Elvis Costello
photo: Amelia Stein, courtesy of Warner Bros. Records
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Elvis Costello: This Year’s Model
Review by Jon Savage, Sounds, 1978
THE INSULT that made a man out of Mac(manus). As runs the hype: get sand kicked in your face (or whatever), keep on punching your ...
Review by Mat Snow, MOJO, December 2002
Elvis Costello And The Attractions: Armed Forces; Imperial BedroomElvis Costello: Mighty Like A Rose ...
AUDIO
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, October 1983
Imperial Bedroom vs. Punch the Clock; Emerick vs. Lowe vs. Langer/Winstanley; reassessing his back catalogue and a whole lot more.
File format: mp3; in 3 parts, total file sizes: 83.9meg, total interview length: 1h 31' 41" sound quality: ***
ARTICLES IN LIBRARY
Elvis Costello: My Aim Is True
Review by Chas de Whalley, Sounds, May 1977
ELVIS COSTELLO is a cagey sort of fellow. You can talk to him for hours and still not discover quite what makes him tick. ...
Elvis Costello & The Attractions: Island Records, Hammersmith, London
Live Review by Nick Kent, NME, July 1977
THE KING ARRIVES ALIVE ...
Interview by Nick Kent, NME, August 1977
IT'S BEEN a rough old week for Elvis Costello. Last weekend he was right up there in the play lists with his 'Red Shoes' single ...
The Stiff Tour: Stiffs Drugs And Rock 'N' Roll
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, NME, November 1977
"SEX AND drugs and rock and roll...sex and drugs and rock and roll...sex and drugs and rock and roll..." Hot damn, m'man, Leicester University is ...
Elvis Costello: I fought the law!
Profile and Interview by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, December 1977
RARELY HAS MYSTERY surrounded the arrival of a new rock performer the way it has Elvis Costello. Totally unknown a year ago, courtesy of Stiff ...
Elvis Costello & The Attractions: Whisky a Go Go, Los Angeles
Live Review by Sylvie Simmons, Sounds, December 1977
THE YELLOW posters outside the Los Angeles Whisky and the yellow pins handed to the punters make him out a Buddy Holly figure who murders ...
Elvis Costello: My Aim Is True (Columbia)
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, February 1978
THIS BANDIT SUMMER, this snatcher of heroes, loved ones and possibilities, will be remembered also for leaving behind intoxicating rock and roll, with this album ...
Elvis Costello: My Aim Is True (Columbia)
Review by Jeffrey Morgan, Stage Life, February 1978
LIKE IT OR NOT, you’d better watch out 'cause talent will out, which is exactly why you’re hearing so much about Elvis Costello these days. ...
Elvis Costello: This Year's Model (Radar Records)
Review by Nick Kent, NME, March 1978
THERE'S ONLY one real problem facing the reviewer assessing this, our El's second album, but if it's tricky enough to deal with then at least ...
Elvis Costello: Holocaust In Microcosm
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, NME, March 1978
"HEY ELVIIIIIS!!!" There's this blonde gumdrop down the front, see, shaking it down in that demure stoned way that hippie girls seem to favour, and ...
Elvis Costello: Costello Group Therapy
Report by Peter Silverton, Sounds, April 1978
"KNOCK KNOCK.""Who's there?""Elvis.""Elvis who?""Forgotten already, huh?" ...
Elvis Costello: The Guildhall, Portsmouth
Live Review by Barbara Charone, Sounds, April 1978
THE THEATRE manager of the Portsmouth Guildhall stood in the foyer panicking. "This Costello chap hasn't turned up yet," he mumbled nervously to one of ...
Elvis Costello: This Year's Model
Review by Ira Robbins, Trouser Press, May 1978
I WAS SOMEWHAT HESITANT about falling in love with My Aim Is True. It didn't make my 1977 Top Ten LP list because the songs ...
Elvis Costello & The Attractions: This Year's Model (Radar)
Review by Anthony O'Grady, RAM, May 1978
ELVIS COSTELLO? Probably you've heard of him even if you haven't heard 'Watching the Detectives' on radio or you somehow missed out on the RAM/Stiff ...
Elvis Costello is Angry and Convincing: This Year's Model Fulfils Every New Wave Expectation
Profile by Fred Schruers, Circus, June 1978
IT'S 1:30AM IN the Bootlegger Lounge in Syracuse, NY. Elvis Costello, the one with the owlish stare and the spitting mad vocals, the man whose ...
Elvis Costello, Richard Hell, John Cooper Clarke: Hammersmith Palais, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, NME, 1979
Are you ready for the fiiinal soluuuuuuuuuuuuuushun (oh yeah)? ...
Elvis Costello: Elvis' Armed Forces
Comment by Charles Shaar Murray, NME, 1979
ELVIS COSTELLO is Superman's fantasy of what Clark Kent should have been. He is Buddy Holly reincarnated as an axe-murderer. He is a nasty Woody ...
Elvis Costello And The Attractions: with Richard Hell and the Voidoids
Live Review by Paul Rambali, NME, January 1979
WELCOME TO to the working week, seven nights of Elvis Costello at London's Dominion Theatre, virtually opposite the location of the Elvis musical.Will the real ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, NME, January 1979
IN The Devil Finds Work, James Baldwin opined that white people's hatred of blacks is based on terror, while black people's hatred of whites is ...
Elvis Costello: Elvis Army Is Here To Stay
Report and Interview by Nick Kent, NME, January 1979
CHAPERONED in the back of a hire car, taking in the sights, partaking in entertaining chit-chat about the industry with fellow passengers, I shouldn't feel ...
Armed and Dangerous: The Rise of Elvis Costello
Profile by Andy Schwartz, New York Rocker, February 1979
Oh, I just don't know where to begin... ...
Elvis Costello: Hammersmith Palais, London
Live Review by Penny Valentine, Melody Maker, February 1979
HAS Elvis Costello finally become an Establishment "star," or is he still mounting a concerted attack against the old-fart fortress? Taking the stage at Hammersmith ...
Elvis Costello: Armed Forces (Columbia)
Review by Ira Robbins, Trouser Press, April 1979
When Bob Dylan broke up with his wife, Sara, a few years ago, the world was treated to the introspective and bitter Blood on the ...
Elvis Costello: Live in New York
Live Review by Roy Trakin, Melody Maker, April 1979
Palladium & Great Gildersleeve's, NYC ...
Report by Fred Schruers, Rolling Stone, May 1979
Elvis Costello puts his foot in his mouth ...
Elvis Costello: Murder on the Liverpool Express
Report by Nick Kent, NME, June 1979
SO THERE I was at Euston station, seated comforably in the 1st class compartment waiting for the Inter City to speed me to my destination ...
Elvis Costello: Costello Beats Anaesthesia
Comment by Richard Williams, Melody Maker, September 1979
ELVIS COSTELLO spun the discs for a couple of hours on Radio One's Star Special last week, and the result was the kind of radio ...
Elvis Costello & The Attractions: Ten Bloody Marys & Ten How's Your Fathers (Imp)
Review by Adam Sweeting, Melody Maker, 1980
COSTELLO BUFFS will undoubtedly be familiar with this generously-stuffed collection of His Master's Voices from its previous existence on cassette. On the other hand, they ...
Elvis Costello & The Attractions: Get Happy!! (F-Beat)
Review by Paul Rambali, NME, February 1980
ON AN otherwise typical day late last October, Elvis Costello strolled through the door of London’s Rock On record shop in Camden Town, the oldies ...
Eivis Costello and the Attractions at West Runton
Live Review by Ian Penman, NME, March 1980
BETTER put it all in present tenses... ...
Elvis Costello: The Elvis Enigma
Profile by Peter Silverton, Sounds, March 1980
WHEN I HEARD the first Elvis Costello single, 'Less Than Zero', I figured it was Stiff's mainstay of the time, Nick Lowe, having a bit ...
Elvis Costello & The Attractions: Get Happy!!
Review by Ira Robbins, Trouser Press, May 1980
The first draft of this review, written on the basis of an American pressing, had to be discarded when an English copy arrived. Sound quality ...
Elvis Costello: Imperial Bedroom (F-Beat)
Review by Richard Cook, NME, July 1982
ONE THING Elvis Costello has never learnt is good manners. I don't want to go to Chelsea! I don't want to be a goody-goody ! ...
Elvis Costello: The Palladium, New York
Live Review by Iman Lababedi, Creem, December 1982
IT HAD been 10 months since I last saw Elvis Costello; in between I'd watched him play footsie with Tom Snyder, straight man to George ...
Elvis Costello: Punch The Clock (F.Beat)****
Review by Edwin Pouncey, Sounds, July 1983
ELVIS COSTELLO, the self-confessed Invisible Man, returns. Off come the dark glasses, the bandages are unwound and drop to the floor to reveal his latest ...
The Face Interview: Elvis Costello
Interview by Paul Rambali, Face, The, August 1983
ALMOST seven years ago now, the son of dance band singer Ross McManus invented somebody called Elvis Costello. It was possible to do that in ...
Elvis Costello: Punch The Clock
Review by Penny Valentine, City Limits, September 1983
"They put the numb into number — the cut into cutie — the slum into slumber — the boot into beauty." ...
Elvis Costello And The Attractions: Punch The Clock (F Beat)
Review by Adam Sweeting, Melody Maker, September 1983
PHEW, for a moment there I thought the penny wasn't going to drop in time. Luckily, after a further batch of circumnavigations of the turntable, ...
"Now is the time, and the time is as good as any": The Elvis Costello Interview
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, RAM, November 1983
IF THE GREAT GREY they put the numb into number and the boot into beauty, then who, pray, puts the El into the element within? ...
Elvis Costello: 10 Bloody Marys And 10 How's Your Fathers
Review by Ian Penman, NME, April 1984
10 AND 10 is 20 postaged stamps of the left-out-of-mainstream Costello: mislaid or temporarily missing 'B'-side moves, free 45s that got lost on the Press, ...
Live Review by Ira Robbins, Face, The, June 1984
ELVIS Costello’s 1983 American tour was so boring that even longtime fans found it difficult to remain alert for an entire set of pseudo-cabaret runthroughs. ...
Elvis Costello: Goodbye Cruel World (F-Beat)
Review by Mat Snow, NME, August 1984
"WHY MUST I be so lonely...?" ...
Elvis Costello and the Attractions: Goodbye Cruel World (Columbia)
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, September 1984
IT'S ALMOST Elvis Costello and the Distractions this time out. Goodbye Cruel World, LP #10 (here in America, at least), has such a desperate busyness ...
Elvis Costello & The Attractions: Hammersmith Palais, London
Live Review by Nick Kent, NME, October 1984
WHETHER one wishes to take into account the possible home truths gleaned from 'rumour' or not – the tittle-tattle here centring on contentions of marital ...
A Man Called Uncle: Elvis Costello
Interview by Mat Snow, NME, May 1985
What is the Elvis Seal Of Approval worth? Mat Snow asks for a few words of wisdom from pop’s Uncle Brian. ...
Elvis Costello: King Of America
Review by Sean O'Hagan, NME, February 1986
IN BROCADE and jewelled crown, Declan Patrick Aloysius MacManus stares out from the sleeve of King Of America, his beard and spectacles framing an unsmiling ...
Elvis Costello: The Costello Show And Tell
Interview by Richard Cook, Sounds, March 1986
The self-proclaimed 'King of America' talks to RICHARD COOK about his new LP, his uncomfortable relationship with the music press, and the mediocrity of today's ...
Elvis Costello & The Attractions: Blood And Chocolate (Imp)
Review by Nick Kent, NME, September 1986
ONE DECADE and 11 albums into a brilliant career, pop's most persistent moniker-monger is still playing the name game: having buried Brother Coward and killed ...
Report and Interview by Lucy O'Brien, NME, September 1986
In the badlands of Spain, a strange scenario... JOE STRUMMER is shooting everyone in sight, SHANE MACGOWAN has been killed, ELVIS COSTELLO is serving coffee... ...
Elvis Costello: Blood and Chocolate
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, October 1986
ELVIS COSTELLO'S CAREER now consists of a spiral of sidesteps and multiplying identities, all designed to accommodate the extraordinary fecundity of his writing. ...
Elvis Costello: Royalty Theatre, London
Review by David Quantick, NME, November 1986
HALFWAY THROUGH 'Watching The Detectives', there is a small fight. When it has been amicably concluded, the thin man in the Buddy Holly specs, striped ...
Elvis Costello: The Royalty Theatre, London
Live Review by Jack Barron, Sounds, November 1986
CROCODILE SMILES ...
Elvis Costello And The Attractions at the Royal Albert Hall
Live Review by Len Brown, NME, January 1987
STEVEN THE computer programmer is in his element. In black and white stripes with red kipper tie, he's sweating, shaking and singing all the words ...
Elvis Costello & The Attractions: The Riviera, Chicago
Live Review by Bill Holdship, Creem, March 1987
ELVIS COSTELLO & The Attractions' early Detroit shows are among my fondest rock 'n' roll memories. I saw him the first time he played the ...
Elvis Costello: Elvis Lives!!!
Interview by Andrew Mueller, On The Street, January 1989
IN THE BEGINNING was the Word. And the word was No.No as in No Interview. Elvis Costello would be talking about his forthcoming album, Spike, ...
Elvis Costello: And So To Bedlam
Interview by Sean O'Hagan, NME, February 1989
If 'you're nobody 'til everybody thinks you're a bastard' then, logically, the universal acclaim received by ELVIS COSTELLO's Spike LP must make him one of ...
Elvis Costello: Spike (Warners)
Review by Terry Staunton, NME, February 1989
THE DOUR, BEARDED man wearing a crown who stared out from a record sleeve three years ago was an unhappy monarch. An emperor in new ...
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, March 1989
ELVIS COSTELLO'S LAST two albums were released back in 1986. Despite their excellence, the combination of King Of America and Blood & Chocolate suggested that ...
El Hath No Fury: Elvis Costello
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Wire, The, June 1991
"WHEN YOU GET OLD IT'S LIKE they go to the file for the opinions on you," said Elvis Costello last time he was on the ...
Elvis Costello: Mighty Like a Mouth
Interview by Richard Gehr, Creem, June 1991
What do we talk about when we talk about pop music? "Rock & roll is a ludicrous response to most things," admits Elvis Costello. ...
Elvis Costello: Mighty Like A Rose
Review by Mat Snow, Q, June 1991
RECENTLY OBSERVED sporting a trainee Father Christmas beard and chewing the fat with Jerry Garcia, Elvis Costello seemed to have completed his self-reinvention as a ...
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, July 1991
"I'M BLOWING MY COVER," Elvis Costello announces mournfully, as the sun, knowing no better, blazes happily down on Notting Hill Gate. ...
Elvis Costello and Martin Amis: Prophets of Doom
Essay by Simon Reynolds, Arena, Summer 1991
The highbrow hysteria of Elvis Costello and Martin Amis ...
Elvis Costello: Can I Be Frank…?
Essay by Mark Sinker, Wire, The, September 1992
2005 note: The original manuscript began and ended with some kind of lyrical gibberish swansong for the song as a music-form (in the age of ...
Interview by Ira Robbins, Newsday, 1994
Like an old flame breezing back through the door with no more than an indolent shrug and a sly wink, Elvis Costello has returned from ...
Elvis Costello: Brutal Youth (Warner Bros.)
Review by Chris Roberts, Melody Maker, February 1994
PRAY TO GOD that Elvis Costello never writes a song about you and relationships. Rather Mike Leigh or Ken Loach documents you, rather a fly ...
Review by Stuart Maconie, Q, April 1994
A PERFORMER as singular as Elvis Costello invites any number of critical perspectives and, needless to say, few gain his approval. Still, here's one. Through ...
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, January 1995
How the devil are you? I'm having a ball. ...
Elvis Costello: They Think It's All Covers... Er, It Is Now!
Interview by Terry Staunton, NME, May 1995
After 18 years of being either a sneering young turk or cumudgeonly old bugger, ELVIS COSTELLO has decided it's time for a change – he's ...
Interview by Francesco Calazzo, Buscadero (Italy), 1996
What follows is a little chat, later rearranged as an interview, occurred between Pete Thomas (the drummer of the now disbanded Elvis Costello’s Attractions) and ...
Elvis Costello: A Good Year For The Composer
Interview by Keith Cameron, NME, June 1996
HE IS THE Music Man, he comes from down your way. And he can play. Oh, he can play pretty much anything you care to ...
Elvis Costello: All This Useless Beauty (Warner Bros.)
Review by Dave DiMartino, Musician, July 1996
IT'S EASY to get lost within the sheer bulk of Elvis Costello's work – particularly since most of it, from 1977's My Aim Is ...
Elvis Costello with Burt Bacharach: Painted From Memory
Review and Interview by Dave DiMartino, MOJO, October 1998
Two years in the making, the full-on follow-up to ‘God Give Me Strength’, their collaboration from the soundtrack to Grace Of My Heart. ...
Pop Go Costello And Bacharach Onstage
Live Review by Frank Tortorici, sonicnet.com, October 1998
New-wave pioneer and '60s-pop tunesmith open their tour at Radio City Music Hall. Contributing Editor Frank Tortorici reports ...
Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach: Painted From Memory
Review by Ian MacDonald, Uncut, November 1998
ONLY FIVE years ago in the UK, it needed to be reaffirmed that Burt Bacharach is one of the greatest popular musicians of the second ...
Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello at the Royal Festival Hall
Live Review by Gavin Martin, NME, November 1998
The stage is in darkness and from somewhere in the wings Elvis sings the opening verse of 'Baby It's You'. It is one of the ...
Interview by Tim Footman, Flipside, 1999
IT'S A TOUGH JOB, but someone's gotta do it. Declan Patrick 'Aloysius' McManus, aka Napoleon Dynamite, aka The Imposter, aka Tiny Hands Of Concrete; a ...
Elvis Costello at the Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool
Live Review by Nick Hasted, Independent, The, April 1999
THERE'S BEEN loose talk lately that Elvis Costello is becoming an irrelevance. The only one of his Nineties albums to gain pop acceptance was an ...
Interview by Fred Schruers, Rolling Stone, November 1999
DECLAN MACMANUS took to the stage in 1977, an angry young man sporting Buddy Holly glasses and a strange name: Elvis Costello. But he wasn't ...
Elvis Costello takes up Position of Artist in Residence at UCLA
Report and Interview by Fred Shuster, LA Daily News, June 2001
Elvis Costello prepares for a year in Westwood ...
Elvis Costello: Elvis Gets His Groove Back
Interview by Roy Trakin, Hits, 2002
THE ONCE-ANGRY young man of punk-rock is now practically a pop music singer-songwriting icon. It's been more than 25 years since a bespectacled nerd with ...
Elvis Costello: My Aim Is True/Blood & Chocolate/Brutal Youth
Review by Jim Irvin, MOJO, January 2002
One more time: Elvis's rockest creations in 2CD editions, each with a bonus disc featuring material available on earlier reissues, plus previously unreleased demos. ...
Review by Chris Roberts, Uncut, April 2002
Second phase of Bonus-packed reissue programme for Costello catalogue ...
Elvis Costello: When He Was Cruel
Review by Ira Robbins, salon.com, April 2002
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 ...
Classics and Newer Tunes, a Full-Circle Mix by Elvis Costello
Live Review by Richard Cromelin, Los Angeles Times, May 2002
Elvis Costello: UCLA Ackerman Grand Ballroom, Los Angeles ...
Interview by Graeme Thomson, Herald, The, August 2002
YOU DON'T REALLY interview Elvis Costello. It's more a matter of tossing a few loaded questions at him then taking cover as each enquiry explodes ...
Elvis Costello: Mighty Like A Rose
Retrospective by Nick Hasted, Uncut, November 2002
SUMMER 1991, AND Elvis Costello's kingdom was about to crumble. In the world outside, it was the year of Screamadelica, Nevermind, Blue Lines and dance ...
Elvis Costello: A Dream Comes True
Report and Interview by Adam Sweeting, Gramophone, January 2004
A ballet from pop legend Elvis Costello based on Shakespeare? How did the musical changeling meet the challenge, asks Adam Sweeting ...
Elvis Costello: Almost Blue/Goodbye Cruel World/Kojak Variety
Review by Terry Staunton, Record Collector, September 2004
AS THE AMBITIOUS Costello reissue programme heads towards completion, the contents of the bonus discs take on a greater significance, bolstering releases that may struggle ...
Elvis Costello and the Imposters: The Delivery Man
Review by Ben Thompson, Daily Telegraph, September 2004
RECORDED AT Sweet Tea Studios in Oxford, Mississippi, with guest appearances by Emmylou Harris and Lucinda Williams, The Delivery Man initially looks like a bold ...
Elvis Costello & The Imposters: The Delivery Man (Mercury)***
Review by Stephen Dalton, Uncut, November 2004
EMERGING FROM AN uneven middle period of marital discord, free-range experimentation and ill-advised beards, the artist formerly known as Declan MacManus appears to have upped ...
Elvis Costello: A Man with a Mission (In Two or Three Editions)
Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, Fall 2004
ELVIS COSTELLO is about to take over the world. No, he's not going to reveal himself as a nefarious arch-villain in league with Doctor Octopus ...
Elvis Costello with Emmylou Harris: SummerStage, Central Park, NYC
Live Review by Mac Randall, New York Daily News, July 2005
"PITY ABOUT IT BEING so cold and all," Elvis Costello cracked toward the beginning of his Central Park SummerStage concert last night. ...
Paul Simon: Bloomsbury Theatre, London; Allen Toussaint: Bush Hall, London
Live Review by Mark Pringle, Rock's Backpages, June 2006
LET'S LOOK at what Paul Simon and Allen Toussaint share. They both wrote songs that helped shape this thing of ours, this culture we've shared ...
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