A rock star’s perpetual reinvention
“Don’t start me talking, I could talk all night,” go the lyrics to Elvis Costello’s 1979 song “Oliver’s Army.” The sentiment was clearly the case while writing his hefty but illuminating new memoir Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink.
Costello’s appealingly non-linear narrative style often feels like a jammy windshield wiper: chapters repeatedly return to certain chronological spots — the lead-up to his late-70s breakout with his band the Attractions, for instance — yet delay mention of salient details such as the adoption of his stage name (he had no particular fondness for his namesake), or his defiant TV debut on Saturday Night Live, which famously got him banned from the show.
Anyone who watched Spectacle, the music-interview program Costello hosted for two seasons, was left with no doubt about his encyclopedic, genre-spanning musical knowledge. Though his first record, My Aim is True, is considered one of the greatest rock albums of all time, Costello has since made serious forays into jazz, classical and country.
Though he only lived with him until age 7 when his parents split, Costello’s late father, Ross MacManus, remains an indelible presence throughout the book. MacManus not only passed his musical genes on to his son, he also passed on the actual music, in the form of the hit singles he got through his job.
Costello is conspicuously silent about his first two marriages, though his guilt over infidelity during his first is palpable. In contrast, the ink spilled over his second, to Pogues’ bassist Cait O’Riordan, is as sparse as it is cringeworthy.
He is most at ease, and endlessly compelling, when writing of his Irish-English lineage, his artistic process and countless musical collaborations, and his remarkable evolution from angry young man to respected musical not-quite-elder statesman.