haunted man who's just awakened in a shooting gallery as he

jumps back onto the curb. Dressed in a midnight-colored suit

and matching tab-collar shirt, his swift reflexes have spared

his life but not his smart crimson floaters, as the predatory

trucks splash a squalid puddle of black water down upon

them. “The cheek of those wankers!" he hisses as they roar

past. Only momentarily shaken, he picks up his hectic pace

again, hurrying from newsstand to newsstand, searching,

searching.

"Damn, damn." he mutters, his unexplained efforts appar-

ently fruitless, and abruptly suggests catching a hack to his

favorite Japanese lunch spot. The car is cruising through

Apostle of anger: “negative but definite emotions.”

Covent Garden when Elvis—“Aha!" he whoops—suddenly

begs the cabbie to pull over and then he leaps out, returning a

few moments later with the new issue of Melody Maker, hot off

the presses. “Excuse me a minute while I look into this," he

says and whips through the venerable British rock journal until

he reaches the record review section. He eases his glasses

back up the bridge of his pug nose and peers anxiously at a

piece headlined IMPOSTER UNMASKED (The Imposter hav-

ing been his alias for a limited election-time release of the

scathingly anti-Thatcher/ruling class “Pills And Soap" on the

independent Demon label).

"Ummm, ummmm—my God!! They like it! They like it!" he

exults, waving aloft the magazine's glowing assessment of

Elvis Costello & the Attractions' new album, Punch The Clock.

When we reach the restaurant, the husky rocker wearing the

tinted hornrims disappears into a phone booth and emerges

moments later to announce that the first new single issued in

the U.K., the shimmering soul bopper "Everyday I Write

The Book." has just hit the top thirty. As a result, a scheduled

band rehearsal for an imminent U.S. tour will be shortened

tomorrow so that Elvis & the Attractions can hold forth as

guests on Top ol the Pops. This calls for sashimi.

It's a steamy ninety-degree day in London in the summer of

1983, but it obviously feels like a deep-freeze for the former

Declan McManus when compared with the pop purgatory in

which he's been roasting since 1979. That was the year that

Elvis and company hit the road for the third time in the States,

at that stage in support of their acclaimed Armed Forces LP.

Cocky and largely incommunicado off-stage, the characteris-

tically taciturn leader of the band got into a drunken bout of

fat-mouthing in a Columbus, Ohio ginmill with a belligerent

Bonnie Bramlett and other members of the Stephen Stills

band, and wound up odd lout out for his highly-publicized

racial slurs about Ray Charles and James Brown. Costello has

long since apologized for his grievous utterances, stating that

he was pie-eyed, perversely petulant and just trying to irk his

barmates with the most gratingly nasty remark he could mus-

ter. People do a lot of foolish things at the age of twenty-four,

and western civilization rarely takes much notice, but this time

a fair chunk of the world was watching, greatly unamused.

It was, of course, a bizarrely self-destructive move for the

leading, most critically beloved figure in the new wave hier-

archy after the stunning originality of his first two albums (My

Aim Is True. 1977, This Year's Model. 1978) had established

him as a rising rock craftsman sans pareil (he was twenty-two

when he debuted)—and one of the few seemingly destined for

mass acceptance. Ironically, he was also one of the few in his

sphere of influence who had gone out of his way to reaffirm the

enormous debt he and his young colleagues owed to the R&B,

blues and soul greats, in addition to being quite active in the

Rock Against Racism movement and a sworn enemy of Eng-

land's fascist, anti-black National Front (his "Night Rally" was

an unequivocal denunciation that put him in personal jeopardy

with its rabid membership). In short, the Angry Young Man

image which Costello cultivated had backfired, severely crip-

pling his career's momentum.

Following the 1979 tour, the Attractions—Steve Nieve, key-

boards; Pete Thomas, drums, Bruce Thomas, bass—broke up

for a time, while Elvis weathered squalls in his personal life.

When the group reunited in 1980 (thanks to manager Jake

Riviera) it was to release Get Happy! a twenty-song celebra-

tion of rockin' R&B that demonstrated enormous energy and

invention but little direction. That same year, Taking Liberties,

a score of obscure B-sides, unreleased masters and cuts

previously relegated to U.K. LPs, was shipped into the States.

Like the previous record, it contained many fascinating tracks

and was a testament to Costello's prolificacy, but was too

diverse to digest and sold poorly. The year 1981 was a gloomy

period that showed an even more reclusive Elvis come

together with longtime producer Nick Lowe for their sixth LP,

Trust, notable for the single "Watch Your Step," and a duet with

Squeeze’s Glenn Tilbrook on "From A Whisper To A Scream."

The record received no radio response and a lukewarm sales

reception in the U.S. market and Elvis shifted gears dramati-

cally, heading down to Nashville in May to do an album with

veteran country producer Billy Sherrill. A grossly underrated

effort by a canny fan of George Jones, Don Gibson and the

best of modern country, Almost Blue did well in the U.K. but

only served to confuse Costello's loyal (and somewhat dwin-

dling) following in America.

It took the bold, highly impressionistic Imperial Bedroom,...