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.
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