Oh, it’s so funny to be seeing you after so long, “My Aim Is True”… but not so very peculiar to have Elvis Costello‘s 1977 debut brought back to mind, because, well, talk about an aim that’s been unswerving in its impact for 50 years. Or make that almost 50, since the title of the new boxed set we’re here to discuss with Costello is “My Aim Is True (49th Anniversary Edition).” The fact that his landmark is being celebrated with an expansive and exhaustive five-CD collection one year shy of its golden-jubilee mark has at least a little with Costello being too mischievous to commemorate anything so painfully obvious as a big round number. But it’s also because the set isn’t just about ’77.
It’s about the huge wealth of demos he was recording in 1976 (and even before that)… as well as the unforgettable live shows he and the Attractions were doing behind the album in ’77 and ’78 that put a nervous turbo charge into the material. Whatever number he or you want to place on it, this set represents several years’ worth of Costello’s origin story and seemingly near-immediate transformation into one of rock ‘n’ roll’s all-time greats. We sat down with EC — as he is best known to many of his friends, as he affirms in our conversation — as he made a recent visit to Universal Music’s L.A. offices to film some promotion for the “My Aim Is True” set.
Costello fans well know there has been no shortage of reissues and boxed sets over the decades, but this one gets so personal, and so into his semi-brutal youth, that it might count as more of a labor of love than any that have preceded it. The singer still professes to have little interest in nostalgia, yet that’s not how he sees this set, which includes so much fresh-sounding unreleased material, he insists issuing it all has more to do with “now” than then. Following our Q&A (which has been condensed and edited for clarity), you’ll learn where the iconic glasses came from (literally); why his handlers suggested the “Elvis” name and then panicked almost to the point of dropping it like a hot potato; why his early demos have a lot more to do with Springsteen and Van Morrison than anything resembling “new wave”; what changed from when he recorded “MAIT” with the California band Clover to the formation of the Attractions; and how he is still able to get a legitimate charge out of performing “Alison,” “Watching the Detectives” and other classics after nearly half a century.
How would you describe where you were at in finding your own voice at the time of making “My Aim Is True”? Some of the songs on that record were kind of written in haste to fit in with the kind of type of record we were making once we got rolling. Because we recorded “My Aim Is True” in episodes; we didn’t record it all in one session.
So it was a little bit like working on a weekly television show, where you get to say, “Oh, you mean the housekeeper character’s really popular with the viewers. Let’s give her a few more lines!” It was like, “OK, you like those sort of angry songs? Well, here’s some more!” I’m making light of it, but there was a little bit of that.
Because by the time we finished “My Aim Is True,” I could sense which way the wind was blowing, and the wind was not blowing in the direction of “Poison Moon” or “I Turn Around” [quieter, unreleased songs heard as demos in the boxed set]. It was going away from that kind of more introspective music, towards something else — and I found I could do the other thing, as well. Even though I’d sung in a band before, I didn’t really know what voice I would sing in for myself until we did “My Aim Is True.” Do you remember any specific moment of working on “My Aim Is True” where you realized that there was something that grabbed people about you being a little surlier than you had been up to that point?
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