Elvis Costello is one of the most distinctive and innovative popular songwriters and performers of the last four decades. In his long-awaited, unconventional, and unforgettable memoir, UNFAITHFUL MUSIC & DISAPPEARING INK (Blue Rider Press; Publication Date: October 13, 2015), he explores the private and emotional foundation of his music, and the influence of three generations of his family’s history upon both the artist and the man.
Costello also provides a unique, incidental survey of modern pop history, as he shares anecdotes about his many illustrious collaborators and reflects on the vagaries of fame. “A lot of people have got spoilt and ruined by sudden success and pushing too hard,” he writes. “I thought I was an exception but I wasn’t as smart or in control as I pretended to be.” [p. 371]
The Grammy Award-winning recording artist and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee found his way into the English music scene in late ‘70s. Musically dynamic, lyrically intricate, and sometimes opaque, Costello’s outlook was skeptical, romantic, and darkly humorous, often within the same number. Although Costello only scraped the American charts with My Aim Is True, This Year’s Model, and Armed Forces, those albums are regularly cited among the most influential records in rock and roll history. The enduring songs from his early years include “Alison,” “Watching the Detectives,” “Oliver’s Army,” “Radio Radio,” and “Accidents Will Happen,” but Costello has gone on to extend his reach across an extraordinary array of styles, working with such artists as Paul McCartney, with whom he co-wrote the hit singles “Veronica” and “My Brave Face,” and Burt Bacharach with whom he composed “God Give Me Strength.” Costello imagined “Stranger in the House” and “Almost Blue” for the voices of George Jones and Chet Baker and eventually heard those songs recorded by his intended vocalists. “The Scarlet Tide,” his 2003 co-composition with T Bone Burnett, was recorded by Alison Krauss for the motion picture Cold Mountain, and received an Academy Award nomination. When Yoko Ono commissioned Costello to record a version of her song, “Walking on Thin Ice,” in 1983, it led to a series of collaborations with Allen Toussaint that would culminate in 2005 with The River in Reverse, as the great New Orleans songwriter and producer returned to work in his home city in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Born Declan Patrick MacManus in 1954 and raised in London and Liverpool, Costello was the son of a successful dance-band vocalist and the grandson of a trumpet player on the White Star line. For Costello, family history is inextricably intertwined with musical history, and UNFAITHFUL MUSIC & DISAPPEARING INK traces his story from playing a cardboard guitar in his parents’ living room to taking the stage at the world’s greatest concert halls, and even at the White House. Costello has shared those stages with Tony Bennett, Johnny Cash, the Brodsky Quartet, Anne Sofie von Otter, and Spinal Tap, among countless others.
In the early 1970s, Costello settled in London after completing his education in Liverpool. He wrote songs in the dead of night, formed a band that went nowhere, and made solo appearances anywhere that would have him. He got married for the first time and had a son. While working in the computer department of the Elizabeth Arden cosmetics company, Costello wrote the songs that would appear on his first album. Although the first two singles—one of them the renowned “Alison”—failed to generate significant sales, the release of My Aim Is True along with Costello’s arrest during a publicity stunt, while attempting to snare an American release for the album, made him something of an improbable overnight sensation.
Costello was not yet twenty-three when he formed the Attractions, who would be his band for the next decade during which they recorded nine albums together. However, before he was twenty-five, his career in pop music was derailed after a regrettable drunken episode in Columbus, Ohio that he cannot excuse, and the background to which he explores with his final words on those events.
Costello continues to add one of the most remarkable song catalogues and impressive performance resumes of any contemporary popular musical artist. He has toured with Bob Dylan, written nearly four hundred songs and two ballets. He has composed for orchestra, leaving one opera and several stage musical scores unfinished. He hosted the television show, Spectacle, for two seasons, featuring guests from Sir Elton John, President Bill Clinton, and Lou Reed to Smokey Robinson, Levon Helm, Jesse Winchester, and Bruce Springsteen. Costello has also been an occasional contributor to Vanity Fair and deputized as the guest host of both The Late Show with David Letterman and Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz, conducting a two-part interview with the pianist about her thirty-year tenure on the NPR show.
Following his tours with the virtuosic acoustic ensemble, The Sugarcanes, and the success of The Spectacular Spinning Songbook in the company of The Imposters, Costello’s most recent concert appearances have been the highly acclaimed, largely solo presentation, “Detour,” in which he connects songs from his catalogue with many of the themes found in his memoir.
Recent recording projects include Wise Up Ghost with The Roots and Costello’s contribution to Lost on the River, new musical settings for previously unseen Bob Dylan lyrics written and recorded by the New Basement Tapes collective. These are among the highlights of the past decade that has also seen the opening of a remarkable new and richly rewarding chapter in Costello’s personal life, with his marriage to world-renowned jazz artist Diana Krall and the birth of their twin sons in 2006.
Like Patti Smith’s Just Kids and Keith Richards’ Life, UNFAITHFUL MUSIC & DISAPPEARING INK is destined to become a classic not just of the literature of celebrity or rock and roll, but of an extraordinary cultural era, and a document of one of the most fertile musical careers and original creative personalities of our time.
ABOUT ELVIS COSTELLO
Elvis Costello is a Grammy Award–winning musician whose career spans almost four decades. A prolific singer-songwriter, Costello has released several critically acclaimed albums, and in 2003 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
ELVIS COSTELLO BOOK SIGNINGS
10/14/15 – Book Signing, 7pm
Book Court, Brooklyn, NY
10/15/15 – “In Conversation with Dan Kois”, 7:30pm
Sixth & I, Washington, DC
10/16/15 – “In Conversation with Paul Hodengraber”, 7pm
New York Public Library, New York, NY
10/17/15 - “In Conversation with Peter Guralnick”, 7pm
Berklee Performance Center, Boston, MA
10/19/15 - “In Conversation with Chuck Reece”, 8pm
The Variety Playhouse, Atlanta, GA
10/20/15 - “In Conversation with Evan Smith”, 7pm
Book People, Austin, TX
10/21/15 - “In Conversation with Chris Connelly”, 8pm
The Wilshire Ebell Theater, Los Angeles, CA
10/22/15 – “In Conversation with Dan Stone”, 7:30pm
City Arts & Lectures, San Francisco, CA
10/23/15 – “In Conversation with Michael Krasny”, 8pm
The Lincoln Theater, Yountville, CA
11/3/15 – “In Conversation with Alison Cuddy”, 8pm
Chicago Humanities Festival, Chicago, IL
11/10/15 – “In Conversation with Rosanne Cash”, 7:30pm
BAM-Howard Gilman Opera House, Brooklyn, NY