Complicated Shadows (13 page)

The hiatus had another positive side-effect: it gave Elvis the chance to write. By the time of
My Aim Is True
’s release in the summer of 1977, much of the follow-up record had
already been written. ‘He was writing two songs a minute,’ says Dave Robinson. ‘He never stopped. He drove everyone potty around him. He was driven, just totally and utterly
fixated.’

Elvis revisted old Flip City and D.P. Costello songs such as ‘Radio Soul’ and ‘Cheap Reward’, moulding them into ‘Radio, Radio’ and ‘Lip Service’.
‘He was such a cannibal,’ says Robinson, ‘that he cannibalised his own stuff.’ He dusted down ‘Living In Paradise’ and stripped it of its country flavour, and
added several more: ‘Crawling To The USA’, ‘The Beat’, ‘Lipstick Vogue’, ‘Night Rally’, ‘No Action’, ‘Watching The
Detectives’, ‘(I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea’ and ‘Less Than Zero (Dallas Version)’
²⁴
were
all
written around this time, an extraordinarily focused period of creativity.

Perhaps most crucially of all, the delay gave Elvis the time to get a band together. Clover had done a laudable job on
My Aim Is True
, especially considering the time constraints and
the fact that they had their own career to worry about, but their laid-back look and polished sound would have set Elvis back to square one had he used them as his permanent backing band. ‘I
would have been happy to do it, but I don’t think it was ever really a serious consideration,’ says John McFee. Elvis was astute enough to know he needed something considerably sharper
and harder behind him, more attuned to the mood of the times. And preferably with shorter hair.

With Elvis keen to keep the guitars down to one – ‘there’ll be no fucking soloists in my band’,
¹
he decreed – he
opted for providing all the parts himself, dispensing with the need for a lead guitarist. The sound would be filled out with bass, drums and keyboards.

The drum stool had already been claimed by Pete Thomas, who had been playing with John Stewart in Los Angeles ever since the demise of Chilli Willi and The Red Hot Peppers in 1975. Now he was
coming home. Ostensibly, Pete was returning to Britain to join ex-Dr Feelgood guitarist Wilko Johnson’s new band. In reality, Jake – Dr Feelgood’s former tour manager –
merely used Johnson as a means of getting another record company to pay for Thomas’s flight back to the UK. In a piece of classic Riviera audacity, within a week he had poached the lanky
drummer for Elvis’s new band. So much for pub-rock loyalties.

Just a couple of weeks older than Elvis, Pete was an inspired choice, unshowy but ruthlessly rhythmic, as comfortable sitting back and keeping time on ‘Alison’ as laying down the
pounding pulse of ‘Lipstick Vogue’. Thomas was – and remains – one of the few great ‘song’ drummers around, with a genuine love and instinctive understanding of
how best to complement the nuances of great writing. He has even been known to ask for the lyrics of a song before recording a session, emphatically not standard practice for a drummer. In his
humour, appetites and
penchant for partying, however, Pete was much closer to the standard stereotype, and would become the chief source of mischief in the band.

On 4 June a small advert for a big band appeared in the back pages of
Melody Maker
: ‘Stiff Records Require Organist/Synthesizer Player and Bass Player – both able to sing
for rocking pop combo. Must be broad-minded. Young or old.’ Bass player Bruce Thomas was broad-minded enough, old-ish, and was certainly interested. He recalls Elvis taking a typically
hands-on approach to the selection procedure: ‘I remember ringing up for the audition, and the girl who answered the phone [Stiff secretary Suzanne Spiro, whom Thomas would later marry] said
hello. And then this other voice came over the line: “Who are your favourite bands?” “Well, um, Graham Parker and Steely Dan.” “Get rid of him!” But thankfully
the secretary said, “Oh no, give him a chance! He sounds quite nice”.’

Despite Elvis’s terse interventions, Bruce Thomas got his chance. Born in Stockton on Tees on 14 August, 1948 and unrelated to Pete, Bruce was a full six years older than Elvis and had a
wealth of professional experience, both on the road and in the studio. He had been part of future Free vocalist Paul Rodgers’ earliest band, The Roadrunners, in 1967, before playing with
numerous groups, including Village and country rockers Quiver, whom he left in 1973 when they joined forces with The Sutherland Brothers. Bruce then turned to session work, playing for the likes of
Ian Matthews, Al Stewart and Bridget St John and touring and recording as part of Baz and Moonrider in 1974 and 1975.

Although a cursory glance at his age and CV – not to mention his flares and earth shoes – placed Bruce firmly on the wrong side of the all-important hippy/punk divide, his attitude
was not at all ‘peace and love’. By nature, he was a temperamental type: moody, sensitive, often quick to take offence and slow to forgive, with a famously sharp wit that frequently
turned venomous after a couple of drinks. His bass guitar had been known to fly towards the object of his frustration, but musically he was right on the money. A superbly melodic bassist with an
inventive style
which roamed genres and octaves, his playing possessed the kind of personality, presence and intuition which someone as adventurous and eclectic as Elvis
needed.

The auditions took place in June at a small rehearsal space in Putney. Pete Thomas was not yet ready to take up his seat behind the drums, and instead Elvis used the rhythm section from The
Rumour: Steve Goulding and Andrew Bodnar.

A veteran of the myriad tricks of the audition process, Bruce Thomas had bought and learned the early Costello singles to maximise his initial impact, but came a little unstuck when the
rehearsal band started playing newly penned numbers such as ‘No Action’ and ‘Watching The Detectives’. All in all, though, he found the songs easier to get to grips with
than the man who had written them. ‘Elvis was intense,’ he recalls. ‘Sweaty. Wouldn’t make eye contact. Ungrounded. Very up in the air. All the energy was going up.
Curt.’

It would often be a difficult relationship, but Elvis knew a great bass player when he heard one. It’s probable that he was also swayed in his decision by the testimony of Pete Thomas, who
had loved Bruce’s earlier band Quiver and had been a frequent visitor backstage after their shows.

‘Pete had his drum kit set up exactly like the Quiver drummer,’ says Bruce Thomas. ‘He once told me he saw me getting out of a taxi in west London with a guitar case, going
into a takeaway to get some food and getting back into the cab. He thought that was the coolest thing he had ever seen. That was the defining moment when he decided he wanted to be a musician! So
Pete kind of said, “I want to play with this guy”, which is probably what got me in.’

The final piece in the jigsaw came in the eccentric form of Stephen Nason, a nineteen-year-old, classically trained piano player from the Royal College of Music who had absolutely no experience
playing rock or pop music. Born in the suburbs of London in early 1958, Nason proudly boasted of his love for Alice Cooper and little else, and initally thought he was auditioning for an Elvis
Presley tribute group. According to legend, he got the job because he drank a bottle of sherry at the audition and fell asleep
on the floor. ‘Steve was a fucking
nutter,’ sighs Dave Robinson. ‘You could tell he would fit in perfectly.’

Elvis now had his band, but they needed bedding in. Typically, he couldn’t wait. Straight after the auditions, he cut two new songs – ‘Watching The Detectives’ and
‘No Action’ – with the rehearsal group of Bodnar and Goulding, with Nick Lowe producing.

‘Watching The Detectives’ had been written after prolonged, caffeine-fuelled exposure to The Clash’s eponymous debut album, listening to it again and again until this menacing
confection appeared. Recorded quickly in Pathway with just drums, bass and echoing, reverbed guitar, Steve Nason – or Steve Nieve, as he had by then been christened – would later add
piano and organ overdubs before its release as an autumn single.

The song was a departure – or perhaps more accurately, a new starting point – for Elvis, owing more than a little of its rhythmic structure to reggae. He later claimed it was his
‘first real record,’
²
an assessment which may have been unduly tough on Clover and
My Aim Is True
, but accurately captured the
shift away from the derivative, Anglo-American country-rock peddled by the likes of Brinsley Schwarz and Graham Parker, towards a more contemporary, British style of urban paranoia. The latter came
much closer to matching the ever-present sense of threat in Elvis’s lyrics, not to mention the sound constantly swirling around in his head.

* * *

By June, Elvis was beginning to attract considerable interest. Partly, this was down to Stiff’s unprecedented promotional zeal. Riviera and Robinson weren’t exactly
shy about pushing their new prodigy, but then they weren’t exactly shy about anything.

‘Elvis happened because of his own impetus,’ says Dave Robinson. ‘But we did a great marketing job on him.’ Their guerilla tactics ran from scratching ‘Elvis Is
King’ on run-out grooves to ‘pre-planned deletions’ of singles;
from eye-catching picture sleeves for ‘Less Than Zero’ and ‘Alison’
to rampant sloganeering such as ‘Help Us Hype Elvis’ and ‘Larger Than Life And More Fun Than People’. There was also an extravagant advertising campaign in the media:
posters showing different portions of Elvis were printed in each of the main music publications, ensuring readers had to buy all the magazines to get the full picture. This didn’t necessarily
mean that people were buying the singles, but it did ensure that people became more and more aware of Elvis Costello.

Nevertheless, it would all have been so much hollow hype if the music wasn’t beginning to make a few waves. ‘Less Than Zero’ had been described as ‘a great record’
by eminent rock writer Charles Shaar Murray in the
NME
back in March, adding: ‘It doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell.’ Accurate assessments on both counts,
although Murray further buried the song’s chances by calling the song ‘Half Past Zero’.
Sounds’
John Ingham had been less impressed, describing it as ‘a cross
between Graham Parker and Brinsley Schwarz. The B-side is a little more palatable, but why bother when there’s Brinsley Schwarz albums that do it far better?’

Other prominent journalists such as Allan Jones and Nick Kent were soon tripping over themselves to lavish praise on Elvis. Jones had reviewed the gig at the Nashville Rooms in May and in late
June – a full month before
My Aim Is True
hit the shops –
Melody Maker
ran a gushing feature. Along with the more famous ‘revenge and guilt’ interview with
the
NME’
s Nick Kent which came eight weeks later, the interview with Jones firmly established the abrasive, bitter, fuck-you-all Costello persona in the minds of both the media and
music-buying public.

He went to ridiculous lengths to emphasise that his past was not just another country, it was another life, and one he had no intention of raking over. ‘I don’t see any point in
talking about the past,’ he said. ‘Nobody showed any interest in me then.’ Even one-time Stag Lane hero Bruce Springsteen got it in the neck. Convinced he was already in a
position to bite back against the people who ran the record industry – who had apparently bequeathed him a
lifetime’s worth of bitterness – Elvis was wasting
little time in making up for years of slights, both real and perceived. ‘You just have to look at them to tell they’re fucking idiots,’ he said. ‘They just don’t know
anything. They’re not worth my time.’

The legendary little black book in which he noted down the names of all those who had crossed him in the past also began to make an appearance. ‘He was enjoying being the nasty,’
says Dave Robinson. ‘“I’m the real thing and I’ll push it up your nose”.’ That was all natural. He needed scant encouragement when he found he could be
unpleasant to people and get away with it.’

Whether or not he
needed
any encouragement, he was getting plenty of it all the same. Behind the snarl was Jake, who instinctively recognised Elvis’s guarded, suspicious nature
and his intrinsic – and often unintentional – ability for creating tension and unease. The logical extension of these natural characteristics was to create an appropriately aggressive
and hostile façade, to ‘burn some earth around me: don’t come into this circle’.
³

The press were given snippets of biographical detail, but no meat. When
Sounds’
scribe Chas De Whalley came calling, Elvis refused to play the game. ‘No pictures,’ he
snapped. ‘I want to keep my own face. I don’t want people to know what I look like.’ It was disingenuous, ridiculous even, considering his face was one of the major selling points
used by Stiff, but it worked. The press were intrigued.

The mystique surrounding Elvis early on was very different from that of the young Bob Dylan, say, who jettisoned his middle-class upbringing in favour of a romantic invention of a misspent youth
playing the harmonica on the railroads. On the contrary, the prosaic reality of Elvis’s circumstances suited Jake just fine: a bitter computer operator, trapped in the suburbs with a young
family, becoming steadily more incensed with the world was a perfect image. It had a modern – if not strictly poetic – appeal, one that fitted neatly with the image, the sense of
impotence and rage of the music.

Computer geek to pop star was a nice story, but the
idea of Elvis toiling for years in whimsical acoustic duos and second-rate pub-rock bands was less evocative. Rusty and
Flip City were not names Jake wanted people to hear. Declan MacManus had been a failure as a musician, largely ignored by those who had stumbled across his wares, and Elvis had grown ashamed of
him. As far as he and Jake were concerned, Elvis Costello’s biography stretched back no further than 1977. Before that, he didn’t exist.

As if to emphasise the point, he quit Elizabeth Arden on 5 July, 1977. It was not a decision Elvis made lightly. Like Ross, he took his family responsibilties seriously, even though he
frequently found them stifling, and he demanded that he was paid as much as he was already earning at Elizabeth Arden. ‘If I’d been on my own, I’d have taken the risk, but I
couldn’t for my family,’
⁴
he said. In any case, it was far from being a fortune, something in the region of £100 a week doled out in
lieu of future royalties.
My Aim Is True
was at last being readied for release and there was promotional work and gigs to be considered. Finally, he was ready to begin.