ELVIS COSTELLO & THE ATTRACTIONS BLOOD & CHOCOLATE

Two very different albums – one produced by T-Bone Burnett, the other by old compadre Nick Lowe Producer T-Bone Burnett and I originally plotted this to be a halfacoustic and half-electric album. The first Hollywood sessions with players from Elvis Presley’s TCB band, jazz bassist Ray Brown and Earl Palmer – the drummer on both “Tutti Frutti” and “The Theme From The Flintstones” – gave us more than we bargained for, including “Indoor Fireworks”, “Poisoned Rose” and “I’ll Wear It Proudly”. Suspicion and ill-feeling replaced any literal or figurative electricity on the Attractions recording dates, apart from their superb contribution to “Suit Of Lights”. A matter of months later I booked Olympic Studios to finish the amplified half of the job in Barnes, and called Nick Lowe to produce, referee and play the acoustic rhythm guitar that holds together a record on which I frankly only make a noise with a Fender Telecaster. We set up with stage monitors, so everything was a roaring, muddy blur whether we were hammering through “Tokyo Storming Warning” or creeping through “I Want You”. If something was too loud in the mix, we simply turned off that channel and balanced to the bleed – appropriate, given the final title of the album. As to the chocolate, I think we ate it all.

“‘Pump It Up’ was scrawled on a hotel fire escape in Newcastle, in the last days of the Stiff Tour”