Elvis Costello

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I want to say that Elvis Costello’s 1986 song “I Want You” is a love song, but it’s like saying a volcanic eruption is about elevated temperatures. It’s so much a misnomer it is almost a lie. Let’s say that the first few seconds, oh my baby, baby, are some sort of spectacularly failed attempt at a love song, and then the egg shell breaks from the inside, and all the pathos, all the jealousy and obsession of a relationship gone south, burst out, red-hot and seething. Please excuse my French, but that song is a fucking hand-grenade of self-pity.

It’s taken from Blood & Chocolate, one of Costello’s best albums if you ask me, but it’s telling that his band, the Attractions, would not make another album with Costello for the next eight years. It’s not just because of this song, but relationships in the band had soured before that. I don’t know how much of those internal problems have found their way into recording I Want You, but creative adversity might have added to the atmosphere of something having come to a painful close. If you listen to the song on your stereo, Costello’s voice, sometimes jarring, sometimes painfully intimate, sounds like it will spill out of the loudspeakers and make small puddles of poisoned honey on your living-room floor.

Since “I Want You” is not a duet, we only have the male I’s point of view, and none of the woman’s. According to him, she has betrayed him, which, in a heterosexual context, means that she has slept with another man. Is he just jealous that she has found another guy after their breakup, or has she cheated on him? To some men (lesser men at that), this is the same thing, oh no, my darling, not with that clown, because the other guy, in some men’s self-estimation, is always the worse choice, no-one who wants you could want you more. Yeah, I’m the guy for you, can’t you see? But if the song would not be from the I’s point of view, it would not be nearly as good, or as revealing. It’s a six and a half minute whopper of a song; no wonder Michael Winterbottom could make a whole movie out of it.

Costello does not mince words here, but if you have ever read or watched any of his interviews, it cannot come as a surprise to you that Mr McManus does say exactly what he means – even if he means it only in the moment he is saying it. But it is exactly that quality that the song needs: It’s the thought of you undressing him, or you undressing. Apart from the fact that we can only guess what happened between the two, he must lie awake, gnashing his teeth, or smoking and drinking, trying in vain to delete the images of what he thinks has happened – and what he thinks has happened is always stronger of what has really happened. His guesses are probably all wrong (it’s knowing that he knows you now after only guessing), but how would that help? The images cannot be unseen, or uncreated. Oh boy, oh boy, us males are so good at feeding our inferiority complexes while maintaining that we are actually caring, considerate and tender when we are not.

I’ll say this for the song: it does not spare the male I any more than it does spare the departed female lover, but since the self-revelation on the side of the male I is so much more telling, it says much more about him than it says about the woman he is addressing, since his view of her is skewered and biased and uttered with the pain of departure at best and vitriolic hatred at worst. Talk about toxic masculinity. Musically, the song stays with you, because it is so slow and contains an absolute joke of a guitar solo while putting all its sensuality in its melody. The music already knows that all is over, while the lyrics still cling to the last vestiges of a relationship that is so over.

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Elvis Costello isn’t the easiest of persons – I kept that in mind last night while entering the Kongresshaus in Zurich. He’s just weird and nasty in some interviews and downright odd in others, and then he comes out and surprises you by being really tame and gentle. So if he announces his tour with the return of the Spectacular Spinning Songbook, I knew that it would take some getting used to. The stage was dominated by that gigantic colored wheel full of songtitles and little in-jokes such as “imperial chocolate.” There was also the Hammer of Songs and the Hostage of Fortune Go-Go Cage. At home, you get Mr McManus the musician; in here, you get Mr Napoleon Dynamite the entertainer.

When he came on stage, I realized the place was only two thirds full, and the applause was sort of lukewarm. No matter – Mr D started with “I hope you’re happy now,” and the go-go girl in the cage made it clear that the maestro was here to have fun. To me, the setting was a slight distraction from the music, and the music… I had a hard time to warm up to it in the first half-hour. I found “Turpentine” flat and uninspired. It was only when someone spun the wheel for “Tokyo Storm Warning” that I knew I had come to the right place. “She” was proof that there was a cupboard crooner in the house.

Besides Costello, there were Steve Nieve at the keys and Pete Thomas on drums, both longtime companions of the Attractions as well as of the Impostors. They did what they could, but there was no way for them to play some of the songs in a way that would have made them more distinct from one another. I had hoped for a rhythm section and some horns that would have played a gloriously loud “Bedlam” or “Needle Time”, but no. “Tramp the Dirt Down” didn’t stand out at all.

So I went along with what was there: a couple from the audience who didn’t know or didn’t want to tell if they were married, and to each other. (Mr MacManus: “Is there something you want to tell us?”) A good rendition of “Condemned Man.” And there was that folksy woman during some sort of “break,” yodelling and playing a small accordion. Was she local? No idea.

Then after that break, something happened. Elvis Costello came back alone and played an acoustic bit with “Jimmie Standing in the Rain”. That stuff worked beautifully, because here, the musician took over from the entertainer. I didn’t mind that he invited some more audience members and the go-go girls back on stage. And, of course, there had to be “I Want You,” which sounded not nearly as fucked up as it should have. I really would like to hear one live version of that song where it almost falls apart and breaks down. It works best when it barely works at all. It’s a song of its own kind.

Then he started to cheat. He wouldn’t accept requests for “Oliver’s Army,” even when it came up on the songbook, and played something else. It pissed off some people in the audience, but I had to smile to myself. That’s just typical, but what did you expect?

It was a good concert once it clicked. There were the typical imported bits, this time the Rolling Stones’ “Baby You’re Out of Time” and the Beatles’ “Please Please Me”. Last night Mr D the entertainer was in a good mood, and I wish the musician Mr C would have tried to have as much fun as him.