10.21.2018
Q&A WITH MUSICIAN ELVIS COSTELLO
Financial Times: Hester Lacey: 12th October 2018
Elvis Costello, 64, released his debut album, My Aim is True, in 1977. His subsequent albums include Armed Forces, Get Happy!!, Imperial Bedroom and Punch the Clock. His best-known singles include “Alison”, “Oliver’s Army”, “ Shipbuilding”, “(I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea” and “Watching the Detectives”. He won a Grammy, with Burt Bacharach, in 1998 for “I Still Have That Other Girl” and his 2003 song “Scarlet Tide”, co-written with T-Bone Burnett for Cold Mountain, was nominated for an Oscar.
What was your childhood or earliest ambition?
To be a coalman. When I was a lad, coal was still delivered to my nana’s street in Birkenhead. I loved the smell and, I suspect, the taste of anthracite.
Private school or state school?
University or straight into work? St Edmund’s RC primary school in Whitton, Archbishop Myers Secondary Modern in Hounslow and Saint Francis Xavier’s Bilateral in Liverpool. I try not to read anything personal into the fact that both of my secondary schools changed their names, one shortly after I left and the other just after I joined. I’ve worked since I was 17.
Who was or still is your mentor?
Harold and Sylvia Hikins were — and are — poets and writers who hosted readings and musical evenings at which my first musical partner, Allan Mayes, and I tried out our songs, when we were working elsewhere for £1.50 a night and very little encouragement.
How physically fit are you?
This being a financial organ, I have to tell you that I feel like a million dollars.