Your favorite liner notes?

[wehitandrun]

There have been 12 Rhino reissues thus far, and I own 11 of them. Therefore, I have not read the "Punch The Clock" liner notes yet, but you have to save something special for another day.

I would say that my favorite set of liner notes as of now are those for "Mighty Like A Rose". I love his comments on the beard years, his political thoughts(drenched in sarcasm), and his summary of what "Spike" truly was(and the irony of its popularity).

The liner notes really made me love the cd, and favor the beard years(which at one time, I admit, threw me off). I havent listened to cd2 yet, but will now.

least favorite nomination: "imperial bedroom" (namedropping!)




<3,
s.

[migdd]

While all of the liner notes in the series have been fantastic, for me the Get Happy notes were the most enlightening and heartbreaking account of the Columbus, Ohio fiasco and portrayed the tone of the making of the album and the last days of the crash-and-burn final days of the "pop stardom" portion of Elvis' career.

[spooky girlfriend]

Not because it's my favorite Elvis cd, but KOA has brutally honest liner notes and contains many confessions and personal touches. I think most of what he wrote exhibited pain and heartache about a group of songs that he desperately wanted to record but had to avoid obstacle after disaster to bring it to fruition.

My second and third favorites would probably be Kojak Variety and Juliet Letters.

[wehitandrun]

While all of the liner notes in the series have been fantastic, for me the Get Happy notes were the most enlightening and heartbreaking account of the Columbus, Ohio fiasco and portrayed the tone of the making of the album and the last days of the crash-and-burn final days of the "pop stardom" portion of Elvis' career.

I never understood the Postcript clearly.

The story he is telling, about seeing Ray Charles... when he says "singer at my side" does he mean that Ray Charles is introduced to another singer in the presence of both of them, or is it a clever elvis way to say "introduced to me".

Also... when is this story taking place? Is it recently, or in the early 80's after the infamous fiasco took place?




<3,
s.

[martinfoyle]

I never undetstood the Postcript clearly.

The story he is telling, about seeing Ray Charles... when he says "singer at my side" does he mean that Ray Charles is introduced to another singer in the presence of both of them, or is it a clever elvis way to say "introduced to me".

EC was referring to their near meeting at this.
http://www.cmt.com/artists/news/1459615 ... lvis.jhtml

[Otis Westinghouse]

On a personal level, it's gotta be Trust, purely because he writes hilariously about the first gig I ever saw, in Guernsey, with no Nieve, and makes a reference to traumatised survivors not being able to talk about it to this day. I don't think I could remotely handle meeting him (I was to scared to ask George Best for an autograph in January), but if I did, I'd love to tell him I was a survivor.

Agree that MLAR is a great and very illuminating account.

[BlueChair]

I like the Imperial Bedroom notes.

If only for a few of the anecdotes:

"A familiar scene must have greeted Ringo when he walked into the studio'

"I recall looking at my reflection in the frozen window of a Scandinavian tour bus without any idea who the hell I was supposed to be"

and several others

[Paul B]

Sounds a hoot, love to have been there too Otis. Maybe you should start a survivors group - or a thread at least.

[mcramahamasham]

Any idea if any (all?) of the liner notes are up on-line somewhere? I'd hate to have to re-buy everything again.

[johnfoyle]

If you can get these links to work , try -

Spike

http://www.elviscostello.info/disc/offi ... notes.html

MAIT

http://www.elviscostello.info/disc/offi ... notes.html

ATUB

http://www.elviscostello.info/disc/offi ... notes.html

[edit by DrS: links should now work with no tinkering .]

[VonOfterdingen]

Are all re-issues with liner-notes from EC?. I still havent bought Spike, MLAR, Brutal Youth as re-issues. They won't get another re-re-issue right? And last question - is KOA and Juliet Letters in the works for 2-disc treatment?

[Chrille]

Hmm, I know King of America is at least.

[wehitandrun]

If you can get these links to work , try -

Spike

http://www.elviscostello.info/disc/offi ... notes.html

MAIT

http://www.elviscostello.info/disc/offi ... notes.html

ATUB

http://www.elviscostello.info/disc/offi ... notes.html

[edit by DrS: links should now work with no tinkering .]

wow, and I'm the sucker who bought the albums.

[johnfoyle]

Elvis' Cd booklet notes for Il Sogno are here -

http://www.deutschegrammophon.com/speci ... lo-ilsogno

[wehitandrun]

Elvis' Cd booklet notes for Il Sogno are here -

http://www.deutschegrammophon.com/speci ... lo-ilsogno

Now that one I didnt buy, thanks!

[laughingcrow]

Are all re-issues with liner-notes from EC?. I still havent bought Spike, MLAR, Brutal Youth as re-issues. They won't get another re-re-issue right? And last question - is KOA and Juliet Letters in the works for 2-disc treatment?

Supposed to be a 2CD KoA, Juliet Letters and a new 'expanded' Taking Liberties/The Man...I can only assume that this will just be another compilation disc, cos I can't think what it might else be.

Maybe June/July this year?

[VonOfterdingen]

ok - thanks. Confused me with linernotes to KoA when it haven't got the 2-disc treatment.

[laughingcrow]

Oh right...that was the other KoA reissue which coinkydinkly was a 2CD affair with a 'live with the confederates' CD as disc 2.

Confusing wot!

[VonOfterdingen]

see, i already forget it came with an extra cd

[John]

The story he is telling, about seeing Ray Charles... when he says "singer at my side" does he mean that Ray Charles is introduced to another singer in the presence of both of them, or is it a clever elvis way to say "introduced to me".

I took the singer at his side to be Diana?

[laughingcrow]

It could have been Orville...




Sorry, the very idea of Ray Charles being introduced to Orville the duck is the funniest thing...and I felt the need to share!

[John]

Once introduced they all took turns at singing Crazy with Orville receiving a standing ovation.

[mcramahamasham]

MY AIM IS TRUE

It was dark when I awoke. I could hear the rats scuttling across the rehearsal room floor. It was just as I had been warned. If the lights went off, the rats came out. Feeling for my shoes, I edged to the light-switch and illuminated the drinking party passed out on another ragged sofa. I tried to get back to sleep with lights on. I was going to make a record the next day.
I was down at Headley Grange, a Swansong/Phonogram safe-house that that had previously featured in the rural adventures of Led Zeppelin. It was not exactly a scene of baronial splendour. However, it was, serving as home for Clover, a Marin County band tempted to England by Stiff Records founders, Jake Riviera and Dave Robinson.
In 1976 I was operating an I.B.M. 360 computer in an office next to a lipstick factory. My duties included printing out invoices for the moustache waxes of the occasional Duchess who visited the company’s West End salon. Some of the work was more tedious.
I’d already had my demo tapes sent back by most of the record labels in London. Recently, I’d attempted a few impromptu auditions in the offices of startled publishers. They tolerated my "have-I- got- a song-for-you" act with fixed smiles but still found time to take calls from their wives or bookies in mid-performance.
Since 1970, I’d been playing the clubs and pubs of Liverpool and London in semi-pro bands or as a solo singer. I’d even been into small demo studios on a few occasions but had little to show for it. My most recent audition tape had been cut in the bedroom of my flat on a borrowed Revox reel-to- reel. D.J. and writer, Charlie Gillett had played a few selections on local London radio and was talking about cutting single for his Oval label. Then I read about Stiff Records opening for business.
I told my boss that I had to go home "sick" and traveled on the Tube a few stops to the Stiff Records office. A charming girl opened the door and politely received my hand-written tape box and that was that. No big interview, no audition, no cigar-chomping mogul.
Bizarrely, back at the Tube station, I actually ran into Nick Lowe, then Stiff’s sole recording artist. I’d been a fan who bugged him at gigs since running into him in Liverpool at "The Grapes" public house in Mathew Street, opposite "The Cavern". That was back in 1972. Now he asked when I was "going to tread the boards again". I told him about my tape and went on my way.
The Alexander St. office quickly became a place were I went after work or instead of work. The Riviera/Robinson team not only ran Stiff but they managed Graham Parker and the Rumour. They were also attempting to launch the Nick Lowe/Dave Edmunds group, Rockpile. There was a state of constant war with Swansong, Mr. Edmunds’ record label, who didn’t quite see things the same way. Upstairs, the Blackhill Management office had connections to Pink Floyd and Peter Green. They were also looking after Ian Dury. It was, to say the least, a volatile place. Filing cabinets took a terrible hammering from winkle-picker shoes and the glazier had to be called when a fraught telephone negotiation concluded with a full bottle of strong cider being hurled through the plate glass front door.
Initially, Stiff were interested in me as a songwriter for Dave Edmunds. Nick Lowe had taken a shine to my demo of "Mystery Dance" but Dave was proving harder to convince. I was put into a tiny 8-track studio in North London called Pathway to cut a version of the song. Clover’s John McFee and Mickey Shine played guitar and drums with Nick taking care of bass and the production. When it came to the piano overdub Nick stood poised with a drum stick to run down the keys while I hammered out very rudimentary chords. We also cut "Radio Sweetheart" with McFee on pedal steel guitar. I realized that most of the songs on the tape that had aired on Charlie Gillett’s radio show just didn’t speak up enough to be heard.
Each time I arrived at the Stiff office I had another bunch of tunes to present. At one point it was seriously suggested that I share a debut album with Wreckless Eric, supposedly in the style of the "Chuck meets Bo" release on Chess. I just happened to visit Pathway on the day of Wreckless’ first session. While Mr. Lowe took him round to the pub to build up his courage, I cut enough new demos to make nonsense of this idea.
I started to phone in sick again to my day job, so I could rehearse at Headley Grange and then travel up to London to record. We were able to cut all of My Aim Is True in a series of six, four-hour sessions at a cost of about £1000 pounds.
Pathway Studio was no bigger than the average front room with a control booth barely able to contain two people and the 8-track mixing board. Nick Lowe was now the full time producer. We had the full Clover line-up – minus the singers, Alex Call and Huey Lewis - jammed into this tiny space. John Ciambotti was on bass and Sean Hopper played keyboards in addition to Shine and McFee. I was pinned behind an acoustic baffle with my amp and a vocal mike. It was rather like recording in a telephone booth. Overdubs were barely an option. Everything is heard pretty much as it was played.
I’d found both of Clover’s earlier releases on Liberty Records at a second-hand shop in south London. One of them came without its sleeve. I’m not so sure that they had heard any of records that I had been listening to recently. Their rehearsal shorthand for "Red Shoes" was "the one that sounds like The Byrds" and the group picked up the feel of tunes like "Sneaky Feelings", "Pay it Back" and "Blame it on Cain" with ease. Perhaps they were not quite so sure what was going on in songs like "Welcome to the working week", "I’m Not Angry" and "Waiting for the end of the world" but they were recorded before we could worry much about it.
In a time when guitar solos could still last for days, John McFee was only given a few bars of "Blame in on Cain" and I’m not angry" in which to step out. For "Waiting for the end of the world" he played a fuzz-tone pedal steel guitar but his most memorable contribution is in the introduction and fade of "Alison". Other than that Nick Lowe made sure that nothing unnecessarily fancy got on to the tape.
When I think about how Nick produced this record I have a mental picture of a big cloud of Senior Service smoke and his arms waving wildly about the tiny control booth. He was emotional, hilarious, incredibly enthusiastic and generous, though I certainly wouldn’t have embarrassed him by saying any of this at the time. He was just being "Nick". Whatever he was doing, it worked.
All of this was pretty new to someone living in the suburbs. I got most of my musical ideas from records. With a young family to provide for, I didn’t have the money for going to clubs. The morning after the Sex Pistols created outrage by swearing on national live television, I was in a commuter train carriage full of scandalized tabloid headlines and high blood pressure.
Something was supposed to be changing. I spent a lot of time with just a big jar of instant coffee and the first Clash album, listening to it over and over. By the time I got down to the last few grains, I had written, "Watching the Detectives". The chorus had these darting figures that I wanted to sound like something from a Bernard Herrmann score. The piano and organ on the recorded version were all we could afford.
I wrote "Alison" and most of these songs late at night, singing sotto voce, so as not to wake up my wife and young son. I didn’t really know what they sounded like until I got into the studio. I had based the chorus of "Alison" on the Detroit Spinners’ "Ghetto Child" but I don’t think I mentioned this at the session. The faster tunes often came to me when riding on the Underground, particularly "…End of the world", which was a fantasy based on a real late night journey.
"(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes" was written on the Inter-City train to Liverpool between Runcorn and Lime Street stations, a journey of about 10 minutes. I had to keep the song in my head until I got to my Mother’s house where I kept an old Spanish guitar that I had had since I was a kid. The lyric is a funny notion for a twenty-two year old to have written.
There was at least as much imagination as experience in the words of this record. Whatever lyrical code or fancy was employed, the songs came straight out of my life plain enough. I hadn’t necessarily developed the confidence or the cruelty to speak otherwise.
Stiff Records had followed up Nick Lowe’s "So it Goes/Heart of the City" with pretty regular releases but over the next few months I wondered whether they would ever issue one of my tracks. Not having a band or being part of either the New York or the London punk scene I had to wait while they issued various singles and E.P.s by The Dammed and Richard Hell - not to mention Plummet Airlines and The Pink Fairies - before the catalogue got to "BUY 11".
"Less than Zero" was a song that I had written after seeing the despicable Oswald Mosley being interviewed on B.B.C. television. The former leader of the British Union of Fascists seemed unrepentant about his poisonous actions of the 1930’s. The song was more of a slandering fantasy than a reasoned argument.
I continued with my computer job after my first single came and went without troubling the charts. I’d been given a new name: "Elvis Costello". It sounded like a dare. People had weirder names than that in those days. I didn’t give it another thought until August 1977. It also seemed that the squarer I looked the better the camera liked it. The cover image of this album was one of the few usable frames as the rest of the session reveals how comical the whole knock-kneed stance seemed to the photographer and subject.
The single release of "Alison" was also a commercial failure but it was finally agreed that "My Aim is True" would be released in the summer of 1977. I was asked to quit my day job and turn professional. The "management company", Messrs. Riviera and Robinson, said they would match my less than spectacular office wages. My record advance consisted of £150, a new cassette tape recorder and a Vox battery powered practice amp. I took some of my new found wealth and bought back a copy of "Hard Day’s Night" that I had recently been forced to sell to pay the gas bill. About three weeks later I was on the cover of a music paper - an overnight success after seven years.
Now the process of recruiting a band could begin. I was helped out at the auditions by Steve Goulding and Andrew Bodnar - the rhythm section of The Rumour. We played the same two songs from "My Aim is True" for several hours as the good, the bad and the ugly candidates displayed their talents. Before this drove us to do something rash, we learned a couple of brand new tunes. By the end of the afternoon they sounded good enough for a session at Pathway to be scheduled. One of them, "Watching the Detectives" later became my first serious chart single and was obviously not included on the original U.K. release of "My Aim is True". The newly discovered, Steve Nieve - still going under his family name of "Nason" - added the organ and piano parts at an overdub session a few weeks later.
Although the microphone levels were set very "hot" to create the unique drum sound of "Detectives", we went into a version of "No Action" before any adjustments could be made. This take has been missing for several years but having finally come to light, the listener may enjoy it in all its distorted glory.
There were only three proper out-takes from "My Aim is True". The first is "Radio Sweetheart", my professional recording debut and a track originally intended to be my first single on Stiff Records. The second is an early version of "Living in Paradise" - also thought to have been "lost" until recently - which was re-written and recorded with the Attractions for "This Year’s Model".
The final out-take is "Stranger in the House". This was left off the album, as including a country ballad was not thought to be a smart move in 1977. The track was later given away on a free single with "This Year’s Model" and a duet version the song was recorded in Nashville with George Jones in 1978. It was released several years later on George’s album "My Special Friends".
The remaining tracks on the second CD come from the years leading up to "My Aim is True". "Imagination (is a powerful deceiver) now sounds to me like a very early attempt to write a song like "Alison". This is a "pre-professional" recording made with the band Flip City on a seven-track board - one track was always malfunctioning - at Hope and Anchor Studios, Islington, sometime in 1974/75. There is no personnel listing for the session but it is included with thanks to the former band member: Mich Kent (bass), Malcolm Dennis and Ian Powling (drums), Steve Hazelhurst (guitar) and Dickie Faulkner (percussion) together with the sound and management team: Mike Whelan and Ken Smith.
The rest of the tracks come from a home demo recorded sometime in late ’75 or early ‘76. This bedroom tape has picked the name "The Honky Tonk Sessions" after the Charlie Gillett radio show on which most of these songs were first broadcast. Despite the sharing lyrics and titles with later songs, the style of the writing is utterly different to that of "My Aim is True".
Listening now to these blatant imitations of various American singers and songwriters is like looking at embarrassing old photographs. I hadn’t really found my own voice. However, you might be able to tell which records I had in my collection. I certainly learned quite a bit while shamelessly attempting to copy Randy Newman, Hoagy Carmichael, John Prine, Lowell George, The Band and many others. It was just part of my apprenticeship.
-Elvis Costello

________________________________________

Rykodisk Liner Notes

"My Aim Is True was recorded at Pathway Studios, Islington in a total of Twenty four hours studio time and at a cost of 2000 pounds. As I still had my "day-job" these sessions had to take place on "sick days" and holidays during late 1976 and early 1977. The musicians were members of the Marin county band Clover, who could not be credited at the time due to contractual reasons. The producer was Nick Lowe, who I had met, unlikely as it may sound, in The Grapes public house, opposite The Cavern, Liverpool in 1972. After the failure of two single releases ("Less Than Zero" and "Alison"), Stiff records nevertheless decided to release the album and asked me to "turn professional" and find a band that would become the Attractions. At the subsequent auditions I was assisted by Steve Goulding and Andrew Bodnar from The Rumour, but after playing "Alison" and "Less Than Zero" for the 20th time it became essential to do something in order to relieve the boredom".
"Having gone to the trouble of learning two brand new songs, it was this line up which recorded a version of "No Action" (Now sadly lost) and "Watching the Detectives" to which Steve Nieve later added Piano and Organ."

EXTENDED PLAY:
"RADIO SWEETHEART" and "STRANGER IN THE HOUSE"
"Two of only three "out-takes" from My Aim Is True (The other, a version of "Living in Paradise", is also lost). "Radio Sweetheart" Was my first "professional recording", was originally picked to be my Stiff Records debut single. Having been pushed onto the b-side by "Less Than Zero", it was also left off the album due to a difference in sound: It was the only track cut at the sessions to prominently feature an acoustic guitar! The case of "Stranger in the House" is more obvious. Despite John McFee's use of a pedal steel guitar on the album, the inclusion of a "Country Song" was thought to be commercial suicide in 1977".
"Stranger in the House" was given away on a free single with the first 50000 copies of This Year's Model and was later released on the 10 Bloody Marys and 10 How's your Fathers and Taking Liberties compilations. It also served as a demonstration record for George Jones, with whom Elvis sang on George's My Special Friends album.
"IMAGINATION (IS A POWERFUL DECIEVER)"
"A "Pre-Professional Recording" made by Stiff Records co-founder Dave Robinson on the unique 7-track machine at Hope and Ancher Studios, Islinton, sometime in 1974/75. It features the band Flip City. There is no personnel listing, but it is included with thanks to all long-term band members: Mich Kent (bass), Malcolm Dennis or Ian Powling (Drums), Steve Hazelhurst (guitar), and Dickie Faulkner (percussion). (Also Mike Whelan and Ken Smith)".
"MYSTERY DANCE"
"Another "Pre-Professional Recording" made in my bedroom and later broadcast for the first time by Charlie Gillett on his BBC Radio London programme "Honkey Tonk". We discussed recording it for Charlie's Oval Records label, but before this could happen Jake Riviera heard the song on a tape which I hand-delivered to Stiff Records on the day they opened for business with the release of Nick Lowe's "So It Goes". Although it was the first (and only) demo Stiff had received, I became the second signing to the new label".
"CHEAP REWARD", "JUMP UP", "WAVE A WHITE FLAG", "BLAME IT ON CAIN", "POISON MOON"
"Pre-Professional recordings" from the same bedroom session as "Mystery Dance", most of which were broadcast by Charlie Gillett.
"Despite the presence of familiar titles and lyrics which re-appear in later compositions, this group of songs are in a radically different style to those on My Aim Is True. With hindsight I must confess that I am uneasy with my blatant imitation of certain American singers and songwriters. However to be truthful I learned a great deal from trying (and failing) to copy such artists as Randy Newman, Hoagy Carmichael, Lowell George, John Prine and The Band. Even though some of the names became unfashionable in 1976, and I abandoned this particular borrowed style in favour of the more direct sound of My Aim Is True, I hope the listener will be amused, one way or another, by these steps in my apprenticeship."

THIS YEAR’S MODEL

It was the 12th of July 1977. One week after quitting my day job, I found myself at a disused R.A.F. base outside the Cornish village of Davidstowe. The only structure that was not derelict doubled as the local dancehall. We were using it as a rehearsal room. In two days I would be playing in public for the first time with my new group, The Attractions.
The keyboard player, a 19-year-old student from the Royal College of Music, was easily the most impressive candidate at the auditions. He had asked to stay to hear the other players and later been discovered curled up asleep among the amplifiers, having quietly demolished a bottle of sweet cooking sherry. He was obviously the man for the job. His family name was Nason, which most people misheard as the more common "Mason", but we soon started calling him "Steve Nieve".
The bass player was a few years older than the rest of us. Bruce Thomas had played in a number of recorded bands and had plenty of road and studio experience. He had a fondness for venturing up the neck of his instrument to registers unfamiliar to other bass players. In those days he also possessed a decent sense of humour. Then again, he was from Middlesborough.
After a couple of years working in California, the drummer had arrived back in England courtesy of a major record company. They had sprung for his plane ticket after my manager, Jake Riviera, had persuaded them that he might be a candidate for a vacant drum stool for one of their new groups. However, upon arrival in London he headed straight for the studio where Nick Lowe had just mixed "Watching the Detectives". I never really entertained the idea of another drummer. Pete Thomas was three weeks older than me. I was 22 and had just released my first record.
Our live debut was second on the bill to Wayne County and the Electric Chairs in Penzance. This was about as far from "where it's at" as you could get. Any sense of the punk or "new wave" excitement that was filling weekly music papers was pretty hard to detect in the West Country. The next evening in Plymouth we saw a few girls sporting scary eye makeup, but everyone else looked like they might have been waiting for The Sweet to take the stage. On Saturday night we returned to Davidstowe to play a dance in the village hall in payment for our week of rehearsal room hire. Now we were ready for the big city.
On the afternoon of our London debut it was decided that I would perform on the pavement outside the Hilton Hotel in Park Lane where C.B.S. Records was holding a convention. Stiff Records personnel marched up and down bearing placards entreating the A&R staff to give me a contract or at least come to our show. Unfortunately, the hotel management thought we were taking part in a political demonstration, and in a short time a large number of police vehicles came roaring up to the scene. The senior inspector was not amused to find that his special squad had been mobilized to deal with a publicity stunt.
He stood directly between me and my bemused audience. He cautioned me that I was obstructing the footpath, although the opposite was clearly the truth. I took a step to the left. He did likewise. I took a step to the right. He followed suit and said, "Do that again and you're nicked". I could see in his eyes that he did not believe that I was about to turn on my heel. So I was arrested while all the other "protesters" got clean away.
Once inside the police van I mentioned that I was making my London "debut" that evening. "Not if we keep you in, sonny", snapped the arresting officer. I had already surrendered my belt and tie and was waiting to be taken down to the cells when my solicitor rang the station. I don't know what was said, but suddenly I was given a cup of tea, they completed the paperwork, and the desperado was released.
I remember much less about that night than the fact that I had to be in court the next day by 9 a.m. I took my turn among the drunks, the disorderlies, and the ladies wearing very few clothes. When I came before the magistrate, the charge was not even correct. I was fined five pounds for "selling records in the street", which I suppose had some truth to it. I thought it easier to agree than to try and explain. It was only when I reached the cashier's desk that I realised there was less than that amount of the fine in my pocket and I had to queue up for a further two hours to go before the bench again to request "time to pay". Three months later I signed a contract with Columbia Records and My Aim is True was scheduled for U.S. release.
After one hysterical trip round the U.K. club circuit, we joined the "Live Stiffs" package tour, also featuring Wreckless Eric, Nick Lowe, and Ian Dury. What started as a presentation of "labelmates" quickly became a pretty competitive adventure both on and off the stage. One night, while suffering from what might be politely called "assisted insomnia", I scrawled a large number of verses about this headlong pursuit of oblivion. Next morning, I mercifully threw away most of the pages, but that evening we were playing a brand-new song. Five days later, we recorded "Pump it Up" in one take. Pretty soon I would stop resisting the lure of the nightlife completely.
This Year's Model was recorded at Eden Studios, London, in a total of 11 days. The engineer was Roger Becherian, who was to work on our next four Nick Lowe-produced albums. Roger was a calm and practical foil to Nick's instinctive and emotional approach to recording. It was Roger who had the task of making a sonic reality out of Nick's directions, such as "turn the drums into one big maraca" or "make it sound like a dinosaur eating cars".
The Attractions made a huge difference to these songs. "(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea" had originally used the same stop-start guitar figure as The Who's "I can't explain" (or for that matter The Clash's "Clash City Rockers"). Now Bruce and Pete came up with a more syncopated rhythm pattern and Steve found a part that sounded like sirens--although he rarely played the same thing twice, so you had to pay attention. His keyboard setup was limited to a Vox Continental organ and a cheap keyboard called an "Instapiano"--which had all the sustain and power of a musical box until cranked through an amp. I changed my guitar part to the sort of clicky figure that I'd heard on old Pioneers rock-steady records, only sped up quite a bit.
When working out songs, I always spoke in shorthand references to records that I liked. It was only after a couple of months that we discovered that Steve's appreciation of rock and roll really only extended to Alice Cooper and T.Rex. Pete, Bruce, and I had certainly listened to The Beatles and The Small Faces, and we could almost agree about the Rolling Stones--well, Aftermath at least, which was the album to which I listened more than any other at this time. "This Year's Girl" was pretty much an "answer song" to the Rolling Stones' "Stupid Girl"--though my words were much less contemptuous.
I never really understood the accusations of misogyny that were leveled at the lyrics on This Year's Model. They clearly contained more sense of disappointment than disgust. In any case, most of these songs were works of imagination rather than products of experience. The temptations and distractions of the touring life would soon enough add the more cynical and guilty edge found in "Little Triggers", "Pump it Up", and "Hand in Hand".
We were crossing a foggy mountain ridge coming into Tennessee, when the size of the task began to dawn on us. It was not going to be easy to take America by storm. The four of us plus our tour manager were jammed into a rented station wagon on-route from Atlanta, Georgia, to Madison, Wisconsin. We took turns riding "shotgun", that way you got to control the radio. It was during this journey that we managed to tune in to different parts of "Stairway to Heaven" playing simultaneously on three stations. It was not uncommon to catch the end of Linda Ronstadt's version of "Blue Bayou", only to find it had just begun on an adjacent frequency. You could have been forgiven for thinking that this was why they were called "frequencies".
We had landed in the country ten days earlier. Fresh from a 15-hour journey from London via Los Angeles, we arrived in the Bay Area at mid-evening and were confronted by the unimaginable luxury of a Howard Johnson's motel. The rooms contained king-size beds, colour television, and a bathroom. Our English hotels of that time typically featured narrow bunks with scratchy nylon sheets, a faulty black-and-white TV in the "residents lounge", and a freezing trip down the threadbare carpet to a shared toilet at the end of a dingy corridor. In the words of Chuck Berry: "Everything you want, they got it right here in the U.S.A.". I took a cab across the Golden Gate Bridge and called the driver to a screaming halt outside a record shop that was still open despite the fact that it was nearly midnight. Picking up a local music paper, I found that Iggy Pop was playing the same club in which we were due to make our American debut the next night. It took me three weeks to recover from seeing Iggy perform--with the limbs of an unstrung marionette, doing his Marlene Dietriech act with a straight-backed chair. I probably would have spent the whole tour hurling myself face down on the stage if I hadn't been holding a guitar.
Our shows went well in San Francisco. We received a pretty good welcome in the Bay Area. I even bought a couple of guitars: a red Rickenbacker six-string and the green Gretsch Country Club, which I later I used for the rhythm part on "This Year's Girl".
After an excellent start in Northern California, I took an instant and irrational dislike to Los Angeles. This was a town where nobody seemed to walk anywhere. Not being able to drive, I spent the first 24 hours in my room at the Tropicana Motel watching television. When I did venture out, I discovered regular resident Tom Waits resting in a chair in the front office and things began to look up.
The scene at our Whisky A-Go-Go show was curious. The audience consisted of young people making spectacularly misguided attempts to emulate London and New York punk style, all Halloween makeup and bin-liner dresses and a smattering of leather-skinned industry types in pressed denim, silver jewelry, and bouffant hair. It would take years and a driver's license to discover the best of this town, but at least we were playing where people had actually heard of us.
Three days later we found ourselves at a sparsely attended club in New Orleans--the atmosphere not helped by the fact that the audience were standing in a foot of water from a burst pipe. Our hotel rooms in the French Quarter had doors that had been kicked in on more than one occasion. The corridor carpet wore dark, tacky stains that were either ketchup or something more sinister. Outside on Bourbon St. we joined the gullible tourists drinking in the open air and paying a $10 cover charge to hear Clarence "Frogman" Henry sing two songs.
We headed north to share a bill with the Talking Heads in a small theatre in Atlanta that neither of us could have been confident in filling alone. The dates were so far apart that we had lots of time to take in the scenery. Every billboard or shop sign seemed like the opening line of a new song, and sometimes that proved to be the case--I was filling notebooks that would provide the lyrics of our next album, Armed Forces.
The tour proceeded across the States, encountering every reaction from curiosity to hostility until we reached the more welcoming audiences of Boston, Philly, and, finally, New York City. We even played the legendary Stone Pony in Asbury Park but had to lock ourselves in the dressing room to escape a furious posse of Springsteen fans when I jokingly introduced The Attractions' own "Bruce" as "the Real Future of Rock and Roll".
The following night we made our U.S. television debut on Saturday Night Live. The Sex Pistols had been scheduled for the show only to cancel after an alleged oversight regarding work permits. Needless to say the expected viewing figures for the debut of U.K. punk outrage were in our favour.
We arrived at NBC with the intention of playing a couple of songs from our live set. Maybe something got lost in translation, but none of the humour seemed nearly as "dangerous" or funny as they seemed to think it was, or perhaps they were just having a bad show. The record company interference certainly didn't help my mood.
We were getting pressure to perform a number from My Aim is True. I honestly believed that the words of "Less than Zero" would be utterly obscure to American viewers. Taking a cue from an impromptu performance by Jimi Hendrix on a late '60s B.B.C. television show, I stopped this tune after a few bars and counted off an unreleased song, "Radio, Radio". I believed that we were just acting in the spirit of the third word of the show's title, but it was quickly apparent that the producer did not agree. He stood behind the camera making obscene and threatening gestures in my direction. When the number was over, we were chased out of the building and told that we would "never work on American television again". Indeed, we did not make another U.S. television appearance until 1980. Although this clip from SNL went on to be rerun on numerous occasions, I was not allowed back on the show until 1989. However, I was forgiven in time to be invited to re-create the moment, with the Beastie Boys as my backing band, for the show's 25th anniversary special.
Back in 1977, we returned to England to find that my final Stiff single, "Watching the Detectives", had reached No.15 in the charts. Our manager, Jake Riviera, then dissolved his Stiff Record partnership with Dave Robinson, taking Nick Lowe and myself to be the first artists on the new Radar label.
Early in 1978, we recorded the last few tracks for this album. Then we returned to America. Between January and early March we played in 19 states and ended with two nights in Toronto, Canada--which were captured on the Columbia promotional album, Live at the Mocambo. The next five weeks were spent touring halls in England, Ireland, and Scotland. The last show was at the Roundhouse in London on April 16 th. Three days later we began another six weeks of American theatre dates supported by Nick Lowe and Mink de Ville. This was followed by our first European tour. Then we recorded our next album, Armed Forces.
The second CD features some songs that got away during this frantic time. "Big Tears" was the only genuine outtake song from the This Year's Model sessions. I cannot imagine why it did not make the actual album. I thought that The Clash were a really great rock and roll band, and although this opinion was most definitely not shared by some of The Attractions, I invited Mick Jones to play on one of our sessions. Despite that fact that his bandmates didn't approve of the idea either, the plan was for him to add another guitar to "Pump it Up". There is a version lying around somewhere on which he plays. However, he made much more difference to "Big Tears", and that is the track included here.
"Crawling to the U.S.A." was a song that was in our very first live set, but it never made the sessions for this album. It was finally recorded during our first Australian tour in the autumn of '78 and released on the motion picture soundtrack album Americathon, in which I had a small cameo as the "Earl of Manchester".
Our version of The Dammed's "Neat Neat Neat" was dedicated to "Chris Millar", otherwise known as "Rat Scabies", in a gesture of solidarity after the drummer got into a scrape in London. This live recording was made during the "Live Stiffs" package tour and features The Blockhead's Davey Payne on saxophone. Our live versions of Ian Dury's "Roadette Song" and the Everly Brothers' "The Price of Love" are also from late '77.
"Running out of Angels", "Greenshirt", and "Big Boys" are acoustic guitar demos dashed off in the first few days of 1978. I know this because "Greenshirt" refers to the "Quisling Clinic", a sinister sounding location simply because it put you in mind of the infamous Norwegian fascist leader. It is a real place in Madison, Wisconsin, that I passed by on our first U.S. tour, and it found its way into this lyric. I faltered over "Running out of Angels" at this session, and that was the last that was heard of it. "Greenshirt" and "Big Boys" were rerecorded for the album Armed Forces.
"You belong to me" and "Radio, Radio" are solo demo recordings, while the alternate takes of "(I don't want to go to) Chelsea" and "This Year's Girl" illustrate how the arrangements developed.
The version of "Stranger in the House" is the only decent item from several sessions recorded for B.B.C. Radio in the first year of my professional career. We always found the staff engineers unfriendly and hostile to our approach, although we were not exactly masters of diplomacy in those days. The sessions were often scheduled for unlikely daylight hours, which certainly didn't help.
The first single on Radar, "(I don't want to go to) Chelsea", went to No.16 in the U.K. charts, although it was removed by Columbia from the original U.S. release of This Year's Model (along with "Night Rally") on the pretext of the lyrical content being "too English". We followed this up with the release of "Pump it Up" and a stand-alone single version of "Radio, Radio" (which was added to the U.S. version of This Year's Model). Both of these singles charted, while the album itself reached No .4. in the U.K. charts. Our last London shows of 1977 featured a little-known support band, Dire Straits, and those locked out of the venue actually managed to stop traffic outside the club. Then again it was a very narrow street.
For a brief, improbable moment the horrified children of Britain were offered magazines featuring pop pinups of myself and the most handsome band in the world, right alongside Debbie Harry and those other blonde beauties, The Police. Thankfully for all concerned, I was just about to screw it all up completely.
--Elvis Costello

________________________________________

Rykodisk Liner Notes

"This Year's Model was begun at Eden Studios, London at the end of 1977, just after the single release of "Watching the Detectives", and completed at the beginning of 1978. The Sessions, which had to be scheduled at either end of our first American tour, took about eleven days. Most of the songs had been played "live" since our first appearances in July '77. Others, such as "Pump it Up", were written in the last days of the infamous "Live Stiffs" package tour which ended shortly before the recording."
Around this time Jake Riviera parted company with Stiff Records taking Nick Lowe and Elvis with him. "This Year's Model" was therefore the first release on the new Radar label. Elvis and The attractions continued what would become an unbroken run of eight top thirty singles in Britain with "Chelsea" and "Pump it Up". These were issued in March and June '78.
"By this point I had lost track of time as we completed our first headlining tour of Britain and Europe and two further tours of America, plus a visit to Toronto, where our date at "El Mocambo" was broadcast live on the radio and later issued as a Canada-Only promotional album. By the time "Radio Radio" was released in October '78 we had already recorded our next album Armed Forces"
In America, Columbia Records had released "My Aim is True" with the addition of "Watching the Detectives", but when it came time to issue "This Year's Model" they requested bizarre changes in the running order. These included the omission of "Night Rally" and "(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea" (Despite it's success as a British single) and the inclusion of "Radio Radio". The original sequence is restored for this edition.

EXTENDED PLAY
"RADIO RADIO"
"This track was either recorded at the This Year's Model sessions or shortly afterwards, but intended as a "stand alone" single, a phenomenon common in the vinyl era".
"BIG TEARS"
"My favourite Out-take by some distance, featuring guest guitarist Mick Jones of the Clash."
Issued first as the B-side to "Pump It Up" and included on the "10 Bloody Marys and 10 How's your Fathers" and "Taking Liberties" compilations.
"CRAWLING TO THE U.S.A."
Having featured in the early club shows, this version was actually recorded at Waterloo Studios, Sydney, during Elvis and The Attractions' first, literally, riotous Australian tour. Elvis was later seen performing it in the "smash-hit" film "Americathon", in which he made his motion picture debut as "Earl Manchester".
"RUNNING OUT OF ANGELS", "GREENSHIRT", and "BIG BOYS"
"These Songs, two of which later appeared on Armed Forces, Must have been recorded some time after This Year's Model. They are rare in the sense that most songs from this time were written in hotel rooms, rehearsed on tour buses or at soundchecks and then recorded. There was hardly ever any any time to make demo tapes. However this is the exception; "Greenshirt" contains a verse that I later dropped while "Big Boys" was my attempt to write a song on one chord. "Running Out of Angels", which includes a false start, sounds as if I was making it up as I went along. I probably was."

ARMED FORCES

It was a chill and misty morning over the lake in Madison, Wisconsin. I stumbled into the deserted breakfast room. I had felt better on other mornings. I’m not sure how the subject came up, but within a couple of minutes the waiter had informed me that this was the place where Otis Redding’s plane had crashed. Looking out on the evil, still water it seemed entirely plausible. It was only later that I found that it was in fact another lake in another part of town. Perhaps the fellow didn’t know his local history or maybe he just liked to spook passing musicians. Nothing in America was quite what it seemed to be.
I was more used to staring out of a moving window; lately they had become the tinted panes of a tour bus. I’d got used to the staggering, half asleep, into a struck-stop in the middle of the night to squander scarce drinking money on irresistible junk – plaster statues of pining dogs and cruel hammers with which to smash them, 3-D Jesus postcards, and cut-out Conway and Loretta cassette that played once and then unraveled.
Every shop front or nightclub sign seemed like a line from a song. In some cases that was just what they became. Wasn’t there likely to be something dastardly going on at any place called the Quisling Clinic? It was just up the road from our hotel. I didn’t know much, but I knew a little history. “Quisling” was the name of the Norwegian Fascist leader who betrayed his country in the Second World War. An entire Boys from Brazil-style fantasy could unravel from such a chance encounter.
Maybe the late hours and my chemical constitution were exaggerating the creeping threat, but the coincidences added the surreal edge into the sensory overload and the paranoid tone of “Green Shirt”. The thugs of the nationalist parties were parading in the streets of London.
Although we played at an anti-racist festival on the eve of recording this record, I had never been that attracted to the slogan song. The last album had concluded with a song fearful of complacency, “Night Rally”. It was a projection into a possible future; I was not reporting current events.
The only song based on such a banner premise was Nick Lowe’s “(What’s so funny ‘bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?”. Although the track was recorded during these sessions, it was not originally intended for inclusion on the album. It was first released under the name “Nick Lowe & His Sound” on the B-side of Nick’s single “American Squirm”. The producer was mysteriously pictured at the mixing desk in a pair of my horn-rimmed sunglasses, clutching a Jazzmaster with my name inlaid into the fingerboard of the guitar. I believe that Nick wrote the song as an affectionate parody of various pious ‘60s peace anthems. We certainly attacked the song with little sense of irony and as if it were obvious that no one knew the answer to the question that the song posed.
This album was originally to be called Emotional Fascism. Two or three half-formed notions collided uneasily in that title, although I never would have admitted to having anything as self-conscious as a “theme” running through the songs. Any patterns that have emerged did so as the record was completed or with the benefit of hindsight. Personal and global matters are spoken about with the same vocabulary; maybe this was a mistake. Betrayal and murder are not the same thing. The first of them only deadens the soul. Some of the highly charged language may now seem a little naïve; it is full of gimmicks and almost overpowers some songs with paradoxes and subverted clichés piling up into private and secret meanings. I was not quite 24 and thought I knew it all.
“Two Little Hitlers” was about a loveless egotistical couple. It paints an unflattering picture of the whole courtship dance. The bridge makes passing reference to a speech from Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (“he’s an unnatural man”), but other than that had nothing to do with 20th century history. Musically, I think the clicking guitar part came from listening to early Talking Heads records.
“Chemistry Class” was a reaction to the complacence of some of the university campuses that we visitied on those first trips to America. As a teenager I’d grown up reading magazine articles about radical student politics in the ‘60s. At times we seemed only to encounter uncomprehending hedonism or braying superficiality. I could only imagine such people sliding blithely into some repressive future. Either that or they might find an excellent career in advertising. I wasn’t feeling very reasonable of reasoned in my arguments.
I was as normal as any young idiot suddenly thrust into the charts and onto the cover of periodicals while being spoken about with exaggerated awe. If I seemed a little self-absorbed at the time, then I have to say that much duller songs have been written on the subject. The oddest and most overwrought is “Goon Squad”. The rhythmic idea was borrowed from the great Don Covay record, “It’s Better To Have (And Don’t Need)”, but we were too wound up to play it in that fashion. Added to this was a guitar figure that seems to imitate a very early record by the New York group Television. Nick Lowe’s inspired suggestion—a highly amplified whisper of the title line, as if “Goon Squad” were the name of a kitsch ‘60s television show—provided a much-needed element of black comedy. Like “Pump It Up”, it began as a reaction to the brutal and violent atmosphere of many U.K. shows of those days and the “reality” of rock and roll life but quickly became something altogether more pitiful as the last verse confesses:
“Mother, Father I’m doing so well
I’m making such progress now that you can hardly tell
I fit in a little dedication with one eye on the clock
They caught you under medication
You could be in for a shock”.
Replace that “you” in the second to last line with a more truthful “me” and you’ve pretty much got the picture. The verse concludes:
“Thinking up the alibis that everyone’s forgotten
Just another Mummy’s boy gone to rotten…”
This was the first record that I had written with an acute awareness of an “audience”. More particularly, there was the matter of the personal attention that I was receiving and the unpleasant character that I felt I was becoming. I had left my family home and was living a totally willful life with little sense of gravity. I surrendered to temptation, committed selfish acts of betrayal, and destroyed any possibility of trust and reconciliation in my marriage.
Now whispered persuasions, ultimatums, and the closing time seductions passed for an emotional life. I was looking to discourage admiration and flirting with a sort of controlled fall from grace. As the words of “Big Boys” state: “I am starting to function in the usual, everything is so provocative, very, very temporary”.
These misadventures inspired the heartless apology and barely coded confession of “Accidents Will Happen” as well as the wish fulfillment of “Party Girl”. This last song was written for an art student that I barely knew. I found our meeting reported in the tatty gossip of a Mid-Western newspaper. I was handed the improbable role of “rock star” and certain assumptions were made about the character of the girl in the title. Some small kindness and tenderness passed between us, I could do no more than resent the portrayal and offer this apology. The song is not so much “hopelessly romantic” as simultaneously romantic and without hope.
The origin of “Oliver’s Army” is easier to explain. I made my first trip to Belfast in 1978 and saw mere boys walking around in battle dress with automatic weapons. They were no longer just on the evening news.
These snapshot experiences exploded into visions of mercenaries and imperial armies marauding around the world. The song was based on the premise: “they always get a working class boy to do the killing”. I don’t know who said that; maybe it was me, but it seems true nonetheless. I pretty much had the song sketched out on the plane back to London.
Another song that contained thoughts of class and nation was “Sunday’s Best”, a slick little waltz that I had originally written for Ian Dury or at least in something approaching his style. The bewildered, xenophobic narrator was the kind of pathetic character that might have invited some pity in Ian’s hands. It was also another song constructed out of shop signs and newspaper slogans.
Most of this record was written in hotel rooms or on a tour bus. I recall working on “Accidents Will Happen” in a stifling motel room in Arizona. In my mind I was writing something styled after the Burt Bacharach song “Anyone Who Had A Heart”, even though I understood little of the mechanics of such a composition. This song also contained a lyrical reference from Randy Newman’s “I Don’t Want To Hear It Anymore”, which can be found on Dusty In Memphis.
Our musical navigation came from the handful of albums about which we could all agree, records to which we listen with a disturbing and almost ritualistic frequency. These included Station To Station, Low, and Heroes by David Bowie—the effect of which can be heard overtly in the keyboard and background voices of “Moods For Moderns” and “Senior Service”—The Idiot and Lust For Life by Iggy Pop, Autobahn by Kraftwerk, and several early compilations by ABBA—including the Swedish language version that we constantly swore we’re superior to the U.K. releases. Finally there was The Beatles’ Abbey Road album and Yellow Submarine soundtrack, especially the track “It’s All Too Much”.
Much of the credit for keeping the heart and pop soul of this record should go to Nick Lowe, who produced the album with Roger Bechirian engineering. The recording venue was once again Eden Studios in London, and the sessions were booked for what seemed like an extravagant six weeks. At the time, it seemed as if we were making an impossibly sophisticated leap from the sound of This Year’s Model, but listening now there are very few production devices that sit between the listener and the songs. The confidence and cohesion of The Attractions’ playing is the product of 12 months of intense touring. The sessions were not without dissent and tension, but we probably never had quite this level of consistent musical agreement again.
Some of the music that we were listening to on the road had an icy clean line that came straight out of art school, but it was safe to say there was little danger of Nick allowing us to take this path beyond the adoption of a few instrumental colours, the most prominent of which were Steve Nieve’s use of the Polymoog and Jupiter-8 synthesizers. “Green Shirt” is driven by a loop created on a monophonic Minimoog keyboard that owes a little to the German productions listed above. However, our humour and the tone of the lyrics created something quite unrelated in the finished record.
Oddly enough the record was originally supposed to open with “Clean Money”, in an arrangement that owe quite a bit to The Beatles’ White Album rockers or more likely to The Beatles-influenced sound of Cheap Trick. Their record, In Colour (And In Black And White), had been another road favourite. We threw everything at the song: a rock and roll beat that is almost completely absent from the final running order, tracked guitar feedback, a guest background vocal from Dave Edmunds, plus a rare appearance from The Attractions as a vocal harmony group. It’s hard to imagine the record opening with this belligerent tone rather than the blindingly obvious first line of “Accidents Will Happen”.
“Oliver’s Army” was to be relegated to a B-side until Steve volunteered to add the piano part that owed no small debt to ABBA’s “Dancing Queen”. It went on to be the biggest U.K. single of our career, selling over 500,000 copies and being held at the No. 2 spot in the U.K. hit parade, while three separate singles reached No. 1, including “Heart Of Glass” by Blondie, and “Tragedy” by the Bee Gees, which presumably must have sold an even greater number, an unthinkable amount by the standard of the present day.
Meanwhile, two perfectly good tracks were left off of the album. The first was “Tiny Steps”, which shared the Animals/Them-style guitar figure that drove This Year’s Model outtake “Big Tears”. It was probably the similarity to the previous album that led me to cut the track, although it is probably superior and less lyrically evasive than “Busy Bodies”. That song contains the densest and most neurotic juggling of words in order to simply state that promiscuity wears you out. It’s just about redeemed by a very ambitious vocal line and a guitar figure related to Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman”.
The second song edited out of the final sequence was a modest but heartfelt song to a confidante of mine, written in the exhausted hours when lust requires only sympathy. It is called “Talking In The Dark”.
“Wednesday Week” was a chillier item; a two-part trifle in which insincere lovers put each other on something rotten. The second part of the song is the most obvious of our affection for the Wings single that we always seemed to find on truck-stop jukeboxes.
Barney Bubbles’ extraordinary pop-art sleeve design was a unique arrangement of folding panels which also included postcard studies of myself and The Attractions in “character” poses. Pete Thomas is pictured in a “James Bond” stance beside a pink sports car with two girls at his feet. Not all the other portraits were this frivolous.
Once the origami package of the original vinyl release was tackled, the “Live At The Hollywood High” E.P. was to be found. This was a snapshot of the band on the verge of success, although the source tape from the soundboard gives little sense of the audience or the atmosphere of the show. “Accidents Will Happen” was performed here as a slow piano ballad before we played what was a pretty typical set at the time. Three titles were issued on the original E.P. More songs from that show now complete the sequence on CD 2.
“My Funny Valentine” was a song that I had known since I was a child. I don’t know what prompted me to record it, maybe someone was late for the session and I was just filling time. It was an oddly romantic choice in the circumstances. I just had lousy judgment in such affairs. It was later given away free on a red vinyl single at a show on Valentine’s Day of 1979. Some might think that appropriate.
On the eve of recording this album a girl arrived on my doorstep from America. At best we were strangers with a coy and theoretical entanglement. I thought that she might be coming for a short visit and that I might at least satisfy my curiosity about her. However, she turned up with eight pieces of luggage like a mail-order bride and moved in. I was too stupid and vain to resist. She’d later claim to have inspired most of the songs on this record—all of which were already written when we met. This was also said about the previous release—a chronological impossibility—and many other of my compositions to this day. It is a tragic delusion about which I wish I could say: “I shall not dignify that with a response” but “dignity” doesn’t come into this story.
I now had everything I needed, other than the ridicule that I seemed determined to invite. I had no way of knowing that this flirtation with disgrace was just about to begin.
-Elvis Costello
________________________________________

Rykodisk Liner Notes

Armed Forces was recorded at Eden Studios, London. The sessions took what we regarded as a very extravagant six weeks. Strangely, the first track to be released came out as a B-side. Credited to "Nick Lowe and his sound", "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, And Understanding" appeared on the back of Nick's Radar single "American Squirm" for reasons nobody can remember. I do recall that Nick was pictured on the sleeve wearing a pair of my dark hornrims, clutching my Jazzmaster, with the name "Costello" inlaid on the neck. I think it was what you might call a clue.
Later it was added to the Columbia edition of Armed Forces in place of "Sunday's Best" which was deemed to be "Too English". The album was released in February 1979. The single "Oliver's Army" stuck at number two in the British charts, despite selling over 400, 000 copies.
Having completed an extensive Canadian Itinerary and made our first trips to Japan and Australia since finishing the recording we now began our most intensive period of touring, playing something like thirty-eight back-to-back dates in Britain (Our one day off being a trip to Holland for a TV show!), followed by eight weeks of concerts and misadventures in the USA.

EXTENDED PLAY
"MY FUNNY VALENTINE"
First issued on the B-side of "Oliver's Army", it was later coupled with "Peace Love and Understanding" and given away at a Valentines Day concert in Long Beach California.
"TINY STEPS"
"If this sounds like it belongs on This Year's Model then it was probably for the benefit of the documentary film crew who were climbing up the walls and crawling across the floor in attempt to capture us in an act of recording our "new sound". For reasons I cannot explain we elected to sound as much like our last record as possible. Not without justification they made they made their escape and the film was never completed.
"Tiny Steps" first appeared on a B-side of "Radio Radio".
"CLEAN MONEY"
Originally intended as the opening track of the album and featuring Dave Edmunds (And a rare appearance by the Attractions) on backing vocals. It was later scrapped and only issued as the "B-side" of "Clubland" in late 1980.
"TALKING IN THE DARK" and "WEDNESDAY WEEK"
"Talking in the Dark" was included in most early drafts of the running order for "Emotional Fascism", which was the original title of the album."
Both of these songs were issued on a free single which came with the initial Radar release of Armed Forces.
"LIVE AT HOLLYWOOD HIGH" - "Accidents Will Happen", "Alison", "Watching the Detectives"
This EP was also issued with the initial Radar release.




GET HAPPY

I was just about to enter the 57th Street building which housed our American offices, when a voice barked out: “Okay, Costello. Freeze”. Two of New York’s finest, who were moonlighting as my armed bodyguards, spun around, reaching for the revolvers concealed beneath their Windcheaters. My manager, who was holding his fingers in a mock pistol-aiming stance, visibly blanched at the speed of their reaction. We were soon doubled up with grim laughter, but had they been quicker on the draw, this might have been the suitably ludicrous conclusion to the tragic comedy through which I found myself stumbling.
The success of the Armed Forces album threatened to take us to a place where there was little understanding or tolerance for detail, only a mass reaction to a hit tune. The game that I was playing in my mind (or perhaps with my mind) was about to come to a very nasty conclusion. We continued to tour relentlessly through the end of 1978 and into an incredibly punishing schedule in the early part of 1979. The tone of our bizarrely named “Armed Funk Tour” could be illustrated by the fact that we were riding around America on a tour bus that claimed to be headed for Marine H.Q. at “Camp Lejeune”. You might say we were spoiling for a fight.
This would all come to an end in April of 1979 at Columbus, Ohio, where a ridiculous drunken argument would culminate in me speaking the exact opposite of my true beliefs in an attempt to provoke a fight that inevitably arrived. That I was speaking in some absurd, exaggerated, supposedly ironic humour, in which everything is expressed in the reverse of that which one knows to be true, is no excuse. There was nothing sparkling or glorious in this wordplay, just the seed of madness. It was the product of crazed indulgence. The racial nature of these alleged remarks—I say “alleged” because I have about as much true memory of what actually transpired as any of the other drunken combatants—created a fairly major scandal.
Our record were pulled from the few radio playlists where they were featured, our shows picketed by the very anti-racist organization for which we had appeared six months earlier, and there were over a hundred death threats to my person, necessitating the employment of armed bodyguards throughout the remaining dates. I left the U.S. having failed to explain myself to the satisfaction of the hysterical and, it must be said, delighted liberal press. The people I had supposedly slandered, Ray Charles and James Brown, had a much more generous view of these remarks, rightly putting them down to drunken idiocy. I didn’t imagine that I would ever return, nor did I particularly think that I deserved to do so, despite the fact that I knew in my heart that the people who sought to make mischief of the incident had many hypocrites among their number. I could never properly explain how such words came out of my mouth. The humour of outrage never did sit that well with people and is particularly useless if the intent is garbled drunkenly.
Only one of the songs on this record refers to these events, “Riot Act”, and particularly the lines: “I got your letter, now they say I don’t care for the colour it paints me”. With hindsight, it might be tempting to claim that I had some noble motive in basing this record on the music I had admired and learned from prior to my brush with infamy. But if I was trying to pay respects and make such amends, I doubt if pride would have allowed me to express that thought after I had made my rather contrived explanation to the jury of the seething and self-righteous. I simply went back to work and relied on instinct, curiosity, and enduring musical passions.
I hated just about everything in my world, reserving the greatest disdain for myself. The handful of songs that had been written and arranged during the touring madness had an appropriately brittle and shallow sound—now identified by radio programmers and A&R men as “new wave”, one term that never passed these lips in earnest. Following a brief attempt to record one or two of these travesties, we retired to the saloon bar to take a few drinks and entirely re-think a record that we had just finished rehearsing. Students of music history might be amused by the live version of “High Fidelity” on CD2, which records our attempts to play the song after the fashion of David Bowie’s Station To Station album.
Much of the music that had come out in the previous three years appeared not to have any obvious precedent. The best of it happened in the moment, the worst of it could make minutes seem endless. I had begun listening again to the R’n’B records, filling in the gaps between the compilations of my teenage years, Atlantic’s This Is Soul and Motown Charbusters Vol. 3, with stacks of Stax singles purchased in Camden Town. The first trips to America had yielded still more riches: whole albums by someone like Garnet Mimms, who had previously only been the name on a single track of a “various artists” collection. Drawing on all of these sources, we set about re-arranging the songs using an R’n’B motor.
Bearing in mind that this record was made many years before the trend towards “sampling”, we made a pretty good job of lifting the main figure of Booker T. & the MGs’ “Time IS Tight” for “Temptation”, while the guitar part of “King Horse” alluded to The Four Tops’ “Reach Out (I’ll Be There)”.
Even the lyrics drew on these influences. The opening line of “High Fidelity” quotes a Supremes song, while “Love For Tender” (itself a re-working of the Armed Forces outtake “Clean Money”) made use of the same “You Can’t Hurry Love” riff that The Jam would take to the top of the UK charts three years later with the vastly superior song, “Town Called Malice”.
Some of the references are much less obvious. There is little in the finished tracks of “Opportunity” or “Secondary Motion” to suggest that these were our attempts to play like Al Green’s backing band or that “Clowntime Is Over” was written in imitation of Curtis Mayfield. In almost every case, my vocal performance would be enough to thoroughly disguise the origin of such thinking.
The record was predominantly recorded at Wisseloord Studio in Hilversum, Holland. The establishment was considerably more sedate than our previous recording venue, with seriously attuned monitoring that seemed shockingly quiet at first. The idea was that we would be thoroughly concentrated on recording without the distractions of family and friends in London or the temptations and charms of nearby Amsterdam.
Nevertheless, a tray of cold Heineken, vodka, and orange juice was delivered to the control room each afternoon, and the illusion of having this civilized cocktail hour (or in the words of our producer, Nick Lowe, never drinking “until the sun is over the yard-arm”) disguised the fact that the whole band was pretty lit up the entire time we were away from home. Thankfully, the only nearby attraction was a rather lifeless lesbian discotheque, the patrons of which were rather unimpressed by our explanation that “we like girls too”. Ah, such youthful wit.
The song “Possession” was actually written in a Dutch taxi during a five-minute journey back to the studio after I had become drunkenly besotted with the waitress in a local café. The song, which aptly departed from the grand marching style of Bob Dylan’s “Is Your Love In Vain?”—our paths had first crossed during his “Street Legal” tour of 1978—was cut the same evening with the singer propped up behind the Hammond organ.
Despite such detours we cut a la

[mcramahamasham]

large amount of material in Holland, adapting “I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down” from a slow Sam & Dave B-side into a frenetic up-tempo, making use of a glass strings room as a vocal booth to create the signature sound of much of the album. This track would become the advance UK single, reaching No.4 in the charts in 1980.
This followed a hilarious interlude in the High Courts in which we found ourselves being sued by our distribution company, Warner Bros. I had recently produced “The Specials” album for 2-Tone Records and group leader and label founder Jerry Dammers offered to put out our new single while we moved from Radar Records to our new F-Beat imprint. This required us to completely ignore the ongoing deal with WB, but the resulting legal action did not seem to harm the album release, as we sought to characterize the record as a second-hand compilation—hence the ready distressed sleeve artwork and our little-aired K-Tel-style television ad campaign. A couple of copies of the 2-Tone pressing of the single actually made it into the shops, which might have pleased a few vinyl collectors but probably confused many record buyers. The follow-up, “High Fidelity”, would become the last in an unbroken run of eight UK Top 30 singles.
Obviously, not all the song could be credibly re-arranged using rhythms and motifs from R’n’B records. “Human Touch” was clearly made under the spell of my recent work with The Specials while “Men Called Uncle” and “Beaten To The Punch” both took their cue from the 1960s Liverpool sound that had produced the records other “cover”: The Merseybeats’ “I Stand Accused”. An earlier attempt to record this song (in a more ska-influenced arrangement) was part of the ill-fated session at which we just about managed to record “So Young”. I can’t really improve upon the paragraph from the previous edition of this record in which this tune and record date were described thus: “This song was borrowed from the great Joe Camilleri, then of Jo Jo Zep and The Falcons, after our first trip to Australia. Unfortunately our only Abbey Road session fell on a Bank Holiday and was blighted by flying coffee cups, technical resistance and overwhelming blueness”.
The final cover song under consideration, a version of Betty Everett’s mighty “Getting Mighty Crowded”, also didn’t make the final sequence but was later issued as a B-side and featured frequently in live sets for a number of years.
In the case of “New Amsterdam”, a song about a bewildered new arrival in the New World, it proved impossible to improve on the demo rendition captured at Archipelago Studios a ₤15 per hour recording facility in Pimlico, London, and on which I played all the instruments. I cut several blueprints for the Get Happy!! arrangements at this session, one of them, “Riot Act”, probably rivaling the final version in intensity. Only “Black & White World” exists in a radically different interpretation, leaning towards the narrative style of a Ray Davies song, while the final recording was based on a Pete Thomas drum pattern which owed something to the style that Richie Hayward of Little Feat employed on “Cold, Cold, Cold”.
This narrative style of songs can also be heard on several of the tracks on CD2. Most of these cuts were demos or recording experiments that took place at Nick Lowe’s AAM-PRO Studios, which was located on the ground floor of his house. In most cases I played all the instruments (occasionally enlisting the help of Pete Thomas and studio engineer Paul “Bassman” Riley as a rhythm section—the latter having been my first choice for the bass role in my band in 1976, shortly before the recording of My Aim Is True and the recruitment of the other Attractions).
“Ghost Train” was a song that fictionalized some of the cabaret turns that I saw in Northern England clubs, when going to see my father perform in the early ‘70s. The first draft of the song, “Maureen And Stan”, was co-written with my first singing partner, Allan Mayes, in around 1971. Allan apparently still performs this version of the material in the Dallas area where he has lived for many years. In the late 70s I completely re-wrote the song around the time that I was spending rather too much time with the Steely Dan album Katy Lied. My version features my own hands on Spanish guitar, marimba, and fretless bass.
“Dr. Luther’s Assistant” had been written just as I completed work on My Aim IS True and owes some melodic debt to both The Byrds’ “5D” and some of Roy Wood’s psychedelic songs for The Move. The story is a fantasy that I invented about a local disused cinema. The track features Pete Thomas’ laboriously overdubbed drum track to a “solo” performance that is less than perfectly in time.
“Hoover Factory” is an ode to a splendid building that I used to pass on my bus route to work in the mid-70s. The façade still stands today although the building now houses a supermarket. I had performed this song in my first appearances as “Elvis Costello” supporting The Rumour (minus Graham Parker) at the Nashville Rooms in early 1977, but the song could not find a place on the first three releases. This solo assembly of sounds seemed to lavish even more affection on the subject of the song.
“New Lace Sleeves” is an earlier draft of a song that would feature on the album Trust. This version, featuring the Thomas/Riley rhythm section, has a mellow “lover’s rock” arrangement with a few dub touches and flourishes of heavily reverberant melodica. Although I am happy to be re-acquainted with this rather hazy rendition, the song clearly benefited from The Attractions edgier and more original treatment.
“Just A Memory” was recorded in T.W. Studios, Fulham (where I had produced “The Specials”). It featured on the E.P. release of “New Amsterdam” along with “Dr. Luther’s Assistant” and “Ghost Train”, but was written in imitation of Burt Bacharach with Dusty Springfield in mind. At the time I had no idea or little confidence about how I might contact her. However, several years later, Dusty’s producers must have recognized the intention of the song, as it was recorded for her album White Heat, with the inclusion of a specially written second verse that brought it closer to a conventional length composition. Indeed, many of the songs on this record were under the two-minute mark.
The lyrical content of the main album still contained the manic spinning of phrases and words that sped into view while touring the world (an approach that had characterized the words of Armed Forces) or a running commentary on the seductions of fame. These included “B Movie” and “Motel Matches”—the latter being adapted from the original arrangement as a country ballad. “King Horse” adapted words that had appeared in a couple of pre-professional compositions and was now used to portray the kind of vain and foolish fellow I feared that I might have easily become. At the time I remember thinking that it might be the best choice for a single release, but this never came to pass.
However, there were also the occasional more revealing lines that spoke of the broken or damaged vows that came straight from my life back in London after three years of misadventure detailed in the trilogy: “Opportunity”, “Temptation”, and “Possession”. These songs included “High Fidelity” and, most painfully, “Riot Act”, which open with the lines, “Forever doesn’t mean forever any more, I said ‘Forever’, now it looks like I’m not going to be around much anymore”.
These last two tracks were actually recorded back in London at Eden Studios. Certainly the vocals have an exhausted, desperate, and obviously sodden quality that tells its own tale. Without checking back over session logs, it is not possible for me to say with accuracy which other songs were cut back in London, but I do recall that they do include “King Horse”, the slow version of “Clowntime Is Over”, and the versions of “Girls Talk” included on CD2. This last song had been given away to Dave Edmunds in a moment of drunken bravado and went to reach No.2 in the U.K. charts for him. Neither of The Attractions’ versions were really completed but illustrate the band at work, switching from the off-center bass-driven version that would the would later be issued as the B-side of “I Can’t Stand Up…” to the weird thrash that has been sensibly buried in the vaults until this edition.
Some time in this “frenzy” of recording—not an idle boast in this case (the original album contained twenty tracks, while this edition includes fifty)—a very slight song, “The Imposter”, was cut. It probably retained more of the frantic, Vox Continental-driven sound with which we had become identified. In among the manic and shallow word spinning, there was one alarming line in which I would recognize the potential for my moral demise: “When I said that I was lying, I might have been lying”. It was little accident that the next album was entitled Trust.

Postscript 2003
I was standing backstage at a gala show in Los Angeles with a group of friends in the dingy, concrete loading bay when I saw a man in dark sunglasses being led in our direction. It was Ray Charles, and as he drew level, his assistant stopped to introduce him to the singer at my side. Realizing that to try and offer any apology after all these years would do little more than embarrass everyone present, all I could do was turn my head away with shame and frustration knowing that this was a hand that I will probably never shake.
One would hope that it is evident in many of my songs that I understand dignity to be the right of all humanity, whether one’s ancestors walked in chains in Rome or were put up for sale in an American market place, or were driven from their homes by the duel oppressions of fanaticism and poverty. Nevertheless, in every encounter with an African-American musician, I have to wonder whether this distorted and obscure fragment of my biography will have filtered through unexplained. I have also found that guilt is a burden without any statue of limitations.
The most widely read account of my explanation of the events that utterly changed the course of my career and probably led to the recording of this album was published in a Rolling Stone interview and cover story. Greil Marcus’ questioning was thoughtful enough and suitable uncompromising, but someone at the paper decided to over-dramatize the contents of the interview by accompanying the Annie Leibowitz cover shot with the byline “Elvis Costello Repents”. As far as I am aware, none of the editors of Rolling Stone were at the time priests or those with a direct connection to the Holy Ghost or anyone else involved with the forgiveness of sins.
Like anyone with a long career, I have had my share of regrets about commercially motivated misjudgments. However, this rag has, over the years, undergone a remarkable transformation from an organ of the supposed counterculture to a shallow pop-culture shop window for starlets and acrobats while funding their efforts with generous amounts of Big Tobacco advertising revenue and offers of penis enlargement to easily deluded teenage boys. I can only hope that those responsible continue to sleep untroubled by the illusion of moral superiority that laid me so low in a dark Holliday Inn bar in 1979, the consequence of which I suppose I will carry all of my days. For now, I have done explaining.
-Elvis Costello
________________________________________

Rykodisk Liner Notes

"Several of the songs on "Get Happy" had been played on the mysteriously named "Armed Funk Tour" in the spring of 1979, our last American trip for over two years. However our first trial sessions revealed our "road" arrangements to be trite, brittle, and uncomfortably close to the rapidly dating style which was now called "New Wave". The decision to change was not exactly agonized over. It took a few drinks, a handful of old Stax singles (which I had recently bought in Camden Town) and our copies of "Motown Chartbusters vol. 3" for us to imagine that we could quickly find a new blueprint for the album.
Some songs, such as "Men Called Uncle" and "Riot Act", retained the shape sketched out at the demo sessions, while almost everything else was reworked, often to the extent of trying the patience of more than one member of the band. Of course, just because you listen to somebody's record doesn't mean that you will sound anything like them. Sessions were often far from coherent and anything but analytical: A song or singer would be mentioned and it was sheer luck if we all handsome response to a direction such as: "Play it like a Garnet Mimms tune". In other cases it is hard to imagine who, or what, we were thinking of. Having said that it is fairly obvious that "Temptation" is based on the Booker T. and the MG's hit "Time is Tight", while "Love for Tender" and "High Fidelity" both quote in different ways from Supremes songs. I could also point out that "King Horse" uses the guitar figure from the Four Tops' "Reach Out (I'll Be There)", but after that you are on your own.
"Get Happy" was produced by Nick Lowe, balanced by Roger Bechirian at Wisseloord Studios, Hilversum, Holland during October 1979 (a little recording was also done at Eden Studios, London). The main exception is "New Amsterdam", which was a fluke recording that came out of a demo session in a fifteen-quid-an-hour studio in Pimlico. Attempts to re-create the mood with the entire band failed, so my solo effort was included on the album and later issued as part of an E.P. On the whole, Wisseloord was a more sedate environment than we were used to, but it did have unforeseen advantages such as a glass "strings" booth which proved to be more useful for creating the vocal sound on "I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down". This song was a Sam and Dave b-side which we changed from a ballad into an up-tempo number, while the other cover on the album, "I Stand Accused", was learned from The Merseybeats."
"I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down" was the first release on the new F-Beat label, but only after a legal dispute with Warner Bros. over the departure of the Riviera Global team (E.C., Nick Lowe, and Jake Riviera) from Radar Records (during which the record was briefly pressed and scheduled for release on The Specials' Two-Tone label). With hour satisfied the delayed single became a top five British hit. The follow-up "High Fidelity" was the last in an unbroken run of eight top thirty singles.
"With such songs as "Possession" being written while we were in Holland, we eventually settled on these twenty tracks. Special care had to be taken with the cutting and pressing process, but now thanks to the wonders of technology we are able to present the new, improved, "Get Happy" containing, count them, THIRTY TRACKS!!!"

EXTENDED PLAY
"GIRLS TALK" ("I can't Stand Up For Falling Down" B-side)
"Perhaps I was careless to give this song away to Dave Edmunds as it became a top five hit for him in Britain. This was just one of the versions of the song that we recorded during the "Get Happy" sessions."
"CLOWNTIME IS OVER (No. 2)" ("High Fidelity" B-side)
"This is how the song was originally written, however being unhappy with our first recording we developed the arrangement heard on the album. I later re-recorded the vocal on our original track. Both versions have featured in "live" performances."
"GETTING MIGHT CROWDED" ("High Fidelity" B-side)
"I learned this song from the great Betty Everett record. Our version was recorded at Eden Studios during the "Get Happy" sessions."
"SO YOUNG" (from the Demon compilation "Out of Our Idiot")
"This song was borrowed from the great Joe Camilleri, then of Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons, after our first trip to Australia. Unfortunately our only Abbey Road session fell on a Bank Holiday and was blighted by flying coffee cups, technical resistance and overwhelming blueness."
In fact, before the session, "So Young" was to be a summer single. Elvis and the Attractions performed the song at the Pink Pop Festival in Holland that July. The bill which now makes curious reading was (in order of appearance): Average White Band, The Police, Dire Straights, E.C. and the Attractions, rush and Peter Tosh.
"JUST A MEMORY" ("New Amsterdam" E.P.)
"Recorded at T.W. Studios, Fulham with Steve Nieve at the keyboards and released on the "New Amsterdam" E.P. Later, with addition of an extra verse (which had to be sung down a transatlantic telephone line), this song was finally recorded by the artist for whom it was originally intended: Dusty Springfield."
"HOOVER FACTORY" (Ampro Studios "Clubland" b-side)
"Although this song was written in 1976 it was among the experimental "solo" recordings made around this time at Ampro and Archipelago studios."
"GHOST TRAIN" (Ampro Studios "New Amsterdam" E.P.)
"I first used this storyline in a song I wrote in Liverpool in 1972. This version was written in 1976."
"DR. LUTHER’S ASSISTANT" (Ampro Studios "New Amsterdam" E.P.)
"Written in 1977 and briefly considered for the album "This Year's Model". I recorded this version at the same session as "Ghost Train", playing everything apart from drums which Pete Thomas added at a later date."
"BLACK AND WHITE WORLD" (Archipeligo Studios; from the Demon and Columbia Compilations "10 bloody Mary's and ten How's your fathers" and "Taking Liberties")
"This is a demo recording for "Get Happy" which presents an entirely different treatment of the music, while although this "Riot Act" (Archipelago Studios; previously unreleased) is a blueprint for the final recording. I think it has something that is missing from the final version."

[mcramahamasham]

TRUST

I was just telling Nick Lowe for the fourteenth time that our next record was going to cross the melody of Armed Forces with the rhythm of Get Happy!!, when one of the drummers present elected to do his party trick. This involved cutting the necktie of one of the other bar patrons with a pair of scissors borrowed from the hotel kitchen. In the movies of Laurel & Hardy or The Three Stooges, this is achieved in one smoothly satisfying snip, but drunkenness and blunted blades meant that the clumsy hacking went on long after the joke had died, and the victim had recovered from his surprise at being assailed by a drinking companion and started to become irate.
We were on the Channel Island of Jersey, a deeply conservative tax-haven belonging to the U.K. but improbably close to the French coast. It was hardly the most likely location to be starting out on a European tour, but then this was hardly a typical tour. Steve Nieve had recently been injured in a car accident in Los Angeles, and I had taken the rash decision to take the road in a trio format.
Our opening-night concert, on the nearby island of Guernsey, had been a disaster that few of the traumatized audience members will talk about to this day. Having equipped myself with a terrifying stock of guitar pedals and a ferocious cocktail of mind-bending liquids, we stumbled through two more such wretched nights before enlisting the help of Martin Belmont, a guitarist from Graham Parker’s band, The Rumour. Once he arrived we went rampaging through Europe, occasionally finding the energy to play concerts featuring the two-guitar format that can be heard on one track of this, my fifth album (and sixth record release) in four years.
From a personal point of view, this was easily the most drug-influenced record of my career. I say this without any sober piety or in order to glory in it with indulgent hindsight but because it is true. It was completed close to a self-induced nervous collapse on a diet of rough “scrumpy” cider, gin and tonic, various powders, only one of which was “Andrews’ Liver Salts”, and, in the final hours, Seconal and Johnnie Walker Black Label. The barely coherent ramblings of my addled brain were gradually beaten into some shape by the relentless re-working of melodies and lyrical fragments, many of which pre-dated my professional career. The radical shift from the innocence of those early drafts of the cynical and jagged texts contained in the final record is only balanced by one or two precisely constructed compositions, most notably, “Shot With His Own Gun”—the first result of having bought a Bechstein baby grand piano in early 1980.
The poise and calm of several of the cuts belies the wild mood swings and the violent hangover through which most of this music was recorded. “New Lace Sleeves”, in particular, is among the finest of The Attractions’ ensemble performances. That the song itself is mostly concerned with the tension between passion and the emotionally suppressing influence of “being civilized” is an irony that we can all enjoy with twenty years or more of hindsight.
One alliance that would play a part in the making of this record was that with the South East London band, Squeeze. I had been a great admirer of Chris Difford’s gift for the details of a short story in lyric form and Glenn Tilbrook’s melodic flights, but our paths had not crossed until one evening when we were all propping up the bar in the BBC Club in Television Centre. It was something of a game to attempt to get past the rather intimidating, uniformed, and mustachioed doorman and then raise hell during the lull between camera rehearsals and the taping of the weekly Top Of The Pops programme on which we had all become fairly regular guests since late 1977.
On this occasion I was more determined than ever to imbibe as much alcohol as possible, as I was due to be “flown” on a painful pantomime wire thanks to the producer’s absurd flight of inspiration that I should be hauled up to the studio ceiling on the title line of our current hit, “I can’t stand up for falling down”. I vaguely recall Mr. Difford being more than generous about the fact that I had allowed myself to be talked into this nonsense, and we have been friends and colleagues ever since. Soon I would be calling his writing partner to come to my assistance in a moment of crisis during our recording sessions.
The songs on this record are loosely concerned with a kind of disenchantment that seemed to settle on me in my mid-20s. Certainly, the recent political swing to the Right offered a gloomier sense of the future and provided the lyrics of “Clubland”, “Pretty Words”, and the unsubtle commentary on the new prime Minister’s enthusiasm for Cold War posturing: “Big Sister”. The sense of general dread and paranoia of “Strict Time” was probably not unconnected with the influence of controlled substances, but this was also to be found in the words of “New Lace Sleeves” and “Watch Your Step”, both of which were completions of songs I had begun when I was between 19 and 20.
The fact that I had come close to a terminal fracture in my marriage lowered me into feelings of adult guilt and romantic disillusionment. I think this can be easily heard in another pre-professional composition, the country ballad “Different Finger”, but also in “Lovers Walk”, “Shot With His Own Gun”, the brutal portrait of “White Knuckles” and its companion song, “You’ll Never Be A Man”. At this remove it seems unnatural that I should have been so unremittingly cynical, but as sense and nonsense collided in the aftermath of our two-and-a-half years of pop success and disgrace, this was a pretty accurate, if blurred, picture.
We might have been perfectly well prepared, having spent several days rehearsing in the West Country cottage of my solicitor. However, we had also developed a taste for the local brew of rough cider (rumoured to be able to dissolve a dead rat or a tennis shoe immersed to test its vintage). At the time licensing laws curtailed drinking in the mid-afternoon, but that which went on behind illegally locked doors reduced some of the locals and several of the visiting musicians into caricatures from a Hogarthian gin house scene.
As might be expected in the circumstances, the process of recording turned out not to be an easy one. This may have been as a consequence of initially having chosen the wrong studio in which to record. Abandoning Eden Studios, in which we had recorded all or part of the previous three albums, we arrived at DJM, on the edge of the city of London. We quickly discovered that we had made an expensive error.
The room was constructed to favour the tight, dry, and muted sound of many early ‘70s records, and it quickly became apparent that we could not create the mood that the songs required. Our attempts to batter the material into shape can be heard on CD2 of this edition. One or two of our ragged experiments now seem to have a sense of anger (the slower of two versions of “Big Sister” and a manic attempt at “Watch Your Step” in particular) that is absent from the more considered and resigned final draft.
Most days would begin with disenchantment at hearing the preious days efforts, and a plan to repair to a pub at the end of the wonderfully named Lamb’s Conduit Passage would soon be proposed. Fortified by several pints of the cider that had fuelled our rehearsals, we then purchased a couple of flagons of the same and the cycle of delusion and disappointment that would continue until the small hours. Despite this “working method”, there were moments of focus that produced very coherent performances such as “Shot With His Own Gun”. Although I composed the song at the piano, I was barely able to play it if anyone was looking. Steve Nieve’s classical training was quite evident, as he provided a much more flowing and dramatic accompaniment than I could have imagined or mastered.
Returning to Eden seemed the wisest option. We effectively began again, no more disciplined but at least able to recognize the sonic results that were being captured by Roger Bechirian. Ironically, we nevertheless took advantage of a drier, close sound first glimpsed at DJM for some of the most individual recordings: “New Lace Sleeves” and “Watch Your Step”, both of which featured melodica fanfares, an idea borrowed from dub records, where we might have previously employed a Vox Continental organ. There were also two guitar solos that I had imagined as part of the compositions rather than recorded improvisations.
The first of these on “Fish ‘n Chip Paper” tipped a hat to the melodic style favoured by Glenn Tilbrook, though hardly executed with his finesse. Glenn had come to visit the studio during the inevitable crisis in which my voice had vanished due to so many nights spent carousing more than singing. He offered to deputize on vocals, so we could cut the track for “From A Whisper To A Scream”, and the effect was so impressive that we decided to cut the song as a duet when I had recovered.
The second guitar solo was part of a surprisingly intricate arrangement for “White Knuckles”. This song is a one of a number of tunes that took musical cues from records in the recent charts. Although, I might have risked a rebellion among The Attractions to state so openly I privately modeled “White Knuckles” on a couple of XTC records, while for “You’ll Never Be A Man” I borrowed some musical ideas from The Pretenders’ “Brass In Pocket” and several other songs by Chrissie Hynde.
Oddest of all, it now occurs to me the circular arpeggios in “Clubland” may have secretly been a disrespectful gloss of The Police’s guitar style, though obviously with a darker lyrical content that their songs always seemed to lack. Although my arrogance about and detachment from the pop mainstream was almost complete, we approached this song as if it were to be the next in out only recently broken run of hit singles.
In our haste to recover the lost time at DJM we continued to record for several days without Nick Lowe while he was down with the flu. And the record of “Clubland” probably never did recover from his absence. Although the arrangement was strong, I now see why Nick had some reservations about our master take upon his return to the studio. At the time I was adamant that this was the version to be mixed, although I have heard the same arrangement played to very much better effect on many occasions since.
It was not the only time I entered the studio without Nick Lowe during these sessions. In the last fraught days of recording, I cut a solo track, a re-working of “Big Sister” into something that contained a little more tragedy than anger: “Big Sister’s Clothes”. The fact that the bass line was modeled on something by The Clash might have risked an allergic reaction in certain members of the band, so I thought it best to record the song alone. Once again melodica and skin tambourine featured in the arrangement, along with a vibraphone and a pair of timpani that just happened to be in the studio. In my slightly befuddled state, I even took the time to record the world’s first “backwards accordion”, imaging that it might be a suitably mysterious effect, only to find that it was almost identical to the sound of the instrument being dropped down a small staircase.
If some of these songs departed in some disguised manner from current releases, there were others that reflected a continuation of the use of R’n’B rhythms derived from some decently obscure sources as with the previous album, Get Happy!! I know that “Strict Time” and “Lovers Walk” both had their beginnings in my interest in The Meters and other less well-known New Orleans artists, but the berserk atmosphere of the final recordings utterly disguised these “influences”.
Several songs recorded during these sessions were not included on the final album, although it is now hard to imagine why this is the case. “Black Sails At Sunset”, a sort of slower melodic variant of “Oliver’s Army”, had been written during my first visit to Berlin and certainly denoted a further disenchantment with the rewards of pop life. It had a similar lyrical theme to “New Lace Sleeves”: the less attractive aspects of the triumph of supposedly civilized culture over instinct and passion—just yer usual pop song nonsense. This tune had been originally cut shortly after the Get Happy!! Sessions in a piano and voice rendition which pre-dated even “Shot With His Own Gun” but was re-recorded during the DJM sessions. With hindsight it might have been a better addition to the album than one or two of the lighter but faster pieces that were included.
“Sad About Girls” was a Steve Nieve song, written by the “Brain and Hart” partnership for The Attractions’ “solo” album, Mad About The Wrong Boy (or “Too Clever By Two-Thirds”, as I once rather sarcastically suggested it might be called). The song was my personal favourite from the set and for some reason been one or two Steve Nieve compositions that featured in our 1978 debut concert in Paris, a town in which Mr. Nieve now resides, despite the nature of that debacle. This attempt to divide the writing responsibilities did not make it to the final sequence and was never repeated.
Other songs recorded in and around this time include a bizarre rendition of Cole Porter’s “Love For Sale”, delicately accompanied by Rockpile’s Billy Bremmer on Spanish guitar, and my hesitant solo piano demo of the music that would later appear in the Imperial Bedroom composition “The Long Honeymoon”. This was cut at a late-night session after a show in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, at which I recorded a surprisingly faithful and reasonably coherent guitar and vocal transcription of a song made famous by Billie Holliday, “Gloomy Sunday”. I have no memory as to why I was moved to cut it, other than I love the song. And, this version of “Boy With A Problem”, with my own piano accompaniment, features Chris Difford’s entire lyric before I made the small amendments which are heard on the Imperial Bedroom recording.
The short instrumental “Weeper’s Dream” was originally composed around 1973, whilst “Twenty-Five To Twelve” represents the first appearance of a piece that illustrates the crooked path that a song may take to its final resting place. The track owes more than a little to David Bowie’s “Heroes”, but for further installments, the listener is directed to Imperial Bedroom (“Seconds Of Pleasure”) and Punch The Clock (“The Invisible Man” and “Seconds Of Pleasure”).
None of the singles from this album made much of an impact in the UK or America, although “Watch Your Step” did return us from our exile from US television with an appearance on Tom Snyder’s show Tomorrow. There was also still sufficient interest in our new release that we were booked to deputize for The Clash as the headline act for the 100,000 people who attended the “Heatwave Festival” at Mosport Speedway, outside Toronto, on a bill that included Talking Heads, The Pretenders, Rockpile, and the B-52’s, most of whom had enjoyed much greater radio and chart success than we had ever done during our absence from North America from mid ’79 to the summer of 1980. It would take a trip to Nashville and an old George Jones song to return us to the charts, and then only in the UK.
Almost by accident, the album arrived at a sound and tone that was very true to my feelings at the time. The world it described was the opposite of the album title in much the same way that Get Happy!! had been less than cheerful. It suggested a tarnished and disappointed soul looking beyond the certainties of brash, arrogant youth and early success and on into a life (and possibly a career) in music. It also contains several songs that I still perform to this day.
Not all the songs included enjoyed such a happy fate. The rowdiest but slightest cut on the record, “Luxembourg”, had its origins in an R’n”B number, “Seven O’Clock”, written for Canvey Island’s finest, Dr. Feelgood. The final draft of the lyrics picked the hapless dukedom as an object of scorn, but only after the original, equally wordy text had been rejected by Dr. Feelgood’s frontman, Lee Brilleaux, after one perusal, with the immortal line: “What’s this then, fucking Shakespeare?”
-Elvis Costello

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Rykodisk Liner Notes

"Trust" was recorded in late October and early November of 1980 at DJM Studios near Holborn, although we inevitably returned to Eden Studios for the Final sessions.
"The cast and content of the album was determined by events during 1980. By the end of the "GET HAPPY" tour, in which we played only seaside towns and places not usually on the concert circuit (and in some cases found out why!), my self-induced fatigue had convinced me to take the melodramatic decision to quit show business. Steve Nieve then departed for California where he was a passenger in a serious car accident. However by the time this occurred I had come to my senses and decided to fulfill the commitment to a European tour. With Steve unable to rejoin the band for some time we decided to make no attempt to find a keyboard deputy. My first solution involved the purchase of a Marshall stack and three hundred effects pedals and fuzz boxes. The debut of "The Elvis Costello Experience" was a disaster which very few of the traumatized Channel Islanders, who were subjected to it, are willing to talk about. For the remaining dates in Europe we were joined on guitar by The Rumour's Martin Belmont, who masterfully learned our adapted repertoire in doubletime.
"Apart from my mercifully brief lunges at a Vox Continental the two-guitar line-up continued to make ragged progress. Martin was later called in to add his guitar to "From A Whisper To A Scream".
"Around this time I had become friendly with members of Squeeze who, like Steve Nieve, came from the mysterious lands of South East London unknown to those of us based in the west. It was soon agreed that, shortly after finishing "Trust", Roger Bechirian and I would co-produce the album that was to become "East Side Story". Chris Difford and I were already making plans to write together, when Glenn Tilbrook offered to help out by singing a guide track after I had lost my voice during the recording. Despite recovering quickly I took the opportunity to ask Glenn to share the vocal on "From A Whisper To A Scream".
Elvis and the Attractions' touring had been restricted to Europe apart from a headlining appearances at the "Heatwave" festival (with The Pretenders, B52s and Talking Heads) near Toronto in August. However following the release of the twenty track "Get Happy" in February, the total for the year was brought up to forty with the U.S. release of "Taking Liberties". This compilation of B-sides and outtakes was designed to make available the many additional tracks generated by the faster release schedule in Britain (And also to kill the exploitive trade in import singles!).
A modified version of the record was later issued on F-Beat as "10 How's your fathers and 10 Bloody Marys" (firstly on cassette only and later, on Demon, in all formats). In current re-issue programme the tracks included on these releases can be located on the "EXTENDED PLAY" bands of the relevant album.
""Trust" contains some of my oldest songs, at least in terms of words and music written before 1976. Many of the lines in "New Lace Sleeves" and "Watch Your Step" were written when I was twenty. The song "Different Finger" was written a year later. However, more recently, after buying a piano, I had written "Shot With His Own Gun".
"The sessions themselves were often frantic, swinging from elation to despair, for which I must take most of the blame. However the finished record seems to contain many of the Attractions' best performances, especially "Strict Time", "Lover's Walk", "White Knuckles", and "New Lace Sleeves".
"I managed to finish the album with a solo session for the newly re-written song "Big Sister's Clothes". After grappling with the world's first and only "backwards" accordion (a clearer head might have told me it would sound almost identical to a "forwards" accordion), I went for a little lie down in a cool dark room."

EXTENDED PLAY
"BLACK SAILS IN THE SUNSET"
"A minor relative of "Oliver's Army" which was first recorded for "Get Happy" in a piano and vocal arrangement (now lost). This version was removed from the album sequence, as I believed we might still record a superior version. However the song never seemed fit into any subsequent album."
Five years later this version was released as the B-side of "Tokyo Storm Warning".
"BIG SISTER"
"We used a figure borrowed from the Rolling Stones' "Under My Thumb" for this arrangement, which was included in the original sequence before being deleted to make way for the "Big Sister's Clothes."
Released in 1982 as the b-side of "You Little Fool"
"SAD ABOUT GIRLS" (DJM Studios)
"This Brain/Hart composition was first heard on The Attractions album "Mad About the Wrong Boy", which was recorded in the summer of 1980. It was one of a couple of Steve Nieve tunes that we played from time to time."
"Trust" outtake. Never previously released.
"TWENTY-FIVE TO TWELVE" (Eden Studios)
"The first in a continuing series illustrating the crooked path that a song may take to it's final resting place. The track, Which owes more than a little to David Bowie's "Heroes", was an unsuccessful experiment, but the words and music went on and ....on. See below.
"Trust" outtake. Never previously released.
"LOVE FOR SALE" (Eden Studios)
"This Rather Bizarre reading of the Cole Porter song was recorded shortly after "Trust" with Rockpile's Billy Bremmer on Spanish guitar."
Never Previously Released.
"WEEPERS DREAM" (Eden Studios)
"A short instrumental written around 1973"
Never Previously released.
"GLOOMY SUNDAY"
"A favourite song of mine which was recorded to pass the time at September Sound Studios, Huddersfield during the "Trust" tour."
Never Previously Released.
"BOY WITH A PROBLEM" (Eden Studios)
"A version, with my own piano accompaniment, of this newly completed song, featuring Chris Difford's entire lyric before I made the small amendments which are heard on the "Imperial Bedroom" recording."
Never Previously Released
"SECONDS OF PLEASURE "
"Continuing the story of the song which was originally "25 to 12". This demo recording from Pathway Studios presents the song as a ballad with amended lyrics and an entirely new chorus and title. To be continued on future releases......."
Never Previously Released