Elvis Costello’s Aim Remains True
A new box set honors Declan’s debut at 49
The emergence of Elvis Costello in 1977 ran counter to the look and sound of what constituted punk rock in the year the music broke.
Here was this skinny Englishman in big black spectacles and a suit looking like he’s about to do your taxes. But when he strapped on that Fender Telecaster, the man born Declan MacManus transformed into this feral, prose-minded firebrand whose angsty blend of soul, country and pub rock created its own strain of punk for those who didn’t look like Sid Vicious.
“It is 1977 and a small man with a bulging bag of vexations has arrived at the door uninvited. With his strange name and Buddy Holly glasses, he seems vaguely ridiculous, and not the sort of person we’d be likely to discuss a half-century later,” renowned rock critic Elizabeth Nelson writes in her 9.5 review of this new 49th anniversary edition of Costello’s debut LP My Aim Is True. “And yet his first LP is a masterpiece — one of a string of them that would elevate him to stratospheric prominence. With its fluttering Byrds riffs, Faustian bargains and Oscar Wilde epigrams, My Aim Is True introduced the world to the brilliant songcraft and outsized neurosis of Elvis Costello.”
In a weekend that also saw the release of the deservedly hyped Rubber Soul box set, this 5CD edition of My Aim Is True was almost guaranteed to be overshadowed by the looming presence of his older brothers in British rock. But in terms of bonus material, Elvis easily has the edge compared to the two LPs of studio rarities from the Rubber Soul sessions, offering the most substantial reissue of Costello’s first in its long history of being reissued through the years.
What makes this anniversary edition such a must-own for EC fans is how it really gets into the evolution of Elvis from a central figure of London’s pub rock scene with a heart full of American music — Randy Newman, Warren Zevon and Little Feat, in particular, with hints of Bonnie, Bruce and Billy Joel to boot — into a songwriter sharp enough to attract the attention of Stiff Records, who pulled Costello away from his first band Flip City to become a songwriter for the label. The second disc, entitled The Blueprint, is an excellent deep dive into the roots of Elvis the craftsman in a cache of raw demos and bedroom recordings that still somehow contain the spark of his debut even in embryonic form.
The third disc, The Stranger In The House, features 28 more demos, outtakes and early band recordings, including all of the surviving material from My Aim Is True. It is also here where Costello’s love for country music really comes into focus, particularly the handful of Flip City demos that will be of particular interest to hardcore fans.
Becoming The Attractions, the fourth disc of the box, contains 25 tracks chronicling the birth of Elvis’s most famous band with material ranging from television appearances, radio broadcasts and a summer 1977 soundcheck at the legendary Nashville Room in Downtown Music City U.S.A., where the young band spits out a particularly ferocious take on “Mystery Dance” among other Aim tracks. The most fun stuff on here, however, is the previously unreleased material from Elvis and the Attractions’ dates in San Francisco, California, at the Winterland Ballroom and the Old Waldorf, where the band rips through an early version of “Pump It Up.” There’s also a pretty kick-ass rendition of “Less Than Zero” from the Warner Theater in Washington, D.C. on here as well, likely pulled from the amazing soundboard recording of the show I bought on vinyl at Rhino Records in New Paltz for like $2 back in the early ‘90s. These live tracks, which also include cuts from the Agora Ballroom in Cleveland, Ohio, really showcase Costello’s proficiencies as a guitarist as well, especially when backed by an engine run by keyboardist Steve Nieve, bassist Bruce Thomas and drummer Pete Thomas. Check out the covers of Burt Bacharach’s “I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself” (foreshadowing his work with the man himself with 1998’s Painted From Memory) and “Whole Wide World” by his Stiff labelmate Wreckless Eric on here as well.
The last CD has been tossed off as a curio in most reviews of this collection, but for what its worth I think this 2007 reunion with Clover — the American country-rock band who backs Elvis up in the studio on My Aim Is True — captured live at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall is pretty fantastic for what it is. Never before released in any format, the show finds Costello and Clover running through the entirety of My Aim Is True in the sequence of the original U.K. pressing.
Music journalist, television producer and author Bill Flanagan chronicles Costello’s arrival in America in the set’s witty and engaging 72-page liner notes, which also includes input from Nick Lowe and Columbia Records’ Gregg Geller as well as memories from Stevie Nieve and Pete Thomas. Further recollections from Warren Zanes, Rosanne Cash, Peter Wolf (then of the J. Geils Band and Costello’s friend of 49 years), and Jim James of My Morning Jacket (a bandmate in the “New Basement Tapes” studio collective) accompany Costello’s account of that first American trip — from seeing Iggy Pop in San Francisco and meeting Tom Waits in Los Angeles to replacing the Sex Pistols on Saturday Night Live and abruptly abandoning “Less Than Zero” for “Radio Radio.”
“Making my first record seemed like the beginning of something that I’d imagined for a long time, before I had any sense of a potential audience, let alone the expectation and the assumptions of others about songs written and performed in mere minutes,” Costello writes in the liners. “Nevertheless, I raise a chaste glass to My Aim Is True and all who sail in her.”
My Aim Is True remains one of the best debuts in rock history, kicking off a run of albums that would stretch well into the next decade. This essential box finally tells the origin story.
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