WHEN ELVIS MET PAUL
The collaboration between a pair of musical giants pays dividends for fans
The 1980s had not been going well for Paul McCartney, who had a series of commercial flops.
“It was time to prove something to myself,” McCartney said back then. Flowers in the Dirt, released in 1989, marked a rebirth. But the most intriguing element of Flowers was shelved for decades. In 1987, McCartney invited Elvis Costello to work with him. Four of their songs ended up on Flowers, but a few others never came out. And both McCartney and Costello agree that their nine, initial demo recordings remain the best part of their collaboration.
On March 24, those demos are being released as part of an elaborate, box-set reissue of Flowers in the Dirt.
We spoke recently with McCartney and Costello, separately and by phone, about their intense writing spurts and the challenges of turning the demos into a polished album.
McCartney’s manager suggested he call Costello who came to McCartney’s Hog Hill Mill Studio in the U.K.:
McCartney We just sat on these couches. Each of us got an acoustic guitar. Sat across from each other. I said to him, “The way I’m used to working with a collaborator is really, mainly with John.” And the way we used to do it is sit opposite like this. And the thing for me that was kind of nice ... because I was left-handed and he was right-handed, as was the case with Elvis, too, it was as if I was looking in the mirror.
Costello I was sort of a little startled when he made that reference. I think it’s more to just try to explain the immediacy of the way we worked rather than put me in the same bracket as Lennon ... I can’t sing above him so I would naturally harmonize below. Which is often the relationship of Lennon and McCartney’s harmonization. That would draw some comparison.
McCartney The bottom line is I’ve never had a better collaborator than John and I don’t expect to. Because we were pretty hot.
Working with Costello created a sound that was decidedly Beatles-like:
McCartney With Elvis, we tried to keep away from it, but if we did fall into anything — like, I think My Brave Face has a sort of Beatle-y thing to it — we didn’t try to avoid it.
Costello I learned how to sing two-part harmonies from singing along with Beatles records. So of course, the minute I put my voice next to his, with the somewhat harder edges in my voice, it naturally created some sort of regional echo. I call it the Mersey cadence. I wasn’t even born in Liverpool. My family’s from Liverpool. But I’ve got a lot of those sounds in my voice.
When critics heard of the collaboration, they developed a storyline — that Costello, the punk-rocking bad boy, represented the darker Lennon. He would push McCartney, the softy who sang Silly Love Songs. Costello dismisses that:
Costello Oh, Paul’s the ballad guy, the same guy who sang I’m Down, She’s a Woman and Helter Skelter. You can find a contrary thing when people talk about Lennon/McCartney and those simplifications. Yeah, you can go Instant Karma and Revolution
and these things and Help. But you can also go Julia and Beautiful Boy.
McCartney I think a lot of people assume that John and I pushed each other in those ways. ... That never occurred. We had a very easy manner where both of us knew that the other was only in it to help and we were pooling our resources. So many times I would help John out with a problem in his song, but conversely, he’d do exactly the same with me. We knew that we would do that, and it was perfectly allowed. It’s not a question of pushing. It’s a question of just being. I’m writing, “It’s getting better all the time” and John comes in with, “Couldn’t get no worse.” Instead of going, “Oh, you’re spoiling my lovely song.” I go, “Genius, great.” I would do the same thing for him . ...
There was no great strategy as they wrote. It was organic. Costello points to Tommy’s Coming Home, a beautiful song about a war widow torn between mourning and temptation. The demo is being released for the first time on the Flowers box-set:
Costello Paul made the first musical statement. But if you listen to that song, who do you think wrote that? Probably me, less known as a melodist than him. But I think I was the one who suggested (hums the chorus). Often we exchanged the role as we were doing it because it wasn’t considered. All these theories, they don’t exist because of who I am. They exist because of who he is and all these associations that people want to read into. None of that was any part of writing any of these songs. It was almost fun really. It was really seeing what we could get . ... The image of the hawk hovering over the little animals in that song. I said, “How do we get that in the story?” And I had the idea of a war widow on a train, and somehow both of those images ended up in that song. That’s proper collaborating. It’s not theoretical. It’s actual practical work.
So why did Costello and McCartney eventually part ways?
McCartney Thinking back ... I didn’t just want to just make an Elvis Costello album. There were other things I was interested in. I also wanted to work with this fabulous arranger, Clare Fischer, which may not have happened if I had been working with Elvis. I think I wanted to work with Trevor Horn and Steve Lipson, and things like Rough Ride and Figure of Eight wouldn’t have been there. I wanted some variety, and that led to the decision of writing some stuff with Elvis. And things like Put It There, I think those were pretty successful.