Tucson. Or something like that.
erey
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Re: Accidents/Arizona/ Mexico etc.

Post by erey »

johnfoyle wrote:Given how chaotic Elvis's life was at the time I'd tend to the theory that Elvis's memory of the time has blurred a bit.
I think I might have solved this mystery.

Back when we had this discussion, I had the idea that EC probably was correctly remembering having an unhappy tryst with a Tucson taxi driver and then skulking back to his hotel feeling like a miserable, no-good, philandering bastard and writing a song about it. I figured his unconscious mind had long since decided that the greatness of the song ought to proportional to the crumminess of his emotional state, so it swapped in "Accidents" for some lesser song.

Well, sure enough... EC played Tucson, AZ, on May 28, 1978 (http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... -28_Tucson) and then on May 30, in Santa Monica, CA, "Busy Bodies" had its first know performance (http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... nta_Monica). Certainly appropriate to scene EC recalls playing out two nights before, but frankly kind of a crap song.
FAVEHOUR
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Re: Accidents/Arizona/ Mexico etc.

Post by FAVEHOUR »

erey wrote:
johnfoyle wrote:Given how chaotic Elvis's life was at the time I'd tend to the theory that Elvis's memory of the time has blurred a bit.
I think I might have solved this mystery.

Back when we had this discussion, I had the idea that EC probably was correctly remembering having an unhappy tryst with a Tucson taxi driver and then skulking back to his hotel feeling like a miserable, no-good, philandering bastard and writing a song about it. I figured his unconscious mind had long since decided that the greatness of the song ought to proportional to the crumminess of his emotional state, so it swapped in "Accidents" for some lesser song.

Well, sure enough... EC played Tucson, AZ, on May 28, 1978 (http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... -28_Tucson) and then on May 30, in Santa Monica, CA, "Busy Bodies" had its first know performance (http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... nta_Monica). Certainly appropriate to scene EC recalls playing out two nights before, but frankly kind of a crap song.

I LOVE this theory. Makes quite a bit of sense. Even the "service stations" line could be fit into a driving to Mexico scenario.

I can vouch for the tapes. Accidents and Olivers were premiered in London in April. Oliver's has no piano, Steve is playing the organ throughout. Accidents is played again at the Palladium etc.

Dave
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Re: Accidents/Arizona/ Mexico etc.

Post by emotional_fascism076 »

Has that April 78 show ever turned up on cd?
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sulky lad
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Re: Accidents/Arizona/ Mexico etc.

Post by sulky lad »

The show has only ever been released on vinyl as either "Accidents" or the Toasted release called "Elvis Costello"

https://www.discogs.com/search/?q=Elvis ... d&type=all

https://www.discogs.com/search/?q=Elvis ... s&type=all
erey
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Re: Accidents/Arizona/ Mexico etc.

Post by erey »

FAVEHOUR wrote: I LOVE this theory. Makes quite a bit of sense. Even the "service stations" line could be fit into a driving to Mexico scenario.
Yes, the whole lyric of "Busy Bodies" resonates more with the story he tells in his memoir than "Accidents" does. Including getting back to the hotel and overhearing another couple getting busy in the room next door.
FAVEHOUR wrote: I can vouch for the tapes. Accidents and Olivers were premiered in London in April. Oliver's has no piano, Steve is playing the organ throughout. Accidents is played again at the Palladium etc.
So the story of Steve giving "Oliver's Army" the "Dancing Queen" treatment late in the recording of Armed Forces still holds up.

And, apparently, EC wrote "Accidents" perhaps six or eight weeks earlier than he now recalls. Likely after a different night's misadventures ended in him feeling like a miserable, no-good... ;)
emotional_fascism076
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Re: Accidents/Arizona/ Mexico etc.

Post by emotional_fascism076 »

sulky lad wrote:The show has only ever been released on vinyl as either "Accidents" or the Toasted release called "Elvis Costello"

https://www.discogs.com/search/?q=Elvis ... d&type=all

https://www.discogs.com/search/?q=Elvis ... s&type=all
I searched for a vinyl rip but couldn't find one. Anyone here have it?
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johnfoyle
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Re: Accidents/Arizona/ Mexico etc.

Post by johnfoyle »

https://www.awn.com/animationworld/keep ... qus_thread

Keep it in Motion - Classic Animation Revisited: 'Accidents Will Happen'

Every Thursday, Chris Robinson takes a look at films from animation’s past.

Today: Accidents Will Happen by Annabel Jankel & Rocky Morton.

By Chris Robinson

Thursday, October 26, 2017


'Accidents Will Happen'

Since the early 1990s, I’ve seen a titanic load of animation films every year. We’re talking over a couple of thousand a year of late, so I’m always pleasantly surprised when I stumble upon something (good) that I’d never seen before. That’s this case with this stunning video from 1978 for Elvis Costello and The Attractions’ song, “Accidents will Happen”.



The video is divided into three segments. First we have choppy pop art footage of the band that has a distorted colour lines look you’d see on old televisions. Second, we see a series of common daily accidents ranging from burnt toast, cups smashing, and bathtubs overflowing to the accidental launching of a nuclear assault. Third, there is final short ‘green’ computer footage of Costello.



Costello has said that the song itself is about infidelity… and I assume the philanderer’s inability to own it (“Accidents will happen, I only hit and run”) …and to just casually write it off in a typically English ‘sweep it under the rug’, ‘nothing to see here manner’. Today, the song takes on a different meaning in this age of liars, phonies and hucksters, people not owning their shit… where we live in a society of endless ‘accidentally unpurpose’ moments followed by faux apologies. As Costello sings:

And it's the damage that we do
And never know
It's the words that we don't say
That scare me so



The video was directed by Annabel Jankel & Rocky Morton. Not knowing much about the video or the directors, I tracked down Annabel Jankel (who co-created the Max Headroom character) to toss her a few routine questions about how the video came about:

How did this song land on your laps?

I recall the producer Martin Baker had a promo company called Rock Biz Pics and he approached myself and my co-director as we owned an animation company called Cucumber Studios, based in London. As Elvis was unavailable for a live action shoot, animation was presumably mooted. By the way, where we created it, was the same space in the same building that Ziggy Stardust is photographed outside of for the Spiders From Mars album.

There are, from what I see, three distinct parts:

1. The band performing

We sent a photographer to shoot 35mm still film on a motor drive - the band and Elvis, against a white cyc so we could use the source 35mm stills as material for the basis of a stylized designed rotoscope technique we developed for the film.


2. Various common accidents that grow from burnt toast to the nuke button being pushed.

Accidents Will Happen inspired a visually focused conversation that threw up a bank of ideas to do with Accidents - from the mundane Domestic to the catastrophic no-going-back. Accidents of course can be "Accidents" which is what we are wrangling with now, 40 years later - in the current political climate.



3. The green almost computerized looking part at the end.

It's not "almost computerized" looking. It's actually computer generated. I believe one of the first uses of CG in a music video - if not the first. It's a vector computer generated read out of Elvis, filmed with a 16mm Bolex off a monitor at the architectural dept. of a big London University. They were the only ones that had the technology at the time. It was a computer interpretation, or rendering - of a graphic composition, after the well-known Piet Mondrian painting. At the time - I was renting a studio flat where I lived, with my co-director, which was where Mondrian had had his studio, in Ben Nicholson's house, in London. I believe Piet Mondrian channeled the composition for the sequence - inspired by the built in bookcase in our one room flat.

The band footage has a pop art feel mixed with what looks like an old TV look..where the distorted colour lines keep 'interrupting' the image of the band.

That was inspired by the ongoing interference on TV at the time, late 70's, that was par for the course. And as such, the ongoing regular TV visual glitch became an integral part of the accidentally impaired visual image system. Rabbit ears were our means of gaining reception.


Did you compile a list of typical accidents that happen?

Many many accidents were bandied about, then were eventually pared down to the final ones included, and that were storyboarded for inclusion to be animated.
emotional_fascism076
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Re: Accidents/Arizona/ Mexico etc.

Post by emotional_fascism076 »

Interesting read.
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erey
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Re: Accidents/Arizona/ Mexico etc.

Post by erey »

FAVEHOUR wrote:
erey wrote:
I think I might have solved this mystery.

Back when we had this discussion, I had the idea that EC probably was correctly remembering having an unhappy tryst with a Tucson taxi driver and then skulking back to his hotel feeling like a miserable, no-good, philandering bastard and writing a song about it. I figured his unconscious mind had long since decided that the greatness of the song ought to proportional to the crumminess of his emotional state, so it swapped in "Accidents" for some lesser song.

Well, sure enough... EC played Tucson, AZ, on May 28, 1978 (http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... -28_Tucson) and then on May 30, in Santa Monica, CA, "Busy Bodies" had its first know performance (http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... nta_Monica). Certainly appropriate to scene EC recalls playing out two nights before, but frankly kind of a crap song.

I LOVE this theory. Makes quite a bit of sense. Even the "service stations" line could be fit into a driving to Mexico scenario.

I can vouch for the tapes. Accidents and Olivers were premiered in London in April. Oliver's has no piano, Steve is playing the organ throughout. Accidents is played again at the Palladium etc.

Dave
A little postscript to this: I think I just stumbled on the source of EC's almost certainly mistaken memory of having written "Accidents Will Happen" in Tucson. I've been re-listening to the 4-part BBC radio program on EC from 1992. In part 2, Nick Lowe says, "I remember I was on tour with Rockpile and we were opening for Elvis. And I remember being in Tucson, Arizona, when he came to my room and said, 'I've got these couple of tunes; what do you think of these?' One was 'Party Girl' and one was 'Accidents Will Happen'. He brought his guitar to my room [and played them]. I couldn't believe that in the midst of this mayhem -- and it really was mayhem on those tours -- how he could come up with such wonderful tunes, wonderful soulful songs." Rockpile was indeed the opening act for the May 28, 1978, Tucson, AZ, show.
erey
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Re: Accidents/Arizona/ Mexico etc.

Post by erey »

Just to cap off this old thread, EC tells all to the Wall Street Journal:

http://www.elviscostellofans.com/phpBB3 ... 4#p7746677
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Re: Accidents/Arizona/ Mexico etc.

Post by johnfoyle »

Thanks



ANATOMY OF A SONG
Elvis Costello on ‘Accidents Will Happen’
The new-wave singer looks back on his mistakes—and the real meaning behind his 1979 song
By Marc Myers
Oct. 28, 2020 11:54 am ET

“Accidents Will Happen” opened the third album by newly minted rock star Elvis Costello in 1979. Recorded with his band the Attractions, the song helped push the album, “Armed Forces,” to No. 10 on the Billboard chart for two weeks in March that year.

In a recent conversation, Mr. Costello revealed the deeper meaning of the lyrics in the autobiographical song—beyond the telling in his 2015 memoir—and shared his regrets and the song’s influences. His new album, “Hey Clockface” (Concord), is due Saturday , and his remastered “Complete Armed Forces” (UMe) box will be issued Nov. 6. Edited from an interview.

Elvis Costello: I wrote “Accidents Will Happen” in early 1978, just prior to my U.S. tour that spring. For the lyrics, I couldn’t bring myself to invent an honest narrative for the life I was living at the time.

As a song, “Accidents” has a romantic sound, but it also has this moral dilemma baked in. I’ve had to make peace with my own failings during that time as a husband and as a father. All of those years ended in a painful divorce.

The song wasn’t inspired by a romantic encounter with a female cab driver in Tucson, Ariz., as I wrote in my 2015 memoir. In the book, I needed to construct a single episode in print to stand in for the truth, which was much less funny and much more embarrassing.

Back in ’78, I was young, newly famous and I didn’t have any sense of responsibility. Temptation came along, and I gave in to it more than I should have. That’s what this song is really about.

I did indeed try to run away to Mexico, as I hinted in the book, but that was just used as a comic way of telling the story. In truth, the song was about several dalliances gone wrong, only to realize after that I shouldn’t have done that.

Several songs influenced me during the writing of “Accidents.” The drama and scale of the song was swayed by Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “Anyone Who Had a Heart.” Though their song doesn’t resemble “Accidents” in any way, I wanted their bell-tolling sensation in the chorus that the Attractions’ Steve Nieve articulated well on keyboards.

The other inspiration was a lyric line—“I don’t want to hear it”— from Randy Newman’s “I Don’t Want to Hear It Anymore.” Dusty Springfield recorded it on her 1969 “Dusty in Memphis” album. I used the line in my chorus:

“Accidents will happen / We only hit and run / I don’t want to hear it / ’Cause I know what I’ve done.”

When writing the lyrics, I decided to add a bit of disguise by shifting the perspective throughout the song, from first to third person—he, she, him, we, they. You hear this immediately in the song’s opening verse:

“Oh I just don’t know where to begin / Though he says he’ll wait forever / It’s now or never / But she keeps him hanging on.”

If I had used the first person—“I”—throughout, it would have sounded too confessional. The third person distracts from the confidence the singer is sharing with the listener and makes the drama more universal and less personal.

That was probably self-defense on my part. When I wrote the lyrics, I couldn’t quite live with what I was saying in the first person. I also was ashamed, as I was married at the time.

The first verse continues on about a guy trying to seduce some girl who has a girlfriend with her. The guy is trying to lose the other girl:

“The silly champion / She says she can’t go home / Without a chaperone.”

Cast in the third person, the lyrics also became more journalistic—I’m relaying something I’ve witnessed. That’s particularly true in the second verse:

“There’s so many fish in the sea / That only rise up in the sweat and smoke like mercury / But they keep you hanging on / They say you’re so young / Your mind is made up but your mouth is undone.”

In reality, the lyrics describe a club scene, the way the eye casts around, and everybody is looking at each other.

From my perspective, I had gone from being an outsider and not very social to being aware of people looking at me because I was on a record cover. There were girls taking an interest because I was somebody they’d heard of. There was all of that conundrum in the verse.

I think in a weird way, there’s a kind of innocence in there or inexperience. I see that now. Of course, all of these things I didn’t see when I was writing it.

I don’t know where the melody came from specifically. I think somewhere in my mind was the song “Walk Away Renée.” I was a huge Levi Stubbs fan and I knew the 1967 version by the Four Tops. Then, when I first came to America on tour in ’77, I found the Left Banke’s 1966 original in a second-hand record store. I remember thinking, “I wish I could write a melody that was that airborne.”

Back in London in late June ’78, the Attractions and I began rehearsing “Accidents” just outside of London in a church hall next to a school. A bunch of girls came out and recognized us from TV or a pop magazine. They wanted to know what we were doing there.

They came into the studio with us and became our focus group as we rehearsed. We were thrilled, since we were playing for an age group we hoped was our audience. The girls just sat there, somewhat bewildered, listening for a little while.

Then they said they had to go. I remember one of them turned around and said, “You look stupid in that jacket.”

In August, we went into London’s Eden Studios to record. We didn’t have a written musical arrangement. Everything was worked out during rehearsals and memorized. We recorded with engineer Roger Béchirian and producer Nick Lowe.

The first two words of the song, “Oh, I,” were always going to be sung a cappella. My influence was the Beatles’ “Girl” from Rubber Soul. I always liked how John Lennon sang the first two words a cappella—“Is there….” The music kicks in and John continues: “…anybody going to listen to my story / all about the girl who came to stay?”

There’s no guitar on the basic track of “Accidents.” It’s just keyboards, bass and drums. We could have used ringing guitars, but we had Steve play these cascading keyboard arpeggios instead. In the second half, you hear Steve on an early synthesizer, which adds mystique.

We had been listening a lot to ABBA’s use of layered keyboards. ABBA’s Benny Andersson added a very grand, almost classical-style piano on their songs. Steve did that for us.

Once the music was recorded, I overdubbed my vocal. Then Nick and I did all the vocal harmonies. We double-tracked our voices to make the background vocals a little wider, for a gauze effect rather than a close harmony.

With distance, I hear the song the way other people do. If there’s anything in it at all, I know that there is a true story behind it.

But I didn’t falsify the story in my memoir. I simply romanticized it to illustrate the dilemma and tragedy I found myself in. It’s the same with the song. If you relayed the details of an important life event precisely in the lyrics, they’d be crushingly boring.

You’d also be thinking of your moments of indecision and prevarication. The moment where you wanted to escape but didn’t and found yourself in some compromise.

Anybody can make that kind of mistake. It’s also not the end of the world. That’s why the song is called “Accidents Will Happen.” In life, there are happy accidents as well as tragic ones.
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