New Elvis Costello interview re: McCartney collaboration

Pretty self-explanatory
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The Gentleman
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New Elvis Costello interview re: McCartney collaboration

Post by The Gentleman »

Very in-depth interview, with details I've never seen before (including the fact EC believes they recorded demos of "Veronica" and "Back On My Feet" that got misfiled):

https://www.rockcellarmagazine.com/2018 ... -the-dirt/
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Re: New Elvis Costello interview re: McCartney collaboration

Post by Top balcony »

Cheers Gent

That's a really interesting read!

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Re: New Elvis Costello interview re: McCartney collaboration

Post by verbal gymnastics »

And who of us can honestly say that we have not been obsessed at one time or another by Albanian choral music :lol:
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Re: New Elvis Costello interview re: McCartney collaboration

Post by Neil. »

verbal gymnastics wrote:And who of us can honestly say that we have not been obsessed at one time or another by Albanian choral music :lol:
:lol:
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Re: New Elvis Costello interview re: McCartney collaboration

Post by emotional_fascism076 »

That was great. Paul was at his best with Lennon EC Linda and Eric Stewart.
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And No Coffee Table
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Re: New Elvis Costello interview re: McCartney collaboration

Post by And No Coffee Table »

Amusing EC mention in new McCartney interview...

https://www.gq.com/story/the-untold-sto ... -mccartney

To illustrate this point, McCartney proceeds to tell me that he recently used Auto-Tune on a song—one that's not even on his new album—and how he worried for a moment about it. "Because I know people are going to go, 'Oh no! Paul McCartney's on bloody Auto-Tune! What have things come to?'… At the back of my mind I've got Elvis Costello saying, 'Fucking hell, Paul!'" But then he considered it some more, and what he thought was: "You know what? If we'd had this in the Beatles, we'd have been—John, particularly—would be so all over it. All his freaking records would be…"

McCartney demonstrates a version of how he'd imagine a modern-day John Lennon singing in an extreme Auto-Tune warble, and then he gets out his iPhone and plays me some of the song in question, another collaboration with Ryan Tedder, called "Get Enough," which has an emphatically full-on Auto-Tuned McCartney vocal, plenty more than would be required to horrify any passing purists. It also sounds pretty good.

"Come on, man," says McCartney. "You can't be so straitlaced to not expose yourself to experiences in life."
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Re: New Elvis Costello interview re: McCartney collaboration

Post by And No Coffee Table »

I remembered a similar McCartney quote from 2013:

"I wanted to try lots of things, see what would come out of working with different people. But I never liked the idea that you made a record and it doesn't sit with modern records. With The Beatles you were always trying to sit with The Supremes, Phil Spector, the Isleys. But I needed to resist sounding like I was trying too hard to be contemporary. You know the Ibiza thing, if you're in a club and dancing, that thud-thud stuff works. But I've got to resist that as I'll have people like Elvis Costello calling me up going, 'Fucking hell Paul, what are you doing?!' But in the '60s we were listening to Motown, which was modern, we were listening to James Brown, Stevie Wonder. And I don't want to be shy of using some modern devices because we weren't into all that in The Beatles — the moment the mellotron came out we just embraced it. "Yeah! We'll have a go at that." We were always trying to create different sounds which now are like traditional sounds. Tomorrow Never Knows, the drum sound, still works great."
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Re: New Elvis Costello interview re: McCartney collaboration

Post by Poor Deportee »

He is surely right about Lennon using auto-tune - apparently Lennon was always demanding that George Martin 'smother his voice with ketchup.'

I revile the abuse of auto-tune. But there's no reason it can't be used to achieve a specific effect (as Macca seems to have done), or tastefully - as Bob Rock's album with Ron Sexsmith shows. Heck, that very discreet usage actually lent a warmth to the vocal track.

McCartney's amusing reference to Elvis calling him up actually gets to something that bugs me about EC's later work, i.e. its conservatism. Apart from Wise Up Ghost, he seems to have moved toward a kind of purism that eschews studio trickery and contemporary sonics and technology. I preferred the EC whose work was in direct musical dialogue with the contemporary (even if it was a critical dialogue). Just a thought.
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Re: New Elvis Costello interview re: McCartney collaboration

Post by verbal gymnastics »

Elvis (like Paul Weller) has an inquisitive mind and is happy to try all kinds of experimental things - different musicians, musical styles, influences etc.

However, in the main I'm not a fan of his non-Attractions/Imposters projects.
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Re: New Elvis Costello interview re: McCartney collaboration

Post by Poor Deportee »

Oh, Elvis is certainly adventurous - only a loon would deny that. What I'm saying is that he mostly ignores contemporary sonic pallettes and options, in stark contrast to the EC who materialized with the Attractions and had a cutting-edge sound for a while. At some point in the early '90s he seems to have decided to give up, and that he wanted only to sound like his vast record collection rather than engaging the current sonic landscape. His one foray into technological options, WIWC, was a hesitant and unconvincing disaster (the confusion being underscored by an interview where he proudly claimed there was no treatment on the vocals, as though such 'authenticity' was the aim). However, the fabulous WUG suggests the awesomeness he could deliver if he fully embraced contemporary options. This is what I meant by identifying a certain conservatism underpinning all the adventuousness. I think it's too bad; acts like Belle and Sebastien or The Shins show what can be accomplished when you mix the contemporary studio with smart songwriting, of which EC is the master.
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Re: New Elvis Costello interview re: McCartney collaboration

Post by Hawksmoor »

Poor Deportee wrote:Oh, Elvis is certainly adventurous - only a loon would deny that. What I'm saying is that he mostly ignores contemporary sonic pallettes and options, in stark contrast to the EC who materialized with the Attractions and had a cutting-edge sound for a while. At some point in the early '90s he seems to have decided to give up, and that he wanted only to sound like his vast record collection rather than engaging the current sonic landscape. His one foray into technological options, WIWC, was a hesitant and unconvincing disaster (the confusion being underscored by an interview where he proudly claimed there was no treatment on the vocals, as though such 'authenticity' was the aim). However, the fabulous WUG suggests the awesomeness he could deliver if he fully embraced contemporary options. This is what I meant by identifying a certain conservatism underpinning all the adventuousness. I think it's too bad; acts like Belle and Sebastien or The Shins show what can be accomplished when you mix the contemporary studio with smart songwriting, of which EC is the master.
Well, up to a point, although I'd argue that for an artists of his age (and career-point), Elvis is still more interested in the 'contemporary sonic palette' than most. I don't really know much about the Shins, but I get your point about (the wonderful) Belle and Sebastian, sure. But then, they can afford to do that kind of stuff on every LP because...that's what they do. They're not trying to fit LPs like Momofuku, Secret Profane and National Ransom into their release schedule, and they're not trying to launch a musical or score a ballet at the same time. So they can devote their time to being 'sonically adventurous'.

And sure, LPs like Momofuku, Secret Profane and National Ransom are old-fashioned, they're singer/songwriter-esque in a kind of 1970s way. But at least, alongside those, Elvis is still doing stuff like WUG. He's still up for it, he still knows those people and is prepared to work with them. Absolutely, WIWC is the most wonderfully conceived disaster in his catalogue, and that's not least because of his indecisiveness over whether he wanted a solo/avant-garde/beatbox thing or a rock'n'roll band thing. But it's still an amazing, and eternally rewarding, LP. And Elvis was, what, in his late 40s then?

Listen to what McCartney, Paul Simon, Springsteen, Dylan are producing (OK, they're mostly a decade older, but you can adjust the timings to look at what they were producing when they were Elvis' age). Who else, in their late 40s, was producing anything as remotely sonically 'current' as WIWC? Who else, in their early 60s, was producing anything as faintly 'modern' as WUG? Weller, maybe, on a good day. Tom Waits, maybe, on a good day. I honestly think Elvis' ears and attitude are better-tuned than most of his generation. OK, this time it's an LP of songs from the personal archive done in a straight rock-band and/or orchestral style. But next up is a musical (if he can get the finance, which seems to be receding into the distance). And next up after that could be some scratchy hip-hop thing. I honestly think it might.
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Re: New Elvis Costello interview re: McCartney collaboration

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And No Coffee Table wrote:Amusing EC mention in new McCartney interview...

https://www.gq.com/story/the-untold-sto ... -mccartney

To illustrate this point, McCartney proceeds to tell me that he recently used Auto-Tune on a song—one that's not even on his new album—and how he worried for a moment about it. "Because I know people are going to go, 'Oh no! Paul McCartney's on bloody Auto-Tune! What have things come to?'… At the back of my mind I've got Elvis Costello saying, 'Fucking hell, Paul!'" But then he considered it some more, and what he thought was: "You know what? If we'd had this in the Beatles, we'd have been—John, particularly—would be so all over it. All his freaking records would be…"

McCartney demonstrates a version of how he'd imagine a modern-day John Lennon singing in an extreme Auto-Tune warble, and then he gets out his iPhone and plays me some of the song in question, another collaboration with Ryan Tedder, called "Get Enough," which has an emphatically full-on Auto-Tuned McCartney vocal, plenty more than would be required to horrify any passing purists. It also sounds pretty good.

"Come on, man," says McCartney. "You can't be so straitlaced to not expose yourself to experiences in life."
Paul McCartney has released that song.

EC responds:
Elvis Costello wrote:“I know people are going to go, ‘Oh no! Paul McCartney on bloody Auto-Tune!

What have things come to?'”

“At the back of my mind,” he said, “I’ve got Elvis Costello saying, ‘Fucking hell, Paul!'”

To which @elviscostello says, “Fucking hell, Paul! “Get Enough” is ace. Love it!”
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Re: New Elvis Costello interview re: McCartney collaboration

Post by sweetest punch »

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021 ... p-the-show

Paul McCartney Doesn’t Really Want to Stop the Show

(...)

When I asked Elvis Costello, who has collaborated with McCartney, about the highlights of the post-Beatles catalogue, he reeled off “Jenny Wren”—“That’s just one melody that could stand next to the greatest songs written while Paul was in the Beatles”—as well as “Every Night,” “Let Me Roll It,” and “That Day Is Done.” He also cited “If I Take You Home Tonight,” which McCartney wrote for Costello’s wife, Diana Krall. “Take a listen to that melody and you will hear an indelible harmonic signature,” Costello said. And his own memories of working with McCartney speak to an undimmed penchant for collaborative creativity. “We were pulling words and notes out of the air, finishing songs, and recording them in his studio, downstairs, minutes later,” he told me, describing their work on the songs that ended up on the album “Flowers in the Dirt.”

As a young man, Costello had a Lennonesque edge, and I wondered if that informed their collaboration. “Paul McCartney and John Lennon were teen-age friends who went to outer space together,” Costello told me. “Nobody could imagine themselves in that place. . . . If he got the innocent line and I got the sarcastic line in a duet dialogue, it would be, like, ‘Hold on a minute, I’ve seen this movie before,’ and we’d laugh and change it around.

(...)
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