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Costello feels he gets no respect
In a thinly-veiled suggestion that he doesn't feel he's treated well enough in the UK, Elvis Costello has said he wouldn't be bothered if he never played Britain again:
"I don't care if I ever play in England again. That [Glastonbury 2005] gig made up my mind that I wouldn't come back. I don't get along with it. We lost touch. It's 25 years since I lived there. I don't dig it, they don't dig me."
But not playing a country because you stank up the festival is a little short-sighted, isn't it? After all, the audience at an expensive festival is hardly going to be your core audience, is it; to go into a big grump and wipe an entire nation - especially one which has been enthusiastically supportive of you for so long - is a little bit crabby.
Costello then suggests that the real reason is the young folk don't treat him like a god:
"British music fans don't have the same attitude to age as they do in America, where young people come to check out, say, Willie Nelson. They feel some connection with him and find a role for that music in their lives."
Really? I somehow doubt there's very much crossover between Hannah Montana's audience and Willie Nelson's; and it's somewhat flip and dismissive to suggest that Britain's young people have a gerontophobic attitude to anyone older than them - Oasis still pull a crowd; the Sex Pistols have sold out as much to misguided young persons as to old punks; Prince and Macca generate excitement whenever they take to a stage.
Maybe Costello's really annoyed that he never got the call for Grumpy Old Men.
3 comments:
Elvis was a hero to most, but he never meant shit to me.
^ Presley never definitively, undeniably called anyone a "nigger" either, unlike Costello. Motherfuck them all. And, also, John Wayne.
I've never understood the modern day reverance toward Costello anyway. Granted, his early new wave/pop success was deserved, but then he seemed to sink into becoming an "artiste" where the passion for the work far outweighed the passion exhibited in the work.
A blueprint for the average modern Costello album is to stick to the mundane, the bland, the boring and the workmanlike. Generally speaking it can only be enjoyed by "serious" music lovers - or fans who developed with Costello from the very start.
And therin lies the problem. Young audiences don't like Elvis Costello because muscially he's a bore. It's that simple.
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