Amazon.com Review
Tony Clayton-Lea's Elvis Costello is a perfect example of the cobbled-together rock biography. With no cooperation from Costello, and apparently no means by which to contact his past or present associates for comment, Clayton-Lea scoured the press files again and again to fill his thin narrative. The result will fail to intrigue the uninitiated and will tell the committed fan little he or she doesn't already know. Given Costello's status as one of the most impressive and enduring music talents to emerge in the past quarter century, not to mention his many adventures on and off the job, this book must be counted as yet another failed attempt at telling his story. It doesn't help that Clayton-Lea's writing is sloppy and that some of the simplest facts--for instance, how much of "Less Than Zero" Costello and his band the Attractions played on the Christmas 1977 episode of Saturday Night Live before abandoning it for "Radio Radio"--escape his pages. (The author also sets a new record for misspellings of King of America coproducer T-Bone Burnett's name.) Clayton-Lea provides the reader plenty to argue with, but not in the manner of, say, Marcus Gray's entertaining, infuriating Last Gang in Town: The Story and Myth of the Clash. In fact, many lay fans' critical takes on Costello's work are bound to be more interesting than those of this supposed professional critic's. Hardly a must. --Rickey Wright
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
In 1977, Elvis Presley died and Elvis Costello emerged from London's iconoclastic punk rock scene. Costello declined to be interviewed for this book and denied permission to reprint his lyrics, so Clayton-Lea, a travel and arts writer for the Irish Times, has relied heavily on interviews from rock magazinesAa strategy that works exceptionally well here. Clayton-Lea's measured narration bleeds into Costello's brutally articulate quotes, creating an intimate, "authorized" rapport. Costello evolves from computer operator to Burt Bacharach collaborator without seeming pretentious or David Bowie-esque. Moreover, Clayton-Lea proves that his subject has put more pop into pop music by incorporating country, classical, and jazz. David Gouldstone's Elvis Costello: God's Comic (St. Martin's, 1990) stops at 1989's Spike, but Clayton-Lea critiques all of Costello's studio albums and many of his side projects with tasteful asides about his personal life. For a nastier, more sensational look at Costello, former Attraction Bruce Thomas's The Big Wheel (Faber, 1991) covers touring life between the late 1970s and 1980s. Recommended for all popular music collections.AHeather McCormack, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
