Costello biographer Graeme Thomson

Pretty self-explanatory
johnfoyle
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Post by johnfoyle »

And does this mean the updated text due in the UK paperback is included in the US?)
I guess so. Graeme has sinced moved on to another music related book so , while he still remains a Costello fan , ' Shadows is very much a 'job done' as far as he is concerned.
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Post by mood swung »

finally shipped today!! I suspect, unless I get sick and spend the next few days in bed (oh! heaven!), that I will get no further in the Dark Tower series than I was before.

and if you haven't ordered your copy yet, don't forget that little button up there on the right side of your screen. Not the one that says Elvis Costello Fans. Your other right. This commercial brought to you by elviscostellofans.com, which thanks you for your support (picture Wilford Brimley here).
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Post by scielle »

Got my copy of Complicated Shadows today, and looking at the back cover I came to a rather unsettling realization - EC looks exactly like my father! Dad's a year younger, doesn't know the first thing about music, and quite frankly has no clue who EC is, but that picutre, minus the guitar and EC's generally tasteful fashion sense, I swear it's like looking at a family album!
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Post by Otis Westinghouse »

Now what would the Freudian interpretation of this be?
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Post by SweetPear »

I had pre-ordered the book on Amazon and it's got my delivery date down as May 12-14.
We shall see.
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SweetPear
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Post by SweetPear »

I just got my copy in the mail today!! Only had time to look through the photos so far. I'm thinking early to bed tonight w/my book?
Ha! (Not a chance.)

(P.S. I did order mine through this site on Amazon.)
Last edited by SweetPear on Tue May 10, 2005 2:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by spooky girlfriend »

Thanks, Sweet Pear, and all of you who have recently made purchases through the site. Every little bit helps to fund the site. :)
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Post by johnfoyle »

I think this is the first U.S. review.

http://www.libraryjournal.com/


Library Journal

It would be an overstatement to say that Elvis Costello single-handedly changed popular music in the late 1970s and 1980s, but one would also be negligent in discounting his influence. As British journalist Thomson eloquently shows in this in-depth biography, Costello's tireless search for inspiration and ideas led to greatness. Drawing on original interviews with nearly 50 people who have been associated with Costello, the author evaluates and rightly praises his subject's lyrics, which are often absolutely inspired.

Thomson also tracks Costello's uncanny ability to choose bandmates (usually under the rubric The Attractions) who lent that extra dimension to his harmonic and melodic touches and his fascinating projects with Burt Bacharach and the Brodsky String Quartet. Readers also get a taste of Costello's personal life, which while stormy is replete with the songwriter's inimitable character.

Although Thomson often succumbs to the "include everything and readers will eventually find the nuggets" school of writing, those with even a remote interest in rock music of the past 30 years will find his book utterly mesmerizing; it surpasses competing books like Tony Clayton-Lea's Elvis Costello. For all popular music collections.

William G. Kenz

http://www.mnstate.edu/govdocs/personal2.htm

Minnesota State Univ. Lib., Moorhead Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
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Post by lostdog »

This from the current issue of BLENDER:

THE BEST PART OF A BIG BOOK!
According to ex-girlfriend Bebe Buell, Elvis Costello wasn't just a mean drunk - he was also paranoid!
"'I've protected Elvis quite a bit, and there are many things about him I'd never reveal,' she says. 'He would wake me up at three in the morning from a sound sleep and accuse me of dreaming about somebody else.'" Excerpted from Complicated Shadows: The Life and Music of Elvis Costello. copyright 2005 Canongate, $24
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Post by johnfoyle »

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/d ... ndup8.html


Complicated Shadows: The Life and Music of Elvis Costello
by Graeme Thomson

Canongate, 352 pp., $24 (paper)

One of many moments Mojo contributor Graeme Thomson gracefully recalls from Elvis Costello's career in order to better contextualize his "life and music" is the cry of "genius" from the audience at a 1991 concert. "Ah, not yet I'm not," Costello replies. "That's next week. And the week after that I'll be a fucking idiot again." At the time, Costello's comeback was a distress signal that the onetime New Wave geek with glasses could still summon the sting of his "coiled tight" youth, while also a reflection of the critical and commercial response to a path that once promised superstardom but now veered wildly into esoterica and perceived pretense. Thomson takes his time getting to this point, but nonetheless finds a sustaining thematic link between the notions it evokes. In other words, how did such an asshole manage to make it between blow-torching bridges and insisting on putting out records like Anne Sofie Von Otter Meets Elvis Costello: For the Stars? Thomson's distinctly un-British effort – the snide-swipes and gossip are kept to a minimum – is that rarest of rock & roll studies: expertly researched, restrained yet stylish, and in perfect tune with its subject's work.

Copyright © 2005 Austin Chronicle Corporation. All rights reserved.


http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... 5?v=glance


Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
The progeny of a trumpet player grandfather and a big band vocalist father, Costello was destined to be a star musician by osmosis, if not genetics. Born Declan Patrick MacManus in 1954, the future Buddy Holly clone was raised by a West London family understandably supportive of his early rock leanings. Though "gawky and comically knock-kneed," the young Brit was performing in Liverpool clubs by 18, honing his anti-establishment persona by 22 and on the verge of conquering America by 25-a lightning fast rise deftly recorded by freelance journalist Thomson. A knowledgeable critic, Thomson skillfully interweaves articulate criticism of Costello's musical evolution into his biographical narrative, and unsentimentally details the thrice-married lyricist's dips into infidelity, drug use and egomania (including the artist's infamous song switcheroo on Saturday Night Live in 1977 and his unceremonious firing of his back-up band, the Attractions, in 1987). And while Thomson assumes that readers will have a certain familiarity with the composer's oeuvre and influences, he also writes clearly enough for Costello novices. And he's not without a sense of humor; while discussing the heyday of glam rock, he explains that Elvis wasn't a believer because he had "neither the physique nor the eyelashes for that." In all, this is an engrossing and lively account of an equally animated personality.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Despite an eclectic quarter-century career in which he has essayed, with varying success, musical genres ranging from country to classical, Elvis Costello remains best known as the angry young geek who burst on the late-seventies scene as the public personification of punk. Since then he has evolved into an imaginative composer, brilliant lyricist, and powerful vocalist who enjoys a critical reputation quite surpassing his limited commercial success. Although a devotee, Thomson is clear-eyed about Costello's missteps, and he doesn't skirt embarrassments like Costello's dalliance with ubergroupie Bebe Buell and the notorious, career-derailing incident when he made a racist remark about Ray Charles during a drunken argument. Even the most hardcore fan will learn something from Thomson's extensive research, particularly about Costello's heretofore veiled pre-Elvis days as an aspiring pub-rocker. If the early years, when Costello and bandmates indulged in drugs and sex on the road, are more interesting than his relatively staid later career, Costello's restless exploration and experimentation help keep the narrative compelling throughout.
Gordon Flagg

Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
sweetest punch
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Post by sweetest punch »

You can now preorder the paperback version of Complicated Shadows in the UK:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASI ... 45-0710830
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Post by johnfoyle »

http://www.villagevoice.com/books/0527, ... 94,10.html

Village Voice


El Clash Combo
Elvis Costello versus the Clash: Apocalypse-stick traces

by Howard Hampton
July 5th, 2005 4:06 PM


Passion Is a Fashion: The Real Story of the Clash
By Pat Gilbert
Da Capo, 404 pp, $18.95

Complicated Shadows: The Life and Music of Elvis Costello
By Graeme Thomson
Canongate, 342 pp, $24.

Comparing Graeme Thomson's hackneyed Elvis Costello biography Complicated Shadows with Pat Gilbert's fine history of the Clash Passion Is a Fashion sets up a battle-of-the-brands replay of 1977. While Thomson zeroes in on the narrowly careerist aspects of Costello's music, Gilbert manages to evoke the Clash's most adventurous and touching impulses alongside the group's protean contradictions. Yet in sensibility if not production values, "Complete Control" and "Watching the Detectives" were never so far apart, both self-consciously committed to the principle of Joe Strummer's one-line manifesto—"No more guitar heroes!"

The biggest difference wasn't Costello's spastic rock classicism and spiffily constructed persona; it was his disgusted-amused insistence on the sexual as political and sometimes vice versa. But Complicated Shadows is an idea-free zone—songs like "Pills and Soap" sail over Thomson's head—that reduces the saga to a long, rocky honeymoon. Devoid of any sense of an outside world, the same events repeat like a needle on a broken record: Elvis writes a batch of new songs and hunkers down in the studio to cut an album amid fill-in-the-turmoil, it's released to great or not so much acclaim, El hits the road, further personal/corporate shit goes down, and so do sales. There's little about the singer's times or artistic philosophy (I think Thomson mentions him reading a book on Napoleon), but if you want to know when he had a sore throat or last dug "Hoover Factory" out of mothballs, you're in luck.

Passion Is a Fashion opens with a "Clash Map of London," which lays out the fabled council blocks, squats, rehearsal spaces, and landmarks from the Westway to Hammersmith Palais. (It lacks only a schedule for the 19 bus.) Gilbert fills in their roots with admirable clarity, showing how ex-folkie and pub rocker Strummer (the Foreign Office worker's son who bought his first Chuck Berry record in Tehran), glam kid Mick Jones, and art school reggae freak Paul Simonon were made for each other. And then they would be turned into the Clash by Bernie Rhodes, the manager-catalyst-madman who created a brilliant patchwork framework that facilitated the band's polyglot leaps of imagination. More than just placing obvious figures, Gilbert is especially good on unstable elements like the Clash's roadies, who "became a sort of punk equivalent of the RAND corporation, the 'malignant university' of intelligent misfits" prodding the band's sense of mission along.

The Clash brought their own experiences together with the world-historical in a tremendous blast of romanticism, humor, and ambition; their screwy courage made the music exciting, and Strummer's rueful suspicions made it enduringly poignant. Costello's retreat into insular pop craftsmanship and Englishman-in-exile professionalism deserves a better book than Thomson's, but Gilbert not only does the Clash proud, he does them justice.
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Post by Otis Westinghouse »

A bit harsh, but not entirely unfounded.
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Post by lostdog »

I would say the truth lies somewhere between the Village Voice's extremely over-the-top rant - which seems to completely ignore Thomson's illuminating opening section of the book, and the last 15 years - and this rather benign pat on the back from Cincinnati City Beat.

http://www.citybeat.com/2005-06-29/alllitup.shtml
GRAEME THOMSON -- COMPLICATED SHADOWS: THE LIFE AND MUSIC OF ELVIS COSTELLO (CANONGATE)
I've been a big Elvis Costello fan for 25-plus years, and yet I know remarkably little about him. Until now. Graeme Thomson (a music writer for Mojo, Observer Music Monthly and other magazines) has produced a fascinating unauthorized biography that covers Declan MacManus' childhood years; his early Rock bands; his explosion as New Wave pioneer Elvis Costello; his love affairs and marriages; his forays into Country, Classical and Opera composition; and his emergence as elder statesman and Rock Hall of Famer. Piecing together previously published Costello interviews with his own interviews of former bandmates and associates, Thomson explains why MacManus chose the stage name Elvis Costello, how Elvis' Catholic upbringing effected his songwriting, how his manager invented and hyped the Angry Young Man persona and how Elvis' original band, The Attractions, formed, gelled, imploded, reunited and eventually broke apart for good. Under the entire story is the curious tale of how and why Elvis seems to have sabotaged his career at every step of the way, leaving him a critic's darling who missed the brass ring of superstardom. Bonus: My first Elvis concert in 1979 is mentioned in detail as an example of his debauched, crazed U.S. tours. (John Fox) Grade: A
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Post by johnfoyle »

This book is now on special offer from Strand Books -

http://www.strandbooks.com/profile/?isb ... 3&itemno=0

Strand Price: $12.00
Publisher's price: $24.00
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Post by Extreme Honey »

Buy the book already :!: I've done so and the book is great. Informative and even funny at some points. Really captures what WE know of Elvis. Go and get it!
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Post by staggerlee »

johnfoyle wrote:
And does this mean the updated text due in the UK paperback is included in the US?)
I guess so. Graeme has sinced moved on to another music related book so , while he still remains a Costello fan , ' Shadows is very much a 'job done' as far as he is concerned.
I don't suppose you have contact info and can ask him, eh? I am going to order the book, but want the updated one - not going to shell out twice for it. Any info appreciated, thanks.
I think you'd better hold your tongue — although you never were that strong.
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Post by johnfoyle »

I hope to see the p/back edition in the next few days ; I'll let you know then.
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Post by Otis Westinghouse »

Hope Canongate have taken on board my contribution over side 1/2 of Get Happy!! And maybe they've corrected the literals. I offered to do this for them, but they said my hourly rate is too high - as if you don't have to pay a few quid to get the text 100% perfect.
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Post by johnfoyle »

In gloomy , wet Belfast for the day I see a copy of the paperback of 'Shadows in Waterstones.

I flick through it looking for the update. However there's no sign of it. Then I see a piece of paper insdie the front cover. It notes that Graeme wrote an update but ' unintentionally it was left out of this edition' . It will be in future editions , the note continues , but for now can be seen at this link -

http://www.canongate.net/ComplicatedShadows/Afterword

Otherwise it is a rather cheap version of the U.K. hardback. Photos that were in colour in that edition are reprodeuced in murky black 'n white. A rather gummy , stiff spine make the book difficult to open without splitting the book in pieces.

Oh , well , I still get a thank you in the foreword so it's not all bad !
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Post by whar »

I was shocked when I saw the Foyle's in the foreword. Very cool.

However, what's with this guy thinking that Elvis had a beard while recording Kojak Variety?
Oy with the poodles, already!
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Post by lostdog »

whar wrote:However, what's with this guy thinking that Elvis had a beard while recording Kojak Variety?
Um, he did have a beard. KV recorded April 90, MLAR recorded summer 1990. KV was definitely recorded at the beginning of the Beard Years......
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Post by bambooneedle »

Image
KV was definitely recorded at the beginning of the Beard Years......
lostdog - The beard years actually started back in the Punch The Clock era, with EC sprucing up for GCW, B&C & Spike. However, no right-minded individual had predicted the badass long hair and beard reprise of MLAR. Understandably though, the latter beard years period (not counting stubble) left quite an impression on beard year afficionados...

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Post by martinfoyle »

[quote="whar"]I was shocked when I saw the Foyle's in the foreword. Very cool.
quote]

So was I, to be honest. Did a bit of fact-checking on the galley version of the book, a few months later I see that credit. Never met Graeme, still glad to help. Too bad the UK publishers have given it such shoddy treatment, hopefully the US publishers will do a better job.
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Post by Otis Westinghouse »

Canongate should know better. Such are the financial pressures to make the ends meet in publishing that people end up acting like cheapskates.
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