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    Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink
    Unavailable
    Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink
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    Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink
    Audiobook18 hours

    Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink

    Published by Penguin Random House Audio

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Born Declan Patrick MacManus, Elvis Costello was raised in London and Liverpool, grandson of a trumpet player on the White Star Line and son of a jazz musician who became a successful radio dance-band vocalist. Costello went into the family business and before he was twenty-four took the popular music world by storm.

    Costello continues to add to one of the most intriguing and extensive songbooks of our day. His performances have taken him from strumming a cardboard guitar in his parents' front room to fronting a rock and roll band on our television screens and performing in the world's greatest concert halls in a wild variety of company. Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink describes how Costello's career has endured for almost four decades through a combination of dumb luck and animal cunning, even managing the occasional absurd episode of pop stardom.

    This memoir, written entirely by Costello, offers his unique view of his unlikely and sometimes comical rise to international success, with diversions through the previously undocumented emotional foundations of some of his best-known songs and the hits of tomorrow. It features many stories and observations about his renowned cowriters and co-conspirators, though Costello also pauses along the way for considerations of the less appealing side of fame.

    Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink     provides readers with a master's catalogue of a lifetime of great music. Costello reveals the process behind writing and recording legendary albums like My Aim Is True, This Year's Model, Armed Forces, Almost Blue, Imperial Bedroom, and King of America. He tells the detailed stories, experiences, and emotions behind such beloved songs as "Alison," "Accidents Will Happen," "Watching the Detectives," "Oliver's Army," "Welcome to the Working Week," "Radio Radio," "Shipbuilding," and "Veronica," the last of which is one of a number of songs revealed to connect to the lives of the previous generations of his family.

    Costello recounts his collaborations with George Jones, Chet Baker, and T Bone Burnett, and writes about Allen Toussaint's inspiring return to work after the disasters following Hurricane Katrina. He describes writing songs with Paul McCartney, the Brodsky Quartet, Burt Bacharach, and The Roots during moments of intense personal crisis and profound sorrow. He shares curious experiences in the company of The Clash, Tony Bennett, The Specials, Van Morrison, and Aretha Franklin; writing songs for Solomon Burke and Johnny Cash; and touring with Bob Dylan; along with his appreciation of the records of Frank Sinatra, David Bowie, David Ackles, and almost everything on the Tamla Motown label.

    Costello chronicles his musical apprenticeship, a child's view of his father Ross MacManus' career on radio and in the dancehall; his own initial almost comical steps in folk clubs and cellar dive before his first sessions for Stiff Record, the formation of the Attractions, and his frenetic and ultimately notorious third U.S. tour. He takes readers behind the scenes of Top of the Pops and Saturday Night Live, and his own show, Spectacle, on which he hosted artists such as Lou Reed, Elton John, Levon Helm, Jesse Winchester, Bruce Springsteen, and President Bill Clinton.

    The idiosyncratic memoir of a singular man, Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink is destined to be a classic.




    From the Hardcover edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateOct 13, 2015
    ISBN9780698154650
    Unavailable
    Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink

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    Reviews for Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink

    3.5/5

    67 ratings8 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Desperately in need of an editor, but relentlessly entertaining nevertheless. Full of glorious anecdotes about starting out as a new wave punk and writing songs with McCartney and Bacharach and appearing on stage with Dylan and Aretha and having tea with Johnny Cash and on and on. Any way you sing it, it's a life well lived.
    • 3/5
      This is quite a memoir. More about the little boy inside this man....the more I read it the more I realized that this book was a look at a person who was and still is, searching for that release of the soil inside. Costello always seemed so dry....so much made of all that was around him, and influenced by others actions. But never really having one of his own. He seems very much
      like he is ready to share with the world his experiences and thoughts.
    • 4/5
      This book, well at 670 pgs more of a tome, is not a quick read. Definitely a fan and was eager to learn more about the man, and this certainly covers that. It's a combination of great stories, that seem to be placed in order by the effort to catch an idea before it runs away, and a music history class. Decades of writing/performing/touring/befriending the famous and obscure alike, are well chronicled.
    • 3/5
      Costello is an engaging writer, but the book suffers from too much detail about every encounter he's ever had with other musicians and too little about his romantic relationships, which clearly are just as important to his songs as his musical influences. Still, it's impossible not to be charmed by Costello's self-deprecating humor and the love he expresses towards his father.
    • 2/5
      The memoir of Declan MacManus, better known by his stage name Elvis Costello, is more of a collection of thematic essays than a birth to present memoir. Like the lyrics of his song, Costello's way with words is evident. His father Ross MacManus, a band leader and musician of some note in his own right, is central to the narrative and an influence on Costello's life and music, if not readily apparent from his punk/new wave days, but more evident in his latter days as pop/jazz/fusion collaborator. Speaking of collaboration, Costello name drops an awful lot of musicians and songwriters, although he comes by it honestly having worked with so many of them. Thankfully his stories tend towards the creative process rather than idle gossip. I can't help but feel that Costello comes of as something of jerk which is an unexpected outcome for a self-penned biography. I don't know if I should admire his self-awareness or just dislike that he's such a jerk. At any rate there are some interesting aspects of this book if you're interested in musicians or a fan of Costello, but it's a bit to long and pompous to recommend to a general audience.
    • 4/5
      This massive 670 page missal might have been much better stringently edited. However, it's quite an amazing memoir - especially with the inclusion of many song lyrics and short stories and how they came to be. There's also an honor roll of all artists Elvis worked with as he tumbled through his many musical phases. Especially vivid are: Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Allen Touissaint, George Jones, David Bowie, the Bronsky Quartet, Chet Baker, and The Roots. He married two musicians, Cait O'Riordan from the Pogues and Dianna Krall, but doesn't seem too interested in playing music with them. The most solid parts of the book are his vibrant relationships with his father and grandfather, both musicians. In many of the photos enhancing the story, the reader is hard pressed to know which of the three is shown. He's also the proud father of three sons, one, Matt, from his first marriage to his childhood sweetheart Mary.The sharpness and humor and overall cynicism and love of humanity any Costello fan knows and loves is all here. "We sought a balance between Allen's (Toussaint) elegance and restraint and my desire to go directly for the throat."
    • 5/5
      Rich life told masterfully on a long and winding road
    • 4/5
      I was quite late to the Elvis Costello party. In my own defense, I was too busy discovering the Beatles, everything McCartney, and the seismic music that influenced and created these highest peaks in modern music. Elvis’ path crossed mine again in the late 1980’s when Elvis and McCartney wrote several songs together that I found on the Flowers In The Dirt album. Although I stuck around Chez Costello after that, I was an indifferent wallflower at best. Soon I noticed that everywhere I found new music to admire, Elvis was already there. But not as a great performer whose stage was a pedestal that kept him out of reach. He always seemed to be next to us on the floor trying to yell over the band, “This is great!”Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink, Costello’s autobiography, defines him and leaves no argument about its accuracy. Encyclopedic, lyrical, humble, egotistical, with an ear that hears more than just music, it hears history, context, pain, and love; Elvis takes his place among the greats of music while remaining an awed fan and listener just like the rest of us. Yes, Elvis, this is great!