10.22.2020
PUMP ‘EM UP! ELVIS COSTELLO’S FAVOURITE MUSIC
The Quietus: Paul Stokes: October 21st 2020.
Elvis Costello tells Paul Stokes about his lockdown life and new album Hey Clockface as he guides us through Baker’s Dozen tales including being taken under the sinful wing of Iggy Pop and the time he nearly joined Blur.
Lockdown could have been very different and very lonely for Elvis Costello. A resident of Vancouver, Canada, the singer-songwriter was thousands of miles away on a tour of his native UK at the moment things started to close across the globe. “I was looking at the deteriorating situation, and asking ‘how long can we stay in the game here?’ I don’t have any legal status in Canada – I live in here in Vancouver where my boys go to school – I had to keep my eye on the borders which were starting to close,” he recalls of the predicament facing him in mid March. Not that it inspired total panic, and Costello even managed to play a show in his childhood heartlands at London’s Eventim Apollo (still “Hammersmith Apollo” to him) as lockdown hung in the balance. “I was waiting for word from above, divine intervention, a letter from Boris Johnson, a glimmer of common sense, anything!” he says. “In the end I remember standing in the wings at Hammersmith after the main set and saying, ‘Ok guys, let’s play [‘Mighty Like A Rose’ track] ‘Hurry Down Doomsdays The Bugs Are Taking Over’. At least let’s have some humour at this moment!’ So we went out and played that and closed the show.”
Eventually, postponing his final few dates, the singer-songwriter dodged the bugs and doomsday, making it back to Canada to spend most of his corona enforced isolation in an idyllic cabin on Vancouver Island with his family… and his audio files. Having completed two, week-long recording sessions just before hitting the road for the tour, the enforced break allowed him to make sense of the results.