The most remarkable thing about Elvis Costello’s hefty new memoir, “Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink,” is how much he left out. [...] Costello doesn’t spend much time on the mechanics of his output at all. Having written extensive liner notes for reissues of his landmark albums, detailing the stories behind the scenes of titles such as 1979’s “Armed Forces” and 1982’s “Imperial Bedroom,” he says, freed him up to explore the other facets of his life. Like Bob Dylan’s “Chronicles,” the author eschews chronology for a more stream-of-conscious flow, skipping through various periods of his life, from his childhood in the English suburbs to his home now in Vancouver, British Columbia, with his wife, the jazz singer Diana Krall, and their twin sons, Dexter and Frank. In one section, where he covers his doomed relationship with former Pogues bassist Cait O’Riordan, he notes, I went inside a room, turned off all the lights, and could not find the door. [...] there’s no compulsion to share every incident and pull people out into the spotlight for things they didn’t ask for. In other places, Costello aims to clarify the moments that have loomed large over his career, including his rivalry with Attractions bassist Bruce Thomas (not that bad!), his ban from “Saturday Night Live” for switching songs mid-performance (the move was inspired by Jimi Hendrix) and the infamous Holiday Inn incident in 1979 when he drunkenly lashed out at James Brown and Ray Charles with a flurry of racial epithets (“Never mind excuses, there are no excuses”). [...] Costello, born Declan Patrick MacManus in 1954, devotes the most substantial passages of “Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink” to his father, Ross McManus, a popular big-band musician of Irish descent whose decline from Parkinson’s disease inspired the writer to get his memories on paper. Aidin Vaziri is The San Francisco Chronicle’s pop music critic.
Comment on Elvis Costello is everywhere in new memoir
By Aidin Vaziri, San Francisco Chronicle: Entertainment
Tue, 10/20/2015 - 4:15am
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