you know uh well they're here on a good night over the last five years my next guest has
proven he is one of the very best writers and performers in popular music he's just released
his new album his eighth i believe imperial bedroom thank you i'll get it there it is
and he is currently on his american tour with the album please welcome mr elvis costello
very nice
very nice indeed was uh is is this your eighth uh album yeah it's our eighth
album over here yeah we've released one more album over here we're still plugging away at
the uh volume yeah but you also do a lot of different things don't you
yeah i think we do yeah we've made a three pop records a country record a soul record and three
that you can call anything you like now so long as it's good uh what now what would be
the reason for that a lot of people tend to want to try and stay in in one area and and
no i think that's boring i i i would much rather experiment with different types of music and
people are always going to be detractors that say you can't play that because you're
you're english and you can't play country music or you can't play this because you know
always find a reason for you not being able to do it but we do it with all our hearts so that's
all it counts yeah as i'm concerned you did uh tell me about making the country album was that an
enjoyable experience interesting strange strange from time to time say the least
being in nashville tennessee is very odd for a bunch of chaps from west london and uh you
know we got on with the recording and we did have one occasion where the engineer and the producer
got their guns out and started examining oh you see my gun here am i going to look at this guy
actually that is a little bit unnerving i suppose it's just part of life
we were talking about you did the the nashville album and um
but you don't get a lot of uh airplay do you no this is what we're fighting against
all the time it's uphill all the way because if anybody there's a lot of people out there
today i'm sure have never even heard of us and that don't hurt our records it's close
to impossible i don't know why we've given them enough variation of material we can't complain
i think in some ways that confuses people over here that you know they like the same old thing
over and over again for years and years until you go to sleep yeah do you um uh do how does
that happen that you can have a successful career without being on the radio a lot it's a miracle
now when you when you travel around to different uh cities on your tour you must meet
the local radio people yeah sometimes yeah i mean i think if i if i met all the people that
say we were the first people to play your records in this town and you know we've been playing your
wreck since the start then you would hear nothing but our records 24 hours a day you know but i'm
sure quite quite a lot of them are sincere in that you know and we hope to eventually
we're going to keep on coming back you might as well give in now because we've been doing it
um same thing goes to the people that buy the records as well you uh you would also
like to have uh now you have written songs for other people but you'd like to have i know you
mentioned frank sinatra you would like to have him record a song yeah well i don't think there's
any songwriter that would would say that that they wouldn't want frank sinatra to record one of those
songs there's a song called almost blue on my new album which i'd love to hear him see and i still
think he's got a marvelous voice and i'm not one of those people who subscribed to saying that he
no longer can sing it's just presents i saw him last two years ago and he was brilliant
when you when you write a song and say it's maybe a song for the new album do you think yourself yep
this is it this is the way i'm going to spend the next uh few years no it's usually this is the way
i'm going to spend however long it takes to get that track down and then we start on something
else yeah the band are really versatile you know and we enjoy experimenting with different things
it's not like there's any great innovation we're not saying this is new music or something yeah we
like to use lots of things that have been used before and changing around a while away i think
uh what were you like you in high school just about sound a bit shorter a little shorter
um did uh no in my high school there were the kids uh in the in the same heart yeah yeah
but there was the kids in the uh honor society and then there were the kids in the shop class
where would you have fit in there oh i don't know that's a bit confusing i don't understand
the american educational system uh i have a long discussion uh okay let's move on to something else
uh how was japan you went to japan it was very odd it was uh i mean
there's a big language problem we don't speak any japanese and
it happened in my high school yeah one two three and uh i'd like to go back there again maybe
and take it in a bit more the last time we went there i think we were practicing being obnoxious
before we came in here i don't think we really took advantage of the visit you were practicing
to be obnoxious for when you got to the united states we studied in canada and then we took it on
to japan and then we got the show really on the road in australia and then arrived here
now uh in in japan you also in addition to performing uh you had to do a lot of your own
publicity work oh yeah yeah yeah we drove down we hired a truck we decided that it was about
time we caused a bit of a stir the worst we could do was get deported and we uh we had a truck and
drove down the ginza which is like supposed fifth avenue blaring away frisbeeing records off the
back of this truck and people didn't want to take them from us we're forcing them on these people
and they ended up arresting the driver of the truck for overloading the truck they
wouldn't even arrest us we're going to take us away you know
handcuff me you know flog me yeah let me let me uh i know you're going to do another song
which is from the current album yes on you single actually isn't that good it's terrific
you must be tired of people asking you about the name yeah okay we could talk about high school uh
anything else any questions you know that's not very good
okay you don't talk about your name we've covered this
oh this might be good yeah okay all right well we're going to cover question number
eight uh right after this and we're going to pause now for intermission we'll return reveal
harry sure will be joining us also sidney miller the doorman of the year will be a little later
you can stay for that if you want elvis right uh and of course elvis costello is here you've just
begun your uh tour of this country well now we're we're nearing the end of it you're in the end
already where did you start we started on the west coast oh so i thought maybe you started on
the east coast no no no no we're now here yeah i've always expected batman to come in through
there you know never thought about that now we've had it we've had a really good time there's been
great crowds everywhere and uh lots of people and uh and well we met the holland brothers
as well when we were in los angeles to holland dozie and holding out all those motown things
they came in the dressing room and i still i can say to them now that i didn't ever even ever say
how great they were to them because they were so shocked yeah that they were there you know so
that was a big thrill and we've had a really good it's been a really good tour yeah had a couple of
20 nights but now what what what kind of a funny night what constitutes a funny night for you guys
uh well just sometimes where people come along with expectations of maybe hearing what we were
playing three four years ago and only doing that and we play a long varied show now and we try to
we try to you know do what pleases others and hopefully that pleases everybody else as well
but we've got a lot of material to choose from and if we played every song we knew we'd probably be
on stage for about three days yeah uh when when you're planning a tour of this country and you
look down the uh itinerary and you see a city does it trigger off really great memories like
fear comes into mind when i say season louis st louis oh yeah right hotels and stuff um but
enough why why fear this i think i know this had something to do with a a radio station
in st louis oh no nothing to do with that no no this is some places where you maybe have a
bad memory of it and the next time you go back it's completely different because it's based on
you know you had a bad gig there because you had a headache or something stupid like that
next time you go back there you got a great audience in it and some places have been real
pleasant surprises we've never been to before like the more in iowa we've never been to and
that everybody makes jokes about it and it's a great place people were screaming we couldn't
start the numbers because i couldn't count them in because we couldn't hear
for the applause terrific uh we're very very happy and excited that you're here tonight