Let me tell you about 1977. If you were there, you may already know. If you
weren’t, then you may want to read this. It was a year of major changes for
me. I was leaving behind nearly eight years at an alternative paper, The
Bugle American in Milwaukee and hopping aboard a daily in Madison, Wisconsin.
Going from what the Milwaukee urina- liked to call the “unreal press”
to legit aboveboard journalism remained to be seen. But there was one constant
other than my family, and that was a spindly guy with Buddy Holly glasses and
the chutzpah to call himself Elvis. He added Costello to give it a biting edge
or set him apart, and he wrote songs that no one was going to be able to forget.
At the end of 1977, Elvis and his band, the Attractions, hit America for the
first time. They were accompanied by a PR powerhouse named Marilyn Laverty,
whose job was to get “influential” critics from their homes to the
shows and back again. Simple proposition. She picked you up at your house and
took you to the show. Then, she brought you back again, while babbling for weeks
on end about this skinny kid with a guitar and a killer band and songs to match
them both.
“(The Angels Wanna Wear) My Red Shoes,” “(I Don’t Want To
Go) To Chelsea,” “Almost Blue,” “Radio, Radio,”
and on and on — there are 22 songs each on the recently released The
Best of Elvis Costello: The First Ten Years and Rock And Roll
Music, with “(I Don’t Want To Go) To Chelsea” reprised
on both. Elvis really did not want to go to Chelsea and we American blokes didn’t
know a thing about that, but his blistering, unforgettable guitar solo here
or the one on the demo version of “Welcome To The Working Week”
told us all about it.
His demos had made the rounds and some of us had them all. Elvis, his guitar,
his songs, his anger were all rolled into one aural statement that eventually
got him arrested for standing in front of Columbia Records. This guy was out
to make an impression and he had the Attractions — Bruce Thomas on bass,
Pete Thomas on drums, and Steve Nieve on keyboards — to make it with.
There was one other guy too — manager Jake Riviera. Jake was the Dinsdale
of British Rock (see Monty Python). He’d nail your head to a table, legend had
it. Later on, he would beat the living crap out of one of the female photographers
I worked with and put her in the hospital. Naughty boy! The place was called
the Electric Ballroom, a Dickensian dive out of, yes, Dickens. It was already
famous, at least in America’s Jerryland, as the site of Bruce Springsteen’s
1975 “bomb scare” concert. The entire old theater/dive had been emptied
out methodically by the police and the Boss after the bomb threat was phoned
in and Bruce was the absolute last man out. He played a solo version of “Thunder
Road” at the piano and 99 percent of the audience returned with ticket
stubs at midnight to rock, literally, until a quarter to three. After that night,
you never needed to see Springsteen again, though I did many times. Likewise,
you never needed to see Costello again, but ditto; I did.
The songs for bothe collections were chosen by Costello himself
from a vast catalog that boggles the imagination. Best of Elvis Costello:
The First Ten Years opens with “(The Angels Want To Wear) My Red
Shoes,” and somehow when that segues into the stunning showstopper, “Alison,”
EC and company are well on their way. After a side trip to a place they did
not want to go, “Radio, Radio” hits, probably the single most electric
song Costello has ever performed. Maybe more so after producer Lorne Michael’s
declaration that the singer would never work again when Costello and the Attractions
switched gears and went live into the forbidden song they weren’t supposed to
play on Saturday Night Live. Who could diss the guy’s rebellious
spirit in the face of network television? Certainly not me.
You also get “What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding”
and “Almost Blue,” a song written for Chet Baker and more recently
covered by Diana Krall, Costello’s wife and mother of their twins. Maybe
the intelligent will inherit the earth, after all.
I just came back from a blessedly brief visit to the mini store in the complex
where I live and the lady at the counter was hungrily devouring the latest Tim
LeHaye crap about the end of days. These people believe this garbage, so I need
“Everyday I Write The Book,” “This Year’s Girl,” and
“Wednesday Week” more than ever. So I hustle back to 1977 and the
Electric Ballroom where the man who was going to write “Shipbuilding”
was stealing the audience for himself and his band, and taking them along for
one of the best rides of their lives. Maybe you had to be there.
~ Gary Peterson
