Complicated Shadows (47 page)

The master craftsman keeps a keen eye on his star pupil.
Burt Bacharach and Elvis bring
Painted From Memory
to the stage in 1998.
Credit: Redferns/JM Enternational

The Brodsky Quartet in their original line-up:
(l-r)
Ian Belton, Paul Cassidy, Michael Thomas and Jacqueline Cassidy.
Credit: Redferns/Patrick Ford

Mr and Mrs MacManus: Diana Krall and Elvis step out in style, May 2003.
Credit: Starfile Agency

HE COULD NEVER STAY IN ONE PLACE
for long. Just as Elvis was getting to grips with the formal structures of writing and reading music, the weekend
songwriting spree and primal demo recordings that he and Pete Thomas had made for Wendy James in Pathway at the end of 1991 had reconnected him with the idea of making louder, simpler music
again.

Following the end of
The Juliet Letters
album sessions, Elvis had toyed with an embryonic vision of a noisy record called
Idiophone
, playing everything himself, with Pete
Thomas adding percussion. In November 1992, he had gone into Pathway with Pete and cut a few exploratory tracks with just guitar, vocals and drums. With Kevin Killen again roped in on production
duties, work soon moved from Pathway to The Church Studios in early December, where Elvis overdubbed bass onto the ultra-raw takes of ‘Kinder Murder’ and ‘20% Amnesia’ and
toyed with an extended rant called ‘Poisoned Letter’, quite possibly aimed at
Vox
’s Patrick Humphries and his ilk.

Early in these trial sessions, Elvis had realised that his own instrumental limitations were going to hold some of the more involved material back. A chance meeting in a London studio solved the
conundrum. Steve Nieve was playing on a session by Sam and Dave stalwart Sam Moore, which included ‘Why Can’t A Man Stand Alone?’, a song Elvis had written specifically for the
soul singer. When Elvis
popped down to see how the recording was going, he inadvertantly ran into the Attraction. The two hadn’t seen each other for some years, but
Steve had apparently decided that enough time had elapsed since their falling out back in 1987 to let bygones be bygones. ‘We got chatting in the break over a tea, and I was invited to a
session where Elvis was cutting tracks with Pete Thomas,’ said Nieve. ‘That was how casually [it] began.’
¹

Although the mood at the first studio session for six years was ‘a little formal’,
²
according to Elvis, the
three-quarters-Attractions trio quickly cut piano, drums and vocal versions of ‘Favourite Hour’, ‘You Tripped At Every Step’, ‘This Is Hell’ and
‘London’s Brilliant Parade’ at Church Studios. Nick Lowe also popped in to play bass on ‘Poisoned Letter’.

It was all slightly chaotic. Elvis had a lot of very beautiful, quite slow material, but after
The Juliet Letters
he wanted to make a raw, rocky record. Producer Kevin Killen was
somewhat confused at what was required of him and decided to bow out. Furthermore, there were forthcoming promotional duties and a tour for
The Juliet Letters
to attend to immediately
after Christmas. With things in a general state of flux, the
Idiophone
sessions were put on hold until after the spring commitments. By then, Elvis hoped, he would have written some more
material and have a clearer idea of the kind of record he wanted to make.

Upon his return from touring the world with the Brodsky Quartet in February and March 1993, Elvis’s thoughts quickly returned to the next record. He realised he needed more upbeat material
and wrote on guitar throughout the spring and summer, when he spent part of his time in Florence with Cait. It was a month-long working holiday. Cait was taking a doctorate in Classics, and they
spent much of their time studying the Italian language and visiting museums and art galleries.

Following the template of the tracks he had recorded before Christmas, the new songs were much simpler than those on
Mighty Like A Rose
and came quickly: indeed, the bare bones of
‘Rocking Horse Road’, ‘Pony Street’, ‘Clown Strike’, ‘Still Too Soon To Know’, ‘13 Steps Lead
Down’ and
‘Just About Glad’ were all written in a single day, swift work even for Elvis. ‘I would work for about half an hour with the guitar cranked up really loud, and make a tape of just
anything that came into my head,’ he said. ‘I did it in bursts, and then I listened to see if any of it was interesting. A lot of it was gibberish.’
³

However, the stronger material began to rise to the surface. He added ‘All The Rage’ and ‘My Science Fiction Twin’, both formed when ‘Poisoned Letter’ was
split into three parts, Elvis keeping many of the words for the former, a bass riff and a snatch of melody for the latter, and discarding the third. ‘Sulky Girl’ soon followed. Combined
with the material that he had attempted to record at Pathway and Church Studios, he now had enough songs for an album.

Elvis demo-ed most of the new songs in Pete Thomas’s basement studio, with Nick Lowe on bass. With Mitchell Froom again pencilled in to co-produce, the plan was to make a stripped down
combo record, with a number of ballads included. However, there were problems with the band line-up. Lowe regarded himself as strictly a rhythm man, and wasn’t particularly at ease playing
bass on the slower, more intricate material. When Elvis sent the demos to Froom in Los Angeles, he also felt that some of the songs needed another style of bass playing. The producer had recently
been working with Bruce Thomas on albums by Richard Thompson and Suzanne Vega, and tentatively suggested that perhaps the ex-Attraction could provide the kind of inspiration that some of
Elvis’s new songs required. ‘At first Elvis hated the idea,’ says Froom. ‘But I think he started thinking about it musically and then he came back and said, “Maybe
Bruce and I will get together and have a cup of tea or something. And just see”.’

Elvis’s immediate misgivings had little to do with music and everything to do with personality. After the numerous snipes and counter-snipes between singer and bass player over the last
few years, topped off with the bridge-burning
The Big Wheel
, he seriously doubted whether they could pull off being in the same room together again, never mind the same band.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Mitchell Froom also had to do a little coaxing to get Bruce Thomas enthused. However, the bass player’s animosity towards Elvis
had softened considerably with the knowledge that Steve Nieve had buried the past and was back on board. Eventually the call came from Elvis, who was in Britain at the time. ‘He actually rang
up in the middle of an earthquake in LA,’ Thomas recalls. ‘I said, “Look, I do want to talk to you but I’m in the middle of an earthquake at the moment!” He was
probably quite pleased to have had an impact.’

Sessions for the new album began at Olympic Studios in London in early August, with Elvis, Pete Thomas and Steve Nieve back in place, and Nick Lowe playing bass. Bruce was due to arrive from Los
Angeles a little later. To paraphrase an early Elvis song, Steve chose to be amused rather than disgusted. Elvis was ‘exactly as he was before’, he recalled. ‘He wanted to record
without giving anyone a chance to know what they were doing. He was really animated, always moving the microphones or behind the mixing desk pushing all the faders. Normally people do their singing
and that’s it. It’s not like that with Elvis.’
⁴

‘Kinder Murder’ and ‘20% Amnesia’ were already complete, left red-raw and untouched from the very earliest Pete and Elvis sessions at Pathway back in November 1992. The
rest of the material came together quite easily. Nick Lowe played bass on the more Attractions-sounding tracks, while Elvis, Steve and Pete quite clearly hadn’t forgotten how to conjure up
the old magic on songs like ‘Rocking Horse Road’ and ‘Just About Glad’.