11 June 2022

“To the new wavers of ’77, Elvis Costello must have looked a straightforward proposition, a black and white world. Punk’s febrile, combative energies and the naïve excitement of golden age rock’n’roll and mod beat encapsulated in one bespectacled, legs-akimbo, skinny tied package. And so, for a short while, it would prove; as the arrival of The Attractions – and a pill-popping angry young man attitude – powered Costello on to the new wave front lines with This Year’s Model and Armed Forces, his aesthetic cohered around barbed and allusive dissections of pop culture, cutting social commentary and the politics of love and war. A critical darling, and not just because, as Dave Lee Roth bitterly attested, the sleeve of …Model was, for most journalists, like looking in a mirror.”

In the 148 pages of this Deluxe Ultimate Music Guide, fully updated to account for his most recent activity, you’ll read some of Costello’s most memorable interactions with just those journalists. Here you’ll find spiky moments – “Getting it all down are you?” – and expansive encounters. Not to mention a full reckoning of the many recordings, collaborations and other adventures which caused them to occur in the first place.

You can purchase a copy and let it send to your home. Info here.