Elvis Costello, _Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink_ (part one)

GIVEN HOW PROLIFIC a songwriter Elvis Costello is, I was not surprised that his memoir clocks in at 670 pages; given the astonishing verbal ingenuity of his lyrics, I was not surprised that he turns out to be an entertaining, resourceful writer. It did come as a surprise, though, that the memoir is as mild-mannered in tone as it is. Costello seems to be following the principle that if one has nothing nice to say about someone, one should say nothing at all. I began to wonder whether he says so little about Attractions bassist Bruce Thomas, short-lived fling Bebe Buell, and longtime partner Cait O'Riordan because a lot of what he felt like saying just wasn't that nice. And why is Greil Marcus simply "a professor" (338)?

The voice throughout is that of the genial host of Spectacle, the charming between-songs-storyteller of Costello's solo shows. Nothing wrong with that; it is just as well that Costello did not use his memoir, à la Keith  Richards, to pay off old scores. The affability feels ironic, though, given that if one is sufficiently interested in Costello to pick up his book, one probably connected with the Elvis Costello of 1977-80--the spiky, illusionless slayer of scared cows that claimed his songwriting was motivated by revenge and guilt, slagged off Linda Ronstadt's earnest covers of some of his songs, and  tongue-lashed Steve Stills and Bonnie Bramlett one boozy night in Ohio.

That's him on the cover of Unfaithful Music, in some hotel room scarcely big enough to hold the bed he sprawls, Jazzmaster guitar on his abdomen, swept-back hair, thick-rimmed glasses, and a stare that says, "go ahead, try to impress me."

Although he was not actually part of the punk scene--his music could be fast and hard, but had none of punk's primitive art brut quality--here in the USA we thought he was as punk as the Pistols or the Clash because he was as savage as they were about rock's dinosaurs, about the tawdry remnants of hippiedom, about the music business ("Radio Radio"), about fashionable bohemias ("I Don't Want to Go to Chelsea"), about looming dystopias ("Night Rally").

Or "Hand in Hand"--

No, don't ask me too apologize. 
I won't ask you to forgive me.
If I'm gonna go down,
You're gonna come with me.
[...]
Don't you know I'm an animal?
Don't you know I can't stand up steady?
You can't show me any kind of hell
That I don't know already.

If Brian Jones had been capable of writing songs as beautiful, cold, and lethal as the aura Brian Jones projected, they would have been like "Hand in Hand." It's like a three-minute précis of Roeg and Cammel's Performance.

So what happened to that guy? Speculations in part two.