Elvis Costello Performance

Elvis Costello came onto the scene in the same general time period as Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, and David Byrne.  If these four bandleader-songwriters are remarkably different one to the next, they all brought us music that in some way pointed back to rock and roll’s primal beginnings.  Cutting through the excess of 1970s rock, they wrote shorter songs that emphasized a raw sound and a lyrical bite.  Unlike the singer-songwriters who were their immediate forbearers, artists like Jackson Browne, this new class identified themselves as bandleaders.  Through them rock and roll got its ferocity back.

Perhaps more than any of the others among this group, Elvis Costello has, since his first recordings, traveled a remarkable musical distance from where he began.  Sometimes it seems like that has been his very point.  With little attention to the demands of the marketplace, Costello has approached his career like a musicologist and a songwriter so in love with music’s possibilities that he can’t resist reinventing himself at every turn.  As a result, Costello has left a trail of recordings that force change with a kind of grace that is rare, even for the finest among popular music’s craftsmen. He has co-written with many of the greats, including Burt Bacharach, Paul McCartney, and Allen Toussaint.  Few writer-performers match the ideal of The Craft as does Costello.  As the first artist in the series, Costello holds a special place in The Craft Artist Series.