References in London's Brilliant Parade

[Paul B]

Hi All,

Some notes on London’s Brilliant Parade, Elvis’s personal map of London, explaining references for those who don’t live in this great and grotty city and wonder about these things, using quotes from Elvis at the time. Hope it’s fun and enlightening.

Outside my window... – ‘I’ve got a flat here and you look out of the window and you’re as likely to see some guy in rags as you are a bunch of dealers in really good suits staggering home. I wanted the idea of a guy falling asleep and dreaming about an imaginary London, the London of all those groovy movies of the sixties, Alan Parker called them ‘Red Bus films’, where everything’s possible and everyone’s fantastically attractive - like the club scene in Antonioni’s film Blow Up where they’re all pretending to be stoned. Then he wakes up and he’s on Hungerford bridge and London is really miserable, dull and drained of any vitality.’

red Routemaster - classic London Double Decker bus, there’s still a lot of them in service even now.

MGB – classic swinging 60’s open topped car

Hungerford Bridge- over the Thames in Central London. Connotations of suicide, jumping? Costello said he was actually thinking of the homeless, who congregate there.: ‘I don’t actually insult anybody’s intelligence by talking about the homeless bashes around the bridge, but that’s what you see when you look below. I didn’t want it to be a pious ‘Oh the poor people on the street’ song, because heaven knows there are so many more talented commentators when it comes to that subject, like Phil Colins (in his song ‘Another Day in Paradise’), doing it for me - and voting Tory at the same time, which is pretty ironic.’

It was a special moment when Elvis sang this line during the 96 Meltdown festival at the Royal Festival Hall right on the riverfront next to the bridge - although he was singing it with a big band and kept mucking it up! The bridge has since been rebuilt – it’s rather nice now actually.

the occidental bazaar they used to call Oxford Street – London’s main shopping street and a neat mismatch of ‘oriental bazaar’. The place has significance for Costello: ‘Oxford Street is just full of road works and jangling loudspeaker voices selling crap; and there were bomb warnings and bombs going off at the time I wrote it.’ The line They sounded the all clear… references the annual Christmas IRA bombing campaigns we used to endure, the store somehow always being evacuated just a you were about to get to the front of the queue. His mother worked in the record department of Selfridges, oldest and grandest of the Oxford Street department stores ‘when it was a place of glittering childhood wonder and not the tacky tourist trap it is today’.

Oddly enough, despite these sentiments I saw Elvis doing his Christmas shopping around Oxford Street two years running after he wrote the song!

For old time’s sake, don’t let me awake - ‘It’s like being in a dream you don’t want to wake from’

Now the bankrupt souls in the city are finally tasting defeat - after the 80’s decade of greed, the stock market crashed in 1992. A comeuppance for what Costello called ‘the City crooks, drugged yuppies and canting scum like Lilley and Portillo’ (Conservative politicians of the 80’s and 90’s).

‘The last verse of this song is very much my own personal map of London.’

trolley bus - classic bus, powered from overhead cables

The lions and the tigers in Regents Park couldn’t pay their way - refers to new management of London's Regents Park Zoo, who controversially turned it into commercial enterprise in the early 90’s. Quite literally the animals had to pay their way: those less popular with the public were sold or given away to sanctuaries. There’s a great BBC documentary from the time that shows the elephant keepers in tears as their animals are loaded on a lorry and driven off.

At the Hammersmith Palais, Kensington and Camden Town there’s a part that I used to play – the Hammersmith Palais, West Kensington Nashville and Camden Dingwalls, sweaty club venues the Attractions played in the late 70s. As a child Costello went to the Palais, then a dance hall, with his father who was rehearsing for the evening’s concert as a member of the Joe Loss orchestra:

‘When the professional dancers practised sometimes there’d be only five couples on the floor and this massive band all dolled up in dress tails and bow ties. Occasionally I would catch a glimpse of the pop band arriving in some beat up van looking shagged out and very young, barely out of their teens, rather like they do today.’

Costello went on to play at the Palais himself several times in the late 70’s:

‘Even though it’s a celebratory song about the city and the good times I had playing at places like the Palais and the Hope & Anchor pub in Islington, it’s also got an edge to it. The song’s about London ‘then’, but not just the Punk/New Wave ‘then’ of when I started in the late 70’s. It’s also the ‘then’ of the sixties, that illusionary London I saw the tail end of with my dad. It only happened in the Kings Road in Chelsea, but all the newsreels and films gave the impression that everybody in the country was in uproar. The same thing happened with Punk, the national press reacted like it was everywhere, that it was the fall of civilisation. Yet when I was on the road in ‘77 we’d play Scarborough in the North at the same time as the Sex Pistols and the extent of rebellion there was three timid looking boys with safety pins in their jacket lapels.’

The lovely Diorama... – a London venue of pre cinema magic lantern and optical illusions shows. Also well known for its exquisite glass domed ceiling. In the 80s became a gig venue, where Costello met second wife Cait, the bass player in The Pogues and the last band Costello produced: ‘You can only marry the bass player once.’ Subsequent events prove this true, he didn’t marry a bass player next time. Though he lives now in New York and Vancouver, he still keeps his flat in London, but back then…

‘I wrote the song in Dublin, it’s the old thing of leaving the town to see it. I’ve always resisted the fact that I was born in London, because my family is from Liverpool and I’ve also lived there and that’s my hometown. One reason I live in Dublin is that certain things about it remind me of Liverpool when I was younger, the other reason is that it’s not London. London’s been running down for years now. It’s a melancholy song because I’m not there, it’s not affecting me. The song is ambivalent too. When I sing ‘Just look at me I’m having the time of my life’ some of the time I mean it, other times it’s very tongue in cheek. It isn’t an absolute judgement, a definitive word on London.’

[cbartal]

Sounds like a fascinating city; I plan on visiting there soon. Just one important question. Do they have a Chili's there yet?

[PlaythingOrPet]

I was in London a lot because of my mother's job when all of the IRA shit was going on. It's not nice being in Euston station when one of those warnings goes off, I can tell you. Such a horrible time.

Simply, it instills vivid images in my mind, I can see the situations he's singing about. And it's got a nice, dreamy melody. One of my faves.

cbartal - there's no Chili's, but I'm pretty sure Krispy Kreme are coming soon.

[Paul B]

The bombs were definitely unpleasent and depressingly we probably haven't seen the last of them. Is Chili's a chain? In which case no. We've got plenty of chilli peppers though, so come on over...

[laughingcrow]

[Paul B]

It's true, our service culture ranks up there with, ooh, Soviet Russia. When I've visited the States I can't help having a Brit twinge of suspicion about people who tell me to 'have a nice day'...

So is this Chilis place any good?

[cbartal]

Guys, please, slow down.

The Chili's reference was a wisecrack; Chili's being a typical American food chain aimed at appealing to the lowest common denominator of banal American appetites.

Gotta admit though, the Fa-Ji-Ta s aint bad.

I have been to your wonderful city and had a great time. I did fall into the Thames though. No kidding, over by Cleopatra's needle. My brother and I wanted to say we had stuck our hands in and I proceeded to slip down a moss covered set of icy stairs. Both legs went entirely in. At the last minute I grasped a half broken hand rail and managed to pull myself out.

We slogged on back to our hotel in Earls Court, smelling of the Thames on a subway filled with rush hour commuters. Needless to say I got a lot more "icy stares" on the way back.

The next day we made our way back to the same place to see the location where I had fallen the previous night. I went to a currency exchange and asked the lady about the stairs by Cleopatra's needle and she said, matter of factly, something to the effect of; "Oh yeah, people slip on those all the time... the current sucks them under, and sometimes they drown".

Now whether that's really true or not some of you all may be able to fill me in on, but I tell you one thing, after my experience my brother settled for our secondary goal of the trip, spitting into the damned river.

[Paul B]

I dunno - they come here, they spit in our river! Yes cbart the currents could have pulled you under (by the dark lapel of you chequered coat). The Thames is tidal but at the same time always running out to sea, so the tide comes in on the surface but the water underneath is going the other way - and that drags you down. It's quick though. Best avoided next time. Look forward to seeing you here again sometime. So about the Chilis...

[verbal gymnastics]

At least he only spat into it...

[Paul B]

True enough, especially after all those Chilis. As long as they had the time of their lives, spiting from Hungerford Bridge, that's OK.