Elvis Costello And The Attractions
Goodbye Cruel World
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Elvis Costello
Goodbye Cruel World
Rykodisc, 1984
RiYL: Daryl Hall, Joe Jackson, Squeeze |
The deal is, the album's creator made a poor decision, which he now admits. 1984 was not a good year for Elvis Costello. His marriage was collapsing. His relationship with his band was on the rocks (to find out why, read bassist Bruce Thomas's stinging roman a clef, The Big Wheel). His record labels, on both sides of the Atlantic, were clamoring for a hit. What's a fragile artiste to do?
Costello, essentially, buckled. He gave Goodbye Cruel World to producers Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley and let them have their way with it. The pair had done a passable job with the previous year's Punch The Clock, the bestselling Costello album since the '70s. He figured he might as well let them try again. The difference was, Punch The Clock's songs were suited for Langer/Winstanley's very active, building-block method. Lightweight, upbeat tunes like "Everyday I Write The Book" and "Let Them All Talk" sounded just fine, perhaps as good as they could, with horn arrangements, cooing backing singers, and metronomic backbeats. The material Elvis had put together for GCW was not of the same ilk.
Understandable for a man whose life was unraveling, Costello wrote a series of songs ("Home Truth," "Room With No Number," "The Comedians") which flatly told just how miserable he was. Then he gave them to two guys whose signature production work was Madness's "Our House."
The result is a unilateral failure, a record where the music and lyrics are not merely clashing but waging war on each other. Costello sings of men whose "hearts are empty while their hands are full" over, insanely, a 5/4 time signature and a rinky-dink organ. Singles "The Only Flame In Town" and "I Wanna Be Loved" reduce Pete Thomas to a tall, lanky, British drum machine, while heinously, either Hall or Oates (I can't remember which one, but does it matter?) guests on harmony vocals. While the blasting four-part horn section of Punch The Clock was actually a kind of fun change, the cheesy, elevator-music saxophone solos on Goodbye Cruel World are flat-out unlistenable. This record is so bad keyboardist Steve Nieve refused to be credited. Instead he is listed as "Maurice Worm," and he only appears masked in the album photography. Ouch.
Costello has long insisted that the production, not the songwriting, was at fault on Goodbye Cruel World, and he's actually gotten a chance to prove it. Several of these tunes are available in other versions, some performed by other artists, some by Costello. The Rykodisc reissue CD features a superior acoustic version of "Worthless Thing." "Love Field" was revised on Costello's 1995 live collaboration with jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, Deep Dead Blue. An excellent duo "Inch By Inch" was recorded on Costello & Nieve's 1998 tour and is available on the "Toledo" CD5. "The Comedians" (in common time) and "The Deportees Club" were remade by Roy Orbison and Christy Moore, respectively, and both can be found on Rhino's phenomenal compilation of Elvis songs performed by other musicians, Bespoke Songs, Lost Dogs and Rendezvous. I even have an '84 bootleg, Lucky Spike, with a version of "The Only Flame In Town" that's almost listenable.
Not everyone is as lucky as Costello in getting to revise their past work. My advice to singer/songwriters everywhere is to stick to your vision. If the label won't let you make the record your way, don't make it.
MARK T.R. DONOHUE | Mark T.R. Donohue is a prolific freelance writer whose areas of expertise include Rockies baseball, video games, genre television, English soccer, and pub rock. He lives in Colorado, where he cultivates the largest and creepiest private collection of Alyson Hannigan memorabilia in the Mountain West.