One Great Cover looks at the greatest cover songs ever, and how they got to be that way.
Nearly 50 years ago, Elvis Costello earned the temporary enmity of Lorne Michaels, and a healthy dose of publicity. During his performance on an episode of Saturday Night Live, he stopped playing “Less Than Zero,” a song about undue deference to a dangerous Fascist, and swung into “Radio Radio,” a song about unreasonable control of what could be said in broadcast media. Different times.
As Costello was only on the show because the Sex Pistols had made themselves unavailable by going through one of their breakups, people might have been tempted to consider him as another artless provocateur from the British punk scene. Costello, however, would contend that it was a reasonable musical decision to change the song. Americans, fortunately for them, would know little about British Fascist lickspittle Oswald Mosley, but could understand something about the marginalization of artists by broadcasters. For his cheek, Costello was then marginalized by SNL for the next decade.
Being led by the music has been the key to Costello’s career. Long-time fans could have seen him in Grand Concert Halls with leading-edge classical ensembles covering Kurt Weill, or in the less salubrious surroundings of a converted circus in Liverpool, playing his early hits, in a building that helped shape those hits. He has collaborated with hip-hop artists and New Orleans legends. His album with Burt Bacharach, 1998’s Painted from Memory, is a beautiful piece of work. His work with Paul McCartney was a career highlight, for at least one of them, and the emotion in every aspect of his performance for McCartney and the Obamas at the White House is touching.
These successful collaborations, which often last beyond the original nature of the project, do not suggest a man who provokes ire unnecessarily. Musical differences are a catalytic necessity, but one needn’t be difficult about it.
In 1999, Richard Curtis was preparing his latest romcom starring Hugh Grant, before we knew of the marvelous range that Grant had outside foppishness. Notting Hill was nearly ready. Prior to the release of the film, the not-yet-gentrified Notting Hill area of London was most associated, in British minds, with the Notting Hill carnival, a rambunctious end-of-summer celebration of the huge contribution of the Afro-Caribbean population to British life. It has a parade like Labor Day, but with less barbeque and more goat curry, less college football and more ganja. Curtis’s Notting Hill has no real sense of that, featuring a largely privileged white British cast (with one Welshman cast as strange comic relief) with American superstar Julia Roberts. Nevertheless, it is good-natured and well observed, within the constraints of the people that it knew.
Curtis has always taken great care with the curation of the soundtrack to his films. He was keen to use “She” by Charles Aznavour. A hit in the UK in 1974, with English lyrics by Howard Kretzmer, “She” was not well known in the United States. Test audiences to the film neither knew it, nor liked what they heard. Forced to come up with a Plan B, Curtis asked Costello to do the job. Resources on one level were not a constraint, as the film featured Julia Roberts at the peak of her fame, but there was not a lot of time. Costello rushed to Abbey Road on the way to the airport, and added his voice to a lush arrangement featuring the London Symphony Orchestra.
The result is a classic. Costello’s delivery is nasal but his articulation is a wonder to behold. No sneering, no provocation. His delivery is straightforward and clear. Similarly, the video for “She” does not contain a sullen performer, doing a job for money that he does not appreciate. It displays a man at ease, both with himself and his material.
Since its release, the main complaint against Costello’s “She” has been related to its ubiquity. Frankly, the song has worn some people’s patience with it thin. We recently had Valentine’s Day and it featured on many, many radio request shows. It is probably on almost all Love Song compilation albums in the UK. Costello has performed “She” hundreds of times in concerts. However, denigrating a song for how much people love it is a particular piece of criticism. They love it because it is good. We needn’t put it down – we should hold it up and marvel.
