If such exposure succeeds in turning Costello into the love balladeer of the VH1 set, it will only be the latest step in his surprising, mid-period infiltration of popular culture. Today songs such as "Alison" and "The Only Flame in Town" are regularly used by music services that provide background sounds for supermarkets, and there's hardly a professional hockey or basketball arena in this country that doesn't play "Pump It Up" at least once per game, even though the song was widely thought to be about masturbation back in the day. Costello cackles at this irony, but he wasn't laughing when Nike execs offered him big bucks to let them use the tune in sneakers commercials. He turned them down flat and is currently involved in a legal dispute with an English firm that's using the song without authorization. His reasons for these moves are simple.
"I think it's a bad deal for the people who bought the record in good faith," he says. "They've bought the record, and it meant what they wanted it to mean or what they assumed it meant. Like in the case of 'Pump It Up': If you imagine that the song is about masturbation, then that's what it's about to you. The fact that it isn't has got nothing to do with it. But if it suddenly becomes about cheese, then that's another matter. That really robs you of the little bit of imagination you've got about it, and I don't think that's really fair."
Neither, Costello feels, is the continuing inability of some observers to let him grow up. "It would be a fairly boneheaded person that would still try to define the records I'm doing currently in terms of 1978, but it still happens with a whole lot of people," he says. "I think most of them write for Rolling Stone. But I worked out pretty early on that you were mostly liked for things that didn't have anything to do with what you thought you were good at. I was overpraised for certain things and ignored for other good things. So I was deeply suspicious of my early success and the lack of comprehension that appeared to be brought forward in certain quarters, even among people who bought the records. Then, later on, once I got over that period, I found that I was able to speak to the people in the audience directly--sing to them without any confusion or any illusion. And I was able to change directions musically following what I thought was something new or interesting that I had learned or became fascinated in. And if I lost some people along the way, I gained other new ones."
In other words, the man who once said his songs were entirely motivated by "revenge and guilt" is walking on the sunny side of the street. "It's not like I'm enjoying myself every minute," he says. "There are frustrations when you see good work kind of thrown down the drain, and there are difficult moments in terms of writing or recording or just doing concerts well. But I reckon that so long as you keep doing it, it's certainly better than working for a living. It's definitely better than any job I ever did before this--and to get paid for it is amazing."
As for the fans who approach him now, he swears that he is much more gracious than he once was. "It takes quite a bit of courage to come up to somebody you recognize and try to engage them in something like a sensible conversation, and I try to take that into account," he notes. "And I'm glad to let them know that I'm not retired."
Elvis Costello, with Steve Nieve. 8 p.m. June 9, Paramount Theatre, 1631 Glenarm Place, $55/$45/$35, 303-830-8497.
