While Oxford may not have arenas to fill, it’s certainly welcomed some genuine legends of the music industry over the years. I’m still not over missing out on Bob Dylan’s 2022 show at the New Theatre and this autumn I was thrilled when it was announced that Elvis Costello will be performing there alongside Steve Nieve. Would there be any chance of getting an interview with him, I wondered? Turns out, yes there would.
What can audiences expect from this tour?
Everything. I am always the least nostalgic person in the room, but our most familiar songs always sound and feel better in the company of surprises and something unexpected.
To what extent did your parents influence your early music preferences?
My parents met across the counter of a record shop; my Ma was a Record Sales Assistant – sounds grand – and my Dad was an aspiring jazz trumpet player wearing yellow socks. When I was nine years old, I heard him learning Please Please Me to sing with a radio dance band on the BBC. That probably didn’t encourage me to seek with a career in bee-keeping or dentistry
In 2007 you said: “British music fans don't have the same attitude to age as they do in America, where young people come to check out, say Willie Nelson. They feel some connection with him and find a role for that music in their lives". Do you feel this is still the case?
Everyone wants to hear Willie, wherever they are and well they might.
My seventeen-year-old sons listening pattens have lessened my suspicion of old Al Go-Rhythm. One likes to pull apart available stems of existing music to learn how it is constructed and has made three albums since he was 15, while his twin brother follows each new discovery along every tributary and branch line that carried him there. It is no different to how an informed independent record shop owner would recommend music on the evidence of my previous purchases, only with added electricity.
Your collaborations range from Allen Toussaint, Burt Bacharach, The Roots and Paul McCartney to the Brodsky Quartet. Are there songwriting partners and/or music genres still on your wish list?
I never dreamed of meeting, let alone working with, any of those people or the fifty or sixty song that those friendship generated. It has been my huge good fortune to work or share the studio or the stage with any them. As to other possibilities, I have songs written with others that still await discovery or their moment. What’s the rush?
Nick Cave famously spoke about writing as a need which must be fulfilled daily. Is the same true for you? What is your process?
I love Nick’s writing and his songs. For myself, I mix the words in a bucket with a big stick.
Famously, Olivia Rodrigo was accused of lifting your Pump it Up guitar riff on her song, Brutal (2021). You shut down the controversy by saying this is something all artists do. Do you think legal action is ever justified?
Sonny Rollins once recorded a beautiful version of How Are Things In Glocca Murra. Do you suppose that was theft? I’d say it was creation. I met Ms Olivia and she was absolutely charming, although her producer looked a little sheepish. As I said at the time, those notes can be found many songs. The artist Yves Klein has a shade of blue named after him. I prefer that of Tiepolo.
Earlier in your career you were known as a political firebrand. Perhaps it is too trite to ask for your opinion on the state of the world today, so instead, can I ask is there anything that gives you hope?
I thought of myself as more of a fireguard. There is not enough ink or paper to discuss the wicked ways of the world. Why would we exhaust ourselves that way, when there is work to be done.
Your activism manifested in your music which what I can only describe as a kind of political pop poetry. It feels as if currently, lyrics are more self-reflective/inward-facing. I wonder, is there anyone performing today who interests, excites or stirs you?
I don’t know that is strictly accurate; the last show of my recent tour with The Imposters and Charlie Sexton was at Wolf Trap, a venue south of DC. These are some of the words I sang in our last song, We Are All Cowards Now:
They’re draping stones with colours and a roll of stolen names
Except those we never cared about and those we need to blame
You should listen to that song, as one can look outward or inward simultaneously. Other lines speak of the “pornography of bullets” or the “pornography of plenty”.
We left our Wolf Trap audience with these thoughts, hanging in the air, and I had the band stop playing one by one, take a bow, and left a loop running with the sound of air-raid sirens, helicopter motors and thud of marching boots. If we can’t love or forgive or console, we probably are cowards.
Then I drove home and 24-hours later went with my son to a warehouse show in Brooklyn by Justice. It was the best, most audacious thing I’ve seen since I don’t when.
Finally, can I ask about your look? How important is image – and was yours consciously created?
I always thought of my original style of spectacles as ‘Clark Kent In Reverse’. There’s not much else to work with. I do the best I can.
Elvis Costello & Steve Nieve Live at The New Theatre, Oxford
15 September 2024
Images (c) Mark Seliger
Huge thanks to Colin Cather, co-owner and Creative Director at Bottle PR, member of Oxford band, Puppet Mechanic, and official Elvis Costello superfan
