“Make magic like he did”: Elvis Costello’s bold attempt to chase Bruce Springsteen
Any aspiring songwriter is going to want to emulate their heroes. Whether it’s trying to cover their songs in their early years or adopting their mannerisms whenever they write their own material, it’s never easy to draw a line between when someone is inspired by their favourite artists and when they are flagrantly ripping them off. However, for all of the great music Elvis Costello was making in the 1970s, there was hardly anyone who managed to match his kind of sarcastic wit whenever he wrote his music.
As soon as the punk revolution got underway, Costello was a breath of fresh air from the self-destructive nature of everyone else at the time. He may have been able to string together a great melody like the songwriting gods before him, but he could also be just as cynical as every other punk rocker that came before, whether talking about some sort of jaded romance or showing the people how the sausage was being made in the music industry.
Even in the era when people like Joey Ramone and Joe Strummer were being looked at as the biggest names in rock and roll, Costello somehow felt at home among that sort of company. It was cheeky enough that he chose his stage name from one of the biggest artists in rock and roll history, but going against the grain on Saturday Night Live endeared him to everyone from old-school punks to people like the Beastie Boys, who eventually covered ‘Radio Radio’ with him.
However, for all of the cynical tones throughout his work, Costello never forgot to put a bit of heart into everything he did. He was tuneful enough to catch the ear of someone like Paul McCartney back in the day, but Costello was always looking to paint a picture for the listener, and that was something that Bruce Springsteen knew like the back of his hand whenever he performed.
“We wanted to be like that, but we didn’t know how.”
Elvis Costello
Although ‘The Boss’ had to spend a few years before hitting his stride on Born to Run, his first records already showed the potential he had to become one of the dominating forces in rock and roll. There were a handful of tunes that stretched out longer than usual and had a bit too much Bob Dylan influence, but that only meant that the characters in his songs had a lot more depth than usual.
And for an impressionable songwriter like Costello, he had found the meaning of songwriting through Springsteen, saying, “I wanted to somehow make magic out of the things around me like he did. We wanted to be like that, but we didn’t know how. There are songs like ‘Radio Radio’. The original version of that song was indebted to the Bruce that wrote The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle.”
But looking at how both of them wrote, Springsteen and Costello feel like two sides of the same coin. Whereas Costello comes in with a more cynical point of view on his first records, he and Springsteen are looking for something better for themselves in their songs, always questioning whether or not there’s some hope that they can find their dreams somewhere in the distance.
It would have been easy for Costello to fall victim to every other punk before him who talked about anarchy and how jaded he was about the world at large, but there’s something about listening to the sounds of heartland rock that can change someone’s soul. Everything might not change instantly, but after listening to anyone from Springsteen to Tom Petty to Bob Seger, the world seems a little bit brighter because of them being in it.
