Complicated Shadows (35 page)

In response, Elvis was eager to be as inclusive as possible. In direct contrast to his method of working with The Attractions, he took time to explain what each song meant and to play them
through on the guitar for each of the musicians, in order that they could gain a real feel for what he was singing about and the intimacy he was searching for.

Nonetheless, Elvis was still in charge. He had learned the folly of compromise on
Goodbye Cruel World
, and despite initial nerves and a few misgivings, his natural self-assurance and
controlling streak came to the fore. ‘In the studio he kept control of everything,’ says Scheff. ‘It was very much his deal and his visions.’ By the second day
‘Glitter Gulch’ and ‘Shoes Without Heels’ were finished, while they had knocked together strong rehearsal arrangements of a handful of the other tracks as well. Almost half
the album was recorded in the first three days.

T-Bone Burnett played a vital role in the production of the record, guiding, directing and experimenting with sounds and styles, participating in a very musical way without actually playing a
note. He also picked the band: aside from the TCB group, the other principal players on
King Of America
were drummer Mickey Curry, bassist T-Bone Wolk, pianist Tom Canning and organ and
piano
player Mitchell Froom. ‘T-Bone is one of the best at putting the right people together,’ says Ron Tutt, and the casting was indeed immaculate throughout.
Burnett saved his
coup de grace
for the jazz-country torch song ‘Poisoned Rose’, for which he had hand-picked a majestic rhythm section: Earl Palmer on drums, a stalwart of the
early Little Richard and Fats Domino singles, and Ray Brown on string bass, who had been married to Ella Fitzgerald and played in her band, as well as with Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Dizzy
Gillespie and Charlie Parker.

Elvis wasn’t easily scared, but he later admitted that it took the opening – and drinking – of a bottle of Glenlivet whisky halfway through the session to calm his nervous
voice and find the sound he was searching for. ‘We started, and it really wasn’t very good, because I found out later that Elvis was intimidated by Ray Brown’s presence, in
particular,’ recalls Mitchell Froom. ‘Then finally, Ray took the lead and everybody fell in after him. When we finished that track he sort of gave his nod of approval and we felt we
were OK.’ Once ‘Poisoned Rose’ was through, the well-refreshed ensemble then cut ‘Eisenhower Blues’, a loose R&B jam and the only other song recorded with that
stellar line-up.

Over the next few sessions, Elvis captured much of the rest of the record with James Burton, Jerry Scheff, Mitchell Froom and Jim Keltner, the line-up who would later tour as The Confederates.
Each of them added their own personal, subtle additions to the songs: Burton’s tender, picked guitar lines on ‘Indoor Fireworks’; Scheff’s shimmering, impossibly high bass
intro on ‘I’ll Wear It Proudly’; Froom’s ghostly organ floating through ‘Sleep Of The Just’; and Keltner’s mean, slap-happy drumming on
‘Lovable’, where Los Lobos’s David Hidalgo joined in on harmonies for good measure.

The Attractions burst into this companionable creative hive in mid-August, about two-thirds of the way through the
King Of America
sessions. Originally, the plan had been for Elvis to
record half the record with the US musicians, then ship in The Attractions to complete the rest of the album, playing on the tracks most suited to their style.

However, it became clear that the reality would be somewhat different. The band arrived to find that Elvis had some new playmates. Cait was present on many occasions, and
Elvis and T-Bone were thick as thieves: having bonded on the road and in the studio, they now enjoyed the shared sense of humour and musical repartee that Elvis and the band had lost. It
immediately became something of an Us vs Them scenario. Always protective when it came to sharing the spotlight with other musicians, The Attractions were wary, tense and very probably dismissive
of what looked like a Californian mutual appreciation society, far removed from the raucous sessions of old in London.

Meanwhile, Elvis felt personally renewed by his relationship with Cait and creatively excited by the music he was making. He swiftly came to the conclusion that the resentful presence of his old
group was casting a dark cloud over proceedings, and that the classic ‘Attractions sound’ would simply unbalance the reflective tenor of the rest of the record. ‘The Attractions
had got to a point that many bands get to: they get the chords, they start to work out what they’re going to do and they’re almost over-familiar with the way someone writes,’ says
Mitchell Froom. ‘The American musicians were much more subtle in general. Which was the idea.’

Eventually, The Attractions got the call to go to the studio on 21 August. Unsure of their role and mightily pissed off with Elvis, they were ‘jumpy and paranoid and generally
edgy’,
¹⁵
and their initial attempts at ‘Brilliant Mistake’ – a song Elvis had set aside specifically for The Attractions to
open the album with – were particularly lame. Eventually, they got acceptable versions of ‘Suit Of Lights’ and the throwaway out-take ‘Baby’s Got A Brand New
Hairdo’, but the mood was irreconcilably grim. ‘I think [the situation] put them on edge and made them defensive and hostile,’ Elvis said. ‘Which made me defensive and
hostile. The sessions were a disaster.’
¹⁶

Disappointed with the standard of the performances, Elvis scrapped any plans to use the band again, but neglected to inform them. The Attractions spent the rest of their time in Los Angeles
sitting in the hotel at Elvis’s
expense, quietly fuming, waiting for an invitation that never came. ‘I was furious about it, absolutely furious,’ said Pete
Thomas. ‘He should just have said, “I’m going to make a solo album, don’t worry about it.” The worst thing about it was that we were all there, day after day, not
getting the call to go to the studio.’
¹⁷

The fiasco killed the already shaky morale of the band. ‘I thought, “If you’re going to fire us, fire us”,’ says Bruce Thomas. ‘It was like being sacked by
instalments.’ Elvis, they felt, had become distant and arrogant, treating them like little more than faceless session men after eight years of close, constant collaboration and companionship.
‘We had more or less been alienated,’ admits Thomas, who for one detected a growing sense of eccentricity in Elvis’s behaviour. ‘I remember going into his room at the hotel
and he’d just had all the album sleeves done; there were all these pictures of him with a crown on dotted around the room, big three-foot squared photos. I thought, “You’re
basically having your psychosis now, aren’t you? Your identity crisis.” I stuck a Burger King crown on my copy.’

* * *

Elvis had always been high profile, putting out at least one album a year and touring relentlessly. Throughout 1985, his relative reclusiveness – and his dishevelled
appearance on the odd occasion when he was sighted, such as Live Aid – provided the perfect fodder for gossip. Heavily bearded, usually wearing a hat and shades and sometimes a shawl, rumours
had been circulating in the press for some time: he was an alcoholic, he was suffering divorce trauma or writer’s block, he was a heroin addict.

Elvis has always been fanatical about keeping abreast of what the media are saying about him, as both Bebe Buell and Bruce Thomas can testify. ‘He reads every review,’ says Thomas.
‘He was always the first one down at the news-stand every morning.’ Pogues engineer Nick Robbins recalls Elvis keeping close tabs on the gossip when they were recording
Rum, Sodomy
& The Lash
. ‘Every day in the studio he’d come in with all his newspapers and the
first thing he’d do is hunt through to see whether he’d
been mentioned. He’d get quite upset if he had and quite upset if he hadn’t!’

Media talk of a personality crisis was given passing credence by the fact that Elvis had made the decision to revert back to his real name. Since as early as 1982 he had occasionally raised the
subject in interviews. ‘I was tired of the way people saw Elvis Costello,’ he said. ‘They saw this funny pair of glasses and a load of mannerisms.’
¹⁸
Now, he legally made the swap back to Declan MacManus. There were other factors in the reversal: he was involved in divorce proceedings with Mary and probably felt it
was easier to use the name he was married under, while the relationship with Cait and his tightness with The Pogues seemed to be teasing some of the latent Irishness out of him. Although Elvis
often cited professional reasons for changing his name, ultimately it seemed to be a private decision, marking a return to some kind of personal contentment. He has never released a record as
Declan MacManus,
³³
merely changing his publishing credits to D.P.A. MacManus. The ‘A’ is for Aloysius, added as a lighthearted tribute to
comedian Tony Hancock, or Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock, as he was known in
Hancock’s Half Hour
.

Tales of Elvis’s growing eccentricity and creative impasse would be conclusively killed off in 1986 by the strength of
King Of America
, but the record was still many months away
from its release date. He had completed the album with further combinations of the American session musicians, finishing in the autumn of 1985 with an aborted take on ‘I Hope You’re
Happy Now’ and an aggressive, hoarse-voiced cover of The Animals – and Nina Simone’s – ‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood’, with Tom Waits percussionist
Michael Blair on marimba. The latter song was a late addition to the running order, added as a last-minute sop to Columbia who, with their predictable set of priorities, didn’t hear any
singles on the record.

With the record done, Elvis had time to take stock and work out what he wanted to do, and how he wanted to do it. He needed time to recharge the engine. The Pogues were
touring heavily, capitalising on the success of
Rum, Sodomy & The Lash –
released to much acclaim in August 1985 – and throughout October, November and December, Elvis
trailed the band through Europe.

He was enjoying the opportunity to indulge in the kind of extended break he hadn’t experienced since the release of
My Aim Is True
. Spending time away from home, falling deeper in
love with Cait, was the perfect antidote to the previous year’s personal and professional pressures. ‘I think it’s fair to say that people in his office clearly thought he’d
lost the plot,’ says Philip Chevron. ‘They could never get hold of him. He was off in fjords of Norway with The Pogues, giving no account of his actions, living a sort of belated youth.
He was having a great time.’

On his travels as an unofficial Pogue, Elvis was happy to take on any duties that were required of him. He might stand in for the guitar roadie when he fell sick; in Freiburg in Germany he took
the place of drummer Andrew Ranken, who had a septic hand. On 6 November in Malmo, Sweden, he even agreed to be Shane MacGowan. The singer had gone down with a serious bout of pneumonia, and Elvis
filled in, singing ‘A Pair Of Brown Eyes’, ‘Old Main Drag’, ‘The Band Played Waltzing Matilda’, ‘Dirty Old Town’ and ‘Boys From The County
Hell’. It was – predictably – a drunken, shambolic set.

Elvis was generally well-liked by the band, and his presence on tour was accepted for a variety of reasons. ‘He was always good for a tenner,’ admits Chevron. ‘Certain people
shamelessly touched him for money.’ He didn’t try to steal their thunder, mostly content to stay firmly in the background as they made tentative inroads into the big time. However, it
was not all sweetness and light. There was a degree of professional needle, primarily from Shane MacGowan. As the principal songwriter and visionary of The Pogues, MacGowan regarded himself as
Elvis’s peer and equal in a way that the others did not. Already sensitive, volatile and quick to attack, MacGowan felt threatened and
a little patronised by
Elvis’s adoption of the band, and began to retrospectively criticise the job he had done producing
Rum, Sodomy & The Lash
.

Furthermore, The Pogues were a band of merciless mickey-takers, and the humour became increasingly cruel and crude as Elvis’s relationship with Cait developed and deepened. The couple had
started dressing the same way, reading the same books, and they became a ripe source of amusement to the band. There was nothing underhand in The Pogues’ behaviour. Elvis knew what people
thought about him. ‘It was very often [to his face] or Cait’s face,’ recalls Philip Chevron. ‘He became the whipping boy for a number of people in the band. Not just the guy
you pushed for money but the guy you took the piss out of, the guy that you bullied almost. There were times when I felt the cruelty went too far.’

It was a strange turnaround. Elvis had often been a figure of fun to The Attractions, especially as time wore on, but he paid the wages and called the shots, and was always regarded as the boss.
This time, he was an outsider – a guest – among a large group of complex and fiercely individual characters. As a man who had plenty of experience travelling the world being nasty to
people from within the cocoon of a rock band, it was an interesting process to be on the receiving end of the same kind of behaviour. ‘Groups like The Pogues, groups that are in a class of
their own, can be very cruel,’ Elvis rationalised. ‘When I’m about, the cruelty just transfers to me.’
¹⁹

He tolerated the barbs because of his relationship with Cait, but it also fed into the deep-rooted sense of being apart – even of victimisation – that had spurred him from an early
age. There had always been a whiff of masochism in Elvis’s music and motivations, and ultimately the jibes brought him and Cait closer together. They were a very tactile, demonstrative
couple, and all the sweetness started to become a little too sugary for many of the band. ‘Occasionally, it got just a bit nauseating,’ admits Philip Chevron. ‘Canoodling at the
back of the studio while you’re trying to do some work.’

The growing ill-feeling reached a head when Elvis
agreed to produce the
Poguetry In Motion
EP at Elephant Studios in January 1986. Matters combusted over the
recording of ‘A Rainy Night In Soho’, The Pogues most ambitious song to date. By this point, Shane MacGowan hated even being in the same room as Elvis, and had taken to not showing up
in the studio when he wasn’t needed. He felt that Elvis’s production ideas were limiting the vision of the band – and his own artistic vision in particular – while
infringing too much on the personal politics of The Pogues. ‘Essentially Elvis got sacked from
Poguetry In Motion,
’ says Chevron. ‘He was questioning the structure of the
band. There was a groundswell of anti-Elvis feeling.’