Complicated Shadows (32 page)

AS
M
ARY
C
OSTELLO
APPEARED TO KNOW
only too well, Elvis had never quite succeeded
in extricating Bebe Buell from his mind – or his heart. ‘He had written me a couple of letters between 1979 and 1982, basically apologising for not “being able to promise me
anything”, but that he wanted me to know that he loved me,’ claims Buell. ‘He left me dangling.’ In the summer of 1982, with his marriage in a familiar state of disarray,
and with Mary already suspicious, Elvis sent Buell another letter, this time more romantically forthcoming. He probably felt that he might as well commit the crime he was being punished for. Buell
was still very much in love with Elvis, and responded to his initial letter by bombarding him with notes sent to his office. ‘I completely forgot he was back with his wife and child,’
she said. ‘I acted as if he were mine and mine alone.’
¹

However, it was a full year before they saw each other again. Contact via letter and telephone continued for some time, with Elvis torn between doing the right thing as a father and husband on
the one hand, and surrendering to his desire and the avalanche of attention and affection from Bebe on the other. Physically, at least, he seemed resolved to keeping Buell at arm’s length,
and the game of emotional cat-and-mouse continued for months until a four-hour telephone conversation in March 1983, when Elvis told her that he ‘needed’ to see her again. ‘It was
all at his instigation,’ says Buell. ‘He was trying to resolve his feelings, revisiting me to see if there were any possibilities of a reconciliation. I
don’t think he was strong enough to deny me. Of course, I played along. I adored him.’

The meeting finally occurred in July in New York, where they had parted over four years earlier. Elvis was rehearsing for the US tour, as well as meeting with Yoko Ono to discuss cutting one of
her songs, ‘Walking On Thin Ice’. As arranged, Buell came to his suite at the Parker Meridien Hotel, and within twenty-four hours they had reconsummated their affair. Before Elvis flew
back to London, they made plans to meet up again during the ‘Clocking Across America’ tour the following month. It would eventually prove to be the knockout blow for his marriage.

* * *

The new live show leaned heavily on
Get Happy!!, Imperial Bedroom
and
Punch The Clock,
but the songs spanned the entirety of Elvis’s six-year recording
career. He had put together a lengthy set which was more ambitious and more structured than anything he’d previously attempted. The equation was simple: there were more people on stage, thus
less room for spontaneity. Afrodiziak hadn’t made the trip to the States, but the TKO Horns appeared on the opening six-song salvo, which on almost every night consisted of ‘Let Them
All Talk’, ‘Possession’, ‘Watching The Detectives’, ‘Secondary Modern’, ‘The Greatest Thing’ and ‘Man Out Of Time’. They then
departed, before returning for the climax of the show, usually ending in a combination of ‘Pump It Up’, ‘Alison’ and ‘I Can’t Stand Up For Falling
Down’.

The horns added drama to some of the songs and gave them a solid, clearer outline, but Elvis experienced vocal problems throughout the tour. His singing voice was never the most pampered of
instruments – indeed, The Attractions sometimes called him ‘The Barking Cabbage’ – and throughout the ‘Clocking Across America’ tour it often sounded forced or
flat, and his words unclear. The rigours of being heard over a brass section – as well as
the typically bruising Attractions – every night were taking their
toll.

There was no hiding place on 8 August, when Elvis took the unmissable opportunity to sing a duet with Tony Bennett as part of a television special in the Red Parrot club in New York. His voice
was shot to pieces, and he only just survived the humiliation of croaking his way through ‘Lil’ Darlin’’ and ‘It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain’t Got That
Swing’ with the Count Basie Orchestra and the man Frank Sinatra regarded as the greatest singer of all time. ‘Mr Bennett was patient, sympathetic and paternal,’ Elvis recalled.
‘By the looks on their faces, the same could not be said for some of the saxophone section.’
²

The show at Columbia’s Merriweather Post Pavillion on 16 August found Elvis in better voice and in a congenial mood, something to do with the imminent arrival of Bebe Buell that night,
perhaps. Geoffrey Himes of the
Washington Post
watched a twenty-nine song set ‘ranging broadly from whispered jazz reflections to punchy soul shouts’, and praised a performer
who was ‘more generous, more subtle and more satisfying [than ever before]’. Towards the end of the tour, the recently composed ‘Great Unknown’ was thrown into the set,
while the 22 September show at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre opened with a rare and welcome flash of crowd-pleasing nostalgia, six back-to-back surges of crackling electricity, played nowhere else on
the tour: ‘Radio, Radio’, ‘Waiting For The End Of The World’, ‘Chelsea’, ‘This Year’s Girl’, ‘Miracle Man’ and ‘Lipstick
Vogue’.

Bebe and Elvis kept in touch after he and The Attractions flew home to resume touring in Europe and the UK at the end of September. Though there had been frequent telephone contact throughout
the US tour, the couple had met only twice. Bebe hadn’t been the only woman Elvis had slept with in America, but the intensity of her feelings remained undiminished. Elvis, on the other hand,
seemed to be trying to work out what exactly it was that he felt, in order to resolve old, unfinished business once and for all.

Back in Britain, backing vocalists Afrodiziak were added to the mix on-stage, but the shows never strayed far from
the US prototype. Many of the concerts were dogged by
very poor sound, and Elvis’s voice remained patchy. Nonetheless, the shows were a hit with reviewers and audiences alike. Fans in Bristol on 29 October were treated to a rare ‘Big
Tears’ and a thankfully even rarer stab at Gary Glitter’s ‘Leader Of The Gang’, while in Liverpool, Elvis received a standing ovation, led by his son Matthew. From there,
the tour rumbled through Europe until the end of November, whereupon everyone – with one exception – took a break.

Elvis spent most of the time up until Christmas writing songs for a new record. He moved an electric piano and a couple of guitars into a disused F-Beat office above a hairdresser’s salon
in Acton, north London, and worked a business day, Brill Building-style. The relocation was an indication of deteriorating relations at home, but it was also Elvis’s attempt to apply more
craft and focus to his writing, a reaction to Clive Langer’s disciplined approach and the retrospective belief that the songs on
Punch The Clock
were not as strong as they could or
should have been.

There was a reflective, narrative thread to the new songs, many of which Elvis demo-ed at Eden Studios in December. They included ‘The Great Unknown’, ‘Worthless Thing,’
and ‘Peace In Our Time’, a ballad first performed at The Big One, an anti-cruise missile benefit at the London Apollo on 18 December, where Elvis had ended his brief appearance by
duetting with Paul Weller on a vamped version of The Style Council’s ‘My Ever Changing Moods’.

By early February, Elvis had enough new material to be able to take The Attractions – shorn of both horns and harmonies – on a short tour of the south of France. Between 13 and 19
February, they road-tested nine of the thirteen songs that would end up on the next record. The gigs were loud, ragged and short, and it was neither a happy nor a particularly sober experience.

‘We were staying at this place in Cap de Ferrat where David Niven used to go,’ recalls Bruce Thomas. ‘I remember Pete Thomas lining up four brandies at one end of the pool and
four brandies at the other. He drank one, swam to the
other end, drank another, swam to the other end, drank another, swam to the other end. There was a different drink all
the time.’

This kind of behaviour was largely born of boredom and disaffection rather than hi-jinks. There had been a lot of tension on the
Punch The Clock
tour. The strain of having six extra
people on the tour bus and on-stage didn’t help, and when it got too much Elvis had occasionally pulled rank and bailed out, popping on a plane instead. Having already found themselves set up
behind two backing vocalists and a horn section on stage, this wasn’t perhaps the best way to foster inter-band harmony amongst The Attractions.

By the time they returned from France to record the new album, relations between Elvis and the band were on the contemptuous side of familiar. Elvis was full of doubt and unsure about the
continuing validity of what they were doing musically; personally, he was at a severely low ebb, recognising that his affair with Bebe Buell had finally made his marriage irreconcilable.

In a state of flux, and unbeknown to the band, he decided privately that his union with The Attractions had probably reached the end of the road. ‘He said to me on the sly, “I think
this is going to be our last album”,’ recalls Clive Langer. With tar-black humour, it was to be called
Goodbye Cruel World
.

Despite substantial artistic misgivings, the satisfying commercial returns of
Punch The Clock
had been sufficient for Elvis to allow Langer and Winstanley a second bite of the cherry.
However, when they entered Sarm West Studios in London in early March, the relatively happy compromise between art and commerce which had proved partially successful on
Punch The Clock
quickly evaporated.

Elvis believed many of the new songs were strong, and he had in mind a ragged, folk-rock sound. This, however, didn’t appeal to Langer and Winstanley, and artist and producers soon found
themselves at loggerheads.

‘He would have been better off going back to Nick Lowe,’ says Clive Langer. ‘I wanted to carry on from where we had got to with ‘Everyday I Write The Book’, but
Elvis
was saying he wanted it really rough. I didn’t think it was his greatest bunch of songs, anyway, and we did say, “It would be great if you could write some
more pop songs.” But he never did.’

After a couple of stress-filled weeks, where Elvis and The Attractions grappled unsuccessfully with live takes of the songs, things reached meltdown in the studio. Langer felt he was being
sidelined, and eventually sat down and confronted Elvis. ‘At one point I did say, “Thanks a lot for inviting me along to listen to you make your record!” He drank a bottle of gin
and I drank a bottle of vodka and we had a good talk and made up, but there was quite a bit of friction.’

The real problem was that Elvis had no firm idea what he wanted. Keen not to relinquish too much of the commercial ground he had gained, he felt bullied into continuing with a production style
he had little affection for. But the sound he was seeking proved elusive. As a consequence, he was changing his mind frequently about the best way to present the songs, alienating the band and
generally driving everybody to distraction. Eventually, a truce was called. ‘I agreed to let them work their magic on a few cuts and give the record company some commercial focus,’ said
Elvis. ‘The rest of the tunes went fairly unadorned.’
³

Langer and Winstanley were let loose on ‘The Only Flame In Town’ and a cover of an obscure Teacher’s Edition B-side called ‘I Wanna Be Loved’. Both were unashamedly
calculated stabs at scoring another hit, utilising all the duo’s pop tools in an attempt to scrape a single or two together. Scritti Politti’s Green added barely audible backing vocals
to ‘I Wanna Be Loved’, while Daryl Hall harmonised with Elvis on ‘The Only Flame In Town’. Big Jim Paterson was back with his trombone, while Gary Barnacle provided
less-than-subtle saxophone adornments – The Italian Traffic Jam, as Elvis witheringly put it – to a few of the tracks. It was pretty desperate stuff.

The addition of guest vocalists and session players did little to rally the spirits of The Attractions. ‘They were just there to inject an extra element that meant we weren’t stuck
with each other all the time,’ admits Bruce Thomas.
‘The same four guys who were probably not on a creative high at the time.’

As a further perceived slight on the band, Elvis had booked his first-ever solo tour to begin in the States in April, with a European trip to follow later in the year. The omens were clear, and
it all added up to a tense, difficult few weeks. ‘It was like going to the dentist every day,’ said Pete Thomas. ‘It was the sort of thing where, if you started having fun you
felt guilty. The whole feeling was so down.’
⁴
Elvis wasn’t any happier than the band. ‘I was having a miserable time,’ he
admitted. ‘I basically ran away to sea.’
⁵

* * *

Coming straight after the completion of
Goodbye Cruel World
in April, Elvis’s solo tour of the US initially stuck closely to the kind of set he would normally
play with The Attractions, opening with the same six songs almost every night: ‘Accidents Will Happen’, ‘Stranger In The House’, ‘Men Called Uncle’, ‘The
Only Flame In Town’, ‘Mouth Almighty’ and ‘Kid About It’. He played like a man released from chains: the
Washington Post’s
reviewer caught the opening
show at the University of Virginia on 10 April, 1984 and found it ‘emotionally devastating’.