Complicated Shadows:The Life And Music Of Elvis Costello

Written by: Graeme Thomson

In 1977, Elvis Costello burst onto the scene with My Aim Is True. After this explosion of creativity, he got an amazing backing band (The Attractions) and recorded some of the best and most cleverly written new wave/punk albums ever released, including This Year’s Model, Armed Forces, Get Happy!!! and Trust. But after the first three albums, he never really sold well again. He put out plenty of great albums, but no one was buying them. Still, he is considered one of the great songwriters of our time and is heavily influential in many different genres.

Thomson is here to explain why. He’s interviewed just about everyone involved in Elvis’ life, read everything there is to read and almost seems to have seen every show Elvis has ever played at.

The one person it seems that he didn’t interview was Elvis himself. Any of his quotes came from other sources. Bruce Thomas (The Attractions’ bassist who has zero love for Elvis at this point) has plenty of say here, but Elvis doesn’t seem to really have any.

But, while Elvis is nearly an unsympathetic character here, Thomson is obviously a huge fan. This book seems to be less about showing the warts of a star than being about showing what a complicated genius the man really is. While Bruce gets interviewed the most, he is also shown to be almost as immature as his ex-boss.

One thing that I really liked about the book was the focus on the work. Each of Elvis’ albums are represented with critiques (not only Thomson’s, but critics’ from both sides of The Pond) and very detailed descriptions of their recording, inspiration and process of writing. His attention to detail is actually pretty amazing. He had access not only to recording studio records, but setlists for just about every single concert that Elvis has ever even briefly appeared in.

For a fan of Costello’s, this book is a bit of a treasure trove. It’s open and as honest as a biography can be. The only problem I have with it is the absence of Elvis himself. But I guess he gets his say with each re-release of all of his albums. (Stop it, dude. We’ve bought them all at least twice. Time to back off. And what the hell happened to the awesome double disc sets?! Why did you pull those?!)

Either way, it’s always nice to read a biography that doesn’t end with “And then he died a horrible, nasty death.” Elvis may not have learned that he’s not the cash cow that he was for those brief three or four years (no matter what he says about the record labels and their marketing budgets), but he’s still putting out albums. And that’s a very good thing.

Oh, and one more thing I would suggest to Thomson: in the next edition, put a freakin’ discography! I know it would take up a LOT of room since the guy has put out about 16 albums a year in 150 different genres, but it would be nice to have a complete discography. Everything he’s produced, recorded or written. That would be pretty awesome.