The greatest concert Elvis Costello ever attended: “Utterly sincere”
Every music obsessive and patron of live performance has an internal list of the greatest shows they have ever attended; the only difference, in the case of Elvis Costello, is that he has attended more than most.
Given the sheer sonic breadth of his own discography, it is no surprise that Costello boasts a particularly expansive record collection, spanning the spectrum from ABBA to Jimmy Cliff. From his earliest origins, after all, the bespectacled songwriter has never made any attempt to hide his pool of influences, whether they were in the subversive realm of punk rock, which formed the backdrop of his emergence, or the pop world with which he soon became acquainted. You don’t need to dig too far, either, to find that Costello has been at a selection of landmark gigs over the years.
Notably, during his younger years, Costello found himself covered in mud at the Bickershaw Festival back in 1972 – Wigan’s answer to Woodstock hippiedom, featuring a five-hour set from the Grateful Dead, along with performances from the likes of Hawkwind, Captain Beefheart, The Kinks, and Donovan. Witnessing such a generational, albeit weather-plagued, event at the age of 18 inevitably changes your outlook on life and music, and perhaps Costello wouldn’t have been the same had he not made the pilgrimage to Lancashire.
Nevertheless, that fateful weekend in Wigan was not the greatest gig Elvis Costello ever witnessed, and during a chat with the Los Angeles Times back in 2017, while heaping praise on Bob Dylan, he claimed that the curly-haired folk hero was among the greatest live acts he had ever witnessed.
“I remember taking my mother to see Bob Dylan in Liverpool when she turned 70,” he recalled. “And I remember being struck, sitting with my mother when she was 70, younger than Bob is now, by how many images of mortality were within his lyrics.”
That experience seemed to spur Costello on to see Dylan in concert whenever possible. “I love his performances of those songs [the Great American Songbook],” he shared. “It’s utterly sincere and presented with fine drama. I saw him do a show at Albert Hall 18 months ago, and it was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen.”
High praise indeed, even for an artist as well-acquainted with praise as Bob Dylan. It is worth noting, though, that Costello’s adoration of Dylan’s live performances, particularly his recent live performances, puts the songwriter in a rather niche category. For decades, Dylan’s shows have been denounced by audiences, owing to the songwriter’s tendency to rewrite, transform, or simply omit his older, more popular material.
While that ever-evolving practice might not earn Dylan’s live shows the adoration of the masses, it has never damaged Elvis Costello’s appreciation for the performer. After all, Costello has also evolved his output on multiple occasions since he first emerged as the angry young songwriter of the 1970s.
Refusing to be stuck in one place has been a repeated element of the songwriter’s career, and in that sense, his affinity for Bob Dylan and his live performances is something of a no-brainer, not to mention the fact that Dylan’s writing has been a constant source of inspiration for Costello since his earliest days.
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