Elvis Costello Solo: Who Needs a Band?

A concert review from 1989

Who needs drums? Who needs bass? Who needs piano? Certainly not Elvis Costello, who is on a do-it-himself college and club solo tour, with his friend Nick Lowe to open the show. Tuesday night at C.W. Post's Tilles Center in Greenvale, L.I., he proved that if you can sing a song convincingly and strum a guitar with ferocity, everything else is frou-frou.

From the opening notes of "Accidents Will Happen," you could see why Costello, despite his predeliction for melody, was associated with the punks when his music hit these shores in the late1970s. He stroked his guitar with such embryonic fury that it seemed only kryptonite could weaken the strings. And he spat out his carefully crafted lyrics with such controlled hysteria that a word like "love" sounded like a curse.

Without a band, Costello was able rewire his material, with spontaneous-sounding arrangements illuminating new angles. On "Mystery Dance," Costello sounded like basic 1950s rock greaser Gene Vincent with a literature degree. "Watching the Detectives," originally done as a brooding reggae, was a breathless, double-speed joyride played with caveman simplicity and brutality. The recent "Deep Dark Truthful Mirror," which was features soul horns on the "Spike" album, was presented solo with a country twang.

“God’s Comic,” live on Italian TV, 1989. Courtesy of You Tube.

Costello also made witty free associations and joyful juxtapositions. During "God's Comic," originally a mordant vision of a crude stand-up jokester meeting his maker, Costello digressed with snatches of the Monkees' hits "I'm a Believer" and "Last Train to Clarksville." During the cutting and poignant "New Amsterdam," he managed to segue into Lennon and McCartney's "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," a splendid mix-and-match. More literally, he broke away from his new "Pads, Paws and Claws," (a Costello-McCartney creation) to include an r&b oldie with a similar lyric theme, Little Willie John's "Leave My Kitten Alone." The humming melody of "Radio Sweetheart"seemed to inspire Costello to jump into the scat-bounce of Van Morrison's "Jackie Wilson Said."

A combination of buoyant spirit and clenched-teeth intensity made Costello look a little like the wired, mischievous 6-year-old Calvin and "Calvin and Hobbes" cartoon fame. And the mischief never seemed to stop.

Just when the concert seemed to be over with a rattling electric guitar version of "This Town" and the Animals' arrangement of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood," Costello came back with his opening act and longtime producer Nick Lowe for a pair of duets. The first, "Marie's the Name (of his Latest Flame)," by Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, was an Elvis hit from 1961--Presley, that is. The next tune, "(What's So Funny About) Peace, Love and Understanding" was, as Costello said, "a song Nick wrote and I stole."

Still ebullient, Costello added a postscript to the show that was a kind of musical "Wheel of Fortune." Dressed in a hideous velveteen jacket in the guise of "Napoleon Dynamite," one of the many pseudonyms Costello has used over the years, he played a diabolical game show hosts while a large, broken satin valentine was wheeled on stage. Inside, a number of compartments were printed stripes with the names of "deadly sins." Members of the audience were invited to choose a sin, then request a song.

The first young woman drew the deadly sin of "Awesomeness" and requested "Alison." Another such sin was "Trump" (click the red to read the interview with Costello about the Donald in the archives); the builder/real estate developer is a current Costello obsession), which was accompanied by a pre-recorded backing track for the only time that evening for the song "Pump It Up."

With one foot in the 1990s and the other in the 1950s, opening act Nick Lowe is the genteel complement to Costello's fierce modernism. [I know I wrote that sentence; I still don't know what it means.-ed]

Highlights of his set included his signature tune (as much as Lowe has one) "Cruel to be Kind"; the marvelous neo-doo-wop "Heart"; a savvy tune with a kind of Creedence Clearwater boogie called "Refrigerator White"; and "So It Goes," a tale of rock star wanna-be-ism just as shrewd now as it was a decade ago.