Elvis Costello

Elvis Costello was born Declan Patrick MacManus, on 25 August 1954, at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, West London, the only child of a record shop worker and a jazz musician. Both parents were from the Liverpool area and had moved to London together a few years earlier.

Costello’s father, Ross MacManus was a professional trumpet player and singer, born and raised in Birkenhead, across the River Mersey from Liverpool. He began his career in music in the late 1940s, playing trumpet in bebop bands. He later played trumpet and sang in modern jazz bands after moving to London in 1951. By 1954, he was sufficiently well known for his son’s birth to be announced in the New Musical Express. From 1955 to 1968, he was a featured singer in Joe Loss Orchestra, one of Britain’s most popular.

In 1973, MacManus sang the “Secret Lemonade Drinker” jingle featured in a series of TV advertisements for R. Whites lemonade, with Costello on backing vocals. In 2000, “Secret Lemonade Drinker” was ranked seventh in Channel 4’s poll of “The 100 Greatest TV Ads”.

Costello’s parents had separated by the time Costello was ten years old, after which he was raised by his mother with the pair moving to Liverpool in 1970.

Costello has said that, having turned nine years old in 1963, he was exactly the right age to experience the full force of Beatles fandom as he grew up. He has described the Beatles as his biggest musical influence. Costello was also deeply impressed by the songs of his future collaborator Burt Bacharach, which he knew through the hits British artists Cilla Black and Dusty Springfield had with them. As Costello grew into his teens, his favourites included British groups the Kinks, Small Faces and the Who.

When Costello was 11 years old, his school entered him into a writing contest held by The Times intended for people aged 16 to 25, for which he won a prize.

Costello began writing songs and teaching himself to play guitar by age 14. To test his songs in front of an audience, he performed them in folk clubs that permitted amateur musicians to perform unpaid.

His first job was as a computer operator at the Midland Bank data centre, in the Merseyside town of Bootle.

At the beginning of 1972, Costello was invited to join a folk-rock band called Rusty by the band’s founder, an 18-year-old veteran of the Liverpool music scene named Allan Mayes. As other members left, Rusty soon became a duo, with Mayes and Costello singing and playing acoustic guitars.

In the second half of 1973, Costello formed a band called Flip City with several slightly older men who, like him, were fans of Brinsley Schwarz and other pub rock bands. The members of Flip City also shared Costello’s enthusiasm for The Band, the Grateful Dead, and Clover. For most of 1974, Costello shared a rented house in southwest London with some of his bandmates.

Costello recorded demos with Flip City at several sessions from mid-1974 until mid-1975, hoping to use them to get live bookings, secure a recording contract, or sell Costello’s songs for other artists to record. All but the first of these sessions were at a small studio owned by Dave Robinson, future Stiff Records founder.

In mid-August 1976, Costello included “Mystery Dance” and “Radio Sweetheart” on a demo tape he gave to Stiff Records, a new independent label that had just released its first single along with other record companies. Costello was soon evaluating offers from several record companies but chose to work with Stiff Records because they seemed prepared to move the fastest.

Stiff agreed to finance more sessions for Costello with Clover, an American country-rock band from Marin County, California, as the backing band. These sessions resulted in what would become his debut album My Aim Is True, recorded and mixed in six four-hour sessions for a total cost of about £1,000.

By February 1977, Jake Riviera and Dave Robinson, who were now Costello’s managers, had given him his new stage name, Elvis. The reference to Elvis Presley, who was still alive at the time, was simply intended to get attention.

Costello’s first single, “Less than Zero”, was released at the end of March 1977. It received a few brief, mixed reviews in the British music press and sold very few copies. Two further singles, “Alison” and “(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes”, also sold poorly.

In mid-June 1977, Costello held auditions for a bassist and keyboardist for a backing band for a tour to promote My Aim Is True. Pete Thomas, formerly of pub-rock band Chilli Willi and the Red Hot Peppers, agreed to be drummer, bassist Bruce Thomas who was 28 years old and had ten years’ experience in professional bands, the most successful being the Sutherland Brothers and Quiver and keyboardist Steve Nieve a 19-year-old student at the Royal College of Music. The band, soon named the Attractions, would be Costello’s touring and recording band for the next seven years.

My Aim Is True received favourable coverage in the UK music press and the album reached number 14 on the UK Albums Chart within a few weeks of its release. “Watching the Detectives”, released in mid-October, reached number 15 in the UK Singles Chart, becoming Costello’s first single to chart. This was the first of an unbroken streak of eight Costello singles to reach the UK top 30.

Costello recorded his second album and his first with the Attractions, This Year’s Model, during short breaks from touring, from November 1977 through January 1978. Most of the songs on This Year’s Model were written while Costello was still working a full-time office job, before his first album was released. Among them was “(I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea”, which was released as the album’s first single in early March 1978, reaching number 16 on the UK Singles Chart.

Armed Forces the third studio album by Costello, was released on 5 January 1979 through Radar Records. Supported by the successful UK singles “Oliver’s Army” and “Accidents Will Happen”, Armed Forces reached number two in the UK, becoming Costello’s biggest commercial success up to that point.

Since the early 1980s, Costello has written about music for publications including Hot Press, Mojo, Musician, Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair.

In 1985, he appeared in the Live Aid benefit concert in England, singing the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love”.

His sixth studio album Almost Blue was recorded in Nashville, Tennessee, is a covers album composed entirely of country music songs, including works written by Hank Williams and George Jones.

Albums released in the 80s include: Imperial Bedroom, Punch the Clock, Goodbye Cruel World, King of America, Blood & Chocolate and Spike.

He signed a new contract with Warner Bros. and in early 1989 released Spike, which spawned his biggest single in the US, the Top 20 hit “Veronica”, one of several songs Costello co-wrote with Paul McCartney. At the 1989 MTV Video Music Awards on 6 September in Los Angeles, “Veronica” won the MTV Award for Best Male Video.

Painted from Memory a collaboration album by Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach was released in September 1998. Following the album’s release, Costello and Bacharach performed songs from the album together at a limited number of shows.

Costello has played himself or fictional characters in movies and television shows including Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999), The Simpsons (2002), Frasier (2003), Two and a Half Men (2004), 30 Rock (2009), Treme (2010) and Sesame Street (2011).

In early 2003, Costello became engaged to and went on to marry singer and pianist Diana Krall, whom he met at the Grammy Awards ceremony the year before. They married in December 2003. The couple have twin sons, born in December 2006.

Costello was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2019 Birthday Honours for services to music.

Costello has released over 30 studio albums, 6 live albums and over 60 singles.

Costello’s debut album, My Aim Is True, is widely considered one of the best debut albums in the history of rock music. On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the album’s release, Billboard called it “one of the most influential albums in the history of rock and punk” and “one of the strongest debut albums in history”.