An arrest outside of a CBS convention. A protest pop icon with a racist blemish. A cancer blown out of proportion. From unconventional beginnings to healthier endings, keep watching to discover the truth behind Elvis Costello's eventful life!
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00:00An arrest outside of a CBS convention, a protest pop icon with a racist blemish, a cancer blown
00:07out of proportion.
00:08From unconventional beginnings to healthier endings, keep watching to discover the truth
00:12behind Elvis Costello's eventful life.
00:16Elvis Costello was born Declan McManus on August 25, 1954, in the Paddington area of
00:21London.
00:22In 1971, he moved with his mother Lillian to Birkenhead, just across the river from
00:26her hometown of Liverpool.
00:28Costello's father Ross McManus was also a musician.
00:31His group, the Joe Loss Orchestra, was known as the UK's biggest dance band in their heyday.
00:36His son would gain his first taste of fame as his backing singer on the famous jingle
00:40I'm a Secret Lemonade Drinker, which became well-known in the country in 1974.
00:45But according to Costello, his mother was the real music expert in the family, as she
00:49worked in a local record store and passed her encyclopedic knowledge down to her son.
00:55Costello's own musical talent grew throughout the early 1970s, as he showcased his abilities
01:00on the local pub rock circuit.
01:02His father advised the young musician to avoid drawing attention to his family's musical
01:06history, but despite his connections, Costello was far from an industry plant.
01:10His early years as a musician were fraught with financial difficulty.
01:14By 1974, he was married to his first wife Mary, and they welcomed their first child
01:19Matthew shortly thereafter.
01:21Costello was scraping out a living with irregular live performances in local pubs and sending
01:25a string of demos to British record companies, but he also worked a number of day jobs, including
01:30at a bank and a cosmetics company.
01:32Mary was also working, but they failed to make ends meet, and were forced to move in
01:36with her family to get by until he finally secured a record deal with Stiff Records.
01:42Costello's early singles, Less Than Zero and Allison, initially failed to chart, but then
01:46the UK release of his debut album My Aim Is True in 1977 made him a celebrity.
01:52On the week of its release, he and his new backing band, The Attractions, headed to London.
01:57The visit was accompanied by a shrewd stunt, in which Costello performed an unannounced
02:01gig in the street outside the convention of CBS Records at London's Hilton Hotel.
02:05He was arrested for busking, but he also caught the attention of American record executives,
02:10and he was then signed to CBS.
02:13Costello soon became a prominent figure in the early stages of the so-called second British
02:17invasion of the American charts.
02:19He was booked to perform with The Attractions on Saturday Night Live, an appearance that
02:23promised to cement his position as a regular fixture on American airwaves.
02:27But things didn't exactly go smoothly.
02:30Originally booked to play Less Than Zero, they defied producers by switching to the
02:33caustic number Radio Radio, which railed against the commercialization of the music industry.
02:39I'm sorry ladies and gentlemen, there's no reason to do this song here.
02:42Costello was subsequently banned from SNL and wouldn't appear on the show for more than
02:46a decade.
02:48Despite the incident, the mishap put Costello firmly in the music press, and his record
02:52sales went through the roof.
02:55Allison was released as a single prior to the release of Elvis Costello's debut album,
02:59and it's since become a fan favorite and a staple in his live performances.
03:03Much of its appeal rests on the mystery of the woman in the title.
03:06Who exactly is Allison?
03:08The answer has eluded fans for decades.
03:11As Costello wrote in his autobiography,
03:13I've always told people that I wrote the song Allison after seeing a beautiful checkout
03:18girl at the local supermarket.
03:19She had a face for which a ship might have once been named.
03:22Now she was punching in the prices on cans of beans at a cash register and looking as
03:27if all the hopes and dreams of her youth were draining away.
03:30But the song was really a reflection of Costello's own life.
03:33At the time he was writing it, he was still working a day job, and his dreams of pop stardom
03:38had to contend with the reality of his responsibilities as a husband and father.
03:42As he put it in his autobiography,
03:43Would you like a song less, or would you like a song more, if you knew exactly the identity
03:49of Allison?
03:51Costello quickly earned a reputation as one of pop music's angry young men, whose invective
03:55on record was matched by a disdain for the music industry he was attempting to navigate.
04:00In his early years, he kindled an uneasy relationship with the music press on both sides of the
04:05Atlantic.
04:06Maybe you hear so many things that you don't like doing them, and you don't like them when
04:10I can do the talking.
04:11One of Costello's major frustrations was arguably a consequence of his own particular pop-friendly
04:16genius.
04:17His production and songwriting were so catchy that relatively few of his fans were picking
04:22up on the serious lyricism underpinning his most famous songs.
04:26This Year's Girl, for example, was criticized by some as misogynistic, though Costello later
04:31clarified that it was meant as a critique of the male gaze.
04:35No song better demonstrates Costello's ability to fill a pop song with caustic lyricism than
04:39Oliver's Army, a single from his 1979 album Armed Forces.
04:44It evokes English Civil War leader Oliver Cromwell to comment on the contemporary conflict
04:49in Northern Ireland.
04:51Costello and his team also looked to the charts for inspiration, and so instrumentation derived
04:55from ABBA's Dancing Queen sugarcoated one of Costello's bitterest pills.
05:00Despite it being a bitter pill to swallow, Oliver's Army reached number two in the UK
05:05charts.
05:06As if Elvis Costello didn't have enough on his plate in the late 70s, he also found time
05:10to become a guiding hand in one of the UK's most important musical movements.
05:15That would be Two-Tone, a London-based ska revival incorporating contemporary punk elements
05:20that became the soundtrack of a country struggling under the weight of a deep recession.
05:24In 1979, Britain was contending with homegrown fascism, and Two-Tone played an important
05:30part in promoting the nation as a multicultural melting pot.
05:33Costello ingratiated himself in the ska revival scene and came to produce the debut album
05:38of The Specials, a socially conscious ska group made up of both black and white members.
05:43The album was a hit, and Costello's production helped to define the raw studio sound that
05:48lent the genre its enduring authenticity and appeal.
05:51He had this to share with The Guardian about his production experience, saying,
05:54"...I thought it was my job to learn everything I could about the band before some more technically
05:59capable producer f----- it all up and took the fun and danger out of it."
06:03Costello's backing band The Attractions consisted of keyboardist Steve Naive, drummer Pete Thomas,
06:08and bassist Bruce Thomas, no relation to Pete.
06:11They're credited as being instrumental in forming the sound that would come to define
06:15their band leader's career, but while they undoubtedly clicked on a musical level, their
06:19working relationship was often fraught, especially when it came to Costello and Bruce Thomas.
06:25As Thomas recounted during a 2021 interview with Wisconsin Public Radio,
06:29"...when he asked who my favorite band was via the woman that answered the phone, I said,
06:33Steely Dan.
06:34And I heard this voice at the other end saying, Get rid of him, get rid of him, and Costello's
06:39assistant say, No, he sounds okay."
06:41"...you have been described by people who have written of you as being an angry man.
06:47Have you worked..."
06:48"...oh, well you can say that."
06:49And in 1997, Thomas explained to Bass Player magazine,
06:52"...it was always a bit intense with Elvis because he's such an intensely demanding person,
06:57not just artistically, but personally."
06:59The Attractions split in 1986, with Costello intent on working with other musicians, but
07:04the animosity continued.
07:06Costello took aim at his former bandmate in the 1991 track, How to Be Dumb, and Thomas
07:11retaliated with a brutal takedown of Costello in his memoir.
07:15Those tensions seem to have been resolved since then, though.
07:18Costello talking highly of his former bassist in his own autobiography
07:23During his early years in the public eye, Elvis Costello made a reputation for himself
07:27as combative, confrontational, and uncooperative, though his songwriting talent ensured he enjoyed
07:33mass appeal.
07:34But in 1979, one shocking incident threatened to ruin his career irredeemably.
07:40Costello and the Attractions were on tour in the U.S. at the time, and they found themselves
07:43sharing the bar at the Holiday Inn in Columbus, Ohio, with members of the Stephen Stills Band.
07:48A generation older than Costello and his New Wave compatriots, tensions soon rose to a
07:52boiling point, with Costello drunkenly disparaging the American music heritage that Stills and
07:57his band belonged to.
07:59Costello reportedly particularly overstepped when he referred to James Brown and Ray Charles
08:04by the N-word, and he was then promptly struck across the face by Stills' backing singer
08:08Bonnie Bramlett.
08:09As the story gained traction, Costello was forced to face the press he had for so long
08:14opposed.
08:15The incident, as well as his truculent non-apology, put the brakes on his career stateside.
08:20It's remained a blemish on his reputation, despite his involvement in numerous anti-racist
08:25campaigns before and since.
08:27As he eventually admitted in his autobiography,
08:29"'Never mind excuses, there are no excuses.'"
08:33After making his name as a pop-punk hit machine, Costello's musical palate widened.
08:38By the mid-'80s, his music was slowing in tempo, as he was referencing jazz great Chet
08:42Baker as an indication of his expanding sound.
08:45In the years that followed, Costello has accrued a discography of more than 30 studio albums
08:50across multiple genres, from pop and punk to country and western and classical.
08:55For many artists, this diversity would make it difficult to put together a coherent live
08:59set list.
09:00But Costello has come up with an ingenious method of ensuring his back catalog gets a
09:04fair shake.
09:05It's called the Spectacular Spinning Songbook, a gimmick that he first employed in the 80s.
09:10He and his musicians are joined on stage by a huge wheel, on which 40 of his best-loved
09:14songs are written.
09:16Audience members are then invited up to spin the wheel for England, and choose which song
09:20from Costello's extensive back catalog the band plays next.
09:24"'It calls for us to know about 50 songs for that game to work.
09:28We don't have any preconceived ideas about when a song is coming up."
09:32As his ample discography and continued live performances demonstrate, Elvis Costello has
09:37shown no signs of slowing down, even more than four decades after he first emerged on
09:41the world stage.
09:42That is, until 2018, when he announced to the world that he was pulling out of his remaining
09:47summer tour as a result of prostate cancer.
09:50He announced that the diagnosis was like, quote, "'entering into the unknown.'"
09:54Costello also reportedly described the cancer as a small but very aggressive cancerous malignancy.
10:00While his fans waited for more details of his condition, he made it clear that he was
10:04far from pleased by the ensuing press speculation that followed.
10:08As he announced at the time,
10:09"'It was a little upsetting to members of my family and friends about some of the hysterical
10:13versions of the reports.
10:15Tabloids in particular love to dramatize and have no sense of responsibility.'"
10:18Fortunately, Costello and his fans soon had cause for celebration, as he declared,
10:23"'No, I'm not dying.'"
10:26His surgery was a complete success, and he's since released two more studio albums, 2018's
10:31Look Now and 2020's Hey Clockface, and he also continues to tour to sell out crowds.
10:37"'How's your health?'
10:38"'I'm great.'"
10:40In March 2020, Elvis Costello returned to Liverpool's historic Olympia Theatre for a
10:45homecoming gig.
10:46The city is the birthplace of both of his parents, and it's also where he made his first
10:50musical steps.
10:51The show earned rave reviews from major British news outlets, partly because of one particularly
10:56personal element.
10:58In the audience was Costello's beloved mother Lillian, who had instilled an everlasting
11:02love and encyclopedic knowledge of popular music in her son.
11:06She'd recently fallen ill, and her presence was warmly applauded by Costello's fans.
11:11Then in February 2021, Costello announced on his Facebook page that Lillian had passed
11:16away.
11:17In a 3,000-word post, he described his mother's eventful life and the profound influence she
11:22had on him throughout his childhood and career.
11:24As he put it,
11:25"'I have known several people who never knew the love of their mother or endured a painful
11:29or even violent relationship with a parent.
11:31I have so much for which I have to thank my mother.
11:34There is not enough to show my gratitude for all she gave to me, teaching me or handing
11:38on to me so many things.'"