Complicated Shadows (11 page)

Although it has been posthumously reclaimed as a punk label, the Stiff house style was all over the place, but was primarily spawned in the melting pot of pub – rather than punk –
rock. It was a style built up by Robinson booking literally hundreds of bands into pubs over a long period, focusing on musicians who could play their instruments and who knew their way around a
decent song. And The Damned.

During the initial, frenetic twelve months of its existence in particular, Stiff was propelled forwards by bright, passionate, slightly out-of-control people who ripped up the rule book and did
more or less what they wanted. It was all topped off with an unprecedented zeal for clever marketing strategies and a healthy degree of unhinged madness. Stiff may have been a miss at least as
often as it was a hit, but from their tiny offices in London’s Alexander Street, the likes of Ian Dury, Nick Lowe and Wreckless Eric all made their haphazard assaults on the music world.

In late July 1976, the label was readying itself for combat with its debut single, Nick Lowe’s ‘So It Goes’, due for release on 13 August. Around the same time, Declan handed
in his demo tape at Stiff’s offices.

There has always been something slightly convenient about the legend of how D.P. Costello became a Stiff artist. The official party line runs thus: Declan had read about
Stiff being open for business in
Melody Maker
and promptly took a ‘sickie’ from work to hand his demo in to the secretary. On the way home, he coincidentally
bumped into Nick Lowe at Royal Oak tube station, and told him he’d just been up to Stiff to buy a copy of ‘So It Goes’ and to leave his demo tape with Jake. The two shook hands,
Lowe wished Declan luck and then went up to Alexander Street, where he found an excited Jake Riviera raving about Declan’s tape.

Jake’s immediate impulse was to sign Declan as a writer, because he felt ‘Mystery Dance’ would be a perfect song for Dave Edmunds. However, because Declan’s was the first
demo tape the label had received, Riviera decided to wait until some other examples arrived so he could make a meaningful comparison. When a ‘load of real dross’ subsequently dropped
through the Alexander Street letterbox, Jake offered Declan a deal on the spot, as a performer rather than merely a writer.

While this may indeed have been the genuine sequence of events, in the small world of the London pub-rock scene it would have taken a frankly astonishing series of coincidences for Declan to
arrive on Stiff’s doorstep as a completely unknown quantity. Nick Lowe, of course, knew him well from his regular appearances at Brinsley Schwarz gigs. Robinson’s connection was
stronger. He had booked Flip City at the Hope and Anchor on several occasions, had also recorded them, and indeed had planned to release a single of ‘Third Rate Romance’ the previous
year, largely on the strength of Declan’s distinctive voice. He had also recorded D.P. Costello earlier in the year, and frequently used Charlie Gillett as a sounding board. How could Stiff
not have known about Declan MacManus?

Robinson states today that he had Declan in his sights long before the demo tape arrived at Stiff’s offices, but had struggled to convince Jake. ‘I knew quite a bit about Declan and
put him on my list. Jake was difficult though, because he wanted to sign everybody himself. I remember mentioning Declan MacManus and Jake going, “Urrrgh! Flip City, fuck
that”.’

Only when Jake heard Declan’s songs on the Charlie
Gillett show was he finally persuaded of the talents of D.P. Costello. ‘I knew Charlie quite well,’
states Robinson. ‘We asked Charlie, Charlie told Declan and Declan sent in a tape. He wanted to be on Stiff, and I think Charlie Gillett also said to him, “This would be the
label”.’

Whatever the exact details of his signing to Stiff in August 1976, it was not immediately a life-changing event for Declan. His signing-on fee consisted of £150, a cassette recorder and a
Vox battery-powered amplifier, not quite enough to quit his day job. It would be nearly another full year before he could give up work at Elizabeth Arden and turn professional. However it was a
real, bona fide record deal with a vibrant new label who were not likely to try to mess with his artistic sensibilities. It was also a happy place to be. ‘It was a family atmosphere,’
recalls Dave Robinson. ‘It was good fun, there was a vibe. We used to go in the pub whenever things got a bit boring. Not that Declan was a drinker, but you had Wreckless Eric falling in the
door and Nick Lowe always liked a quick sharpener.’

Soon, Declan was making the Stiff office in Alexander Street a regular stopping-off point on his way home from work, hatching plans, helping with slogans. It made him feel he was finally getting
somewhere, but what he really needed was a backing band. Luckily, there was one virtually on the doorstep. Clover consisted of guitarist John McFee, bassist John Ciambotti, drummer Mickey Shine,
keyboardist Sean Hopper and singer and harmonica player Huey Lewis, later to shoot to stardom in Huey Lewis & The News. Hailing from Marin County in California, Clover had been brought over to
the UK in the wake of one of Dave Robinson’s ‘fact-finding’ trips to California, their similarity to the laid-back, consumately accomplished style of Eggs Over Easy convincing him
they were worth investigating.

He and Jake signed Clover to their Advancedale roster and set them up in a dilapidated old country house in Headley Grange, a village not far from Guildford and within easy distance of London.
Although they had a record deal with Polygram and toured constantly, the mood of the times meant that it wasn’t really happening for them
in the UK. They were left at a
loose end, simply hanging around much of the time, until eventually they became a kind of house band for Stiff.

Clover were by no means unknown or unloved by Declan: both Rusty and Flip City had played their songs, so when the time came for him to enter the studio to make his first recordings, Nick
Lowe’s suggestion that he use Clover seeemed inspired. And the band were more than amenable to the idea.

‘The closest thing Jake could compare him to was a Van Morrison type,’ says John McFee, who had played with Morrison on his
Saint Dominic’s Preview
album. ‘I got
a little demo of Declan and his guitar, and I was blown away. It was pretty scary to hear somebody with so much conviction and such a sense of how to use the language. Great voice. He just had a
lot going for him.’

After an initial break-the-ice meeting at Advancedale’s London offices, a rehearsal was set up with Clover at Headley Grange to run through two or three songs. This time, it was John
Ciambotti’s turn to be bowled over. ‘He dragged out this green Fender Jaguar electric guitar, played it without plugging it in and just started singing these songs. And each new song
was better than the last. It was kinda mindblowing, actually.’

Clover were a favoured band of his from the early ’70s, and Nick Lowe something close to a hero, but Declan was taking it all in his stride. ‘I don’t think being intimidated is
in his nature!’ laughs Ciambotti. ‘Intimidation, maybe, although I don’t think consciously he ever tried to intimidate anybody, but feeling intimidated? No.’ Declan simply
felt that his talents were at last getting due recognition from his peers.

Originally, the plan was simply for Declan to cut a single, because Stiff were operating on severely limited resources. With house producer Nick Lowe also moon-lighting on bass duties, a
stripped-down line-up of Declan, John McFee and Mickey Shine went into the tiny eight-track Pathway Studio in Islington, north London, to record ‘Radio Sweetheart’ – intended as
the first single – and ‘Mystery Dance’, the song from the
Honky Tonk
demo
which both Jake and Lowe had taken a particular shine to. Pathway was a
glorified box. ‘No bigger than the average front room, with a control booth barely able to contain two people and the mixing board,’ recalled Declan. ‘It was rather like recording
in a telephone booth.’
⁷

It was all distinctly home-made. Nick Lowe banged a drum stick for the trills on ‘Mystery Dance’, while Declan hammered the piano. The fact that – to all intents and purposes
– he couldn’t play piano didn’t appear to concern him.

The sessions turned out so well that Stiff rethought their intial plans for simply cutting a 45. Instead, the label proposed a split album in the style of Chess Records’ legendary
Chuck Meets Bo
record, where Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley had shared a side each. The plan was for Declan to split his debut with Wreckless Eric, aka Eric Goulden, another recent Stiff
signing.

‘Declan meets Eric’ didn’t have quite the same buzz, and neither artist was particularly keen on the idea – or each other for that matter – and to most observers
and certainly to Declan himself, it quickly became apparent that even half an album was not going to do justice to his talents. ‘I cut enough demos to make nonsense of this idea [of a side
each],’
⁸
he later recalled. Thus,
My Aim Is True
became an album made by both accident and increment, as the scope of the record
steadily expanded, creeping from 7 inches towards 12, from 45 rpm towards the full 331/3 as Declan and the band put down more and more tracks.

As a full-time worker, not to mention a father and husband, Declan began cutting corners in all aspects of his life to ensure he was able to spend as much time on the music as he could. He would
skip work, go down to Headley Grange, rehearse a few songs with Clover, then the ensemble would travel up to London the following day to put the results on tape.

Everything was moving at a frantic pace. He was writing all the time, later claiming that he wrote much of
My Aim Is True
in little over a fortnight. ‘Waiting For The End Of The
World’ popped up ‘when riding on the underground. [It was] a fantasy based on a real late night journey.’
⁹
In
actual fact, Declan claimed the song was partly inspired by watching legendary
NME
scribe Nick Kent – ‘obviously pretty out of it’
¹⁰
– get on a tube bound for Osterley, oblivious to the mayhem he was causing around him. ‘Red Shoes’ was another train song, written on a British Rail
timetable on an inter-city between Runcorn Bridge and Lime Street stations in Liverpool, the tune held in his head for the duration of the ten-minute journey and then bashed out on an old guitar at
his mother’s house in West Derby.

‘Pay It Back’ came from the Flip City days, while ‘Less Than Zero’ took the elderly British fascist Oswald Mosely to task, written after Declan fumed over a television
programme which allowed Mosley to reminisce about his blackshirt days in the east End of London. It was recorded three days later. ‘That was unbelievable,’ admits John Ciambotti.
‘Less Than Zero’ was pretty amazing. Once we recorded it, I can remember hearing John McFee playing it about 150 times on his ghetto blaster in his room.’

But the pick of the bunch was ‘Alison’, a bitter-sweet love song with a chorus taking its inspiration from the unlikely source of The Detroit Spinner’s ‘Ghetto
Child’. Despite several contradictory theories over the years regarding the inspiration for the song, many fuelled by its author, ‘Alison’ is for and about Mary, plain and simple.
It was cut at the second session, and finally alerted Nick Lowe to the true depths of Declan’s talents. ‘That was the day when I thought this is something seriously happening,’ he
recalled. ‘He gave off something. You could tell that here was somebody different. For someone as young as he was to be so clear and so in control of what he was trying to portray and get
across was maturity beyond his years. Unsettling and very soulful. I’m not ashamed to admit that I cried.’
¹¹

All those who worked on the record emphasise the importance of Lowe in the producer’s chair as the catalyst for bringing everyone together and keeping enthusiasm at a peak. At the age of
twenty-seven, he was very much the senior partner in the Costello-Lowe relationship, a veteran of the music industry with albums and hit singles under his belt. Because Declan had little studio
experience, he was
happy to let Lowe take the lion’s share of the responsibility, even if Lowe often felt he was making it up as he went along. ‘The people I was
working with then were all in their teens or very early twenties,’ said Lowe. ‘As far as they were concerned, I was this real experienced old cove, but I didn’t really know
anything about anything.’
¹²

But he did know instinctively what a good record should sound like – and that making it should be fun. The essence of the Lowe production technique was to wind up the energy levels to
fever pitch and then ensure that that Delphic factor known as ‘the feel’ was right. He wasn’t interested in technical perfection, but had an astute ear for a great performance and
a gift for creating an atmosphere that suited the mood of each song. He was also smart and secure enough to recognise that the songs were the most important part of the recording process, and he
had sufficient faith in Declan’s ability to want to keep things simple. Less romantically, with a tight budget to adhere to, Lowe also had one eye firmly on the studio clock. ‘They came
into the studio and set up and played, and all I did was just switch everything on and watch them do it,’
¹³
he later claimed, with no small
degree of self-deprecation.

Most of the album was recorded live, in first takes, with Declan singing and playing guitar to Clover’s backing. There were a few overdubs of background vocals here and there, but very
little polish, to the extent that Clover were originally a little concerned by the rawness of the final takes. If any of the band came to him wanting to re-do their bass part or have another go at
their guitar line, the standard Lowe response was: ‘Ach, nobody will hear it in the morning!’ And he was right.

The songs that would eventually make up
My Aim Is True
were recorded in about sixteen hours, between October 1976 and January 1977, with the final mix being made in a five-hour session
at Pathway on 27 January, with Nick Lowe and Declan in attendance, at a cost of £43.20. In total, the album cost about £800, mainly because the speed of recording and the budget studio
– basic rates were £8 an hour – ensured expenses stayed very low. Clover were already on a retainer from
Robinson and Riviera, and were therefore paid very
little for their services. ‘If the group know what they’re doing and they’re ready to make a record it shouldn’t cost very much money and it should be made quickly,’
says Dave Robinson.