Elvis Costello was never really a ‘proper’ punk rocker. He emerged at that time, in the late 70s, when Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious were spitting all over the place and piercing their ears on stage with broken bottles and being as outrageous as Malcolm McLaren (who, after all, was paying for all the drugs) told them to be.

The world was full of ‘disco’ at that time and Saturday Night Fever was a mission statement for a generation. But that generation couldn’t actually live up to the rather vapid and vacuous aspirations of all that glitter and glitz when the economy was for shit and half the nation was unemployed. So along came punk and, for the first time really, made music about ‘proper issues’. They politicised music. Ok, the Vietnam war had inspired protest songs but mainy these were sung by overweight moaning Americans so don’t carry such an impact.

Punk was British. It was ours. And it was nasty. It was rebellion, it was telling your parents and teachers to FUCK RIGHT OFF!!! Ok, it wasn’t necessarily ‘nice’ but really that was the whole point. Whass’a point of teenage anarchy if you have to be in bed by 10?

I was never a Sex Pistols fan, in fact, I fucking hated them and their attention-seeking, shreiking ways. But the Clash were something else. Classy but aggressive, strong and intelligent. A bit like me but without the glasses. Sham 69, the Stranglers, loads of bands, out of nothing, all loaded with talent and producing fab music. Which was relevant. Music had moved from teenagers in love to unemployment benefits and the deposed Shah of Iran.

And along came Elvis. The new Elvis. Elvis is dead; long live Elvis.

And this one didn’t sport a pompadour quiff like the previous incumbent of Elvis, nor a fluorescent blue mohican that everyone else wore. He looked like your bank manager in oversized specs. He wore a suit. And he sang like an angel. Albeit one who smokes 60 Lucky Strikes a day.

I heard ‘Alison’ from his first album and cried. It moved me in a way that I’m seldom moved unless Spurs are playing. Though generally then the tears are for a different reason.

And he was and still is prolific. Single after single, album after album, all brilliant, all evolving from the early punky roughness to something much more refined and elegant by the time Punch the Clock emerged. Then he got a bit up himself, started playing with string quartets and went all ‘classical’.

I first saw him play at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1980, when his Trust album came out. It was sensational. I saw him another 20 times between then and the late 80s. Always brilliant, always amazing value. As he only ever wrote sub-2-minute songs, over 3 hours he’d play 659 numbers. You never wondered what he’d play, he’d just play everything.

In 1981 I was in a record store on Ventura Boulevard in Encino, California, having a browse. I was wearing my ‘Elvis Costello: a tour to Trust’ t-shirt and he walked in. The man himself. He looked at me, looked at his face on the t-shirt, smiled and left. I was shell-shocked. Frozen. And never said a word. What would I have said anyway? I looooovvvveee youououou. Or I’m your biggest fan, honest. So perhaps for the best that I kept shtum. At least there’s some dignity in silence.

Tonight on BBC4 there’s one of their super documentaries about Elvis Costello’s life and music. Gotta be watched. There’s no football on so its a must see.

 

Happy friday

 

A xxxx