Elvis the prophet
Tracking the man who could save rock radio
BY Dave Bidini
I heard “Radio Radio,” Elvis Costello's visceral 1979 pop scream, in the supermarket yesterday. It made me think of where the begoggled one came from and where he’s at now, which is, generally, in British Columbia, having wedded singer Diana Krall a few years back. If I’d known, at the vanguard of New Wave, that Elvis Costello and I would one day be sharing provinces, the thought that he might direct his cynic’s eye and political rage at Canada’s potentates would have been irrresistable. Instead, he lives among us, but all we get are twenty-year-old hit records on oldies radio.
This is not to undermine the acute, if softening, talents of Puxtney’s Buddy Holly. No artists short of Neil Young, maybe Tom Waits, should be expected to spit out the poison as long as they have. That Elvis has written classical music and interpreted jazz is his choice. In most cases, his followers have followed in droves. In one sense, even writing but a single line like, “The radio is in the hands of such a lot of fools trying to anaesthetize the way that you feel,” is more than many artists have done over a career. But being as singularily charged as I was after hearing “This Year’s Model”—and others, from “Live at the El Mocambo” to “Blood and Chocolate”—it’s hard not to measure his otherwise fine albums against these paradigm recordings. In a sense, it’s both the artist’s curse and his blessing having achieved career-defining work, and often results in the disaffection of hardcore fans. Personally, I couldn’t help but feel melancholy after listeniing to his voice peal through the supermarket speakers as I strolled between coffees and condiments, hearing the great British singer savage the lies of commercial radio—and of popular media—while I was consumed in a world of uber-consumersim.
Having “Radio Radio”—a searing indictment of commercial radio, and the crassness of contemporary music programming—played on the very format that the song despises is both a triumph and a defeat. I often felt the same way watching Elvis (successfully) host The Late Show with David Letterman or turn up in movies or an HBO sitcom, trying to find a fan’s balance between the guy who wrote “Pills and Soap” and “Shipbuilding” to the guy who appeared with his wife on The Hour’s Christmas special. Like his first appearance on SNL, in which he aborted “Less Than Zero” in favour of “Radio, Radio”—easily one of the Top 5 televised rock-and-roll performances of all time—part of me wanted him to do the same thing wherever appeared, while part of me knew he could not.
Still, because the radio continues to be in the hands of such a lot fools trying to anaesthetize the way that we feel, I still wish rock and roll’s original punk poet hadn’t changed or grown up or moved to Canada to marry a jazz songstress. While Elvis has grown and matured and widened his musical palette, rock-and-roll radio has only gotten worse. It’s still our generation’s most failed medium. Elvis we need you now, more than ever.
