Complicated Shadows (48 page)

The sessions had produced seven songs before Bruce Thomas arrived back on the scene to complete the somewhat accidental reunion. Initially, the mood was ‘cautious and
respectful’.
⁵
Nobody wanted the intensity and strained feelings of the
Blood & Chocolate
sessions to resurface this time around.
‘We
elected
to get on,’ said Bruce Thomas, summing up the general tenor of tolerance and patience – perhaps it was maturity – which characterised the sessions.
‘We put a sticking plaster on it.’ Elvis also made a concerted effort not to dwell on the past, buying Bach’s
Preludes
for
Bruce for his birthday
and generally making an effort to meet the bass player halfway.

The music fell into place immediately, but then the music had never really been the problem. ‘I got this great moment,’ says Mitchell Froom. ‘I mean, I was an Attractions fan,
so I got to see the first rehearsal where the four of them were back in a room together. They’d all gotten the tapes and the first thing they played was ‘Sulky Girl’, and it took
about fifteen seconds for it to sound great. It was just right back. After they played that song they all laughed, saying, “Well, we know how to do this, I guess!”.’

From that point on it all went relatively smoothly. It was actually a much easier experience than the making of
Mighty Like A Rose
, and the group quickly knocked off the remaining
tracks. The record was finished by October, mixed and sequenced at Sound Factory in Los Angeles by the end of the year, whereupon it was played to executives at the Warners’ New Year party.
There would, they noted with relief, be no string quartet on this record.

* * *

After visiting Canada with the Brodsky Quartet early in 1994, performing Kurt Weill’s ‘Lost In The Stars’ for a film tribute to the great European songwriter,
Elvis undertook heavy promotional duties in Europe throughout February and March. These included The Attractions’ first appearance on
Top Of The Pops
for ten years, performing
‘Sulky Girl’, which reached No. 22 in the UK charts in early March. It was Elvis’s biggest hit single since ‘Pills And Soap’ in 1983.

Finally called
Brutal Youth
after a line from the closing ‘Favourite Hour’, the album was released on 7 March. Predictably, the critics focused on the return to a more
familiar, welcoming sound after
The Juliet Letters
and
Mighty Like A Rose
, while the reformation of The Attractions grabbed most of the headlines. Despite the fact the band only
played together on five songs and their name didn’t feature on the sleeve, the record was inevitably hailed
as a comeback, and Nick Lowe’s significant role on the
album was all but overlooked.

Brutal Youth
was wildly eclectic at heart, much more
Imperial Bedroom
than
Blood & Chocolate
in spirit. It wasn’t really a raw record at all, with plenty of
surprising little production details buried in many of the songs. However, there were a few typically pulsing moments which were bound to induce a certain amount of nostalgia: the chorus to
‘Sulky Girl’; the razor-wire guitar riff and squaddie-baiting squall of ‘Kinder Murder’; the shades of ‘Radio, Radio’ in ‘13 Steps Lead Down’, and
the majesterial fade of ‘Rocking Horse Road’, but they were fewer than many of the rave reviews suggested.

Instead, it was the strange, humourous, slightly off-kilter songs like ‘This Is Hell’, ‘My Science Fiction Twin’ and ‘Clown Strike’ which best summed up the
mood of the record. ‘Still Too Soon To Know’ and ‘Favourite Hour’ – performed solo on the piano by Elvis – were spare, stark and sorrowful, while ‘You
Tripped At Every Step’ and ‘London’s Brilliant Parade’ were lush, beautiful, compassionate recordings.

The latter in particular was a very personal song: there were mentions of the ‘Gates of St Mary’s,’ the local Catholic primary school in Olympia, where Elvis spent his earliest
years; the Hammersmith Palais where Ross plied his trade for so long; and even the Diorama in Euston, where Elvis had first laid eyes on Cait. Elsewhere, there were regretful glances back at
youthful bravado in ‘Just About Glad’, and even a few classic selections from the Costello Book of Puns.

All in all, it was a far more ambitious, melodically broad and warmer record than the lazy
This Year’s Model
comparisons often gave it credit for. Nonetheless, there is no doubt
that the inclusion of The Attractions and the sense of returning to something fundamental helped the record enormously, and most of the reviews were predicatably euphoric. ‘This is an
emotional whirlwind,’ said Chris Roberts in
Melody Maker.
‘A disciplined stab at perfection, a jaded howl of unabated anguish and a bloody good beat record.’ The
NME
awarded it nine out of ten. ‘Elvis Costello has
made an album that sounds like a debut, with all the fire and fury that entails – and he has brought
to it a wise man’s brain and wit.’
Q
heard his ‘best pop album since 1982’, while
CD Review
praised the ‘superb melodies, punkish anger, sarcastic
wit, creative arrangements, flashes of tenderness, daring and literate lyrics. Although The Attractions don’t appear on every track, the old chemistry does.’ There were dozens more
along similar lines, an outpouring of genuine affection and delight which must have touched even Elvis. It was enough to quickly propel
Brutal Youth
to No. 2 in the UK charts and No. 32 in
the States, his best combined placings since
Get Happy!!
. However, the record dropped quickly and in fact did not sell significantly better than his recent releases.

If the album was the appetiser, then the
Brutal Youth
world tour was the proper Attractions reunion. Opening in Vancouver on 3 May with the swift knock-out triptych of ‘No
Action’, ‘High Fidelity’ and ‘The Beat’, the spine of each night’s set was firmly centred around
This Year’s Model
and
Brutal Youth
.

‘No Action’, ‘The Beat’, ‘You Belong To Me’, ‘Radio, Radio’, ‘Lipstick Vogue’ and ‘Pump It Up’ were all regulars, while
‘Hand In Hand’ and ‘This Year’s Girl’ also made the odd appearance. Almost all of
Brutal Youth
was played every night, while the remaining third of each
night’s show consisted mainly of classic Attractions material: ‘Alison’, ‘Red Shoes’, ‘High Fidelity’, ‘Less Than Zero’,
‘Clubland’, ‘New Lace Sleeves’, ‘Shabby Doll’, ‘Beyond Belief’, ‘Party Girl’, ‘(What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love
& Understanding’, ‘Watching The Detectives’, ‘Accidents Will Happen’, and a Merseybeat-style ‘Everyday I Write The Book’.
Spike
and
Mighty
Like A Rose
were raided for ‘Deep Dark Truthful Mirror’, ‘Veronica’ and a rare ‘So Like Candy’, with the occasional ‘Uncomplicated’ or
‘Honey, Are You Straight Or Are You Blind?’ from
Blood & Chocolate
. Rarities included ‘Temptation’ and a performance of ‘Puppet Girl’, one of the
songs Elvis had written for Wendy James. All in all, it was the closest thing going to a crowd-pleasing, greatest hits set, albeit one that rarely featured ‘Oliver’s Army’ or
‘Chelsea’.

Some found great difficulty in reconciling the well-fed, classical music-loving millionaire on stage with the angst-ridden anti-hero who wrote most of these songs in the
late ’70s. ‘Anyone who saw Costello when these songs seemed like fresh wounds couldn’t help but recognise how emotionally hollow they seem now,’ wrote Greg Kent in the
Chicago Tribune
, afer the show at Tingley Park in Illinois on 28 May, claiming that the concert was ‘at best nostalgia, at worst hypocrisy’.

It was admittedly a tricky tightrope to walk, but for most observers the undeniable whiff of nostalgia in the setlist was largely nullified by the sheer vigour of the performances. Clearly,
everyone involved felt an urgent need to play this music again, even more so considering the rancour that had surrounded the end of the band in the ’80s. As they hammered through thirty-odd
songs in under two hours each night, with barely a pause in between and little inter-band interaction, it was impossible to feel that this was anything other than a creative collaboration brought
on by something deeper and more fundamental than nostalgia or money. It may have been lacking in the trite, on-stage bonhomie of most ‘reunions’, but then everyone was on-stage for very
personal and probably very different reasons. Certainly, there was little sense of someone simply going through the motions. Elvis and The Attractions played for their lives most nights.

The band were in good musical shape and all concerned were managing to survive the early rigours of touring without coming to blows. Elvis and Pete were thirty-nine years old, almost forty,
Bruce was forty-five and Steve thirty-six. Having spent fifteen years on and off the road, they had all finally grown up to a greater or lesser extent, and had other interests outside of music,
alcohol and chasing women. Bruce was still interested in literature and increasingly into martial arts, and had combined the two by writing a book on martial arts legend Bruce Lee; Pete Thomas had
settled down and was often heard talking about his nine-year-old daughter’s progress on the piano; Steve Nieve retreated into his portable computer. Elvis even brought his mother Lilian out
to California for a Mother’s
Day treat to see the show at Concord Pavillion on 8 May. Compared to the madness of old, the US tour was calmness personified.

‘I think we’re probably less selfish [now],’ said Elvis. ‘Nobody is going wild. It would be really stupid to think that just because you’re playing some of the old
songs, you’ve also got to stay up all night and get drunk. We might have less nervous energy and more physical energy, because we’re probably looking after ourselves a bit
more.’
⁶

Nonetheless, the sense of kinship and comradeship was forever lost. The band were paid as session men, and Elvis seemed rather churlishly reluctant to actually utter the name ‘The
Attractions’, instead referring to the band as ‘these gentlemen on stage with me’ or similarly vague terminology. ‘It was never a band again,’ says Bruce Thomas.

Away from the shows, Elvis spent most of his time with Cait, visiting museums, reading and eating well, although it was not always entirely harmonious. Their relationship could be wildly
volatile and inconsistent, and there were frequent rows throughout the tour, the rumours of marital discord reaching print in America. And although most of the concerts had been very well attended,
audience responses had often been surprisingly muted, given the circumstances. The tour also wasn’t helping the record:
Brutal Youth
had slid to No. 195 in the US charts by mid-May
and continued its descent thereafter. Neither was there a hint of a hit single which may have helped focus the attention on more current concerns, rather than past glories.

Elvis and The Attractions headed back to Britain in June to play at Glastonbury, the scene of their last British appearance seven years earlier. It was a standard set, notable for the fact that
Elvis duly dished out ‘Oliver’s Army’ for the fairweather festival fans and Jake refused to allow any of the performance to be filmed for TV – unlike all the other acts
– because permission had not been sought early enough.

It was Jake’s last stand, though at the time he probably
didn’t know it. Following a brief British tour and festivals in Europe throughout July, Elvis and The
Attractions took a break for the whole of August. As Elvis turned forty, the indomitable and often fearsome pairing of Riviera and Costello had finally cracked. ‘Like Burton and Taylor,
[Graham] Taylor and England, and Halpern and Burton’s, many great partnerships come to an end,’ ran a statement released the following month. ‘After seventeen mighty, furious
years we have decided to end our working relationship. We remain good pals and do not invite and will not welcome further questions on this matter.’

The off-hand bonhomie of the press release was a smokescreen. The underlying reasons for the split inevitably remained private, mired in nearly two decades’ worth of intense personal
involvement, but it seemed that the fissure was deep and far from amicable. There were rumours of a backstage bust-up between Riviera and Cait at one of the three Royal Albert Hall shows, which ran
between 5–7 July. When Jake showed up for the next British concert at Liverpool Royal Court on the twelfth there were embarrassed glances among the band and the crew, who already knew his
fate. By the time July was over ‘he was gone’, says Bruce Thomas. ‘And we never saw him again.’

It is possible that there may also have been some residual tensions at play. ‘I think Elvis had to reel in Jake on one or two times – I won’t go into details – but
let’s just say old Mr Riviera was an impetuous sort of person,’ says Marc Ribot. Jake had reportedly been unhappy for some time about the direction in which Elvis’s career was
travelling, while Elvis may have felt that Jake’s aggressive style of management didn’t sit well with his new classical contacts. He also probably felt that commercially he should be
doing somewhat better than he was, especially with
Brutal Youth
, which had sold less than
The Juliet Letters
in the US by the summer of 1994. Indeed, none of Elvis’s
’90s records had sold more than 200,000 copies in the US.

Neither Jake nor Elvis has ever spoken publicly about their parting of the ways, but Roger Bechirian remained on good terms with Jake and recalls some of the fall-out.
‘Certainly, I know Jake would never want to see Elvis for as long as he lives,’ says Bechirian. ‘He doesn’t even buy his records any more. As far as he’s
concerned, Elvis’s ego is so enormous that he needs a truck to drive behind him to carry it, and he [thinks he] just [won’t] listen to reason. It hurt Jake tremendously.’ A
character like Jake Riviera was basically irreplaceable, but in time his role was taken on by Elvis’s own management company, By Eleven, under which he started running his own affairs with
the day-to-day help of former Riviera-Global assistant Gill Taylor, aided by Chris Difford’s elder brother, Lew.