Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink
Ratings6
Average rating3.3
Born Declan Patrick MacManus, Elvis Costello was raised in London and Liverpool, grandson of a trumpet player on the White Star Line and son of a jazz musician who became a successful radio dance band vocalist. Costello went into the family business and had taken the popular music world by storm before he was twenty-four. "Unfaithful Music" describes how Costello's career has endured for almost four decades through a combination of dumb luck and animal cunning, even managing the occasional absurd episode of pop stardom. The memoir, written entirely by Costello himself, offers his unique view of his unlikely and sometimes comical rise to international success, with diversions through the previously undocumented emotional foundations of some of his best known songs and the hits of tomorrow. It contains many stories and observations about his renowned co-writers and co-conspirators, although Costello also pauses along the way for considerations on the less appealing side of infamy.
Tags
Genre
Reviews
Popular Reviews
Reviews with the most likes.
So Elvis Costello finally gets around to writing his autobiography. Was it worth the wait? Well, sort of. Mostly. Don't get me wrong, the man can write and is at times very entertaining. But his approach here can also be very frustrating.
The structure is nominally linear, but Costello does go off on tangents which tend to derail the flow of the story. It's almost stream of consciousness at times, one story bringing to mind another and then another. So for 400 pages, give or take, we get a fairly riveting account of Costello's early years (with diversions), first musical steps and rise to a sort of pop stardom, with all the transgressions and temptations that such a lifestyle brings with it. He also delves deep into family history, especially his relationship with his father, Ross McManus, former singer with the Joe Loss Orchestra. Costello's love and respect for his father is very evident.
But by the time we get to Armed Forces and it's aftermath you realise you're almost two-thirds of the way through the book, with no sign of a “volume two” in the offing.
Consequently, and frustratingly, Costello leaves his story hanging. We get very little on the making of Get Happy!!, Trust, even Imperial Bedroom. The book starts to become more scattergun, dipping into the making of River In Reverse here, meeting his wife Diana Krall there.
The sound of names being dropped is deafening as we speed through the last 30 years of Costello's career.
In fact some of the final chapters descend into a list of “and then I wrote....” with chunks of lyrics reprinted. Costello is never less than honest, I'll give him that, and he owns up to his failings as both a husband and bandmate. But with the album “North” he seems to have shut up shop in terms of confessional songwriting and become a modern day Tin Pan Alley songwriter. This makes for a less interesting final third, apart from a very moving account of the death of his father, Ross McManus.
I don't want to sound too negative about this book, it is a very good read. But as Costello fan I would have liked some of the gaps in his story to be filled in a bit more. So it just about gets 4 stars from me.
