Elvis Costello on the best song he wrote with Paul McCartney: “You’ll just have to take my word for this”
Like most musically-orientated minds of his generation, Elvis Costello grew up as an ardent Beatlemaniac. When he achieved fame in his own right in the 1970s as the frontman of The Attractions, Costello helped to establish the new wave era, which brought a nuance of vibrancy and virtuosity to the ephemeral punk flame. The English singer frequently cited The Beatles as his most pivotal and longstanding influence during this foundational period.
Costello’s associative sound contains influences from vast swathes of the musical spectrum, from jazz and folk to punk and soul. Accordingly, his record collection extends far beyond The Beatles’ broad musical domain. However, as Costello notes, the Fab Four’s influence also penetrates much deeper than music itself.
Costello attempted to summarise his unbound appreciation of The Beatles in a short essay for Rolling Stone in 2020. He identified the group as countercultural catalysts before discussing their unrivalled contributions to music’s evolutionary trail. “The word ‘Beatlesque’ has been in the dictionary for quite a while now,” he wrote. “You hear them in Harry Nilsson’s melodies, in Prince’s Around the World in a Day, in the hits of ELO and Crowded House, and in Ron Sexsmith’s ballads. You can hear that Kurt Cobain listened to The Beatles and mixed their ideas with punk and metal.”
Costello defined The Beatles’ influence as spanning from The Knickerbockers’ ‘Lies’ to The Flamin’ Groovies’ ‘Shake Some Action, adding, “The scope and license of The White Album has permitted everyone from Outkast to Radiohead to Green Day to Joanna Newsom to roll their picture out on a broader, bolder canvas.”
Although it is more fashionable to favour John Lennon for his more abstract songwriting contributions and mysterious personality, Costello has always had a soft spot for McCartney as the band’s workhorse and most consummate composer. In the late 1980s, Costello joined McCartney to work together on their respective 1989 records, Spike and Flowers in the Dirt. At the time, McCartney had fallen out of favour with many fans after a run of lacklustre albums that reached a nadir in 1986’s Press to Play.
Costello understood McCartney’s difficult situation at the time but damned if he was going to pass up the opportunity to work with one of his heroes. “I know some people have very bad preconceptions about Paul McCartney, but I’m involved to the extent that I’ve written a bunch of songs with him as well,” Costello noted at the time. “I know he’s a really good bass player, so I’m not too bothered about what anyone thinks about him playing on my record.”
Speaking to Club Sandwich magazine in 1993, McCartney remembered his experience writing alongside Costello. “A few years ago, Elvis and I got together to see if we could write a few songs,” he said. “First of all, just to see if we could stand the sight of each other or if we annoyed each other too much. I fixed one of his songs up, then he fixed up one of mine.”
After establishing a solid friendship and professional chemistry, the pair decided to create some new music together. The first song was inspired by their shared love for Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. “The question then was, where do we start? We had the whole musical universe to choose from – a rock and roll song, a love song, what would it be?” McCartney continued. “So I said, ‘Well, let’s start with Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. Let’s think of them.’ So we started off, and ‘The Lovers That Never Were’ came out. It was our first song together.”
In his 2015 memoir Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink, Costello revealed that ‘The Lovers That Never Were’ was his favourite of his creations with McCartney. Sadly, the original version they recorded never saw the light of day. “I’d say the rough recording of ‘The Lovers That Never Were’ is one of the great, unreleased performances of Paul McCartney’s solo career. I know you’ll just have to take my word for this, but I was playing the piano when Paul opened up behind me in a wild, distorted voice that was almost like the one he used on ‘I’m Down’.”
McCartney told Club Sandwich of the “nice but very, very rough demo” he recorded with Costello. He lamented that “when we tried to record it properly, it didn’t really work out.” Presumably, Costello referred to the demo when he mentioned an “unreleased performance”. McCartney ultimately shelved the song for Flowers in the Dirt but revisited it without Costello for his 1993 album, Off the Ground. “We thought of bringing in a 4/4 bass drum over a 3/4 song, which just makes it swing,” the former Beatle reflected. “It’s an old rhythm trick, but it made it come alive, and we then had a version that we liked.”
Fortunately, McCratney released the original demo with Costello in 2017 as part of a special edition reissue of Flowers in the Dirt. The demo certainly has a unique charm that couldn’t be replicated in the polished studio setting.
