It is the morning of Friday, August 25th. Elvis Costello is in Rome, it is his 69th birthday, and he is peering out of a screen on a Zoom call with almost 40 journalists from around Europe. Part birthday celebration, part promotional tactic to plug his new tour, which arrives in Dublin this week, Costello is in an especially cheery mood. Does he really want to spend his birthday morning with strangers?
“What a wonderful way to spend a birthday!” he says. “By the end of this I’m hoping that we’re going to have a pan-European five-part harmony rendition of Happy Birthday.”
It doesn’t happen – which is just as well given the occasional inevitable connectivity glitches: over the next 60 minutes some of our questions are garbled and/or lost in pidgin-English translation, and some of Costello’s answers sound like a stream of hiccups. But the first of many topics touches on the venues that Costello and Steve Nieve, his long-term friend and collaborator, will be playing at. He mentions the beauty of Palermo’s Teatro di Verdura, Madrid’s Teatro Lope de Vega and, in a neat segue, Dublin’s National Concert Hall.
“I have some very good memories of being there,” he says before The Irish Times gets in early with a question about the shape of his new show. Considering that he and Nieve have been mates and musical associates since 1977, how do they choose the songs each night? Is the set list rigidly adhered to or do they wing it now and again?
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You’ve got to have room to change things, he replies. “There may be some surprises along the way, depending on who’s in town and who wants to come and play. We don’t put that on the poster, because it should be enough if it’s me and my ukulele. It’ll be a show, but it might not be the show everybody wants, so we have to start with a list of songs that satisfy what we think the audience wants to hear but which doesn’t become a predictable nostalgic exercise in repeating things you already know.”
In this way, he continues, the older songs – he doesn’t name them, but we’d bet the mortgage they include the likes of Accidents Will Happen, Alison and Watching the Detectives – come to life. “The best for me is when they keep company with newer songs, and the stories they each tell talk to one another as we’re playing them.” There is a starting point for each show, he says, “and then after 10 minutes it all goes to hell, and we change everything. That’s incredible, isn’t it? You know, few people can do that.”
He sounds pleased with himself, but he’s right – and it is his birthday, so a hint of self-congratulation is allowed.
A question is asked about working with Allen Toussaint, with whom Costello released The River in Reverse, in 2006, but then the internet connection starts to have a fit of the vapours. The topic of social media is broached (“That’s just not necessarily for me. For one thing I’m not that photogenic, so I can’t provide the content for that kind of a way of presenting myself”), followed by a query on Costello’s voiceover work on the US animation series Pete the Cat. (“I’m much better as an actor when I’m drawn,” is his droll response.)
Questions are asked about longevity and commercial success in the music industry. There isn’t a magic formula for anything, Costello says. “If I knew how to have success with songs I probably wouldn’t be speaking to you now. I would be on my own private island relaxing with all the money I’d made, but that was never really why I was doing it. I wanted to have an adventure in music. I’ve had some success, and I’ve made a good living now and again, but I invest a lot of the money that I make back into the making of records.”
As for working within the industry itself, he reckons it’s something of a cop-out to say it was better in the good old days. “No, it wasn’t. There were as many thieves and villains then as there are now, and there were as many people trying to do it well then as there are now. I wish I had more encouraging things to say. Yeah, there were people who were making vast fortunes, but I wasn’t. Most musicians are just making a living, and that’s the truth of it. Some people are playing somewhere as we’re speaking or getting ready to go and do a gig tonight, where they’ll earn the same money as if they were doing any other job.”
Being a working musician, he says, doesn’t equate to a life of luxury. “I don’t live in a special kind of class where everything is done for them. It’s just not true. I have friends that don’t have any medical insurance. They don’t have any of the security that a person employed by business has, but they still do it, because they want to.”
He warms to a theme that is clearly close to his heart – he and his wife, the jazz musician Diana Krall, are on the board of Musician Treatment Foundation, which funds surgery and other care for professional musicians who are underinsured or uninsured. “I’m a musician, that’s my occupation, and inside that occupation you look for moments of illumination, something that touches emotions that other activities don’t allow you to reach. Sometimes it can even get close to the things we call spiritual.”
This leads to a question about the differences between occupational and vocational work. He would, he says, be an occupational musician if he just wanted to play a dozen of his best-known songs and be represented only by those. With a catalogue that stretches towards 500 songs, however, “that isn’t in my nature”. He goes on to say that songs of his that were popular on the radio 40 years ago “were not always my choice. I’m happy they were hits, of course. Any artist has to be grateful for the fact there’s still a curiosity about their songs, but to limit your thinking to just 10 or so titles would be … Well, how would you ever expect to have another good idea?”
The hour is coming to an end, which prompts some of journalists to perk up and try to fit in a question before the Zoom window closes. One asks which young songwriter is his favourite? Costello says he “doesn’t know what constitutes young any more. I haven’t got anybody that I particularly want to pin that medal on.” Many of the most interesting people, he says, are away from the brighter spotlights. It isn’t that he doesn’t listen, he emphasises. “I try to get around to everything, but the real truth of it is I don’t listen to a lot of rock music or song-form music at all.”
Someone who hasn’t bothered with Wikipedia asks, “Are your parents still alive, Mr Costello?” No, sadly, is the reply. “My father passed over 10 years ago, and my mother in early 2021, but you know this is my birthday, so it’s good to think of them.” The final question – “any other plans for your birthday?” – is received yet again with a combination of breezy generosity and subtle marketing. “I genuinely hope we have a splendid time when Steve and I reach your country. We have surprises in the choices of songs, sometimes in the new arrangements, but faithful arrangements as well. That kind of investigation can be fun, but we’re not there to deliberately confound people’s expectations.”
The aim, straight and true, continues.
Elvis Costello and Steve Nieve are at the National Concert Hall, Dublin, on Thursday, September 7th
