GOSSIP

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girl out of time
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GOSSIP

Post by girl out of time »

From the http://www.elviscostello.info

PRESS- Interview w/ Mary Coughlan
Red Hot and Blue
<snip>

The topic of one of her favourite singers, Elvis Costello, and his imminent marriage to Diana Krall leads to a fresh bout of invective. Costello's former wife, Pogues singer Cait O'Riordan, is a close friend of Coughlan's.

"I met his ex-wife in town the other day. I've known the two of them for 16 years. I've been at all their gigs and we used to have such a good time," she says sadly.

"She's lost about five stone weight. She never knew. He didn't have the fookin'' balls to tell her - she read it in a gossip column. She was still together living with him in Dublin and he was seeing the other woman all the time! I didn't think he'd do something like that. Jesus, you know. I mean, you all fall in love and all that, but you at least could tell your wife.

"Anyway, Cait's very upset and I hate Diana Krall. I can't stand her, God forgive me. She's so boring. She's just like a blonde thing in a skirt that sings. I went to see her twice. Went the first time and I was unimpressed and I thought no, I'm just being silly, so I went back and I was even more unimpressed. So there you are."

She laughs as she catches herself being catty. "Meouw, meouw!"

<snip>
...the promise of indulgence in my confidential voice approached inmortal danger but you´ll never know how close....
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A rope leash
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Men!

Post by A rope leash »

Go easy on the man-bashing here, repondants!
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mood swung
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Post by mood swung »

Jesus. To be fair, there's always two sides at least, and this little bit of gossip might not even be true...but if it is...Jesus.
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IStandAccused
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Cait & Elvis

Post by IStandAccused »

**Sadly, it is VERY true.
mood swung wrote:Jesus. To be fair, there's always two sides at least, and this little bit of gossip might not even be true...but if it is...Jesus.
Last edited by IStandAccused on Thu Aug 21, 2003 10:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Poppet
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Post by Poppet »

i never imagined EC as a saint. he can sing. he can write songs. and there's tons of things he can't do. being a mensch might very well be one of them.
... name the stars and constellations,
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IStandAccused
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Honesty not his strong point

Post by IStandAccused »

**It saddens me so much. You want the people you admire and respect to be honest.

Poppet wrote:i never imagined EC as a saint. he can sing. he can write songs. and there's tons of things he can't do. being a mensch might very well be one of them.
Last edited by IStandAccused on Thu Aug 21, 2003 10:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
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For those who speak French, "Le sens common n'est pas si commun."
Pov
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Post by Pov »

Look, he's a human being. That means he's an asshole just like the rest of us. He's certainly not the first guy who cheated on his wife and won't be the last.
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Post by mood swung »

of course he's a human being, not a saint! but for Cait to find out about it in the newspapers? that's cold.
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pip_52
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Post by pip_52 »

He seems to know what he's doing (what he's done) , I mean, I dont think he holds himself blameless.


But marrying him under circumstances like that seems like a bit of risk . . .
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Post by PlaythingOrPet »

Come on, we all know he's a bastard. It's hardly suprising. The bit at the end about DK made me laugh.

It's a bit shitty finding out about it in the gossip colums tho. Poor Cait.
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Post by spooky girlfriend »

There's really no way to know the whole story, I suppose. I mean, all the private details. But this isn't the first time his eye has wandered. . . 8)

I love his music, but never claimed to love everything he does. Just the way it is with a celebrity. Even Elvis.

Cait must be really thin now.
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A rope leash
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Red little bit

Post by A rope leash »

I just gotta pick at this.

I don't know Cait, but I do know that you don't know anybody until you have lived with them. Maybe Elvis lived through fifteen years of Hell, and this was payback.

Maybe he just met Diana, and forgot all about Cait.

How romantic!
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costellopunk
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Post by costellopunk »

i don't know what really happened between them but i gotta tell you it really sucks being the last to know that you're getting dumped.
-it takes a long time but god dies too/but not before he sticks it to you-
Sour Milk Cow
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NORTH indeed

Post by Sour Milk Cow »

I have to say, if this is true, it kind of makes NORTH a slightly sour thing.

After all, it sort of paints a picture of EC as this heartbroken man who gets "left" in the dark, and "someone" takes his words away, and he's stopped dreaming, and fallen and all that. And then he meets Diana Krall and falls in love all over again. From heartbreak to love in 11 songs.

It's certainly more romantic than, say "I met this blonde at the Grammies, and now I'm in love, and I think I'll just leave my wife of 15 years."

Episode of blonde would be a fitting title to such an album.

However, maybe this article isn't legit, or somehow the circumstances are more complicated. (Which is highly likely.) It still seems kind of odd that Costello has written this kind of album about it all. After all, when he and Cait split up officially, their press release was all about how these were private issues and not for public consumption. And now Elvis has a new album all about his side of the story!! Yes, it's not exactly filled with details, but it certainly tells a story.

It just seems kind of cheap to do this. After all, I doubt that he got Cait's PERMISSION to write and record such an autobiographical album. This is not unlike what he got so mad at Bruce Thomas about for writing THE BIG WHEEL, a thinly fictionalized account of their years on the road.

"In all the world there's only one true love
And finding it's hard enough..."

...somehow seems like a lie now. Cait's song, "Baby Plays Around," is more fitting.
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whtesde
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Post by whtesde »

I am shocked - shocked, I tell you! - at the implication that Mr. Costello has ever been anything but 100% faithful. Look at me. Sitting here. Being shocked.

I hope Cait got buckets of money out of him.
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IStandAccused
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Re: NORTH indeed

Post by IStandAccused »

**Amen!!!!!
Sour Milk Cow wrote:I have to say, if this is true, it kind of makes NORTH a slightly sour thing.

After all, it sort of paints a picture of EC as this heartbroken man who gets "left" in the dark, and "someone" takes his words away, and he's stopped dreaming, and fallen and all that. And then he meets Diana Krall and falls in love all over again. From heartbreak to love in 11 songs.

It's certainly more romantic than, say "I met this blonde at the Grammies, and now I'm in love, and I think I'll just leave my wife of 15 years."

Episode of blonde would be a fitting title to such an album.

However, maybe this article isn't legit, or somehow the circumstances are more complicated. (Which is highly likely.) It still seems kind of odd that Costello has written this kind of album about it all. After all, when he and Cait split up officially, their press release was all about how these were private issues and not for public consumption. And now Elvis has a new album all about his side of the story!! Yes, it's not exactly filled with details, but it certainly tells a story.

It just seems kind of cheap to do this. After all, I doubt that he got Cait's PERMISSION to write and record such an autobiographical album. This is not unlike what he got so mad at Bruce Thomas about for writing THE BIG WHEEL, a thinly fictionalized account of their years on the road.

"In all the world there's only one true love
And finding it's hard enough..."

...somehow seems like a lie now. Cait's song, "Baby Plays Around," is more fitting.
Last edited by IStandAccused on Thu Aug 21, 2003 10:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
*"Common sense is not so common."*Voltaire
For those who speak French, "Le sens common n'est pas si commun."
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BlueChair
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Post by BlueChair »

I think it's easy to get involved in people we admire's personal life, but it's best to back off. I mean it's sometimes hard to believe that a song like "Wild Horses", such a despairing song, is sung by Mick Jagger, a man who has impregnated many women and broken many more hearts.

That's only one of the many examples I can conjur up. The bottom line is that we listen to Elvis because of his music, not because of his personality. Though his liner notes imply that he would be an interesting person to talk to as well.
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Evil Elvis

Post by A rope leash »

Is it the art that matters, or the artist?
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Post by bobster »

Here, here BC....

A few small points.

1. There's a big difference between writing a tell-all book about a coworker (which is what "The Big Wheel" is generally considered to be) than the kind of songs EC typically writes, which certainly don't reveal that much in any literal sense and should generally be considered as more or less fictional works about fictional characters. Haven't seen the lyrics to "North" yet (wanna wait for the album), but unless they're in the nature of "My wife was really a bitch, so I was forced to cheat on her with a blond jazz singer", it's not quite the same thing.

2. On the bigger issue of infidelity, honesty and the horrifying possibility that Cait first read about it in the gossip sheets. It's fairly disturbing if, like me, you sort of want to like and respect Elvis as a person, even if you know that it really shouldn't impact how you respond to his music and it's not really any of your business anyhow. (Well, at least until EC is dead and someone writes a definite biography which will present his personal life in a scholarly sort of way, since gossip can be santified by time and scholarship, but by time I'll be up there in years myself!).

2. We have no clue at all how legit this article is. (Who is Mary Coughlin, btw? Should I know her? The name is vaguely familiar but I can't place it.)

3. It's truly impossible for a bunch of us people, watching this all from a great distance to have any idea of the rights and wrongs here. Like ARL said, for all know we know, Cait may have been some horrible, cheating shrew -- though I sort of doubt it. The point is that we just don't know anything at all, so throwing around a bunch of invective as if we did might be a nice way to vent, but it's doesn't mean a thing.
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Post by Danny »

Okay, people fall out of love, they have affairs - they're too cowardly to admit it for a while: maybe the wife finds out JUST before the husband is about to confess as honourably as possible. They split up. We all know it happens.

So I'm not going to judge anyone for this kind of very human thing. I'm sure we've all been complete idiots in love.

But if he WAS the one having the affair and doing the dumping, then what gets me is the cruelty of painting Cait as the guilty party in 'NORTH'. 'You left me in the dark?' is an incredibly callous lyric to write if he was in fact the one doing the dumping. What the hell would Cait think if she heard that?

That said, this is only one side of the story, and we really shouldn't judge. We don't know what's really gone on.

Chris Difford, who knows Elvis well I imagine, has called the album 'stunning'. Could he say that if what Mary Coughlan says is the truth?

That said, I'm not saying she's lying - just that she only knows Cait's side - perhaps Elvis flew to another's arms because Cait had been playing around, in which case 'North' would retain its integrity.

I really hope this is the case - it's sad for both of them, but then at least the guy's work comes out unscathed for us fans!
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Post by verbal gymnastics »

Even Phil Collins had the decency to tell his wife it was all over by FAX! :lol: Perhaps our El is trying to go one better!

Who are we to judge though? As Nick Lowe sang "All men are liars and that's the truth".
Who’s this kid with his mumbo jumbo?
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Post by Gillibeanz »

OK - heres my 2 cents worth (oooh ive gone all American - must be the infulence of this board!) :lol: ..........

This is Elvis private life - note the word 'private'. No one but he Cait and Dianna know whats gone on or the true facts and they dont need to. Elvis's music has got nothing to do with his private life - its work. End of chat! :?

PS(I see the beginings of a Bebe thread rearing its ugly head again here..... :roll: )
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Post by so lacklustre »

I don't give a fuck
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Post by martinfoyle »

(Who is Mary Coughlin, btw? Should I know her? The name is vaguely familiar but I can't place it.)
http://www.softshoe-slim.com/lists/c/coughlan.html

Mary Coughlan is a great blues singer, who has done many fine interpretations of standards over the years. Unfortunately she has had recurring problems due to alcohol abuse. This piece reads like a bit of pub-talk quoted out of context.
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Post by Sour Milk Cow »

[quote="bobster"]
> 1. There's a big difference between writing a tell-all book about a
> coworker (which is what "The Big Wheel" is generally considered to be)
> than the kind of songs EC typically writes, which certainly don't reveal
> that much in any literal sense and should generally be considered as
> more or less fictional works about fictional characters. Haven't seen the
> lyrics to "North" yet (wanna wait for the album), but unless they're in the
> nature of "My wife was really a bitch, so I was forced to cheat on her
> with a blond jazz singer", it's not quite the same thing.

The lyrics are of course more poetic than that, but it does seem to tell the story of a poor man whose heart was broken and then he found true love with another. Maybe that's what really happened. And I still think that it's a really terrific record of compelling songs. But when he writes such a highly personal bunch of songs (and there is not even an attempt at disguising this-- the song "North" is about moving to Canada, fer chrissake!), it pushes things into an area his art has never gone before.

He has always disparaged the practice of (in his words) "setting your diary to music" and lambasted people like Bruch and Bebe for spilling their sides of the story. It will be interesting to see how he defends his own new practice of bleeding onto the page (another phrase of his).

In any case, if his former wife is finding out about his new love through the gossip columns, you can bet that it will be painful to find out his new album is all about how he no longer loves her, and how she left him in the dark, and about a marvelous new girl covered up in his coat. And that is an element that I find a little bit depressing to think about, that's all. Doesn't change the quality of the songs, but it does slightly affect the way they make me feel in some respects. But that's just me, I'm not saying everyone need be moved by the same things.
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