Elvis Costello: When He Was Cruel

MICK JAGGER HAD A POINT when he announced "it's the singer not the song" – the young Rolling Stones were perfectly content to beg, borrow and steal material their charisma machine could strut to. The songs of Bob Dylan, which at first were his career, are now reshaped nightly in performance by an artful renderer. And as a singer, Paul McCartney has never been anything but the lucky sod who gets first crack at all of Paul McCartney's compositions.