2023-09-22 06:00:15
Elvis Costello, November 2021. MARK SELIGER
Formerly the “angry young man” of British new wave, Elvis Costello, 69, has become one of the most productive, eclectic and respected singer-songwriters in pop history. After an album full of bite, The Boy Named If (2022), he tours Europe with his eternal accomplice, pianist Steve Nieve. Meeting in Paris, during a performance, Sunday September 24, on the stage of the Philharmonie.
Read the interview (in 2017): Article reserved for our subscribers “My writing is instinctive”
You have recorded nearly thirty albums. How do you choose the repertoire for your concerts?
This number of records and songs allows for fun. I started this tour in February with a series of ten concerts in New York, in a Broadway venue, the Gramercy Theater. We played 238 songs there, although it was originally planned to play a hundred. I wanted to create a different story every night.
The breadth of this repertoire allows us not to repeat ourselves. I try to find a balance so as not to frustrate people. It makes me happy that titles that are forty years old are still being listened to. But these pieces must remain alive. I don’t mind the audience being nostalgic as long as I’m not.
I also obtain this variety of interpretations by changing formation at certain moments of the tour. In the United States, we added a brass section last week. The other day, in Italy, I gave three concerts with the Sicilian singer Carmen Consoli. We each played for an hour, before ending up together on stage for thirty minutes. In Europe, I’m usually alone on stage with pianist Steve Nieve. In Paris, there will undoubtedly also be a cello, a trumpet, a clarinet and percussion.
After being part of Attractions, the group from your first albums, Steve Nieve accompanied you on many other projects and tours. How does his style suit yours?
We met in 1977, when I was auditioning musicians to form a band after the release of my first album. He couldn’t have been more than 17, but he was way above the keyboard players I had seen. His acting was so imaginative!
For me there are two types of pianists. Most play within a given musical form. The best of them, like Paul Griffin [Bob Dylan, Dionne Warwick…]Larry Knechtel [Paul Simon, Phil Spector…] or Hargus “Pig” Robbins [Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton…], were able to adapt to all kinds of styles and bring their magic. Others – they are rarer – play more like guitarists, bringing a particular angle to the songs, being an element of illumination.
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