Born in St Mary's Hospital, Paddington in London, Costello is the son of trumpeter, vocalist and band-leader Ronald (“Ross”) MacManus and record store manager Lillian Costello. His family had roots in Merseyside and he moved to Birkenhead at age 16, with his mother, when his parents separated. While he is better known as 'Elvis Costello', a stage name referring to the legendary Elvis Presley suggested by Stiff Records manager Jake Riviera, he has used many other aliases, including 'The Imposter' and 'Napoleon Dynamite'.
In the early 1970s Costello was a participant in London's pub rock scene with the group Flip City. Then in 1977 along with fellow Pub-Rockers Nick Lowe and Ian Dury he made his first releases on the independent label Stiff, tailoring his work towards the burgeoning punk, power pop, and new wave scenes. From 1980's Armed Forces onwards, however, other influences including soul, country, 1960s pop, and classical music began to re-emerge, and he soon became established as a unique and original voice. His output has been wildly diverse: one critic has written that "Costello, the pop encyclopedia, can reinvent the past in his own image".
His prolific and varied 30-year career has been marked by two constants: sharp songwriting and musical restlessness. The latter has seen him dabble in almost every musical form, from country to jazz to orchestral. This stems from the fact that, at heart, Costello is a fan. His desire to work with his musical heroes has attracted collaborators as diverse as Burt Bacharach and Paul McCartney, Anne Sofie von Otter, Allen Toussaint, Aimee Mann, Bill Frisell, and Brian Eno.
But his most successful partners were his long-term band The Attractions. They comprised Steve Nieve (keyboards), Pete Thomas (drums) and Bruce Thomas (bass). Between 1978 and 1983, this outfit produced a peerless series of albums: This Year's Model; Armed Forces; Get Happy!!; Almost Blue; Trust; Imperial Bedroom and Punch the Clock.
These recordings drew on styles spanning soul, country and western and commercial pop. It was only with 1984's Goodbye Cruel World that Costello started to stumble. An album he concedes was one of his worst, it ushered in a period which produced interesting music but lacked the consistent quality of his halcyon days. Interestingly, although he enlisted the other Elvis's band for King of America in 1986, it was a reunion with The Attractions and former producer Nick Lowe that produced his best album of the late 1980s in the form of the scabrous Blood and Chocolate.
The following albums, Spike and Mighty Like a Rose were uncompromising and difficult solo works, as was the string quartet collaboration The Juliet Letters in 1993. It was only reconvening the Attractions for Brutal Youth the following year that gave his fans another glimpse of what first attracted them to him: punchy, angry pop songs, tightly played by an impeccably taut ensemble.
Since then, Costello has become a career dilettante, true to his inner musical quest, but never again returning to heights he scaled in the early 1980s. Maybe the best work of this latter period was 1998's Painted from Memory. This joint effort with Burt Bacharach matched restrained writing from Costello with stately Bacharach arrangements.
Subsequent career nadirs such as the tune-free North (2003), and instrumental orchestral works such as Il Sogno (2004) led many long-term admirers to conclude that Costello had retained his integrity at the expense of his real musical strengths. However, he has given occasional evidence of his former fire. The ballsy bar-room atmosphere of the collaborative The Delivery Man (2004), suggests that he is still capable of giving his fans what they want, in between his more esoteric experiments.
Elvis is married to jazz vocalist Diana Krall and they have twin sons.
*Upon the film's release, it was noted that the name "Napoleon Dynamite" had originally been used by musician Elvis Costello, most visibly on his 1986 album Blood and Chocolate, although he had used the pseudonym on a single B-side as early as 1982. Filmmaker Jared Hess claims that he was not aware of Costello's use of the name until two days before the end of shooting, when he was informed by a teenage extra. He later said, "Had I known that name was used by anybody else prior to shooting the whole film, it definitely would have been changed ... I listen to hip-hop, dude. It's a pretty embarrassing coincidence." Hess claims that "Napoleon Dynamite" was the name of a man he met around the year 2000 on the streets of Cicero, Illinois while doing missionary work for the Mormon Church.
Costello believes that Hess stole the name: "The guy just denies completely that I made the name up... but I invented it. Maybe somebody told him the name and he truly feels that he came about it by chance. But it's two words that you're never going to hear together." To date, Costello has taken no legal action against the film.
Elvis Costello and Elton John to Make a Television 'Spectacle'
Two of the most respected musicians in the world will collaborate on an extraordinary new television series.
"Spectacle: Elvis Costello with..." is hosted by its namesake and produced in conjunction with Sir Elton John's Rocket Pictures. Elton John will be one of the program's Executive Producers.
The series begain airing in 2008 on CTV in Canada, Channel 4 in the UK and Sundance Channel in the US. FremantleMedia Enterprises, will handle sales of the show to the rest of the world.
Conceived to provide a forum for in-depth discussion and performance with the most interesting and influential artists and personalities of our time, the show fuses the best of talk and music television.
"Spectacle: Elvis Costello with..." is an unpredictable and unprecedented television experience. The series of 13 one-hour programs features everything from intimate one-on-ones with legendary performers and notable newcomers to thematic panel discussions, with a variety of performance elements including unique collaborations, acoustic and impromptu "illustrative" demonstrations of the creative process, and some original interpretations of others' songs by Costello.
Tokyo Storm Warning
Elvis Costello Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
And spilled into the mezzanine of the crushed capsule hotel
Between the Disney abattoir and the chemical refinery
I knew I was in trouble but I thought I was in hell
So you look around the tiny room and you wonder where the hell you are
While the K.K.K. convention are all stranded in the bar
They wear hoods and carry shotguns in the main streets of Montgomery
But they're helpless here as babies 'cause they're only here on holiday
What do we care if the world is a joke? (Tokyo Storm Warning)
We'll give it a big kiss, we'll give it a poke (Tokyo Storm Warning)
Death wears a big hat 'cause he's a big bloke (Tokyo Storm Warning)
We're only living this instant
Well, the black sand stuck beneath her feet in a warm Sorrento sunrise
A barefoot girl from Naples or was it a Barcelona hi-rise?
Whistles out the tuneless theme song of a hundred cheap suggestions
And a million false seductions and all those eternal questions
Well, what do we care if the world is a joke? (Tokyo Storm Warning)
Oh, we'll give it a big kiss, we'll give it a poke (Tokyo Storm Warning)
Death wears a big hat 'cause he's a big bloke (Tokyo Storm Warning)
We're only living this instant
So they flew the Super-Constellation all the way from Rimini
And feasted them on fish and chips from a newspaper facsimile
Now dead Italian tourist bodies litter up the Broadway
Some people can't be told, you know they have to learn the hard way
Holidays are dirt-cheap in the Costa del Malvinas
In the Hotel Argentina they can hardly tell between us
For Teresa is a waitress, though she's now known as Juanita
In a tango bar in Stanley or in Puerto Margarita
She's the sweetest and the sauciest
The loveliest and naughtiest
She's Miss Buenos Aires in a world of lacy lingerie
What do we care if the world is a joke? (Tokyo Storm Warning)
We'll give it a big kiss, we'll give it a poke (Tokyo Storm Warning)
Death wears a big hat 'cause he's a big bloke (Tokyo Storm Warning)
We're only living this instant
Japanese God, Jesus robots telling teenage fortunes
For all we know and all we care they might as well be Martians
They say gold paint on the palace gates comes from the teeth of pensioners
They're so tired of shooting protest singers
That they hardly mention us
While fountains fill with second-hand perfume and sodden trading stamps
They'll hang the bullies and the louts that dampen down the day
What do we care if the world is a joke? (Tokyo Storm Warning)
We'll give it a big kiss, we'll give it a poke (Tokyo Storm Warning)
Death wears a big hat 'cause he's a big bloke (Tokyo Storm Warning)
We're only living this instant, hey
We braved the cold November air and the undertaker's curses, saying
"Take me to the Folies Bergères, and please don't spare the hearses"
For he always had a dream of that revolver in your purse
How you loved him 'till you hated him and made him cry for mercy
He said "don't ever mention my name there or talk of all the nights you cried
We've always been like worlds apart, now you're seeing two nightmares collide"
What do we care if the world is a joke? (Tokyo Storm Warning)
We'll give it a big kiss, we'll give it a poke (Tokyo Storm Warning)
Death wears a big hat 'cause he's a big bloke (Tokyo Storm Warning)
We're only living this instant, hey, ow!
Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba!
The lyrics of Elvis Costello & The Attractions's song "Tokyo Storm Warning" are layered, strange, and cryptic. They do not tell a linear story but instead provide snapshots of various settings and situations, all tied together by the theme of the fragility of life and the absurdity of the world. The first verse describes being trapped in a tiny room in a cheap Japanese hotel near a chemical refinery and a Disney abattoir (slaughterhouse), with a KKK convention (complete with hoods and shotguns) stranded in the bar nearby. The chorus suggests a nihilistic outlook on life, with the world being viewed as a joke to be kissed and poked at. The second verse similarly describes being stuck in a situation, this time on a Sorrento beach with a barefoot girl whistling a tuneless song.
Line by Line Meaning
Oh, the sky fell over cheap Korean monster-movie scenery
The scene is cheap and couldn't support a falling sky
And spilled into the mezzanine of the crushed capsule hotel
The impact of the sky fell into the mezzanine of a rundown capsule hotel
Between the Disney abattoir and the chemical refinery
The sky fell in the middle of two unpleasant places
I knew I was in trouble but I thought I was in hell
The scene was so terrible it felt like hell
So you look around the tiny room and you wonder where the hell you are
The atmosphere makes you uncertain about your surroundings
While the K.K.K. convention are all stranded in the bar
The K.K.K. convention, a white supremacist group, can't leave the bar because of the falling sky
They wear hoods and carry shotguns in the main streets of Montgomery
They are dangerous, militant racists but now they can't act because they're stuck in a bar
But they're helpless here as babies 'cause they're only here on holiday
The K.K.K. is too out of its element because they're simply tourists
What do we care if the world is a joke? (Tokyo Storm Warning)
The state of the world doesn't matter
We'll give it a big kiss, we'll give it a poke (Tokyo Storm Warning)
We'll have our fun with the world regardless
Death wears a big hat 'cause he's a big bloke (Tokyo Storm Warning)
Death is portrayed as a powerful being
We're only living this instant
We're only living for the moment
Well, the black sand stuck beneath her feet in a warm Sorrento sunrise
A girl wakes up to see the black sand beneath her feet during a sunrise in Sorrento
A barefoot girl from Naples or was it a Barcelona hi-rise?
The girl's origin is unclear but she's now in Sorrento
Whistles out the tuneless theme song of a hundred cheap suggestions
With no melody, the girl is singing bad advice
And a million false seductions and all those eternal questions
The girl is pregnant with unanswered questions and false ideas of love
So they flew the Super-Constellation all the way from Rimini
They flew a plane to transport something valuable
And feasted them on fish and chips from a newspaper facsimile
The fish and chips given to guests was from a picture on a newspaper
Now dead Italian tourist bodies litter up the Broadway
The plane crashed on Broadway and there are dead Italian tourists
Some people can't be told, you know they have to learn the hard way
Some people refuse advice and have to learn from their own mistakes
Holidays are dirt-cheap in the Costa del Malvinas
Holidays are cheap in the Malvinas islands
In the Hotel Argentina they can hardly tell between us
The people in the hotel can't distinguish between the tourists
For Teresa is a waitress, though she's now known as Juanita
Teresa changed her name to Juanita and works as a waitress
In a tango bar in Stanley or in Puerto Margarita
Juanita works in a tango bar either in Stanley or in Puerto Margarita
She's the sweetest and the sauciest
Juanita is very sweet but also very charming
The loveliest and naughtiest
Juanita is both lovely and naughty
She's Miss Buenos Aires in a world of lacy lingerie
Even though she's not actually Miss Buenos Aires, she's still very pretty
Japanese God, Jesus robots telling teenage fortunes
In Japan, teenage fortunes are told by Japanese God and Jesus robots
For all we know and all we care they might as well be Martians
To others who don't understand Japan, these are no different than Martians
They say gold paint on the palace gates comes from the teeth of pensioners
Gold paint is said to come from the teeth of the elderly
They're so tired of shooting protest singers
They're tired of the same old thing, protest singers are no longer important
That they hardly mention us
They don't even notice us
While fountains fill with second-hand perfume and sodden trading stamps
The fountains are filled with already used perfume and stamps
They'll hang the bullies and the louts that dampen down the day
They will punish the people that try to ruin the mood
We braved the cold November air and the undertaker's curses, saying
We ignored the cold weather and the undertaker's warnings
"Take me to the Folies Bergères, and please don't spare the hearses"
Take me to the Folies Bergères, where the hearses are not in short supply
For he always had a dream of that revolver in your purse
He always dreamed of the revolver in your purse
How you loved him 'till you hated him and made him cry for mercy
You had a love-hate relationship and made him beg for mercy
He said "don't ever mention my name there or talk of all the nights you cried
He doesn't want his name or the pain he caused brought up
We've always been like worlds apart, now you're seeing two nightmares collide"
He believes they've been too different for too long and it's all going to fall apart
Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba!
N/A
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: Cait O'riordan, Elvis Costello
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind