UNFAITHFUL MUSIC & DISAPPEARING INK - Oct. 2015

Pretty self-explanatory
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charliestumpy
Posts: 710
Joined: Thu Jan 06, 2005 7:33 am

Re: UNFAITHFUL MUSIC & DISAPPEARING INK - Oct. 2015

Post by charliestumpy »

Although my lovely hard-back book with extra bits at back is a bit of a mess, I am still holding off publishing HIS Index/d'loading for only a few quid his reading on iTunes ....

I like his stuff/continue to pay for/enjoy it.
'Sometimes via the senses, mostly in the mind (or pocket)'.
sweetest punch
Posts: 5961
Joined: Sat Apr 03, 2004 5:49 am
Location: Belgium

Re: UNFAITHFUL MUSIC & DISAPPEARING INK - Oct. 2015

Post by sweetest punch »

Interview in Belgian newspaper "De Standaard": http://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20151126_01991586

‘Ik heb geen enkele intentie om mezelf wit te wassen’

ELVIS COSTELLO LAAT BINNENKIJKEN


Hij schreef de mooiste zin over het grote verlies dat soms oorlog heet, en die dezer dagen sprekender lijkt dan ooit: ‘Diving for dear life, when we could be diving for pearls.’ Elvis Costello is pas 61, maar schreef toch al zijn memoires. In Trouweloze muziek en verdwijnende inkt blikt hij terug, zonder genade, op al wat al was. ‘Het leven duurt veel langer dan de gemiddelde popsong.’

Hij was net 30, zat op de trein van Liverpool naar Londen, en schreef in die zuidwaartse beweging een vel papier vol. Hij deed dat gehaast, en hij gebruikte maar drie woorden. I want you. ‘Ik had al die irrationele, wrede dingen gedaan die mensen doen om erachter te komen hoeveel macht ze hebben, om hun grenzen op te zoeken, om wraak te nemen. Die dingen waren me goed van pas gekomen, ik nam aan dat ik het verdiende om ook eens het lijdende voorwerp te zijn. Ik was nog niet helemaal aangekomen toen de angel er al uit was en ik het nummer af had. Je zou kunnen denken dat het een straf was om dat nummer avond na avond te zingen, maar op de duur voelde het gewoon als een stuk dat ik moest opvoeren. Ik denk dat het Othello was.’

Dat is alles wat Elvis Costello erover moest schrijven. In vijf zinnen, ergens diep in zijn 600 pagina’s tellende memoires, schetst hij het noodzakelijke ontstaan en bestaan van een van zijn meest geliefde nummers. Het is het perfecte achtergrondkortverhaal voor ‘I Want You’, het is de perfecte paragraaf. Allesomvattend, tegelijk niets onthullend – de bezwerende wanhoop behoudt haar mysterie. Het is een techniek die de meestersongschrijver als geen ander kent. Zijn 30-regels-lyrics zijn het allemaal: niet minder levensgroot dan ze kleinmenselijk zijn. En al wat niet wordt gezegd, zegt nog meer. ‘It’s the words that we don’t say, that scare me so’. Zo omschrijft hij dat zelf in ‘Accidents Will Happen’.

Droever dan geestiger

Het is schrikken, alleen al daarom, van de volle volzinnen en de allesomvattende omvang van zijn net verschenen ‘memoires’ – hij vindt er zelf geen beter woord voor. Hij heeft er jaren aan geschreven, elke letter eigenhandig. ‘Ik wou mijn eigen antwoord formuleren op al wat ik over mezelf op het internet las. En áls ik dat deed, dan all the way. Als ik wou uitleggen waarom ik het zo’n thrill vond om met Burt Bacharach te werken, dan moest ik eerst uitleggen wie ik was toen ik de muziek van Bacharach voor de eerste keer hoorde. Waarom ik van bij het begin geen easy listening hoorde, maar pure sensual carnal music. Wat dat zegt over mij en over de mens die ik toen was. Want je ontvankelijkheid voor bepaalde muziek heeft natuurlijk alles te maken met wie je bent op dat moment. Dit boek gaat over de enige constante in mijn leven, over het enige waaraan ik altijd trouw ben gebleven, dat altijd trouw aan mij is gebleven, dat geantwoord heeft als ik vragen had, en dat me vragen begon te stellen als ik te veel antwoorden had. Dit boek gaat over muziek, and therefore: over de essentie van mezelf.’

Het is een haast theatraal ernstige en kwetsbare toon die we van de flegmatieke Brit niet gewoon zijn. Maar de generositeit waarmee hij laat binnenkijken, is ondubbelzinnig. In genadeloze TL-verlichting blikt hij op zijn bestaan terug, helemaal tot de jaren waarin hij nog de kleine Declan Patrick MacManus was, toen die heelder weekends mee ging kijken en luisteren naar vader Ross, die trompet speelde en zong bij het Londense dansorkest Joe Loss Orchestra. Dat de aanpak en het register van dit boek verschillen van zijn lyrics, dat vindt hij evident. Dat het droever dan geestiger is, ook. ‘Het leven duurt veel langer dan een gemiddelde popsong’, schrijft hij. ‘Het zit vol verkeerde keuzes en onwelkome verantwoordelijkheden die je niet hebt genomen. Het is veel pijnlijker, en veel minder makkelijk vergeten.’

Eén dag reserveert hij om dat fragiele naslagwerk in Europa te promoten. Ergens in het hart van dat continent, in een hotel in het Duitse Hamburg, op de dag dat zijn derde en huidige vrouw, de jazzpianiste en -zangeres Diana Krall, er een optreden heeft. Eén en ander laat zich echtelijk bundelen. Dat is handiger dan het rock-’n-roll is. Dat is al lang geen punt meer.

Gelijk trillen

Elvis Costello ziet er op deze maandag heel erg uit als zichzelf. Veston, das, jasje en zijn duplex visitekaartje: de fedorahoed boven de vette brilmontuur. Aan de overkant van de tafel waaraan hij klaarzit, staat één vrije stoel. De regie laat zich helder lezen, maar zodra ik binnenkom, staat hij op, komt naast me staan, wijst naar de twee stoelen, en benadrukt de keuzemogelijkheid: ‘Where would you like to sit?’ Hij schuift vervolgens mijn stoel voor me klaar, en gaat pas terug naar zijn plek zodra hij vindt dat hij de cue daarvoor krijgt, die is: wanneer hij mij ‘I’m fine, thank you very much’ hoort zeggen. De 61-jarige Brit blijft stijldansen.

Dat ik van België ben, dat vindt hij ‘lovely’. ‘Belgium, where all good conflicts begin’, schrijft hij in zijn boek, in een paragraaf over een concert in Brussel, in 1978, dat al van bij het voorprogramma uit de hand liep – vuistgevechten op straat, bereden politie, zelfs traangas. Terwijl hij er net van uit was gegaan dat ‘ik van een hartelijk welkom verzekerd zou zijn omdat ik enige gelijkenis vertoonde met koning Boudewijn’. Het stormachtige begin kondigde aan wat een stormachtig begin wel vaker aankondigt: eeuwigdurende liefde. ‘Ik heb geen toegewijder publiek dan het Belgische’, zegt hij. ‘Het voelt wat silly om dat zo aan jou te vertellen. Maar je moet me geloven, ik heb daarnet niet hetzelfde gezegd aan de journalist uit Zwitserland. Ook al heb ik, met dank aan jullie Duvel, meer dan één optreden verkwanseld, het is me vergeven. Jullie zijn me altijd trouw gebleven. Zelfs in periodes dat ik in Groot-Brittannië uit de gratie was gevallen, dat ik er niet eens geboekt raakte, bleef ik in België moeiteloos zalen uitverkopen.’

Q: Verklaart u dat zelf eens.

Ik denk dat het te maken heeft met een bepaald gevoel voor humor die deep down matcht met de muziek die ik maak. Het lijkt iets intuïtiefs. We “trillen” gelijk. We delen een register dat je makkelijk als ironisch zou kunnen samenvatten. Maar die ironie deel ik ook met Groot-Brittannië. En daarmee tril ik toch niet zo gelijk.’

Q: Het voelt hoe dan ook als een uitgesproken Europees register. U woont al lange tijd in de Verenigde Staten, intussen in het Canadese Vancouver. Ergens schrijft u hoe u ooit vond dat ‘Ironie zo’n woord is dat amper een handvol Amerikanen kunnen uitspreken, nog minder kunnen begrijpen’. Bent u al over de stijlbreuk heen?

Well yeah. Zoals dat dan gaat, bleek van al wat ik over Amerika dacht, ook het tegenovergestelde helemaal waar. Het is een contradictorische plek. Verleidelijk en flirtend, tegelijk zeer preuts. Zeer vrij, tegelijk zeer begrensd. Moeilijk om grip op te krijgen. I like that. Ik heb me in elk geval nooit holy English gevoeld. Ik heb nooit bij de scouts willen gaan, omdat ik absoluut geen trouw wou zweren aan the Queen. En toen was ik nog maar 7. Ik heb me nooit kunnen overgeven aan mijn geboorteland, en dat was geen bewuste beslissing. Het is altijd zo geweest. Ongetwijfeld heeft een en ander te maken met het Ierse bloed van mijn grootvader. De liefde tussen mij en mijn geboorteland is zelden harmonieus geweest, altijd een strijd.’

Het is geen toeval dat een van zijn eerste, alleszins grootste hits het vlammende ‘Oliver’s Army’ was, dat hij schreef op de terugweg van Belfast. Een nummer over ‘de voortdurend verschuivende loyaliteiten en miskleunen van het rijk’, zoals hij daar zelf over schrijft. ‘En over hoe ze altijd een jongen uit de arbeidersklasse kiezen om het moorden te doen. Sommigen van hen Ieren die, zoals mijn grootvader, een uniform van het Britse leger droegen.’ ‘Oliver’s Army’ verkocht een half miljoen exemplaren – ‘Als je dat nu zou doen, zou je een heel jaar op nummer 1 staan.’ De boodschap was niet mis te verstaan, en toch was het nooit bedoeld als een politiek betoog. Dat benadrukt hij. ‘It was pop music.’

Net zo met het onmeedogend mooie ‘Shipbuilding’, een miniatuur van 3 minuten als macroanalyse van de Falklandoorlog. Hij huivert ervoor het woord protestlied te gebruiken. ‘Ik heb me nooit de illusie gemaakt met dat nummer ook maar één iets te kunnen veranderen.’ Al vindt hij het zelf wel een van de beste songs die hij ooit schreef. Dat deze genadeloze zin uit ‘Shipbuilding’ dezer dagen weer zo actueel zou zijn, daar hadden we op het moment van ons gesprek – comfortabel lang voor de aanslagen in Parijs – nog geen benul van: ‘Diving for dear live, when we could be diving for pearls.’

Biechten

De zware gordijnen, het kamerbrede tapijt, en al de rest van het teveel aan textiel in deze Hamburgse hotelkamer dempen Costello’s rafelige eigenste timbre niet één klein beetje. Zijn stem bleef al die jaren net zo onaangetast als zijn look. En als hij praat, resoneert die niet minder dan als hij zingt. Alle credits voor die stemkleur geeft hij graag aan zijn vader, ‘technisch een veel betere zanger dan ik’.

Zijn hele boek leest als een diepe buiging voor Ross MacManus, die vier jaar geleden overleed – een getalenteerde antiheld met een groot hart, zeker voor vrouwen. Costello’s ouders leerden elkaar kennen in de lokale platenwinkel, waar zijn moeder werkte. De liefde was groot en zou dat altijd blijven, ook al gingen ze uit elkaar toen Costello nog klein was. Het openlijke prutsen van de vader leek de band met de zoon alleen maar te versterken. De eerlijkheid was totaal, en de liefde totaal eerlijk. ‘Sometimes, I was at my best. Sometimes, I was worse for wear. He always listened. He never judged. How could he?’

Ook de fysieke gelijkenis met zijn vader is treffend, nog los van de identieke brilmontuur. Costello neemt er zijn smartphone bij, en laat me een Youtube-filmpje zien van een voluit performende Ross, ergens begin jaren 60, met het Joe Loss Orchestra. Zijn vader, kleiner en fijner dan hij, beweegt de hele bühne rond. Dan toch een opmerkelijk verschil tussen de twee. Costello knikt. ‘Hij was een veel betere danser dan ik.’ Op dat moment gooit Ross in het filmpje het onderlijf helemaal los. ‘Those steps I am yet to master’, zegt de zoon ernstig.

Q: De openheid is opmerkelijk, waarmee u over uzelf en de band met uw dierbaren schrijft. Alsof er niets taboe was.

Wat is het nut van zo’n onderneming als ik mezelf zou censureren? Ik hou niet van niet voluit gaan. En ik hou van volle waarachtigheid. Als ik hier en daar heb nagelaten om iemand bij naam te noemen, dan alleen maar omdat ik bang was dat die naam de aandacht zou afleiden van wat ik wou vertellen.’

Q: Af en toe doet het zelfs aan een openlijke biecht denken.

Over jezelf schrijven, de keuzes die je hebt gemaakt, of net niet, de fouten die je hebt gemaakt, en waaruit je weigerde te leren, zoiets is onvermijdelijk – bij gebrek aan een beter woord – therapeutisch. Maar een biecht, zo heb ik het niet aangevoeld. Ik had in elk geval geen intentie om mezelf wit te wassen. Als ik vertel over die knappe Amerikaanse taxichauffeur, met wie ik op weg was naar Mexico, en met wie ik onvermijdelijk in bed belandde, en dan ’s anderendaags, gedumpt en met een kater, ‘Accidents Will Happen’ schreef, dan probeer ik mezelf niet te vergoelijken. Was ik mijn vrouw ontrouw met dat meisje? Yes. Is dat een verhaal waarmee ik mezelf en die daad glorieus kan maken? Hardly. Ik kom er net als een willoos jongetje uit, denk ik. Het klopt wel dat ik mezelf toelaat mogelijke achterliggende drijfveren en mechanismes te beschrijven in het boek, maar dan niet om me erachter te verschuilen. Gewoon om mezelf retrospectief te helpen verklaren.’

Q: Zoals u vertelt hoe u het nummer ‘Alison’ aan het begin van uw huwelijk schreef vanuit een angstig voorgevoel dat u niet trouw zou kunnen blijven, en dat u vanuit het ongeloof in een happy end de liefde altijd kapot zou maken.

Welja. Dat zijn van die inzichten die voor een 60-jarige glashelder zijn. De nummers zelf hebben die verklaringen dan wel niet nodig. Nogmaals: ‘Accidents Will Happen’ is niet mis te verstaan. Het is de pure ontgoocheling in mezelf. “Jongen toch, je bent er alweer ingelopen. Het is het niet waard.” Het rapporteert openlijk over de verslaving aan die brief thrill. En die heeft jarenlang geduurd. Het was geen seksverslaving, wel. Want met die seks had het eigenlijk minder te maken. Het was vreemd genoeg veeleer de bijbehorende emotionele rotzooi die een verslavend effect op me kreeg. Ik voelde dat ik die ellende, of toch zeker het drama, zelf ging orkestreren op de duur. Om erover te kunnen schrijven. Het heeft een hele tijd geduurd voor ik doorhad dat ik niet noodzakelijk zelf acute chaos moest creëren om goed materiaal te hebben. Ongetwijfeld heeft ook het simpele ouder worden een kalmerend effect gehad op die impuls. Of het heeft er alles mee te maken dat ik nu eindelijk iemand gevonden heb die me juist kan lezen.’

Q: In al uw openheid bent u onvermijdelijk al eens bijzonder hard voor sommige personages.

Over wie heb je het?’

Q: Uw tweede vrouw bijvoorbeeld.

Omdat ik die relatie omschrijf als “dat ik een kamer ben binnengaan, het licht heb uitgedaan, en de deur niet meer vond?”’

Q: Wel, ja. Achttien jaar lang, benadrukt u. Hebt u eraan gedacht hoe zij dat zal lezen?

Er is geen communicatie meer tussen ons. Ik weet niet hoe het met haar is. Ik hoop, dat meen ik, goed. Ik wil alleen maar eerlijk zijn. Is dat hard voor haar? Dan toch niet meer dan voor mezelf. Denk ik. Ik schrijf het tenslotte volledig op eigen rekening: mijn gebrek aan moed om te vertrekken.’

Klein drama, groot geluk

Hij krijgt een droge keel, haalt een trosje druiven van de salontafel, wijst er mij op dat er ook ananas ligt. De vader van drie kinderen – een zoon uit zijn eerste huwelijk, en een tweelingzoon met Diana Krall, van nog geen 9 – let op zijn gezondheid. De vegetariër drinkt ook niet meer. ‘There’s a time for everything.’ Omdat bovenal de muzikant Elvis Costello een overlever is, en dan nog een soepele verteller met een ‘scary memory’, laten deze memoires zich ook lezen als een popencyclopedie van de voorbije halve eeuw. Zowat alle belangwekkende personages komen langs, met vele geestige, vaak beklijvende, anekdotes – van Bob Dylan, over Chet Baker, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Joni Mitchell, Paul McCartney, Allen Toussaint, Quincy Jones, Johnny Cash tot David Bowie. En al de rest. Het neigt bij momenten naar een iets te blije name dropping, en dat is het misschien ook. Maar ‘het zijn nu eenmaal wel die ontmoetingen die mijn leven hebben vormgegeven, gestuurd, geworteld. Wat ben ik blij dat ik me heb durven laten leiden door die ontmoetingen. Dat is een moed waar ik misschien wel het meest trots op ben.’

Ook wel op de moed om op zijn bek te gaan, zal hij op het einde zeggen. Om vervolgens altijd weer recht te krabbelen, om de gevolgen van zijn fouten te durven leven, zelfs te waarderen. Hij zegt het wanneer een van de vervelendere passages uit zijn carrière ter sprake komt: toen hij ergens in Ohio, eind de jaren 70, stomdronken, voor een volle Holiday Inn-bar en met zijn volle krachtige stemgeluid het n-woord en andere ongepast racistische termen gebruikte om James Brown en Ray Charles te definiëren. Puur om te provoceren natuurlijk, zegt hij, om rel te schoppen. ‘Het was toch duidelijk dat ik ironisch was, wisten ze dan niet dat ik fan was van Brown en Charles?’ Amerika’s gevoeligheden liggen anders, dat moest hij toen nog leren.

Het incident trok een dikke streep door de rekening, het zou nog jaren aan hem blijven plakken. Het was een knik in zijn nog prille Amerikaanse carrière. Een klein drama, dat hij nu een groot geluk noemt. ‘Die avond is misschien wel de redding geweest van mijn pathetische jonge leven. De redding van de leegte die ik toen al voelde en mijn ruige jacht op de vergetelheid’, schrijft hij. ‘Mijn leven werd een stuk boeiender dankzij deze mislukte poging om in een onverdiende en wellicht fatale orbit terecht te komen.’

Hij wandelt na afloop mee de hotelkamer uit. Straks nog een verdere halve dag over zijn leven praten, nu wil hij eerst zalm met appelsalade eten. Afscheid neemt hij met een kleine buiging. Hij heft daarbij de deukhoed op.

----------------------------------
Google translate:


"I have no intention to wash myself white '

ELVIS COSTELLO LETS LOOK INSIDE


He wrote the best sentence about the great loss that is sometimes called war, and these days more striking than ever, ". Diving for dear life, when, we could be diving for pearls' Elvis Costello's only 61, but wrote already his memoirs . In treacherous music and disappearing ink looks back without mercy, on what already was. "Life takes much longer than the average pop song."

He was just 30, was on the train from Liverpool to London, and wrote in the southward movement a sheet of paper full. He did it in a hurry, and he only used three words. I want you. "I had already done irrational, cruel things people do to figure out how much power they have, to look at their borders, to take revenge. Those things came to me in good stead, I assumed that I deserved to be also once the passive object. I was not quite arrived when the sting was already there and I finished the song. You might think that it was a punishment to sing that song night after night, but at the time it just felt like a piece that I had to step up. I think it was Othello. "

That's all Elvis Costello had to write about it. In five sentences, somewhere deep in his 600-page memoir, he outlines the necessary creation and existence of one of his most beloved songs. It's the perfect backdrop for short story 'I Want You', it's the perfect section. Comprehensive, while revealing nothing - the imploring desperation retains its mystery. It is a technique that the master songwriter like no other. His 30-rules-lyrics have it all: no less than life-size they are small human. And what is not said, saying more. 'It's the words That we do not say, that scare me so. " As he describes it himself in "Accidents Will Happen".

Sadder than wittier

It is scared, alone, therefore, the whole sentences and the all-encompassing scope of his just released "memoirs" - he finds himself no better word for it. He has written for years, each letter personally. "I wanted to formulate my own answer to what I read about myself on the internet. And if I did, then all the way. If I wish to explain why I thought it was such a thrill to work with Burt Bacharach, I had to explain who I was when I was the music of Bacharach for the first time heard. Why am I not easy listening heard from the beginning, but pure sensual carnal music. What that says about me and the person I was then. Because your susceptibility to certain music of course has everything to do with who you are at that moment. This book is about the only constant in my life, about the only thing I'm always remained faithful, always remaining faithful to me that the answer is I had questions, and I began to ask questions if I had too many answers . This book is about music, and Therefore: the essence of myself. "

It is an almost theatrical serious and delicate tone that we are not just the phlegmatic Brit. But the generosity with which he lets look inside, is unambiguous. In merciless fluorescent lights, he looks at his life back, all the way to the years when he was still small Declan Patrick MacManus, when that heelder weekend was watch and listen to father Ross, who played trumpet and sang at London's dance band Joe Loss Orchestra. That the approach and the register of this book differ from his lyrics, which he considers obvious. It is sadder than witty, too. "Life takes much longer than a typical pop song," he writes. "It is full of wrong decisions and unwelcome responsibilities that you have not taken. It is much more painful and much less likely to forget. "

One day he reserves to promote that fragile reference in Europe. Somewhere in the heart of the continent, at a hotel in Hamburg, Germany, on the day his third and current wife, the jazz pianist and -zangeres Diana Krall, there is a performance. All this makes them combine wedlock. This is more convenient than rock 'n' roll is. That is no longer a point more.

Equal vibrate

Elvis Costello looks at this Monday very much like themselves. Veston, tie, jacket and duplex card: fedora hat above the fat-rimmed glasses. Across the table he klaarzit, is one free seat. The director makes himself clear reading, but as soon as I come in, he gets up, comes and stands next to me, pointing to the two chairs, and highlights the option "? Where would you like to sit" He then pushes my chair ready for me, and only goes back to his place once he finds that he gets the cue for it, which is: when he me 'I'm fine, thank you very much "hear say. The 61-year-old Briton remains ballroom dancing.

I'm from Belgium, which he finds 'lovely'. 'Belgium, where all good conflicts start, "he writes in his book, in a section on a concert in Brussels in 1978, which already on the schedule out of hand - fist fights on the street, rangers, even tear gas. While he was there just by assessing "I warmly welcome would be assured because I showed some resemblance to King Baldwin. Stormy beginning announced that a stormy beginning it often announces: everlasting love. "I have no more dedicated audience than the Belgian," he says. "It feels a little silly for so to tell you. But you must believe me, I've just not the same thing to the journalist from Switzerland. Even though I have, thanks to you Duvel, more than one appear squandered, it's forgiven me. You have always been faithful to me. Even in periods when I was out of favor in Britain cases that I did not even booked there, I continued to sell off effortlessly halls in Belgium. "

Q: You declare yourself.

I think it has to do with a certain sense of humor that deep down matches the music I make. It seems like something intuïtiefs. We "vibrate" equal. We share a record that you could easily summarized as ironic. But the irony I also share with Britain. And with that I still vibrating not so right. "

Q: It feels somehow as an outspoken European register. You live a long time in the United States, meanwhile, in Vancouver. Somewhere you write how you ever thought that "such a word irony is that only a handful of Americans can speak, can still less understand." If you already have the style break through?

Well yeah. As it goes then, pale with what I thought about America, even the opposite entirely true. It is a contradictory place. Seductive and flirtatious at the same time very squeamish. Very pretty, very limited at the same time. Hard to get a grip. I like that. I have felt in any case never holy English. I never want to go with the Scouts, because I absolutely wanted to not swear allegiance to the Queen. And then I was only 7. I can never surrender to my native country, and that was not a conscious decision. It's always been that way. Undoubtedly has to do all this with the Irish blood of my grandfather. The love between me and my homeland has rarely been harmonious, always a struggle. "

It is no coincidence that one of his first, accounted biggest hits was the flaming 'Oliver's Army', which he wrote on the way back from Belfast. A song about "the constantly shifting loyalties and blunders of the empire," as he wrote it himself. "And how they always choose a boy from the working class to do the killing. Some of them Irishmen who, like my grandfather, wore a uniform of the British Army '' Oliver's Army "sold half a million copies -." If you could do that now, you'd be a whole year at number one. "The Message was unmistakable, and yet it was never intended as a political argument. He stressed that. "It was pop music."

Just as with the ruthless beautiful 'Shipbuilding', a miniature of three minutes as macro analysis of the Falklands War. He shudders sure to use the word protest song. "I never made me the illusion that number even one to change something." Though he thinks it myself one of the best songs he ever wrote. That merciless sense of 'Shipbuilding' these days would again be up to date, as we had at the time of our conversation - comfortable well before the attacks in Paris - no clue, "Diving for dear live, when, we could be diving for pearls. "

Confess

The heavy curtains, the wall carpet, and all the rest of the excess fabric at this Hamburg hotel room mute Costello's frayed very own timbre, not one little bit. His voice remained all these years just as unaffected as its look. And when he talks resonates no less than when he sings. All credits for voice color indicates he would like his father, "technically a much better singer than me."

His whole book reads like a deep bow for Ross MacManus, who died four years ago - a talented anti-hero with a big heart, especially for women. Costello's parents met in the local record shop, where his mother worked. Love was great and would always remain, even though they were separated when Costello was still small. The overt tinker's father seemed to bond with the son only strengthen. Honesty was totally, totally honest and love. 'Sometimes, I was at my best. Sometimes, I was worse for wear. He always listened. He never Judged. How could he? "

The physical resemblance to his father is striking, apart from the same spectacle frame. Costello at his smartphone, and let me see a Youtube video of a fully perform income Ross, sometime early 60s, with the Joe Loss Orchestra. His father, smaller and finer than he moves around the whole stage. Then, yet a remarkable difference between the two. Costello nods. "He was a much better dancer than I am." At that moment Ross throws in the video the abdomen completely. 'Those steps I am yet to master, "said the son seriously.

Q: The openness is remarkable that you provide about yourself and the band writes with your loved ones. If nothing was taboo.

What is the point of such a venture as I myself would censor? I do not like not to go flat out. And I love the full truth. When I got here and it failed to mention anyone by name, but only because I was afraid that that name would divert attention away from what I wanted to tell. "

Q: Occasionally it reminds even an outright confession.

Write about yourself, the choices you have made, or just not the mistakes you've made, and which you refused to learn anything is inevitable - for lack of a better word - therapeutic. But a confession, so I have not felt it. I at least had no intention to wash myself white. When I talk about that handsome American taxi driver, with whom I was on my way to Mexico and with whom I ended inevitably in bed, and then the next day, dumped and with a hangover, "Accidents Will Happen" wrote, I try myself not condone. I was unfaithful to my wife with that girl? Yes. Is that a story which I myself and that act can make glorious? Hardly. I'll be there like a spineless little boy, I think. It's true that allowing myself to describe possible underlying motives and mechanisms in the book, but not to hide behind me. Just to help explain myself retrospectively. "

Q: As tells you how the song 'Alison' at the beginning of your marriage wrote from an anxious feeling that you might not be faithful, and that, from the disbelief in a happy ending love would always destroy.

Well yeah. Those are the insights for a 60-year-old crystal clear. The songs themselves have those statements or unnecessary. Again: "Accidents Will Happen" is unmistakable. It is the sheer disappointment in myself. "Boy do, you're caught up again. It's not worth it. "It reports openly about the addiction to that letter thrill. And that has lasted for years. It was not a sex addiction, though. Because with that sex had to actually make it less. It was strangely rather the associated emotional mess that had an addictive effect on me. I felt I was misery, or at least went to the drama itself orchestrate the duration. In order to write about it. It has taken a long time to realize that I do not own acute need was to create chaos in order to have good material. Undoubtedly has the simple aging had a calming effect on that impulse. Whether it has to do with everything that I've finally found someone that can read me right. "

Q: In all your openness, you are inevitably already very hard for some characters.

Who are you talking about?'

Q: Your second wife for example.

As I describe that relationship as "I am entering a room, the lights got turned off, and no longer found the door? '"

Q: Well yeah. For eighteen years, stressing you. Have you thought of how they will read?

There is no communication between us. I do not know how it is with her. I hope that I consider good. I just want to be honest. Is that hard for her? Still no more than for myself. I think. I write it finally completely on his own account: my lack of courage to leave. "

Little drama, great happiness

He gets a dry throat, get a bunch of grapes on the coffee table, it shows me that there is pineapple. The father of three children - a son from his first marriage, and a twin son with Diana Krall, of no 9 - pay attention to his health. The vegetarian also does not drink anymore. "There's a time for everything." Because most of the musician Elvis Costello is a survivor, and then a smooth storyteller with a scary memory ', leave these memoirs also be read as a pop encyclopaedia of the past half century. Just about all the interesting characters come along, with numerous witty, often haunting, anecdotes - Bob Dylan, about Chet Baker, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Joni Mitchell, Paul McCartney, Allen Toussaint, Quincy Jones, Johnny Cash to David Bowie. And all the rest. It tends at times a little too happy name-dropping, and that it might be too. But it is simply well those encounters that have shaped my life, sent rooted. I'm so glad I dared to be guided by these encounters. That is a courage that I perhaps most proud of. "

Also called up the courage to go into his mouth, he will tell in the end. Then, always straight to scramble, to dare to live the consequences of his mistakes, even to appreciate. He says when one of the bore more passages of his career raised is: when he was somewhere in Ohio, late 70s, drunk, for a full Holiday Inn bar and with all his powerful voice the n-word and other inappropriate racist terms used to define James Brown and Ray Charles. Purely to provoke, of course, he says, to kick rel. "Though it was clear that I was ironic, she did not realize that I was a fan of Brown and Charles?" America's sensibilities are different, that he still had to learn.

The incident drew a thick line through the bill, it would still remain for years to stick him. It was a kink in his still fledgling American career. A little drama, which he now calls a great happiness. "That night was perhaps the rescue of my pathetic young life. The rescue of the emptiness I felt back then and my rugged hunting oblivion, "he writes. "My life became a lot more interesting thanks to this failed attempt to get into an undeserved and possibly fatal orbit."

He walks after them in the hotel room. Later, a further half a day to talk about his life, now he wants to eat first salmon with apple salad. Farewell he takes with a small bow. He thereby raises the trilby hat.
Since you put me down, it seems i've been very gloomy. You may laugh but pretty girls look right through me.
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Re: UNFAITHFUL MUSIC & DISAPPEARING INK - Oct. 2015

Post by sweetest punch »

Dutch version "Trouweloze muziek en verdwijnende inkt" is pushed back to December 8: http://www.ako.nl/product/9789400506640/

Read a fragment in Dutch here: http://beeld.boekboek.nl/BRVI/p/9789400 ... 506640.pdf
Since you put me down, it seems i've been very gloomy. You may laugh but pretty girls look right through me.
johnfoyle
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Re: UNFAITHFUL MUSIC & DISAPPEARING INK - Oct. 2015

Post by johnfoyle »

Use these Amazon links and this forum & site gets a fee-


Dutch edition -

http://www.amazon.fr/Trouweloze-muziek- ... s+costello


German edition -

http://www.amazon.de/Unfaithful-Music-L ... s+costello
johnfoyle
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Re: UNFAITHFUL MUSIC & DISAPPEARING INK - Oct. 2015

Post by johnfoyle »

This Tweet seems to be from the above feature -


https://twitter.com/moenaert/status/670937702666280960


Image
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Re: UNFAITHFUL MUSIC & DISAPPEARING INK - Oct. 2015

Post by johnfoyle »

http://thespinoff.co.nz/26-11-2015/why- ... CY.twitter


Why Do You Talk Such Stupid Nonsense – Guy Somerset Reads the Riot Act on Elvis Costello

26 NOVEMBER 2015 / By Guy Somerset

Elvis Costello’s autobiography doesnt seem to know when to STFU.

‘Death wears a big hat,’ Elvis Costello once sang, ‘because he’s a big bloke.’ No doubt Death would write a big memoir, too. But he’d probably stop short of the 670 pages of Costello’s Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink.

True, Costello is the best songwriter of his generation. But then Bob Dylan is the best songwriter of his generation, and many other generations besides, and he managed to keep Chronicles down to 300 pages.

The problem is, Costello has so many strings to his bow, and he wants to play them all.

Loving son, faithless first-time husband atoning for his sins; a pop star off his face on gin, vodka, ‘little white pills’, you name it, followed by a more abstemious ‘second act’ of ever-expanding depth (if not listenability); music fan extraordinaire, music collaborator extraordinaire; loyal second-time husband to jazz pianist and singer Diana Krall (with a 17-year relationship with ex-Pogue Cait O’Riordan in between marriages), doting father of three …

Costello needed someone to help him – or make him – see the wood for the trees. What he got instead was Penguin Books, where he follows Morrissey as beneficiary of the publisher’s besotted indulgence. Morrissey was allowed to demand Penguin Classics status for his mess of an autobiography and then to release an appalling novel, List of the Lost. Costello has been given free rein to fire off every last name-dropping anecdote in his arsenal, lurching from one to the other with all the finesse of a drunk kangaroo.

There’s a good book, possibly even two good books, trapped inside Unfaithful Music, but they’re wearing the fat suit of a third.

The first of the books is the tender evocation of Costello’s relationship with his father, Ross MacManus, old-school crooner with Britain’s Joe Loss Orchestra during the 1960s when such dance bands were enjoying their last hurrah before obsolescence as a result of the musical revolution wrought by The Beatles.

MacManus and his professional and personal worlds are in many ways the best things in Unfaithful Music, and Costello is at his best writing about them: be it his childhood glimpses of the Joe Loss Orchestra at work; MacManus’s bachelor pad after breaking up with Costello’s mother, with its bathroom papered with pages from Playboy; or MacManus’s unlikely embracing of psychedelia in his post-Joe Loss years on the cabaret circuit of northern workingmen’s clubs.

A memoir more tightly focused on MacManus would have had the charm of Ben Watt’s book about his parents, Romany and Tom.

The second book inside Unfaithful Music is Costello’s account of the first half of his career, which gives us the opportunity to finally – at least partially – decipher some of the most densely packed and cryptically worded lyrics of the late 1970s and early to mid-1980s, from that pretty much faultless run of albums My Aim is True, This Year’s Model, Armed Forces, Get Happy!!, Trust, Imperial Bedroom, Punch the Clock, Goodbye Cruel World, King of America, Blood and Chocolate and Spike. A run that ended with 1991’s tin-eared Mighty Like a Rose and has never been recovered.

Costello proves, like Dylan, to have been a collagist, storing up lines and ideas sometimes for years before finding a home for them within a song, where they would make perfect sense even if you didn’t necessarily know what they meant.

He also proves to have been something we might not have expected: a confessional songwriter. His was not a regular and orderly life so he could be violent and original in his work – or, in his case, scathing of the moral and sexual squalor around him. That squalor was his life. The bile came from within, and was aimed at within. And all the time he was hiding in plain sight. A song like Shabby Doll on Imperial Bedroom wasn’t him putting on a mask; it was him taking one off.

Not that we can be blamed for missing this at the time. It’s not mentioned here, but in a 1981 South Bank Show about him making country standards album Almost Blue in Nashville, he was at pains to tell us all those songs of betrayal and heartbreak were being recorded by a man who was happily married.

Even in Unfaithful Music, you need your wits about you to put it all together. Costello certainly doesn’t intend to leave us under any illusions: ‘The trouble with finishing any autobiographical tome like this is that for every mildly diverting tale or precious memory, you eventually arrive at this thought: I don’t much care for the subject.’

Or: ‘Almost Blue was something of a Houdini act for me. I felt as if I’d slipped out of those tricky, bitter little songs that only appealed to a certain kind of creep.’ (A certain kind of creep? Thanks, mate.)

Or: ‘Implicit in so many of the records I brought home to play to her [his mother] was the thought Look, Ma, look at the mess I’ve made of my life. Lucky I know how to write songs about it.’

But for all his candour, Costello can be opaque, and sometimes you’ll only know what he’s getting at if you’ve read around the subject beforehand – eg, his toxic relationship with the Attractions’ bass player, Bruce Thomas (see Thomas’ 1990 roman à clef The Big Wheel), and the bleakness of his life with O’Riordan (better understood in the light of this Irish Independent interview).

http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/lif ... 33990.html


While self-laceration provides Unfaithful Music with its most compelling drama, not to say psychodrama, the lack of reflection in the endless anecdotes that bulk out the book proves its undoing.

It may be a tautology to complain about a memoir being solipsistic, but this one starts to feel that way, with so many greats of the musical firmament only getting a walk-on part because of how they’ve come into Costello’s orbit and give rise to a story he can tell. It diminishes them, and him. He’s such a good writer about music (as evidenced elsewhere in the book and in those Vanity Fair pieces of his over the years), and these tired tales don’t have the capacity to show so.

One could live with the sloppy editing, the random shifts in time and place, and the tics that come and go – the indecision about naming (Charlie/Gillett/Mr Gillett); the weaving of song titles and lines into the text, accompanied by an implied knowing wink; the excerpts from hitherto unpublished stabs at fiction. (Although, given Morrissey’s List of the Lost, possibly not unpublished for much longer.)

But just as late-period Costello’s music has tended to founder on his conservative obeisance to classic forms (his 2013 album with The Roots, Wise Up Ghost, being a rare exception and cause for surprise), so his book founders on its humblebrags about hanging out with the masters of those forms.

The man who was banned from Saturday Night Live in 1977, after on air and without warning dumping the approved song and instead bursting into a seditious rendition of Radio Radio, is now clutched firmly to the bosom of the music and broadcasting establishments and not about to break ranks. Instead we get reheated witticisms and cloying chumminess.

That’s to say, we get the meat and potatoes of your bog-standard rock memoir. The fodder of the chatshow sofa. Something Unfaithful Music sets out not to be, so often isn’t, and could happily have avoided altogether.

The book could stand another mowing.
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Re: UNFAITHFUL MUSIC & DISAPPEARING INK - Oct. 2015

Post by erey »

johnfoyle wrote: The man who was banned from Saturday Night Live in 1977, after on air and without warning dumping the approved song and instead bursting into a seditious rendition of Radio Radio, is now clutched firmly to the bosom of the music and broadcasting establishments and not about to break ranks.
This reviewer seems to have been so overwhelmed by having to read all 674 pages that he missed the part where EC explains, not for the first time, that there was nothing seditious about playing "Radio Radio" on SNL, unless you count messing up pre-arranged camera cues as sedition. He just thought "Radio Radio" was a good, new song that would connection with American audience better than the flop UK single his record company had picked out for him to play. In other words, he thought he knew better than anyone else how to present himself. Just as with his memoir. :wink:
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Re: UNFAITHFUL MUSIC & DISAPPEARING INK - Oct. 2015

Post by johnfoyle »

http://www.thenational.ae/arts-life/mus ... and-candid


Review: Elvis Costello’s memoir is humorous and candid

Adam Workman

November 29, 2015


Elvis Costello’s memoir is a humorous and candid portrayal of the rock star’s musical journey.


The measure of a truly inclusive rock biog is a reader’s capacity to enjoy the book regardless of their fondness for the musician in question’s audio output.

Similarly, whether or not you enjoy his music, Elvis Costello has always come across as a thoughtful, likeable chap. It naturally follows, therefore, that this well-written autobiography is a product of his pen alone, with no ghost author in sight.

The music of the man born Declan Patrick MacManus has never seemed to quite fit into any one scene, so it’s also fitting that his memoir has a nonconformist sheen, dispensing with a chronological account in favour of carefree skipping between the years.

Regularly flicking back to a childhood spent in London and Liverpool, with a musical father plying his trade in popular big band the Joss Loss Orchestra, there are plenty of personal revelations, from his dad’s infidelities to the death of a childhood friend, and a short portrait of his flawed grandfather.

Costello’s writing style brims with wit and self-awareness, containing plenty of self-deprecating passages such as: “I was born in the same hospital in which Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin. I apologise in advance that I have not been the same boon to mankind.”

For casual observers, it’s interesting to hear the origins of hits such as Oliver’s Army (a trip to Northern Ireland during The Troubles), and how his band, The Attractions, came together.

He talks plainly and openly about his lyrical inspirations, which were often significantly more menial than the cleverly clipped poetry they catalysed.

Clocking in at more than 650 pages, this is no light poolside read. A decent portion of the word count is devoted to Costello’s adulation of The Beatles, and while his detailing of encounters with Paul McCartney is a little fawning, his enthusiasm shines through brightly – he paints himself as a fan who became a musician, eagerly snapping up records throughout his childhood whenever money allowed.

This is a refreshing change in a medium where others often prefer to haughtily ignore their influences in favour of stoking the fires of their own mystique.

The Fab Four anecdotes include one about a concert at the White House to celebrate McCartney’s career – Barack Obama deals a cheeky zinger to Costello, who accidentally leaves his guitar in the president’s residence.

Prior Stateside success also leads to encounters with American music legends including Bob Dylan and Neil Diamond (the latter is given a particularly terse dose of British humour from one of Costello’s touring party).

On the other side of the Atlantic, we’re led into the chaotic days of late-1970s punk, including dialogue with The Sex Pistols and The Clash, via a publicity stunt that ends up in an afternoon in prison.

The only truly uncomfortable incident among a largely jovial journey is Costello’s most shameful career low – an episode of drunken racism in the seemingly unremarkable surrounds of Columbus, Ohio. He’s fairly candid about how a row with one of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young got out of hand and just about redeems his age-old “but I’m not a racist” protestations with the apologetic words “there are no excuses”.

The second half of the book drags a touch, and many of his latter-day tales from the road are actually less engaging than the intimate vignettes of his younger years and family life.

Costello comes across more like a sinning choirboy than a real hell-raiser – he’s not quite rock ’n’ roll enough for his exploits in excess to sound truly dangerous.

You won’t be left anticipating a second volume of Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink, then, not least because the book is thoroughly exhaustive – but as a stand-alone read, it’s an entertaining portrait of one of rock’s square pegs, who somehow smuggled himself into its inner circles.
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Re: UNFAITHFUL MUSIC & DISAPPEARING INK - Oct. 2015

Post by verbal gymnastics »

Guy Somerset's comment of "...meat and potatoes of your bog standard memoir"

:?
Who’s this kid with his mumbo jumbo?
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Re: UNFAITHFUL MUSIC & DISAPPEARING INK - Oct. 2015

Post by johnfoyle »

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No.3 in Uncut's books of the year, the comment not credited, presumably by their original reviewer Allan Jones .
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Re: UNFAITHFUL MUSIC & DISAPPEARING INK - Oct. 2015

Post by sweetest punch »

http://www.nrc.nl/next/2015/12/04/hoe-c ... rd-1563705

Hoe Costello’s leven een zooitje werd

Elvis Costello is één van de meest productieve artiesten. Toch is hij in zijn autobiografie heel hard voor zichzelf.

Elvis Costello is al over de helft van zijn autobiografie als hij iets opmerkt: eigenlijk houdt hij niet zo van het onderwerp van het boek. Van zichzelf, dus. Van de man die op een gegeven moment, getrouwd en met een kind, er diverse minnaressen op nahield, doorgedraaid was van het leven op tournee, veel dronk en blauwe pilletjes nam. Hij was toen – eind 1978 – een sensatie, een van boze energie overlopende new wave-zanger die twee succesvolle albums had uitgebracht en een aantal bescheiden hits had gescoord. Het gaat vaak mis met artiesten die van de ene op de andere dag beroemd worden, dat wist hij wel. ‘Ik dacht dat ik een uitzondering was, maar ik was niet zo slim en had niet alles zo onder controle als ik deed voorkomen’, geeft hij toe. Later liet hij telkens zijn nieuwe platen horen aan zijn moeder, waarbij volgens hem de impliciete boodschap was: ‘Kijk eens ma, wat voor zooitje ik van mijn leven heb gemaakt. Het is maar goed dat ik er songs over kan schrijven.’ Er was één nummer dat zijn moeder niet vaker dan één keer wilde horen: ‘I Want To Vanish’.

Ondanks de melancholie, zelfspot en bittere observaties die Costello (61) in veel van zijn songs stopt, is het harde oordeel dat hij over zichzelf velt toch verrassend. Hij is één van de productiefste Britse artiesten van de afgelopen decennia en zeker de veelzijdigste. Na die explosieve eerste albums maakte hij uitstapjes naar countrymuziek, jazz, klassiek, verfijnde tijdloze pop en rhythm-and-blues.

Costello is een zanger die bijna altijd zeker van zichzelf klinkt, soms hard uithaalt, maar ook heel teder uit de hoek kan komen. Iemand die met muzieklegendes werkte, van Burt Bacharach tot Paul McCartney, van George Jones tot Allen Toussaint, van Count Basie tot Johnny Cash. Hij mag ‘Bob’ zeggen tegen Dylan. Hij is een graag geziene gast in Amerikaanse talkshows.

Zijn autobiografie roept eigenlijk een dubbel beeld op. De succesvolle artiest Elvis Costello, die soms rare fratsen uithaalt maar vooral ook hard werkt en groot respect geniet onder collega’s, en daarnaast de persoon achter de artiest – Declan MacManus (zoals zijn echte naam luidt) –, de muziekfan die altijd andere artiesten is blijven bewonderen, de jongen die opkeek naar zijn vader, de man die zich tegenover zijn moeder schaamde voor wat hij anderen had aangedaan, vooral zijn eerste vrouw Mary. De katholiek opgevoede man die vanaf midden jaren tachtig, bij wijze van boetedoening, lang vast bleef zitten in een steeds ongelukkigere relatie met Cait O’Riordan, die bekendstaat als zijn tweede vrouw maar met wie hij nooit officieel getrouwd is. ‘Ik vermoed nu dat ik mezelf simpelweg wilde straffen voor de dingen die ik had gedaan’, schrijft hij daarover. Hij strafte zichzelf voor zijn ondankbaarheid, ijdelheid en laksheid, zo somt hij zijn grootste zonden op.

Grootmoeder

Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink is een ambitieus boek. Dat Costello veel te vertellen heeft, is meteen al te zien aan de omvang. De structuur is niet die van de meeste memoires, die beginnen bij de vroegste herinneringen en netjes alle belangrijke gebeurtenissen chronologisch langslopen. Costello begint weliswaar met een jeugdherinnering, maar springt een paar pagina’s verderop naar 1980. Een anekdote uit de jaren negentig kan hem terugvoeren naar de jaren zeventig, het liedje ‘Veronica’ (1989) is een logische aanleiding om uit te weiden over zijn grootmoeder, over wie de tekst gaat.

Zijn geboorte komt aan bod in hoofdstuk zes, in het achttiende hoofdstuk gaat hij verder terug in het verleden en duikt hij in zijn familiegeschiedenis. Elders vertelt hij uitgebreid en liefdevol over de carrière van zijn vader Ross MacManus, die als zanger en trompettist redelijk bekend was. Zo laat hij tijdperken door elkaar lopen, zonder dat je als lezer de draad kwijtraakt.

Vooral zijn fans zullen blij zijn met de passages waarin Costello inzicht geeft in zijn teksten en laat zien hoe ze aansluiten bij de gebeurtenissen in zijn leven. In zijn liedjes speelt Costello graag met taal en stopt hij slimmigheidjes in zijn teksten die vrij cryptisch kunnen zijn. Ook in dit boek kan hij slim uit de hoek te komen, maar het blijft toegankelijk en begrijpelijk. Mede dankzij de anekdotes is het vermakelijk om te lezen, maar het legt zoals gezegd de vinger ook op zere plekken. En soms, zoals in de beschrijving van het overlijden van zijn vader, weet hij te ontroeren als in zijn mooiste songs.
Since you put me down, it seems i've been very gloomy. You may laugh but pretty girls look right through me.
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Re: UNFAITHFUL MUSIC & DISAPPEARING INK - Oct. 2015

Post by sweetest punch »

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/d ... -tom-jones

The best celebrity memoirs of 2015

From Tom Jones to the green grass of Old Trafford, via Sue Perkins’s diaristic mash-up and Steve Coogan’s entertaining confessional

Reports of the death of the celebrity memoir are much exaggerated, if this year’s giant crop is anything to go by. The new trend? The hybrid memoir that is actually a manifesto, a diary, a collection of essays or even a long list of life tips. The best example of this genre is Spectacles by Sue Perkins (Michael Joseph). She takes the quirky route with transcripts of dialogue, short diary entries, a FAQs section and virtually every paragraph punctuated by the spectacles logo. It has a narrative but it doesn’t shove it in your face. She’s honest, real and a decent writer.

Particularly enjoyable is her characterisation of BBC1’s failed game show, Don’t Scare the Hare (for which she provided the voiceover), as a “cluster-fuck omniflop”. And how satisfying to read about just how long it took the producers of Bake Off to realise that “watching nice people make nice cakes is all you need”.

From the more classic autobiographies, it’s worth picking up Steve Coogan’s Easily Distracted (Century) for the 1970s pudding-bowl haircut pictures of him alone. This is a simple, readable confessional – “I was happy with Anna, but had endless flings”; “I went to a party, took two tabs and went bonkers” – interspersed with Coogan’s trademark caustic asides and loads of telly and performance insight. Coke, drink, Spitting Image, Alan Partridge... If you love Coogan, this delivers.

With large print and some beautiful vintage photographs (Elvis and Tom!), Tom Jones: Over the Top and Back (Michael Joseph) is – honestly – a magical journey from Pontypridd to Vegas. Meticulously researched and evocative of a whole era, this is an excellent piece of journalism. (Kudos to the biographer-ghostwriter Giles Smith, who is credited in the acknowledgements for “helping with the words”. Jones’s voice is perfectly captured here.)

For serious music fans? It has to be Elvis Costello’s Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink (Viking). Utterly definitive and clearly, painstakingly penned by Costello himself, who doesn’t want to miss a detail. Patti Smith’s M Train (Bloomsbury) is more novelistic and lyrical (“September was ending and already cold”), complete with a collection of pre-Instagram, personal black and white arty shots. She calls it “a roadmap to my life”. It’s classy, elegant and addictive.

Something completely different? Well, this reviewer is not the target audience for Leading by Alex Ferguson with Michael Moritz (Hodder & Stoughton). However, it’s a gripping enough business/motivational read, in the mould of Alastair Campbell’s Winners and How They Succeed (in which Ferguson was a case study): “Nobody should not look at football for lessons about the way to fire people”; “I have yet to encounter anyone who has achieved massive success without closing themselves off from the demands of others or forgoing pastimes.” The ideal read for football fans who love self-help books. (Is that a large demographic?)

A personal favourite? Dedicated to his Jack Russell, Misty, Brian Blessed’s memoir, Absolute Pandemonium (Macmillan), is exactly what you would expect only louder, taller, bigger and more so. By taller I mean both the tales and the general vibe. “Now, there was a live donkey in this particular pantomime, but because it wasn’t going to be present until the dress rehearsal, somebody had to shout ‘Eee-orr!’ every time it was mentioned in the script... When the first cue arrived, somebody duly shouted ‘Eee-orr!’, and, as they did, [Peter] O’Toole woke up with a jolt. He looked at me, crossed his eyes and said, ‘This is art, love!’” With walk-on parts for Katharine Hepburn, Patrick Stewart, Laurence Olivier, Oliver Reed and Harold Pinter, it’s the quintessential luvvie memoir, pleasingly bonkers and bloody entertaining.
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Re: UNFAITHFUL MUSIC & DISAPPEARING INK - Oct. 2015

Post by johnfoyle »

http://www.drb.ie/essays/post-punk-polymath

Dublin Review of Books

Issue 73, December 2015

Post-Punk Polymath
John Fleming




Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink, by Elvis Costello, Viking, 688 pp, £25, ISBN: 978-0241003466



Frantic broken puppets half-twist and force music from instruments they seem to disdain. Steve Nieve waves fingers in dismissive flourishes over the unstable keyboard, as if trying to magic away its swirling sound. Peter Thomas is banging the drums, with the precision of a riveter. Bruce Thomas rotovates a deep tonal landscape with his cinematic and seismic bass. And an articulate young man called Elvis Costello thrashes in apparent scepticism at a guitar in which his surname has been embedded in silver lettering along the fretboard. Malarial sweat rolls from his face as he glares bug-eyed through glasses, mouth moulding a new wave sneer as the stage lights shift through the primary colours: violent red, migraine blue and jealous green. It is June 1978 and Elvis Costello and the Attractions are belting out Lipstick Vogue in the WDR studio in Cologne for a Rockpalast television broadcast.


Almost four decades later, Costello occupies a strange cultural perch as a literate dramatist operating as always through the medium of songwriting. A collaborator of extreme promiscuity, he has evolved into a grand old man of music who has crept across borders into nearly all the protected and cordoned off musical genres (classical, country, opera, jazz,R&B). Dragged behind what many must see as enemy lines, his fan base has reaped mixed rewards, deciding to stay loyal to the man or defect as tastes dictated.


Costello’s vast autobiography comes as a treat for this diehard fan of his first five or six albums. It is no surprise that one of the best lyricists of the punk rock wars should be able to deliver an engaging and articulate work. And for a man who used to punch out an album with a free EP, plus a brace of singles with extra B-sides each year, it is no shock the book should be so long.


A post-punk polymath, Costello shifted gear in the closing years of the 1970s from the tersely monochrome anger of the Clover-backed My Aim is True (1977) album to the spectrum-refracting richness of This Year’s Model (1978) and Armed Forces (1979). Then he navigated sideways towards Stax and Motown in Get Happy (1980) and to Nashville with Almost Blue (1981), along with the emergent lushness of Trust (1981) and Imperial Bedroom (1982) as the eighties got under way. But words such as Stax and Motown were historical terms to a listener limited by the infinity of punk-fuelled new wave and the literate possibility of its dismissive youth. They were “musical” terms mentioned reverentially, often by mod revivalists, in interviews in the New Musical Express and the rather soggy Melody Maker. They sounded like lessons to be learned and cast Costello as an intimidating pedagogue to the perhaps reluctant learner.


But Costello still served it all up with a characteristic swagger and intensity: there was a committed belief in music in there with his pop razzmatazz of polka-dot shirts and sharp suits and the sturdy clan articulacy of his four-man band. There was something honest and reverential in his musical reinvention. Ongoing experimentation would drive his progressing (if not progressive) rock in the decades that followed. On a creased VHS recording of the 1981 South Bank Show about his big trip to Nashville to work with the late Billy Sherrill (a big country and western producer, the documentary told his fans), it became apparent that Costello was a craftsman, a melodic lyricist for hire in the service of his own musical obsession. To him, the musical past was extremely relevant, a wishing well to be usefully dipped into. As he observes here in the book of his life “ … performance doesn’t require the qualification of being either ‘country music’ or ‘soul music’. It’s just a human with the unique gift of an instrument, telling you everything you need to know about the bleak comedy of love in two and a half minutes.” And, more generally again, conjuring up the earthy spirituality that only the foolish would choose to deny permeates pop music, he writes: “These songs are there to help you when you need them most. You can stumble into them anytime, like the noise and benediction of any basement dive.”


Costello comes across in these pages as a very decent man, one whose cynicism about the music business chimes with his early anti-rock-star antics and demeanour. There is a maturity in his self-criticism and something honourable about the complete lack of backstabbing of people who must have crossed him over the years. His world view is hugely moral and self-reproaching, but his brushwork appears at times rather broad. Whether motivated by efforts to protect himself from gory details or out of a more noble kindness to spare the feelings of others involved, he tends to allude to rather than describe incidents that clearly cause him to hang his head in shame. He imparts ruefully the insight he may have acquired into his own frailty rather than presenting the facts of the associated misbehaviour. Backdrops to early songs that crackle with the electricity of possessiveness, emotional betrayal and hurt are suggested here but mainly with mere reference to those very themes of possession, betrayal and hurt. He takes such themes of songs and tells us these themes are anchored in his life, but usually without specifying exactly how. Infidelity stalks the pages, but this is no confessional. From his early days as an emergent pop star on the road, he harvests his understanding with tools of intelligence rather than visceral or lurid replays. Is he just being a gentleman or is he running scared? Let the reader decide. He would not be alone among artists in letting words rather than feelings be the units of his medium. He sounds a few chords suggestive of this approach: “I’d become expert in writing in the dark, as even pausing to reach for the light switch could scare away the thought … The proposed titles read like a script … It took me nearly another ten years to finish writing about the misery I provoked and the darkness that could envelope two people once so brightly in love.”


There are far more direct emotions and anecdotes in accounts of his beloved father, Ross McManus, a singer with the Joe Loss Orchestra and later a type of musical jack of all trades. It is tempting to suggest that Costello’s clear love for his father was an attempt to bond with a man all too often away on musical tours and with a weakness for falling into the arms of women other than his wife. The father comes across as an unlikely charmer and ladies’ man embroiled in a phase of popular music closely allied to the hovering ghost of vaudeville, in which the aesthetics of a simpler showbiz world revolve around entertainment. Ross’s profession necessitated him bringing home all the latest records for impartial listening with a view to mastering suitable tunes for later reproduction to his big band/show band audience. This imitative activity sheds some procedural light on episodes in Elvis’s life. Young Costello buys every country record he can get his hands on and whittles them down to a shortlist of thirty-odd tunes to bring to Nashville. In an earlier exercise, he stockpiles Stax and Motown records so that he and the Attractions can steep themselves in such music to create the generous twenty-tune homage of Get Happy with Nick Lowe. Formative years include a teenage Elvis in Liverpool emerging after a childhood in London from which he relocated with his mother after his parents split up. His father’s parcels of records, US imports and promo acetates feed the boy and introduce him to the wonderful wideness of music. Costello listened and learned, studying variety and style with his ears, plucking out and keeping the records he liked most, first hearing and falling for the Beatles in this way. A whirlwind of music enters his mind and heart as something that can be appropriated, imitated, pastiched or, better still, drawn upon.


Rock’s rich tapestry (note to the unfamiliar: this was a succinct, lore-filled phrase used in the New Musical Express, a publication itself fabled in its late 1970s and early 1980s incarnation) is an influential and hardwearing floor-covering. Costello is both a participant observer and zealous sentinel among rock’s practitioners. To read his lifelong enthusiasm and reverence for music is to remember that tapestry is a magic carpet woven for us all from our early musical moments of fan discovery, be it of musicians of mass appeal and great success or minor obscurities mainly unknown. As we go through life, we might never develop a passion for morsels of music. Or we might relinquish it. But far better, we might cling to it, rejecting any accusation that our affection might be an immaturity out of which we should have grown. Songs are things we love: melodies twist into us, they poison and preserve us, a lyrical line becomes part of your life line, a drum intro or bleating note can infect you with an illness of which you will never be cured. You can remain blissfully scarred by the scratches on records you acquired and will always keep. Despite a suspicious taste for the obscure, I have no idea who David Ackles was but many thoughts about music are triggered for me in wanting to quote Costello here when he writes: “I have no explanation as to why the David Ackles albums spoke to me so intensely, but it was with these records that I probably spent the most time when I was about sixteen, listening in a darkened room, trying to imagine how everything had come to exist.”


Returning to London as a computer programmer, Costello records clandestinely afterhours in his kitchen, banging out songs that would be the backbone of his debut album My Aim is True. His affection for producer/musician Nick Lowe and his work with the maverick Stiff record label is presented in a matter-of-fact unmythologised way: he is booked to record at Pathway Studios in Islington, which “looked like a place where you might get your bicycle fixed”.



Apart from words on his grandparents, parents and half-brothers, and his wife and three sons, Costello’s most tender moments come in his descriptions of the personalities of musicians he loves and respects: Bob Dylan, Burt Bacharach, Allen Toussaint, Paul McCartney, Chet Baker, Robert Wyatt, the members of the Brodsky Quartet, the Attractions themselves. There is a brief mention of “sherbet fountains and penny chews” but Costello avoids any easy nostalgia for the postwar 1950s into which he was born. Occasional details leap from his prose like evocative lyrics: reminiscing about his grandfather, he writes “my Papa, not being a practical man, had Sellotaped the runner of the carpet when a stair-rod came unfixed”. There is a warm nostalgia in his recollection of his Nana’s use of the word “several” to suggest seven of something. In another striking aside, he refers to his son at six fretting why “nobody seems to like him” as he listens to The Beatles’ Fool on the Hill – he may be joking when he suggests the easiest solution now is to phone up Paul McCartney who wrote the words for advice on how to reassure the boy.


The dignity of labour and a sense of hard work are conveyed throughout the book. Costello is clearly no slouch: he is driven by curiosity and the notion that being blessed with a talent means you have a duty to use it. His father’s livelihood as a jobbing musician seems to have instilled in him a need to put in the hours, but also a keen sense of the cruelty of fickle show business, as in this account: “I listen to the radio late into the night, waiting for my Dad to arrive from any workingmen’s club engagement within driving distance of Birkenhead. My Nana prepares sandwiches and a bottle of Guinness on a side table, I might get to share the beer with him at this hour. It is 1971 … I tell my Dad about the earnest song I was trying to sing earlier that evening in a folk club, but our worlds are very different … He recounts the fates of failed acts or ‘turns’, faced with the indignity of being ‘paid off’ – that is sent on their way without completing their engagement rather than left at the mercy of a disapproving or hostile crowd. It’s no easy life. He tells of the desperate characters clinging to the edges of fame: eager girl singers, eccentric ventriloquists, and sullen comics, some of whom conform to the sad-clown cliché, others who turn into belligerent drunks.”


He describes an early occasion in which he joins his father onstage: “I’m huddled with a sceptical band behind a lowered curtain, struggling to get my guitar in tune … The compere finishes reading out a list of bingo numbers and coming attractions and begins our introduction ... My Dad gives me a final look of encouragement and checks that I have the right opening number. I know he is happy to have me there with him, but his urgency also says, This isn’t a game, this is my work.”


Such moments are evocative and enlightening. While they excavate a troubadour gene, they also shed light on father and son lineages everywhere. On this he writes succinctly and with salience. But accounts of his grandfather playing as a musician on a liner back and forth across the Atlantic and of his First World War experiences simply fail to engage. The book sags occasionally for this reason: it could have done without some chapters and could usefully have been shorn of say two hundred of its pages. But perhaps Costello is simply worth it – the Midas touch he has always had with music saves the day and, after a run of wayward paragraphs, he always gets back on track and hits you with something memorable and insightful. Take this on Declan MacManus’s stunning show biz stage name: “The decision for me to adopt the Elvis name had always seemed like a mad dare. A stunt conceived by my managers to grab people’s attention long enough for the songs to penetrate, as my good looks and animal magnetism were certainly not going to do the job.” Describing how he comes unstuck as a former pop star with a fall from Top of the Pops fame, he writes lucidly: “Otherwise I’d think of those years in the mid-’80s as ‘The Land That Music Forgot’. A lot of the hit records of the time were not songs as I understood them, but shiny, open-ended sequences of music, mostly conjured up in the studio. I tried to go along with the plan for a while but I felt like a blacksmith in a glass factory.”


“Blacksmith” and “glass factory” are workplace references which resonate within the oeuvre of a man who wrote songs called Hoover Factory and Shipbuilding. One might be tempted to widen this into detection of an ongoing theme to do with establishments, as per Chemistry Class’s lyric “They chopped you up in butcher's school / Threw you out of the academy of garbage / You'll be a joker all your life / A student at the comedy college.” And as for the 1996 Grammy Awards, he writes here in familiar terms: “I felt like a spy who had infiltrated Show Business School.”


Chapter 23 is called “Is He Really Going Out With Her?”, a good-natured reference to Joe Jackson’s song of almost the same name. Elsewhere in the book, Costello refers to Jackson as a talent. Back in the distant past, the music press perceived a vocal similarity between the two. Some similarity might have also extended to Graham Parker, an original who predated them both, and indeed The Jags, a less original, short-lived act, who followed them. Jackson’s debut album Look Sharp (1979) shared some of the world view of My Aim is True. When Jackson’s On Your Radio came out that same year, some rather facilely detected a conceptual similarity to Costello’s Radio Radio. Joe at the time masterfully pointed out he had written and performed the song long before Radio Radio appeared. While none of this is alluded to in these pages, it is encouraging to see Costello joke with a chapter title.


I have only seen Elvis Costello in concert three times – and always at the Stadium in Dublin – in around 1980, 1983 and “more recently” in 2002. The first time he played I shook his hand outside on the South Circular Road through the window of a limousine, passing in a piece of paper which he and all the band autographed for me. But when it came back out through the window someone else made off with it, to my eternal dismay. The second time, the band were in a white van and I got the picture sleeve of the Clubland single signed by all the band but sadly not Costello. The third time, as a thirty-seven-year old, I did not hang around outside the Stadium for my teenage zeal had understandably waned. I also met him in 1985 at a Pogues sound-check in McGonagles. Some fellow communication studies student friends and I had blagged our way into doing some videoing. Costello was there that afternoon but would not co-operate or give an interview. Or even be civil. He was snide and I came away disheartened at a hero. Two years later in London, in 1987, I passed him in Ladbroke Grove. He wore a herring-bone overcoat and had an album under his arm. He smiled and said hello. However, I had ceased listening to his new records some years beforehand, as the energy of the new wave dissipated and fussy brass sections entered his music.


He went on to grow as a sophisticated musician, a songwriter of subtlety and a collaborator of great note. On the relationship between melody and lyrics, he has this to say: “One lesson I learned from writing with Paul [McCartney] was that once the melodic shape was established, he would not negotiate about stretching the line rhythmically to accommodate a rhyme … Burt [Bacharach] is even more unyielding once the melody is written … Not being a lyricist, he had never given himself any reason to cheat. I cheat shamelessly. The unevenly apportioned lines of my early songs drove The Attractions mad. They were difficult to memorise, as no two verses were exactly alike.”


Speckled throughout the book are a few short sequences introduced as short stories. They have something of the flavour of Pinter’s more or less adjective-shorn prose, and seem to be offered as sublimated insights into Costello’s fears and worst experiences: “It was raining hard on one side of the building as Inch took shelter inside … Whenever he was fool enough to come here, Inch always felt as if he had entered in the middle of a private conversation that he would never understand … The cackling laughter of the two men followed Inch outside until the sprung door slammed shut behind him.”

This book is a smart, considered account of the life of an artist. It turns a spotlight on pop music and entertainment, as well as on the process of collaborative songwriting, as Costello eventually gets to work with many of his idols: “I know I never expected to meet half the people who I’ve encountered down these years and across these pages. I thought they were just names on record jackets, reputations spelled out in the lightbulbs of a marquee, or consoling voices in the dark, but that’s not the way it has turned out.” Towards the end, he pulls together various strands explored when he writes: “I see no way to stop now, whatever stage I’m standing on or if my songs should be distant memories or widely distributed in pill form like the food of astronauts. This is not an occupation. I believe it is a vocation. One can mean you’re just taking up space and burning time, the other cannot be denied.”

While his career has waxed and waned, Costello’s endurance and effective permanent success suggests he will persevere until he drops. He will keep writing songs and mastering styles, living in music whatever about the public eye, always incorporating what he learns from other musicians and what has been handed down to him from father to son. And whatever about the eternity of cultural artefacts such as records, pop videos, magazine covers and now this book, the sixty-one-year-old remains conscious of one thing: “When your name was printed just above that of the liquor licensee at the bottom of the bill. That’s where we all start out and that is where I suspect I shall return, and none of this that I am telling you about will matter then.”


1/12/2015


John Fleming is a journalist with The Irish Times and an award-winning radio dramatist whose plays have been broadcast on BBC and RTÉ. A Dubliner, he writes fiction and is a music fan.
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Re: UNFAITHFUL MUSIC & DISAPPEARING INK - Oct. 2015

Post by johnfoyle »

http://therumpus.net/2015/12/horn-revie ... aring-ink/


HORN! REVIEWS: UNFAITHFUL MUSIC & DISAPPEARING INK
BY KEVIN THOMAS
December 4th, 2015


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Re: UNFAITHFUL MUSIC & DISAPPEARING INK - Oct. 2015

Post by Otis Westinghouse »

Great review!
There's more to life than books, you know, but not much more
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Re: UNFAITHFUL MUSIC & DISAPPEARING INK - Oct. 2015

Post by sweetest punch »

Review in Dutch: http://www.demorgen.be/cultuur/elvis-co ... 0212814eec

Elvis Costello toont zijn andere gezicht

In een fabelachtig goed geschreven autobiografie laat de muzikant een andere kant van zichzelf zien.

Elvis Costello blikt terug op zijn leven als muzikant in een fabelachtig goed geschreven boek, dat leest als een boetedoening en een eerbetoon tegelijk. Vreemd hoe een van de grootste songschrijvers van zijn generatie zo hard voor zichzelf kan zijn.


In 1977, na een in ruzie geëindigde onenightstand met een Mexicaanse taxichauffeuse, schreef de jonge Elvis Costello (nu 61) een van zijn grootste hits, 'Accidents Will Happen'. Het kostte hem een half uur in een schrale motelkamer ergens in de buurt van Tucson, Arizona, bij het ochtendgloren. ''Accidents' is een nummer over een vreemdgaande minnaar, die moeite heeft de waarheid te vertellen en de gevolgen te aanvaarden. Ik veranderde elke 'I' in 'we', als om de schuld bij ons allebei te leggen, ook al was het helemaal die van mij, en toen veranderde ik 'I' in 'he' om mijn sporen nog verder uit te wissen.'

Dat schuldgevoel en het veranderende perspectief op zijn eigen leven hebben Elvis Costello gevormd, zo blijkt uit zijn fabelachtig goed geschreven autobiografie Trouweloze muziek & verdwijnende inkt, waarin hij een heel ander gezicht toont als in het merendeel van zijn publieke leven.

Het gekke is: ik ben al meer dan dertig jaar fan, maar ik heb Costello nooit sympathiek gevonden. Ik was te zeer geïntimideerd door zijn taalvirtuositeit, en tijdens concerten ging er zelfs op zijn charmantste momenten een bepaalde superioriteit van hem uit die dezelfde soort afstand creëerde als die tussen een zelfgenoegzame professor en een onzekere student. Costello zelf wijt een en ander aan het spleetje tussen zijn voortanden: 'Het lijkt erop dat wat Jane Birkin zo aantrekkelijk maakt, bij mij het effect teweegbrengt dat de helft van wat ik zeg klinkt als provocatie of belediging.'

Al vroeg in het boek wordt duidelijk dat hij met schaamte terugkijkt op zijn jonge jaren, waarin hij 'werd opgezogen door de stofzuiger van het amusement'. Genadeloos fileert hij zijn eigen gedrag, gedreven door drank, drugs en promiscuïteit. Wanneer ik zijn gewraakte optreden in Saturday Night Live uit 1977 bekijk op YouTube (Costello onderbrak de afgesproken song na dertig seconden om vervolgens het onbekende 'Radio Radio' af te raggen), zie ik niet langer een eigenzinnige rebel maar een jongen opgefokt door zijn eigen onzekerheid die angstig in het rond kijkt om te zien of de camera's nog draaien.

Wat dat betreft is het boek een boetedoening, en tegelijk vereffent hij een schuld met al wie hem in de loop der jaren heeft beïnvloed of op weg hielp. De centrale figuur is in beide gevallen zijn vader, van wie Costello zowel zijn swingend-destructieve levensstijl als zijn liefde voor muziek erfde. Het hoofdstuk waarin hij samen met zijn dementerende vader muziek luistert is hartverscheurend, net als de passage over diens overlijden. Met opvallend veel detail en liefde schrijft Costello over zijn familie, die vaak opduikt in zijn werk: 'Veronica' gaat over zijn grootmoeder, 'Suit of Lights' over een pijnlijk optreden van zijn vader, en 'Any King's Chilling' over zijn grootvader Pat MacManus, trompettist op de White Star Line, over wie Costello op schitterende wijze vertelt hoe zijn geest aan hem verschijnt, jaren na zijn dood.

Bevrijd

Costello gaat uitgebreid in op details in zijn teksten en composities die verwijzen naar andere songs en artiesten, alsof hij wil zeggen: het was niet mijn verdienste, ik hoefde het alleen maar op te schrijven. Zo plaatst hij zichzelf nadrukkelijk in een traditie, terwijl hij onverdroten verder zoekt naar zijn eigen verhaal.

In de klassieker 'Shipbuilding' (over de Falklands-oorlog) verbindt hij het wedervaren van zijn eigen ouders in de Tweede Wereldoorlog met de actualiteit van 1982, en ontstaat er iets universeels uit wat hij zelf 'een simpel idee' noemt: 'Mannen die hun werk terug krijgen om schepen te bouwen om daarop hun zonen te laten sneuvelen.' Wanneer hij zo zijn persoonlijke geschiedenis verbindt met de geschiedenis van de wereld waarin hij zich bevindt, puttend uit elke mogelijke bron, met veel respect voor al wie hem voorging, toont Costello zich een echte schrijver, nog meer dan muzikant. Die momenten, en de verhalen over zijn gewetensvolle manier van werken, het eindeloze 'verhuizen' van zinnen van notitieboekje naar notitieboekje tot ze uiteindelijk soms meer dan twintig jaar later pas hun plek vinden in een song, deden mij meer dan eens berustend voor me uit staren terwijl ik tegen mezelf mompelde: "Zo moet het."

Ik heb altijd beweerd dat Costello van grotere invloed op mijn fictiewerk is dan eender welke romanschrijver. Dat deed ik vooral omdat het goed klonk - zoals de jonge Costello vermoedelijk zelf ook zou hebben gedaan - maar nu weet ik zeker dat het waar is. Dat komt wellicht ook doordat mijn fascinatie voor Costello begon als een fascinatie voor taal: toen ik als vijftienjarige puber het toen al jaren oude 'Accidents Will Happen' hoorde, werd ik getroffen door de mysterieuze, nerveuze frasering van een tekst die ik niet begreep, vol woorden die je nooit in popsongs tegenkwam. Twee weken later kocht ik het album King of America, dat in niets leek op de snedige, sarcastische en gek genoeg bijzonder meezingbare powerpop van Armed Forces maar verhalende songs geworteld in blues en country bevatte, met godbetert de bejaarde gitarist van die ándere Elvis in de begeleidingsband.

Ik was niet bereid toe te geven dat ik mijn zuurverdiende centjes aan een miskoop had besteed, en luisterbeurt na luisterbeurt, met het tekstvel op schoot, openbaarde zich de schoonheid van dit album met zijn ijzingwekkend mooie, sterk beeldende songteksten die lezen als korte verhalen. Daarna stond ik muzikaal en tekstueel gezien voor alles open en had ik onbewust dezelfde belangrijke les geleerd die Costello van Neil Young meekreeg: 'Als er een verwachtingspatroon is, probeer het dan te doorbreken.'

King of America (1986) en de talloze andere genre-uitstapjes die Costello tot op de dag van vandaag maakte, waren er nooit gekomen zonder een knokpartij met de entourage van Stephen Stills tijdens een Amerikaanse tour in 1979 waarbij een dronken Costello racistische taal uitsloeg over Ray Charles. Het incident ('Ik was altijd bevriend geweest met woorden, nu had ik ze verraden') kostte hem zijn Amerikaanse doorbraak en beschouwt hij nu als zijn 'redding van een pathetisch leven'. Bevrijd van de plicht om een popster te moeten zijn, stortte hij zich op een enorme verscheidenheid aan samenwerkingen.

Optische illusie

In Trouweloze muziek & verdwijnende inkt toont Costello zich uitermate nederig, een eeuwige fan, en dat kan verdacht zijn: publiek geuite bescheidenheid is vaak een vorm van arrogantie. Maar Costello's geloofwaardigheid komt nooit in het gedrang. Daarvoor schrijft hij te consistent, te gedetailleerd, te goed - en geestig waar het kan. Hij laat zich leiden door wat hem heeft geraakt in het leven in plaats van zich de dwang van de chronologie te laten opleggen.

En zo is het verbijsterend om te lezen dat een van de grootste songschrijvers van zijn tijd zichzelf simpelweg niet goed genoeg vindt en zichzelf voortdurend lijkt te willen straffen voor 'mijn gebrek aan dankbaarheid, mijn ijdelheid'. De talloze ontmoetingen en vriendschappen met mensen als Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Joni Mitchell, Burt Bacharach, Bruce Springsteen beschrijft hij alsof hij in zijn eigen jongensboek heeft geleefd en het nóg niet kan geloven.

Nadat hij heeft verteld hoe hij als kind voor het eerst een podium betrad met de band van zijn vader en de volumeknop van zijn gitaar dichtdraaide om vervolgens de hele show te playbacken uit angst het te verknallen, schrijft hij dan ook: 'Vrijwel alles wat hierop volgde, is een vergelijkbare optische illusie geweest.'

(Ivo Victoria)
Since you put me down, it seems i've been very gloomy. You may laugh but pretty girls look right through me.
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Re: UNFAITHFUL MUSIC & DISAPPEARING INK - Oct. 2015

Post by johnfoyle »

Print presentation of the above -

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Re: UNFAITHFUL MUSIC & DISAPPEARING INK - Oct. 2015

Post by johnfoyle »

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Nadine O'Regan includes the book in the Sunday Business Post (Dublin) best books of the year , though , alas , she seems to have mixed up the Sam Cooke tribute show (2005) with the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame induction show (2003).
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Re: UNFAITHFUL MUSIC & DISAPPEARING INK - Oct. 2015

Post by sweetest punch »

Amazon.co.uk has a paperback version for pre- order: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Unfaithful-Musi ... 6MPBQ0PA0P
Releasedate: May 5, 2016

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Since you put me down, it seems i've been very gloomy. You may laugh but pretty girls look right through me.
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Re: UNFAITHFUL MUSIC & DISAPPEARING INK - Oct. 2015

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Re: UNFAITHFUL MUSIC & DISAPPEARING INK - Oct. 2015

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http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero ... cover-rock


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Do music memoirs matter?

Dec 14th 2015, 12:51 by K.Y.W. | ATLANTA


THIS Christmas, booksellers are featuring several memoirs by rock musicians in their product queues. The authors are not all household names, yet new volumes by Elvis Costello (an English singer-songwriter, pictured), Chrissie Hynde (of The Pretenders), Patti Smith (a New York musician), Carrie Brownstein (of Sleater-Kinney) and others have already made it onto the year’s bestsellers lists. The books are diverse in style and tone: Mr Costello’s witty “Unfaithful Music” is a colourful timeline for which the singer serves as his own emcee; Ms Smith’s “M Train” is a sentimental journey through cities of the world ­and the pathways of her singular mind; Ms Hynde’s “Reckless” is an oral history with an unfinished ending; and Ms Brownstein’s “Hunger” is a self-effacing primer on the last of rock’s glory days.

If rock ‘n’ roll has waned on the pop charts for more than a decade, why would the personal histories of artists who hail from the heydays of terrestrial FM radio and MTV matter to readers in 2015? One answer lies in the book-tour trend, in which such authors trek across America and Europe signing copies of their hardbacks, narrating slideshows about their childhoods and performing acoustic songs in front of sold-out crowds. The release of so many memoirs is more than an attempt to cash in on nostalgia. Songwriters are storytellers, and each in their way, these memoirists seem to enjoy prose as much as music and lyrics. Readers respond with an eagerness for more words from those whose melodies have defined memorable moments in their lives.


At an Atlanta theatre, there to peddle his 672-page "Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink" in October, Mr Costello spent more than an hour telling tales from his book and using a tablet computer to swipe between memories, such as a video of his father singing a 1960s big-band version of Pete Seeger’s “If I Had a Hammer” and a still of his own first performance at a local Liverpool civic club in 1971. Mr Costello writes like a showman, with a poetic, polished surface and masked emotions; “Unfaithful Music” is full of career details to devour, yet the book feels a bit like sleight of hand compared to this deeper presentation Mr Costello makes in front of a live audience. Reading between the lines of the book isn’t enough to reveal what’s behind the skinny ties and spectacles. At the event, he is a comic, a lexicon of musical knowledge and a master collaborator who drops names like McCartney, Dylan and Cash without a thought. The prolific showman needs his show: at the 90-minute mark, he flipped through a large stack of 45-RPM singles that influenced him—recounting a story for each one, before finishing the evening with a cheeky acoustic take on his “Every Day I Write the Book”.


A few weeks later in the same venue, Patti Smith read from “M Train”, and fielded questions ranging in topic from the record collection she shared with her late husband (Fred “Sonic” Smith, guitarist for MC5) to her favourite coffee shops. As a young woman living in Manhattan in the 1970s with artist Robert Mapplethorpe (about whom she wrote a 2010 memoir, “Just Kids”), she never imagined later touring the world as a rock star or winning literary awards in her 60s. In contrast to Mr Costello’s stories of endless gigs and interchangeable bandmates, Ms Smith’s book contains a series of lonesome reflections scribbled on napkins at restaurants, including her grief upon Sonic's death. At the end of the event, when Ms Smith performed a sing-along version of 1978’s “Because the Night”, the song’s familiar melody and lyrics had taken on the weight of the discussion which had preceded them.

In “Reckless”, The Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde recalls walking miles from her suburban childhood home to downtown Akron, Ohio to sneak into local music clubs and to buy the latest albums at the shop. The book is written in the same tone as her casual, tough singing voice – no extraneous flourishes, only the vibe of black eyeliner and motorcycle boots. In one diary-style chapter, she remembers being a student at Kent State University in the days surrounding the shootings of 1970, when “every dorm room blasted Hendrix” and “the campus looked like an on-the-spot report from Vietnam.” In subsequent passages, Ms Hynde describes being the victim of a sexual assault, surviving the deaths of two bandmates (from cocaine and heroin use), and earning her status as one of the first women to both front a successful rock quartet and pen its musical catalogue. These experiences ultimately yielded “My City Was Gone“ and “Back on the Chain Gang”, among others. “Reckless” is juicy but not salacious, comprehensive yet incomplete; it leaves readers breathlessly dangling in 1984 and and wanting more.

Carrie Brownstein’s “Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl” is a Generation X companion to “Reckless”, without the feminist struggle. To most audiences, Ms Brownstein is known as the writer, producer and actress from the television sketch comedy “Portlandia”, but she got her start playing guitar for Sleater-Kinney in the 1990s. In the book, when Ms Brownstein and her bandmates debate about whether to release their third album (“Dig Me Out”) on a major music label, she labours to reconcile the opportunity with her “esoteric and extraneous knowledge of musical minutiae...developed during those formative years as a means of social currency and credibility.” The author unwittingly evokes the hipsters at which she pokes fun on TV: she seems so afraid of selling out that she spends hundreds of words affirming her coolness to herself. The band settles on a label, goes to therapy, tours relentlessly and suffers health problems. The turning point in the book happens at the end, when Sleater-Kinney opens for Pearl Jam, an epiphany Ms Brownstein claims, “changed [her] life.” In the final chapters, she writes of Pearl Jam’s dedication to the purity of its craft, in both songwriting and performance – an influence that not only “emboldened” her own band to briefly enter the mainstream it once feared, but also to broaden its approach to songwriting and business.

Rock biographies written by outsiders often focus on sex, drugs and notoriety. The most successful music memoirs, however, are the ones in which the authors reveal more than what a Wikipedia search and tabloid headlines might turn up. In this regard, Ms Hynde’s descriptions of how she emerged from the Ohio suburbs to become a rock star make Reckless the rawest and most compelling of the season. Ms Smith’s book reads like an richly textured novella; Mr Costello’s is simply a clever chronology; and surprisingly, Ms Brownstein’s autobiography lacks much of the humour which ultimately pushed her fame beyond her band to a wider audience on TV.

In the digital era, artists’ curated lifestyles on social media leave nothing to the imagination. But even if a picture is worth a thousand words, these older stars' 100,000 words are worth even more. There are few shreds of mystery or privacy left in the celebrity world, but readers remain eager to hear even over-covered rockers do what they do best: tell their own stories.
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Otis Westinghouse
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Re: UNFAITHFUL MUSIC & DISAPPEARING INK - Oct. 2015

Post by Otis Westinghouse »

I hope for the paperback edition they fork out enough to correct the annoyingly frequent typos in the book. It's a bugbear of mine as someone who's worked in publishing for 27 years, but why a publisher of the status of Penguin Viking can't send a book of this stature out 'clean' is beyond me. They say that if you have no corrections in your reprint file, you spent too long editing the book, but I'm only 50 pages or so in and have already found several clangers (missing articles, misspellings, etc.). Beyond the literals are also quite few things where a good copy editor would have tidied up some of the wording, and beyond the copy editing a really good text editor might have tightened up some of the writing a bit.

No blaming Costello, he writes very well indeed, as has been said repeatedly, his speaking voice comes through, and if you're used hearing him tell his tales in his live shows, you can hear his singular voice coming through the prose. Many people I know who aren't Costello fans per se loved the Radio 4 Book of the Week excerpts from the full audiobook and it makes me almost wish I was listening to it not reading it. Maybe I should do both.

Other than that, now I'm reading it I seriously miss the lack of an index, especially for the songs. As it's non-chronological, I really want to know what he says about all the songs and will want to go back to these comments for future reference. I don't know if anyone has got there before me (Charliestumpy?) but I'm thinking I need to keep running notes of each and every song/album ref.

It's great read and you do learn a lot from it, for example the engrossing details of recording Imperial Bedroom, or the Macbeth family living downstairs. As a second tier fan compared to some of you folks, this is all new to me. Great stuff. And I love the free-flowing digressive feel of it. Good job Elvis!
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erey
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Re: UNFAITHFUL MUSIC & DISAPPEARING INK - Oct. 2015

Post by erey »

Otis Westinghouse wrote:I hope for the paperback edition they fork out enough to correct the annoyingly frequent typos in the book. It's a bugbear of mine as someone who's worked in publishing for 27 years, but why a publisher of the status of Penguin Viking can't send a book of this stature out 'clean' is beyond me. They say that if you have no corrections in your reprint file, you spent too long editing the book, but I'm only 50 pages or so in and have already found several clangers (missing articles, misspellings, etc.).
Is this only a problem in the UK version, or are US readers (including me) just too dumb to notice it? I've noticed the occasional oddly placed comma or compound adjective possibly in need of a hyphen, but nothing like the kind of basic proofreading errors UK readers keep complaining about.

As far as listening goes, you're really depriving yourself as an EC fan if you don't get the audio book. Out my way, Audible.com is giving the things away all the time.
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verbal gymnastics
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Re: UNFAITHFUL MUSIC & DISAPPEARING INK - Oct. 2015

Post by verbal gymnastics »

It's written in American eg humor, behavior but there are the odd grammatical errors as well.

Am I the only person that's not bothered about the lack of an index?
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erey
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Re: UNFAITHFUL MUSIC & DISAPPEARING INK - Oct. 2015

Post by erey »

verbal gymnastics wrote:It's written in American eg humor, behavior but there are the odd grammatical errors as well.

Am I the only person that's not bothered about the lack of an index?
I'm certainly not bothered by the lack of index, VG, since the digital text is fully searchable.

Indices are tricky business, anyway, and require more editorial choices than the uninitiated might realize. I suspect this is exactly why EC nixed having one. For example, do you index something -- or someone -- if the reference is clear but not explicit? Term selection s important, too. I suspect the only way EC would have allowed on index is if he'd done it himself.
Last edited by erey on Wed Dec 16, 2015 3:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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