The most “absolutely fucking fearless” performer Elvis Costello has ever seen
A pretty important quality that every rockstar needs to have is fearlessness, something which came in many forms, as Elvis Costello can attest.
Costello was certainly fearless in his own right, as his performance on Saturday Night Live proved. When asked to play the popular American comedy show, Costello’s record label told him he needed to perform his catchy single ‘Less Than Zero’, but Costello wanted to play something new. He began with the big hit, but then a few seconds in, he told his band to stop and went into his newer song ‘Radio Radio’.
The producer of Saturday Night Live, Lorne Michaels, by all accounts, couldn’t contain his rage when Costello decided to switch the song. As a result of his supposed fearlessness, he was banned from the show.
“We did end up on Saturday Night Live,” the musician recalled. “And I just wanted them to remember us. I didn’t really have anything against the show. I was more pissed off at being told what to play by the record company than I was at NBC, truthfully. I can’t remember whether I said what I was going to do, but I think I just said, ‘Watch me.’”
Fearlessness comes in many other forms, not just in the style of pissing off a major comedy show. One artist Costello had huge admiration for because of his ability to approach different songs, regardless of how hard they might be to play, was Jeff Buckley. He was a huge fan of the singer and viewed him as such a musical maverick that he worried his tragic end might get in the way of how much of a talent he was.
“I hope that people who liked him resist the temptation to turn his life and death into some dumb romantic fantasy – he was so much better than that,” said Costello. “Not everyone can get up and sing something they take a liking to and make it their own, sing true to their heart and be curious about all different strains of music. Corpus Christi Carol was a completely conceived interpretation. I’d never heard the piece before, and when I heard the original, I realised what Jeff had done was even more amazing.”
He continued, “He’d taken it into his own world. That’s something my favourite classical musicians can do, be themselves but use all that expertise to make the music more beautiful. Jeff did that naturally. Only a handful of people are capable of that.”
Costello couldn’t believe how well he played different pieces of music, despite how far removed they might be from his original sound. Never has a musician had such a solid understanding of the kind of music that they adore. Costello knew what he loved and, therefore, felt in a position to pay homage to it, regardless of how much rehearsal time he had had for certain songs. He heard this first-hand, as once when he saw Buckley perform, he witnessed the musician perform a German composition in the original language. No rehearsal time, no practice runs, just a fearless musician and an innate love for this song. This is a commitment to music that all rockstars need to have, but that few are willing to truly embrace.
“I was amazed when he did Meltdown. I asked him what he wanted to sing, and he said he’d like to do one of Mahler’s ‘Kindertotenlieder’ in the original German! Absolutely fucking fearless,” said Costello, concluding, “He was convinced he could sing it without rehearsal, just because he liked it.”
