The two greatest Bob Marley songs, according to Elvis Costello
Elvis Costello’s musical output is anchored in eccentricity, boundless in his creativity thanks to a well of inspirations to dive into.
Growing up in a musical family, Costello, born Declan Patrick MacManus, was taught the value of a varied musical palate from an early age. As a child, he had Frank Sinatra and The Beatles as the two beacons of popular music, with their own respective stylings within jazz, pop, blues and guitar rock, singling out our genres for the then-young Costello to explore.
Latching on to Joni Mitchell’s work after the success of Blue, his father bought him his first Mitchell record, Court and Spark, permanently shifting his approach to songwriting. Tinges of folk and country mixed with the singer-songwriter tradition followed Costello, who assembled an arsenal of influences when envisioning his own music career.
Famously coming of musical age in the rise of England’s punk scene, his work is most often looped into his contemporaries’ punk and subsequent new wave stylings. Costello certainly fit the mould: an admiration for bands like The Clash led him to identify with the same unrefined, simple yet evocative spirit. But from the beginning, Costello hosted a varied affinity for genre and style. As Rolling Stone once declared, he “reinvigorated the literate, lyrical traditions of Bob Dylan and Van Morrison with the raw energy and sass that were principal ethics of punk”. He was punk with a literary twist; rock ‘n’ roll with sedated aggression.
Costello reflected his kaleidoscopic musical tastes on his debut album, 1977’s My Aim Is True. He emerged resembling Buddy Holly, a cross between a 1950s greaser and a rockabilly. Unconcerned with being pigeonholed into the punk mould by his label, Costello wrote what he felt compelled to, matching his rock-R&B-new wave hybrid with downbeat lyricism that addressed sorrowful emotions and politically-charged stories.
With initial modest chart success in the UK, the reissue of My Aim Is True in the US saw it become the biggest-selling import album in U.S. history, reaching number 32. On this version, the song ‘Watching the Detectives’ was included as side one’s closer, a reggae-inspired track that was both a nod to The Clash and a prime example of reggae-rock that proliferated in the 1970s, influenced by Jamaican music most popularised by Bob Marley.
Costello has credited the writing of ‘Watching the Detectives’ with being inspired by The Clash. In an interview, he told the story of listening to their self-titled debut album (released just three months before his own) after being awake for 36 hours, running on a jar of instant coffee. He told Q Magazine in 2013, “Why do you think that song is so jerky? I drank a lot of coffee.” Costello explains that upon first listen, he found the album “just terrible”. But with every subsequent listen, he grew more fond of it, prompting him to sit down and write ‘Watching the Detectives’.
With The Clash’s reggae inspirations clearly heard in their debut, it is no wonder that Costello echoed a similar admiration for the style. But, he was a Bob Marley fan in his own right, even sharing with Vanity Fair what he calls the two greatest Marley songs. In a painstaking recording of the 500 albums he believes “can only improve your life”, he also names the songs that helped these albums make the cut. On his list, two Bob Marley and the Wailers albums are praised.
The first is 1973’s African Herbsman, with ‘Small Axe’ deemed Costello’s favourite song. While Costello has not explicitly said so, one can imagine the young musician listening to this Wailer’s album and digesting its sound, exposed to a new musical world that would later be mirrored on his own debut album, particularly on ‘Watching the Detectives’. His second Bob Marley and the Wailers pick is 1975’s Natty Dread, featuring the song ‘Lively Up Yourself’, the album’s celebratory opener. Inspired by the blues, the song is a spirited uplift of emotion, and its infectious optimism surely resonated with Costello.
As Costello explains to Vanity Fair, “I sometimes torture myself by considering all the musicians who were still performing during my lifetime but whom I failed to see because I was too stupid, too timid, or too preoccupied with some passing fancy. Records can fix some of that. It’s a form of time travel.” His choice of some of Bob Marley’s classics reflects his voracious appetite for music of all forms and is a respectful nod to one of music’s profound masters.
