Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A musician widely regarded as one of the best British songwriters, known for hits with The Attractions and collaborations with Paul McCartney.
On the island
Eight records
Scherzo from String Quartet No. 16 in F major, Op. 135Favourite
The whole piece contains a whole variety of music. It's a very seems to to my mind to be the beginning of a very personal expression in music that perhaps wasn't there to the same degree before this piece. And this particular movement is full of vitality and and humour, and I think you could put this on and run around in the sand uh or skate around on the ice to it.
This is probably the first song that I can remember, although really I think my memory has been prompted slightly by my mother, who tells me that I requested it before I could talk properly. I got the word skin from the title of I've Got You Under My Skin and insist on it being played.
a recording of my father singing... I thought it would be very nice to have a recording of my father singing.
music like Rossini and particularly this Mozart piece just came to life and it's full of energy and all of the things that I'm sure were intended in the original composition. It's not under layers of dust. It's not in a glass case to be admired. It's there and it jumps out at you with the same excitement as a great record by Tony Bennett or a great record by Elvis Presley. And it's witty and it's sexy.
the first album I ever owned. So it has a very sentimental attraction to me.
Piano Sonata in B-flat major, D. 960
I would sometimes put it on in the bedroom and sometimes I have to confess drift off to sleep to it.
this woman's voice... doesn't have the veneer of the singer that so many classically trained singers have had in the past. It sounds like a human being singing this, so this is Dido's Lament, and I feel it has the same kind of tragedy as a Billie Holiday record, although you couldn't compare the vocal technique in any way.
he wrote this on his deathbed... I can imagine this wafting on a on a sort of mildly tropical breeze on the on the warmer days on the temperate island and I I think it would it would be okay.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:15What happened to Declan McManus in all this?
Well, as you just illustrated, it's a rather difficult name to say, particularly over the telephone. All the way through school I was tortured by teachers imitating the sound of somebody twanging elastic bands when saying my name. It proved equally difficult over the phone when dealing with record company people when I was trying to get my tapes listened to. And so I adopted my great grandmother's name, Costello... And somewhere along the way the gentleman who became my manager, and still is, Jack Riviera, just announced one day I was going to be Elvis, and it seemed in the time that it was 76, 77, just the kind of crazy thing that would probably keep people's attention. And we had no idea how long that attention might be.
Presenter asks
2:04Didn't you feel a bit daft suddenly at the age of twenty three asking people to call you Elvis?
There was a sort of dare element to it, you know. It there was a form of bravado in suddenly expecting that and it was somewhat shocking to some people's minds. And also then Elvis unfortunately died at that time and it became a little bit controversial for a while and it gave me a very good estimation of how serious the music industry and the media could be... within a couple of days of Elvis passing away, we had American TV companies trying to get me on the station when they had no idea of my music, simply to prolong the story of his death a little bit longer by having this novelty idea. So it heightened my sense of contempt for elements of the media which was already in the background.
The keepsakes
The book
Selected Works of James Thurber
James Thurber
the advice, Let Your Mind Alone, which I think would be very important on an island... The Greatest Man in the World... my favorite short story.
The luxury
If I could have um an exact reproduction of the altarpiece of the Church of St. Barnabas by Botticelli embossed on the front of the piano... I could invent my own tonality completely... people would have to come and rescue me so they could hear the entirely new music that I'd made up.
Presenter asks
5:10Why did you choose Oswald Mosley for a theme for your first single Less Than Zero?
I saw him on TV, in his last ugly days and it just made me annoyed the way it was handled. It wasn't so much him... It was a documentary about... No, it was an interview with him and it seemed rather apologetic. The fact that he was even on... given the chance he may well have done. It seemed like a good subject for a song, and maybe slightly unlikely, but that was the whole point of wanting to start to get my songs in front of people.
Presenter asks
5:58How important are those political issues to you? Do they go on being important or are they just an inspiration of a moment?
I think they're the release valve. They're the expression of your frustration and the impotence that most everybody feels in the face of some of the more terrible things in life. And being able to write songs about them certainly provides a little bit of solace from the darker feelings that you have, certainly in the view of Tramp the Dirt Down song.
Presenter asks
12:58So how come if you were so enamoured with all this world of show business as you say you were, how come you ended up working in a bank?
Well, I stayed in school. I had picked up the guitar... It's a big jump from that to actually being able to go and start the times. I was living with my mother in Liverpool by then. It was early 70s. Liverpool's music scene was non-existent... So the bank was a means to an end. I just left school. I just got in I worked in a computer place for a while, nothing very glamorous... I worked in branch banking, which I was a total disaster... I was asked to stand outside the branch with a whistle when they delivered the bullion in case of a robbery... I got to thinking that, hang on, if there's a robbery, they're not going to shoot the person with the money, they shoot the guy with the whistle first... So I realized that wasn't for me and by then I'd started to make some sort of roads into semi-professional playing.
Presenter asks
21:41Tell me about performing. Tell me about being a pop star. You say that you've done that and it didn't prove fatal.
Well, I only mean that because in about 79 we had this big hit record, Oliver's Army, and we were in girly magazines... we were kind of the ugliest band on earth at the time of that. And it was good fun, there were some good things about it, but it did feel a bit strange, a bit dislocating. And I was very keen that my career carried on. A lot of people, it is fatal to become a pop star because you have your little five minutes and then it's somebody else's turn... I can't go the different ways I want to go. And while some people would say, oh, his career hit a peak at a certain point, I think I've only just started and I'm only just getting good.
“I think they're the release valve. They're the expression of your frustration and the impotence that most everybody feels in the face of some of the more terrible things in life.”
“I honestly believe everybody has songs inside them. They just haven't learned how to release it.”
“I think I've only just started and I'm only just getting good.”
“I feel it has the same kind of tragedy as a Billie Holiday record, although you couldn't compare the vocal technique in any way.”
“Don't listen, is what I say. ... If you don't like it, don't listen. There's plenty of other records.”