Elvis Costello

0:00This is Ira Glass. On this American life, we tell stories about when things change. Like for this guy David, whose entire life took a sharp, unexpected, and very unpleasant term. And it did take me a while to realize it's basically because the monkey pressed the button. That's right, because the monkey pressed the button. Sprising stories every week, wherever you get your podcasts. Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR. It's Bullseye, I'm Jesse Thorn. I want to play one of my favorite past interviews for you. It's with Elvis Costello.

1:01You know Elvis Costello, right? Anyway, I talked to him in 2015. He had just written a memoir called Unfateful Music and Disappearing Inc. You can hear me talking about it more in just a second. In 2026 Costello is celebrating the 49th anniversary of his debut album, My Aim Is True. There's a box set with over 50, never before heard recordings on it. And I mean, you're about to hear this in just a second, but Elvis Costello is a genuine delight. Let's kick things off with the first track from My Aim Is True.

2:04Welcome to The Working Week. David Lee Roth once said that music critics like Elvis Costello because he was not again. But it might be more that he, it's a good quote. I mean, that is a solid piece of business. I don't know if it's true, but it's fun to say. I don't know. You tell me I'm not a writer. I'm a, I'm a loving other fighter. David Lee Roth once said that music critics like Elvis Costello because he looks like them. But is the next part of this? Yes.

3:05It might be more because he thinks like them or makes music the way they might like to. Have you seen David recently? No. It looks just like a, it looks just like a, a wisdom dial writer to me. Yeah. I'm a, I'm only teasing you. I know. I've heard that one a few times. It's through his career. As you might guess. Through his career he's taking his favorite, I'm going to power through this. Yeah, I know you are. I can sense I'm not going to deflect you. No, not at all. I'm a professional pseudo journalist. Through his career. I'm proud to hear it. He's taking his favorite pop sounds. The ones he grew up with, the ones he learned about as a young man, the ones he's come to know in middle age and he's pushed them through his own vessel. He writes eloquently about this web of influence. It's sorry. I kind of stuff you set, kind of stuff you for a second. Yes. I'm talking about David on me because this, this reference to pushing things through my vessel, it frankly sounds quite rude to me. I, I don't know whether we should be saying this on MPR. I think we may get letters. There's some things that are legal to say on the radio and some things that aren't.

4:08I think I'm allowed to speak metaphorically. Um, but if you make it vulgar, we might have to bleep this whole exchange. I, I, I'm almost certain they're going to have to do that. I see them hovering over that big red button there in the, in the control room. If you're so, that's not a rude reference. I promise you that wasn't intent a double entendre. Uh, Castello writes eloquently about this web of influence in his new memoir, unfaithful music and disappearing ink, the way that, and, or by the way, you've ruined the entire tone of this introduction. This was a really like thoughtful introduction that I worked very hard on. And now it's just a series of jokes about private parts. Well, that's what you know by now from reading this book that that is really my entire aim has been this. I think, I know I appreciate what you're saying. I, of course, the David Lee Roth, uh, we've managed to mention David's name more often than mine. It's amazing. He's getting a lot of free publicity.

5:08Maybe he's got a book out as well. Um, I appreciate what you're saying. I'm teasing you. Uh, but you're quite right. This book is, uh, trying to link up. I wasn't as you can tell from reading even a few pages. It doesn't begin. I was born. And then I did this and then I did that. And the laughter in the tears and my drug hell and then my conversion to some strange philosophy and, you know, um, I tried to connect up emotionally the things that came to me. And the fact that I, I happened to be born into a family for whom music was both vocation and occupation, both my parents, my grandfather before my father as well, a life of travel that leads you on adventures. And in some cases, miss adventures, hence the title, unfaithful music, memory being somewhat elusive, um, or very vivid and then elusive. Um, fortunately, both my father and grandmother afflicted by dementia and in their later years

6:12made me fearful that I, you know, would at some point in the future not be able to gather all of these experiences that have been lucky to have and put them on a page so they could be read by just say, take two people, my two eight year old boys. I mean, other people want to read it too. That's great. But in some senses, I was thinking about there's some time in the future where I'll wish that I wrote this down because it may not all join up in quite the same way. That's really what I was trying to say. Well, I think, I mean, how did, how'd I gotten to the end of the very beautiful introduction that I wrote? It was exquisite, by the way. Thank you very much. Um, I, uh, I enjoyed your book very much as well. Um, you know, one of the musicians that you return to in this book again and again is your dad. Um, and it's how, you know, it's how you start the book and it's, you know, it's a relationship that is really central to the book.

7:13Um, and I wonder like when you were a child before your dad stopped living with you, what did you think about his music? Well, I don't think you think a lot of things when you're that age, you know, like form opinions as comparative like, is it this or is it that or is it better than this or better than that? I was very, I mean, I, my mother tells me I went looking around the back of the television for my dad when I was really, uh, middle more than an infant, you know, because I saw him on an early TV show. I, I saw him as I described in the first chapter from the balcony of a dance hall that was nearly deserted. It's hard to imagine a dance hall opening in on Saturday afternoon for 30 patrons. And having a full dance band come out and play tunes for however long they played, you know, but they did in those days. And so that was unusual. I would go in the morning when I was off school on holiday and go to radio broadcast

8:15theaters in the center of London and watch musicians who to my mind were old men, but of course, my men that were a 20 years younger than I am now reading the racing results and smoking cigarettes and waiting for the downbeat. And then a group of young men come in carrying their amplifiers and guitars and that would be the beat group. In one case, I described the holies, including Graham Nash coming in from having driven overnight from the north of England, so they could sing two songs on a guest slot on the rate on a lunchtime radio show. These are sort of, it's a world of music and pop music. It doesn't really exist anymore. And this is within my lifetime. But admittedly, as old as I am, it's a surprise to me that things are quite so different. And of course, those images really stayed in my mind and the transference from the mundane to the magical in the moment of performance was startling to me as a child, but I didn't have anything to compare it to. It was just what my father did for a living. Other dads came home and my dad went to work.

9:17We've got more still to come with the great Elvis Costello. Keep it locked, it's Bullseye from MaximumFund.org and NPR. As the political landscape shifts beneath our feet, we're all vulnerable to a well-funded distraction economy determined to take our eye off the ball. Our weekly politics series, if you can keep it, is here to help where our focus is not the horse race, but the state. We tackle the big political stories of the day and why they matter for our democracy. Join me, Todd Zwilland and me Jen White on the 1A podcast from WAMU and NPR. On Dear Life Kit, our team answers your listener questions with time-tested advice from past episodes. But we don't always agree. Opposite, no! That's not what we thought. What if he's the one? Oh my god. What? Listen to the latest juicy episode of Dear Life Kit on the Life Kit podcast in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's me, Peter Seggle, host of Weight Weight Don't Tell Me.

10:19It's leaf-peeping season, so why not peep our weekly news quiz while you're at it? We got comedians, celebrities, and games to help laugh about the week's news, and you can listen while you're spicing your pumpkins, whatever people do. Listen every week to Weight Weight Don't Tell Me in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to Bullseye. I'm Jesse Thorne. My guest is Elvis Costello. I mean, he's Elvis Costello. He is one of the most beloved singer-songwriters of the late 20th century. He is celebrating the 49th anniversary of his debut album, My Aim Is True. There's a staggering new box set with hours and hours of never-before-heard material. When Costello and I talked in 2015, he had just written a memoir. It's called Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink. Let's get back into our conversation. I'm going to play a song with your father singing from the mid-1960s.

11:20It's called Stop You're Playing Around. Hey, why would you find that? You should be in my heart, loving me, stay up there. You were always playing round, maybe, baby, baby, when you stay. Yes, I will. I'll be gone. At my field. So I see. And I've been living around. I've been living. And I've been around. An atypical performance by Russell. Obviously. You should, I should tell you that that was a beside of a one or two, I guess you would call them Scar. You can bet sort of vaguely recognize that as Scar. You've got to understand when Bluebeat, as it was called in early 60s, came in from Jamaica. It was another dance craze, just like the twist and the Madison before it. And the Jellos Augustura that my dad played with were a dance band. So the band leader would say to the arranger,

12:21can we adapt these songs for our lineup, which was that of a typical dance band of the 1940s and 50s, you know, with saxophones and trumpets and trumpets? He gave my dad the task of writing a few songs in this new style. And Hans has kind of almost like a West Indian inflection and his voice there, just the same way as people, we learned all our singing from American records. And then, latterly, you know, I guess people heard music from all over the world and just copied it. And that was the music, the different thing between England and America, as I think, although there are many people from Nicarabian and America, they all came at once sort of as it were into the culture and really transformed it, with bringing music clips on and, you know, scar and then later reggae. We have that really as our second line of music, you know, to pop popular music if you, people of my age anyway, that was what we danced to at parties in the early 60s. It's strange to think my dad got to make a record like that, you know, because it was,

13:21it was actually trying to keep up with a new trend. I mean, I'm really just imagining what it must have been like for your dad, who was, you know, by that point, a grown adult who'd had a healthy career and was singing in a band that was, you know, like the Glenn Miller composed, like the Glenn Miller band or something like that. Exactly. Their theme song was actually in the mood. I mean, they borrowed the theme song from Graham Miller. They played a lot of the Miller repertoire. One of my favorite recordings of my dad is actually, I know why and so do you and at last, which were recorded for a tribute to Glenn Miller album that was made in the early 60s. Did he go like, I'm literally imagining it and I'm wondering like was someone in the band going dumb, dada, dumb, dada, dumb, and did he go like, ha, I guess so. I guess so. I know it doesn't seem very lightly, but he, you know, they had a sense of humor about these things and I suppose they weren't always respectful about the numbers, but they also had the groups. They had the young groups of the day on his guests. So the show was

14:22attractive to younger listeners because if only they were tuning into here, they're pop favorites and they would hear these renditions alongside the original groups. That even sounds strange. I know, but that's how I came to see the Hollies. I got, when I first met Graham Nash in 1979, we were introduced backstage at a gig in Manchester and I said, we've met before, but you won't recognize because I had short trousers on, you know, and I had met him at 10 with my dad. And, you know, my dad was very kind. I suppose, as he say, he was a grown-up, you know, he wasn't a kid, but he liked a lot of the music that he was asked to sing. And a lot of the lads in those groups, they're either from Liverpool or from Manchester, they've been northern lads. And I suppose he saw some parallel to the journey he'd taken going down to London in the early 50s to make his name in music. And there was some sort of sympathy that might not have been there otherwise. And he used to take my autograph book to the broadcast and come home with signatures. And I have printed them, you know, in the, there's an electric book of this, you know, one of those e-books. And I added

15:23a gallery of pictures as an appendix to that edition with, you know, these, these dedications, and they're very, they're poignant to read them now because there are these, some of them are people like Tom Jones, you know, that are, that are well known to this day. Others, Freddie Garrity are Freddie and the Dreamers who are not such a household name, you know. Was your father a better singer than you are? Technically, yes. I mean, the record you played didn't really show his voice to best effect, but if you heard him singing, at last, you would definitely say that. Were you sort of aware of that when you were a kid? I mean, because I was never going to be, I was never going to be a musician when I was a kid. I was, I was, I didn't, I wanted to be a coalman. I mean, it would have mean a coalman, a man who delivers coal, not a minor, I wanted to be a coalman. Why did you want to be a coalman? Because I like getting dirty and I like the smell of it. Then, then, then, then the nuns tried to make me into a priest and that didn't work out.

16:25So, I was stuck with being in Rock and Roll. You write in the book that you think that people took you as angry just because of the gap in your front teeth. I certainly true. I've had lots of altercations with people of authority. Teachers, board of guards, policemen. Because if you can hear it now, I can hear it on the microphone. There were air that's expelled between the gap and something, this teeth was born like I was and didn't get the teeth straight. It causes this sort of thing. It could be a list which could make you sound very gentle. Or if you express things emphatically, it makes you sound as if it's slightly more exaggerated. And perhaps you sometimes mean and I also have a loud voice which means that people jump out of the skin, you know. And I'm obviously making a joke. I mean, hey, look at Jane Birkin, you know, she was just the most regiling person when he saw pictures of her as a young woman.

17:27Today she's extraordinary and she has that. Ray Davis has it. Jerry Lewis has it. What links us all together is our teeth. One of the people that you met when you were still very young, relatively new to the music industry was Johnny Cash, right? Yeah, well, that was complete coincidence. You know, I know I have no way to met him in the circumstance, you know, I could have never imagined. Minick Low was the first person who was in a group who I could ask questions of. I'd been around musicians since I was a child, but I had no questions to ask my dad's colleagues. I didn't ask my dad a lot of questions about music. He also didn't impose on me the learning of any music theory, although his father had been classically trained or military trained musician. So I had questions for Nick Low, there were about songwriting. I can't even remember what they were on now, you know. And of course, then he became my producer when I was first making records. Then a couple of years into that, he married June Carter's daughter, Carlyne, and

18:28next thing, the in-laws came for Christmas and the in-laws of Johnny Cash and June Carter, you know, was like, and we were invited round for a recording session on the day after Christmas. I mean, it sounds absolutely fantastic, but it really happened, you know. And of course, it was to be in a confined space of a domestic setting in England, which Johnny Cash was a bit unusual. Isn't that exactly what you were doing? You were so unbelievably like himself. It was, you know, it was like... You don't really imagine Johnny Cash like walking through a Victorian Christmas card, you know. Well, it was, yeah, a little bit like that, you know, Christmas time and it's London. Obviously, the American idea of it is lots of urchins, you know, baby feet, you know, we're all huddling together around a, around a brazier. You were at Jimmy's sweep at the time, right? I was, it was in my years as a chimney sweep and I said, oh God, bless you, Mr. Cash. May I have a penny to pay for a rosecoose? You know, it's like Dick Van Dyke, you know, Mary Poppins. But, no, you know, we went to the door and he was great.

19:31He just introduced himself the way he always did. You know, a lot of Johnny Cash. I couldn't believe you've sent it to me. And then, you know, there was a little, there was certainly some drink and going on with, I described in the book, Johnny relating this night later on. In a tribute to George Jones, because the song we recorded was a song that George had written, a rare composition. And Johnny, Johnny reciting it was perhaps the best thing of all, because, you know, he said, I said, I was, I was with Elvis Costell and Nick Lauren. They were drinking a little bit and, you know, and apparently we toasted how great George was. And I mean, this was later in the evening, perhaps after we had recorded this duet, which was vocally fairly ill advised on my part, I have to say. You know, it was to try and get in the ring with John. I want to play a song that you wrote for one of my favorite singers of all time, Solomon Burke, who recorded an album in the early 2000s.

20:35It was sort of, you know, sort of a comeback album for him, although he had done very well on the road for decades and decades. And it's called The Judgement. Let's take the listen. The Judgement. When you're writing a song for somebody whose style, whose instrument, is as distinctive as somebody like Solomon Burke or Johnny Cash, are you thinking of it the way, say, a comedy writer might think

21:36about, you know, writing a joke for David Letterman or Roseanne Barr, thinking about trying to capture something about their particular voice? It's sort of different with music, I think. At least for me, it is. I had dreams of people singing songs that came true. I had a dream of Dusty Springfield singing my song. I had a dream of a chap baker singing my song, a dream of Roy Orbison, dream of Johnny Cash, even though I knew John a little bit, you know, I still didn't sort of really think he would pick up my song. Not the first time anyway. With Solomon, it was a little bit different because I'd had the experience of trying to write for some people and not got the measure of them right. I was trying to put too much into a song or didn't quite get the measurement right. And even with this one, there were a couple of tricks to this song musically that interrupted Solomon's flow. And Joe Henry would produce this record.

22:37There's a friend of mine who also produced the River River and worked with Alan Tusson. He had me stand in the booth with Solomon because I was at the recording session. And Solomon, you know, he was such a big personality, but in many ways he was like, it was something really wonderful about the way he invited you in. And he told me to sing it for him because it was just timing of this one line. He just kept every time he'd get rolling with it, he'd come in the wrong place. And I got to learn this. So you sing it. Can you imagine that having a stand in front of Solomon Burke and singing the song? You know, I could sort of sing it in my head, you know. And then I did. And then of course, then he learned it and he could hear what it was. Once he could watch me do it, he could he got what the rhythm of it was. And then he sang it great, you know. And I mean, Nick Lowe will tell the same story about staying up all night to imagine singing, writing the beast in me from Johnny Cash and then sort of the next day, you know,

23:40June, having heard about it, getting Nick to play it to Johnny. And so when it came out, of course, it came out in this feeble little voice that wasn't like this big voice. It was like, how to be you know, it was like, because the dream we have of the singer is often, you know, we can't we can't animate like that. You know, we're going to take a break. Don't go anywhere. As you might know, Elvis Costello's legal name is Declan McManus. His wife, the brilliant singer Diana Crawl calls him Declan. So imagine your Elvis Costello and you're getting coffee. What name do you give to the barista? We'll have the answer after the break. It's Bullseye from Maximumfund.org and NPR. The Lindsey Clancy Trial shined a light on how little we know about postpartum psychosis. I went sort of from feeling a little off all day to suddenly believing people were watching me. On the Sunday story, how the Clancy Trial sparked a new conversation about maternal mental health.

24:41Listen now to the Sunday story from the Up First podcast on the NPR app. What's more action-packed than prestige television? With more continuity than comic books? A more reality than reality television? It's professional wrestling. And a better understand wrestling is the ultimate form of entertainment. You need the Tights and Fights podcast. This is the perfect wrestling show with a lot of love a lack of toxic masculinity and just the right amount of bots, cats and spandex. Listen to Tights and Fights every Saturday on Maximumfund. I'm Jesse Thorne, you're listening to Bullseye. I'm talking with Elvis Costello. He's celebrating the 49th anniversary of his debut album My Aim Is Trist.

25:47I don't know if you were loving somebody. I don't know it is a man. Yeah, a son. I know this world is killing you. Oh, yeah, a son. My Aim Is Trist. Who in your life knows you by your birth name, Declan McManus? My mother. Handful of friends. Few people that knew me before I ever got into this world. You know, of music and adopted other names, you know. When you adopted the name, it was a name that was given to you by your manager, right? The second name was as a family name. Costello is more correctly said Costello. It's an Irish name. It's my great-grandmother, Elizabeth Costello.

26:50I'd adopted that because it was easier to say and short it to right now. And I'd use my initials for a one DP because my dad used to address me that way, which is an Irish convention too. And then they handed me that and it was like a dare. My father had recorded under other aliases in the 1960s. He'd recorded cover records for cash money, you know. Earlier the morning sessions that were put out on cheap cover records. You get four titles from the hip parade on an EP on an extended play, final record. And he went on, sometimes he'd be three or four aliases on one release. You know, he'd be Hal Prince and the layabouts or the foresters singing blown in the wind or Frank Bacon and the Bacon is. So you can appreciate that being Elvis Costello really was just like second nature to me. When you go into like a Starbucks or whatever, do you tell them your name is Elvis or Tecklin? I try to avoid doing that anyway.

27:54I mean, I usually don't tell them anything. Was there ever a point where it stopped feeling strange to be addressed by a made up name? Well, nobody ever did call me that name anyway. Most of it, for oddly enough, the thing of being called by my initials, which I know from childhood, is sort of the way everybody's always addressed me in my camp, you know, as it were in my gang, whether it was a band or the management, it was always easy. So that was easier, you know, shorter. And I don't ever have called that many people ever calling me by Elvis. Well, I'm really grateful to you for taking the time to be on Bulls. I thank you so much for talking. Thank you very much. You're most thoughtful questions. Thank you. Elvis Costello recorded in 2015. As we mentioned, his memoir is called Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Inc. You can get that at your local bookstore or at bookshop.org. The special 49th anniversary edition of My Aim is True drops October 2nd. You can pre-order it now

29:00at Elvis Costello's official website. Let's go out on one more song from that landmark album. This is The Angels Want to Wear My Red Shoes. That's the end of another episode of Bulls Eye. Bulls Eye recorded at maximum fun world head quarters in the historic jewelry district of downtown Los Angeles. The weather has improved recently because it was brutally hot. But now they're supposed to be like a hurricane coming. I went outside and it was like weird kind of like tropical semi-raining earlier today.

30:07What's going on? Our show is produced by speaking into microphones. Our senior producer Kevin Ferguson, our producer, Jesus Ambrosio and Richard Grobe. Our video producer is Daniel Spear. We get booking help on Bulls Eye from Meredith Davis. Our interstitial music comes from our pal Dan Wally, also known as DJW. You can find his music at djwsound.bandcamp.com. You can buy a whole collection of his music at any price you please there at djwsound.bandcamp.com. Our theme music was written and recorded by the GO team. It's called Huddl Formation. Thanks to the GO team, thanks to their label Memphis Industries. You can follow Bulls Eye on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. You will find video from just about all our interviews in those places. I think that's about it. Just remember, all great radio hosts have a signature sign. Bulls Eye with Jesse Thorn is a production of maximumfun.org and is distributed by NPR.

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