Thanks to mcramahamasham for posting this , along with all the other 'notes , in another thread here - I'm posting them individually for easier access.
IMPERIAL BEDROOM
A familiar scene must have greeted Ringo when he walked into the studio. His former producer was stooped over the grand piano, talking through detail of an orchestral score. Our producer, Geoff Emerick, had asked George Martin to cast an eye over a madly ambitious Steve Nieve chart for the song “…And In Every Home”. Forty musicians were due at AIR Studios, and George agreed to look the music over to see if there were going to be any tricky passages that might require special attention. He would have encountered several musical allusions to his own arrangements. Ringo and I retired to the control room to discuss a record that was never made, and George and Steve went back to the score…
To some extent Imperial Bedroom was the record on which The Attractions and I granted ourselves the sort of scope that we imagined The Beatles had enjoyed in the mid-‘60s. We had engaged the engineering skills of the sonic, and somewhat unsung, genius behind many of those productions. The studio was booked for an unprecedented 12 weeks. I we needed a harpsichord or Mellotron, we hired one; if we required a 12-string acoustic guitar, marimba, or accordion, we went out and bought one; if we heard strings and trumpet and horns, we booked the musicians and Steve began writing out the parts
It had not begun in this fashion. After our excursion to Nashville, during which we recorded nearly 30 tracks in nine days for the album, Almost Blue, we reconvened at a country cottage to rehearse my new songs. This followed our working method for the album Trust. Once again, we recorded the rehearsals on an 8-track machine (one of which appears on CD 2). Even when we entered the vastly more sophisticated AIR Studios, we still intended to record the album “live” with few overdubs.
The first two weeks did not go well. The only thing that really survives on the final record from those chaotic and undisciplined sessions is the screaming introduction and tag of “Man Out Of Time”—a fair indication of the tone of those days. We were trying to beat the songs into submission. A few of these drunken and berserk items can be found on CD 2, if you care to attend the autopsy.
Somewhere around the end of the second week, a moment of sober reflection set us on a new course.
The major change of the previous 18 months had been a gradual switch to piano as my main composing instrument. This not only invited a more arranged approach to the songs, but also reflected the music to which I was listening. This consisted of a lot of hours with a handful of mid-‘30s Billie Holiday recordings—“Ghost Of Yesterday” and “Gloomy Sunday” being my favourites—the “Glad To Be Unhappy” side of Rodgers & Hart, as found on the late Billie Holiday album Lady In Satin and Frank Sinatra’s In The Wee Small Hours collection, the Round About Midnight album by Miles Davis, a The Left Banke compilation, the piano music of Erik Satie, and a cassette of “La Mer” by Debussy. Hardly any of these choices had a detectable influence on the songs on this record, but I also returned to the albums of David Ackles with which I had spent an awful lot of time as a teenager. Now as an adult, there was certainly something attractive about the way these records felt out of step with fashion and had a connection to so many musical threads.
It was being an “adult” that was most of the problem, that and the fact there seemed to be little time for “sober reflection”. The public and private upheavals of the previous four or five years had heightened my already melancholy disposition. I intend that most “private” matters should remain that way, but when the opening track is called “Beyond Belief”, and the key song of a record is entitled “Man Out Of Time”, you don’t have to be a psychiatrist to work out what was going on.
Disgusted, disenchanted, and occasionally in love, “Man Out Of Time” was the product of a troubling dialogue with myself that continued through my more regretful moments. I recall looking at my reflection in the frozen window of a Scandinavian tour bus without any idea who the hell I was supposed to be. I was trying to think or feel my way out of a defeated and exhausted frame of mind to something more glorious.
This was resolved in song, one shivering, hungover morning in the manicured gardens of a remote Scottish hotel. The house in which we were staying had played a very minor part in one of Britain’s most notorious political scandals, apparently serving briefly as a bolt-hole fort one of the disgraced protagonists. I actually delighted at the thought of this sordid history; it suited my mood. I can’t say that the words and ideas that emerged from these experiences were exactly welcome news to some of the band members. Like I could give a damn.
Strangely, I do recall telling the artist Barney Bubbles that we had made our brightest and most positive record around the time that he commenced work on the cover painting. I had asked him to illustrate what he heard, in what I hoped would be the first of a series of such covers. I was delighted with the wit and humour of the Picasso references in the painting, which contains the inscription “Pablo Si”. However, I was startled by the darker, carnal aspects of the canvas that Barney had correctly identified in the songs and placed at the center of his composition. Sometimes you can bee too close to the frame to see the picture. Even the album title, which I had intended as reference to the comparative opulence of the recording, started to take on another meaning. This was shortly after I had abandoned the working title: P.S. I Love You.
Occasionally I used a little craft to put some distance on the emotional contents. Before we even entered the studio, I was toying with the notion of abandoning some of the responsibility for the words, asking Chris Difford to make sense of the title “Boy With A Problem”. I had also made an attempt to connect with a lyricist from the pre-rock and roll era. Sammy Cahn had written “All The Way” for Sinatra, along with many other lighter pieces that dare listeners to mock (“You go to a spot that just a spot on the MAP” is rhymed with “WHAP!” in “The Tender Trap”). He was also a brilliant radio raconteur and writer of the spoof “special lyrics” sung at conventions for Presidential nominees. He may not have has the tortured soul of Lorenz Hart, but he was a link with another less self-obsessed era of lyricism, when personal confessions were couched in elegant romantic language and sung with restraint and discretion.
Mr. Cahn was frankly bewildered by the music that I had sent him on tape. At an after-show session in a Huddersfield recording studio during the Trust tour of England, I had recorded a rather ham-fisted piano sketch of what later turned out to be “The Long Honeymoon”. We had an entertaining telephone conversation, but Sammy diplomatically removed himself from the enterprise, seemingly surprised that I would simply be writing a song to record and not for a show or event of some kind. Oddly enough, this seemed to clear my mind as to what needed to be written, and the song was soon finished.
“The Long Honeymoon” tells the story of a young wife waiting by the phone for her husband to call or come home. She half suspects that he is with her best friend but can’t bring herself to pick up the phone to find out. It is a story that I might have found in Nashville, but the music here belongs more to the cabaret.
The arrangement is a pretty good example of the approach to this record. The rhythm section plays a sort of vague Latin pulse while Steve leads the way on both the piano and accordion. In fact it took three of us to execute this part. Laying the instrument on the table, Steve played the keyboard, while one of us worked the bellow, and a third party held the beast in place. I play a composed melody on the tremolo guitar in the middle of the track, and the song concludes with a trio of French horns arranged by Steve Nieve.
In those days the relationship between “legit” players and pop musicians was not always an easy one. Steve had intended the part to be plaintive and noble like a Wagnerian hunting motif, but after on of the players adjourned to the pub during the mid-session break, the execution began to resemble something from an after-hours club in New Orleans. By complete accident, I actually preferred this effect.
It was not as if outside players were ever likely to steal the attention from The Attractions’ playing on this album. The demos of these songs reveal and approach similar to Trust, which itself had a number of very fine ensemble performances. However, once we were in AIR Studios with Geoff Emerick, it was possible for each player to be featured while never distracting from the songs. There is some particularly fine playing from Bruce Thomas on the tag of “Shabby Doll” and in the final verse of “Human Hands”, where his bass counterpoint sits elegantly below my overdubbed vocal group. My favourite among Steve Nieve’s many musical highlights must be the dazzling bridge passage of “The Loved Ones”.
One afternoon, Pete Thomas arrived at the studio straight from a night of carousing, he confounded all of us by turning in the single inventive take of “Beyond Belief” that transformed the song into the opening track of the record. It was originally entitled “The Land Of Give And Take” with an almost improvised sounding text. The strength of Pete’s performance meant that I was able to consider a more ambitious and confidential vocal approach. I re-wrote the song over the existing backing track, achieving a more coherent structure. There was less explosive playing required on many of the other tracks.
The melancholic domestic mood is carried through the songs “The Long Honeymoon” and “Boy With A Problem”—the backing track for which was recorded by The Attractions and posted through my letter box when I had to leave the studio early one evening. “Tears Before Bedtime”—which was the sole original composition attempted during our Almost Blue sessions—is one of a number of tracks that employ an overdubbed vocal group or disguised voice in order to distort the perspective or the identity of the narrator.
After the band sessions were concluded, I worked alone for several weeks, experimenting with odd overdubs and vocal approaches. It is possible that I lost as much as I gained. The raw and borrowed style of the “Tears Before Bedtime” take on CD 2 might well be a little closer to the truth.
The most disguised of these songs is “Little Savage”; one of several cuts rehearsed and even recorded in different tempi and time signatures. The slower pace of the album demanded the up-tempo arrangement to be included, but the meaning of the song would have been better served by the approach of the unfinished version found on CD 2, even though the vocalist seems to be trying to escape the confines of the harmony.
Most concentrated of these songs is the ballad “Almost Blue”. It was written in imitation of the Brown/Henderson song “The Thrill Is Gone”. I had become obsessed with the Chet Baker recording of that tune, firstly the trumpet instrumental and, later, the vocal take. It is probably the most faithful likeness to the model of any of my songs of this time. It has become my most covered composition.
Two years later, when Chet Baker came into the studio to play the trumpet solo on our recording of “Shipbuilding”, I gave him a copy of this album and suggested that he might listen to one track in particular. Although we met up again at his subsequent London engagements and even worked together on one occasion, he never mentioned the record again. It wasn’t until several months after his death that I found out that he had been including “Almost Blue” in his later sets and that it would feature in photographer Bruce Weber’s documentary on Baker, Let’s Get Lost. Chet’s performance of the song, before an indifferent film festival crowd, makes for very uncomfortable viewing, but there is a wonderful version, featuring an extended trumpet solo, on a late “live” album from Japan. He finally seemed to get what I hoped he would recognize in the composition.
Many of the remaining songs on the record take their cue from the opening track, “Beyond Belief”. They exhibit a malaise of the spirit and a sinking feeling about happy endings. The souring and spoiling of England was just under way. Passing from town to town on the tours of the early ‘80s, I came to know some people who seemed just as disenchanted and discouraged. Their stories found their way into these songs.
It was about two in the morning when I visited the coffee bar. It was doing a brisk trade in salt fish, dumplings, and hot, sweet drinks. It was about the only place to go after the bars had shut. The girls, who looked like over-the-hill boxers in pink stretch nylon, were coming in from the cold to negotiate with their pimps. I’d gone there with a girl I knew and a couple of her friends because my parents had lived in the area shortly before I was born. My folks had just got out in time. I’d nearly been a Yorkshireman. My visit was during the Trust tour of England, and the area had long since tipped into decline. Shortly afterwards it was revealed that this had been the beat of the serial killer Peter Sutcliffe.
My Chapeltown tour guide was probably the model for the character in “…And In Every Home”, even though we were barely acquainted. It is a snapshot of a disappointed young women, with the boyfriend in prison and a strong feeling that life should be offering something more. The least that I could offer her was that this story should be decorated with an ornate orchestral arrangement. As the chorus remarks:
“Oh heaven preserve us
Because they don’t deserve us”
My one regret is that none of us thought to capture the remarkable sight of Maestro Nieve at the conductor’s podium before the 40-piece ensemble.
These nighttime excursions got mixed up with images of the cigar-stained function rooms of our “grand” touring hotels, where rotten businessmen and craven local government figures could be found selling the ground under everyone’s feet. The personal doubts and fears expressed in “Man Out Of Time” and “Beyond Belief” were presented before this backdrop.
Another song in this group was “Shabby Doll”. The title came from a music hall poster hung in a hotel dining room. I’d heard the tale of John Lennon writing “Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite” from a similar source, the difference being that the one that I came across was a blurred facsimile decorating a fake Victorian façade. Perhaps this was entirely appropriate for such an unflattering self-portrait.
Although I am fond of the “Shabby Doll” demo on CD 2, with its prominent dissonant bass figure, the finished ensemble version is both more powerful and mischievous. It is a rare example of the words becoming harsher in the final draft, with the line: “being what you might call a whore, always worked for HIM before”, being amended to the more truthful first person.
Despite the talk of “drinking to distraction” and the entreaty to “drink yourself insensitive”, not all of the songs exist in the realm of guilt and despair. “The Loved Ones” joyfully trashes the myth of the romantically self-destructive artist and “You Little Fool” is a cautionary word to a young girl who is about to throw herself away on an unworthy fellow. A version with an entirely different vocal line appears on CD 2.
“Human Hands” was a song of reconciliation, but the original lyric seemed to raw and easily read, closing it off to the experience of others. The original vocal take can be heard on CD 2. Among the colloquialisms and lyrical puzzles of “Pidgin English”, there is a longing for the simple words to express love.
The odd song out on the second half of the record is “Kid About It”. Originally, styled as a slow r’n’b ballad, I made the decision to pitch the recorded vocal in my lowest octave for greater intimacy. An early run-through take of the first draft appears on CD 2.
The song is a rejection of tarnished and jaded games of adulthood. There is even a small, improbable sense of hope at the end of the second verse. It was composed on the morning after John Lennon’s murder. I went out walking to clear my head of the dreadful news reports, and this song came to me. I wouldn’t have done anything as presumptuous as write a song “about” the event and even edited out a passing reference to it in the original second verse. However, the line “Singing the ‘Leaving Of Liverpool’ and turning into Americans” seems to be about a place where dreams begin and end.
A short time after completing the record, we were sent into a tiny basement studio to cut a series of self-produced “covers”, mostly sings originally cut by Merseybeat groups. I was then a co-owner of Demon Records and our “Edsel” re-issue imprint was making some of these records available. I had the berserk notion that we might be able to scare up some extra interest in the re-releases by cutting the same songs. Quite apart from anything else, there was an innocence about the tunes that had been absent from the Imperial Bedroom sessions. These tracks and the trio recording of an early song of mine, “I Turn Around”—Steve Nieve was out of town, so I played organ—were cut without the burden of meaning and dark emotion. One of them, the Smokey Robinson song “From Head To Toe”, was actually a bigger U.K. hit than any of the Imperial Bedroom singles.
Even during the album session there were some moments of levity. The record closes with “Town Cryer”, a truthful if rather self-pitying lament. The song is taken at a grand slow tempo with the decoration of Steve Nieve’s Philly-style string chart. However, late one evening—and concerned about the gathering gloom—armed only with a wah-wah pedal and a beat group’s attempt to imitate Barry White and the Love Unlimited Orchestra, we recorded an up-tempo arrangement, briefly issued (in mock-French) as the “Version Discotheque” and presented here once more for your amusement.
I continued the album theme for a little while, writing the “title song”, a sick waltz about the seduction of a bride by the best man. It was not a natural choice for the former ABBA singer Frida, but it was nevertheless originally submitted for inclusion on her latest solo album. It was not thought suitable by her producer, a Mr. Collins. He was probably right for once.
The album was not a big commercial success, despite Columbia Records absurd “Masterpiece?” ad campaign—which was really asking for it. The choice of singles did little to indicate the change of scene from the previous albums, although many of the songs established a place in the live repertoire.
Several years later, while working on the album King Of America, I was in a Hollywood hotel bar and a man introduced himself and started talking about this album. He turned out to be the renowned pianist, singer, and connoisseur of arcane and obscure lyrics of the Broadway era, Michael Fienstein. He had once worked as an assistant to Ira Gershwin, and he told me that when a New York Times review compared some of the writing on Imperial Bedroom to his brother, George, Mr. Gershwin had requested that his assistant purchase a copy of the record.
It conjures a horrifying image of a despairing Ira Gershwin being assailed by the howling introduction of “Man Out Of Time”, believing that this is what the people made of his brother’s legacy. He had no way of knowing that I would have been delighted by this small contact with the musical world that existed before rock and roll. Having read the cutting remarks in Mr. Gershwin’s volume of annotated lyrics, I probably don’t want to know his true reaction to the record.
Listening again to the raw and ragged early takes, demos, and rejected songs, I am not sorry to have employed just a little restraint and reserve in the final draft. I suppose that just came naturally to writers like Ira Gershwin. The record is not exactly easy listening as it is, but I trust that it isn’t just the experience of one person. Thanks to the playing of The Attractions and the sonic expertise of Geoff Emerick (and his assistant, Jon Jacobs), it sounds like music rather than a confession.
-Elvis Costello
________________________________________
Rykodisk Liner Notes
"Imperial Bedroom" was my first record of original material to be produced by anybody other than Nick Lowe. We had made five albums between 1976 and 1980 - four of them with the attractions - as well as touring together, so we had all heard each other's jokes at least once by this point. In any case I knew that I wanted to try a few things in the studio that I suspected would quickly exhaust Nick's patience.
Of course we still worked together: on a duet version of "Baby, It's You" and for Nick's track "L.A.F.S.", which I produced, before he came back in to produce our album "Blood and Chocolate".
As it was our first album to be recorded without the benefit of extensive "live" experience of the songs, work on the arrangements and even some of the writing continued through rehearsals and into the studio sessions. This was only possible because we were to allow ourselves an extravagant twelve weeks of recording time. That this opportunity was not squandered must be credited to Geoff Emerick who was listed on the sleeve as producing the record "...from an original idea" by myself. This was not the conceit it may have appeared to be at the time. I had observed how the production of Squeeze's "East Side Story" had come, in a very short time, to be attributed to myself alone, with co-producer Roger Bechirian's name often omitted from reviews and articles. I did not want this process to be repeated, so although I was nomianlly co-producer with Geoff, in truth he did nearly everything that could be called "production" in terms of sound, while I concentrated on the music. Of course we were well aware that Geoff had engineered The Beatles' most ambitious records. "Revolver", "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" were just a few of his vast and varied "credits". In those days it was standard practice for only "the producer" to be listed on the record sleeve, although by the time we worked with Geoff I'm sure that most people with an appreciation of his contribution must have thought that this was terribly unfair. Nevertheless we swore not to bug him for old Beatles stories, but as the sessions wore on, Geoff volunteered a few "behind the scenes" anecdotes and would occasionally surprise us by conjuring up a trademark echo or effected that he had more or less "invented", through experimentation, in the days before these sounds were so readily available in little digital boxes. A constant reminder of his illustrious work at AIR studios where George Martin and Paul McCartney were producing "Tug Of War". In fact Geoff was also the main engineer on that album, as "Imperial Bedroom" was supposed to be made during a hiatus in their recording schedule. In fact a few sessions actually ran simultaneously with Geoff departing for an hour or two to engineer a McCartney recording while we fooled around in the studio. This proximity was later to prove quite fortuitous. As with "Trust" the rehearsals took place in a friend's cottage in Devon, only on this occasion the local scrumpy pub played a smaller part in the proceedings. We could draw from material written during the end of the "Trust" sessions ("Boy With A Problem"), through my work on "East Side Story" ("Kid About It"), during our Nashville adventure ("Tears Before Bedtime"), as well as time at home with my piano ("Almost Blue", "...And In Every Home" and "Long Honeymoon"). We did not make any attempt to have the songs obey an arrangement or production style, rather we tried to make the most out of this musical variety.
During the rehearsals we made quite credible 8-track recordings of most of the songs. That tape suggests an album very close to "Trust" and during the first two hectic weeks of recording we maintained this "live - first take" attitude. All that survives of those sessions is the "intro" and "outro" of "Man Out Of Time". The listener is spared our reckless attempt to play the song at this frenetic tempo, instead the "random racket" was used to break with the mood of the surrounding tracks. Despite a few junked experiments with tape loops and some radical editing, the basic group performances are as "live-in-the-studio" as on our previous albums. Songs such as "Almost Blue" and the main body of "Man Out Of Time" have few if any additions to the basic ensemble. The Attractions actually recorded the perfect "Boy With A Problem" track while I was absent from the studio and posted it through my letter-box one evening.
It is probably the vocal and instrumental additions that set this album apart from our previous records. Having decided to use some orchestral instruments, Steve Nieve began writing the charts; for a trio of French horns on "Long Honeymoon" (which he later told me was supposed to sound like Wagnerian hunting horns, although as one of the players might have swallowed something that didn't agree with him, that effect came closer to a New Orleans funeral band), a brass and woodwind section on "Pidgin English", a Philly-style violin section on "Town Cryer" and a full forty piece orchestra for "...And In Every Home". Prior to that last session Geoff asked George Martin to cast an eye over Steve's score (which contained a couple of musical jokes and allusions to George's orchestrations for the Beatles), as he might make a few valuable suggestions regarding the booking of particular players to negotiate the trickier passages. On the big day Steve conducted the orchestra himself, a remarkable sight which non of us had the foresight to capture on a snap-shot camera.
Another feature of the recording was the use of additional instruments which we attempted to play ourselves. Some were layered in ways that might have been bewildering without Geoff's expertise. On other occasions instruments were adapted in unlikely ways; a twelve-string Martin guitar was "bugged" and run through a Hammond Leslie speaker on "Shabby Doll", while a National Steel Dobro was used for the sitar-like line in the introduction of "Pidgin English" while a Danelectro Sitar-Guitar was used like an electric harp on "Human Hands". A beautiful harpsichord was hired in for "You Little Fool", although its effect was subverted in the closing choruses when the part was redubbed using the backwards-tape technique. Most ridiculous was the accordion part on "Long Honeymoon" which it took three of us to play; Steve at the Keyboard (which we lay flat across the table) Bruce to work the bellows and myself to wrestle with the beast and stop it from crawling onto the studio floor. For "Long Honeymoon" and "Pidgin English" I wrote the guitar interludes into the original composition rather than improvise, while both Steve and Bruce added more crucial musical detail of their own invention than ever before. In saying this I am thinking of Bruce's final verse in "Human Hands" and the fade of "Shabby Doll", while I once again commend Steve's spectacular bridge in "The Loved Ones" to the listener, not to forget his solitary guitar playing cameo in the final seconds of "Tears Before Bedtime"! The fact that there is less explosive music contained herein could lead to Pete Thomas' contribution being underestimated. However as you listen again I am sure you will hear the range of his playing from "Almost Blue" to "Man Out of Time". Without doubt it was his singular frame of mind that shaped the performance of the album's most spontaneous and unexpected music: "Beyond Belief".
The outcome of the "Beyond Belief" session caused me to reconsider the role of the vocal line in some of our arrangements. I then worked for several weeks with just Geoff Emerick and Jon Jacobs as I experimented with different vocal combinations. Sometimes lowering the lead voice by an octave as in "Kid About It" or contrasting two stylings as in "Pidgin English" or using a combination of falsetto voice (which I can never sustain outside the studio) and an overdubbed "vocal group" as with "Tears Before Bedtime", "The Loved Ones" and "Town Cryer". This way I tried to create some more contrast with the straightforward approach of "Almost Blue", "Man Out Of Time", and "Long Honeymoon". I must confess that I also tinkered at the organ and vibraphone on the "Kid About It" backing track which didn't meet with band approval, but we were to some extent hearing different things in the songs by that point. "Beyond Belief" (Which had originally been entitled "The Land Of Give And Take") was most transformed by my solo sessions. I completely "re-composed" the song over the existing track altering both the metre of the lyric and the register of the vocal line and creating an uneven structure leading to a more defined chorus of a less ranting tone. In a later concert performance the songs had to be stripped of many of the above embellishments; the "Kid About It" vocal line was returned to the higher octave as it made a more powerful "live" impression that way, while other songs such as "The Loved Ones" and "Tears Before Bedtime" never really found a place in our live repertoire without their studio-created vocal arrangements. Nevertheless the process of making this record was both a "do-it-yourself" education in using the studio like blank manuscript paper on which to work out the arrangements and...I nearly forgot...enormous fun.
About the cover: Given most of the lyrical content, you might be surprised to hear that I had imagined this to be my most optimistic album to date. Perhaps I was distracted by some of the sunnier instrumental sounds borrowed from the late 60's pop music. I was therefore taken aback when I first viewed Barney Bubbles' cover painting. In what was intended to be the first in a series I had asked him to pain an impression of the finished record as a change from the usual cover photograph. You can see that he obviously responded to the more violent and carnal aspects of the songs. The large canvas now hangs in my music room, so I am fondly reminded of Barney, his with and panache.
"Recently in Spain somebody asked me about the cover and its obvious pastiche of Picasso's "Three Musicians". I could have said that Barney was tipping a large hat to the masters as we intended to do on the album, but instead I pointed out the lettering on each of the zipper-like creatures. It spells out "Pablo Si""
Although "Imperial Bedroom" reached No. 6 in the U.K. charts and No. 30 in the U.S. charts, the single released did not fare well in the hit parade. Both Warner (F-Beat's Distributor) and Columbia (in the U.S.) were rather cautious in releasing "You Little Fool" as the first single ahead of a bolder choice such as "Beyond Belief". So by the release of "Man Out Of Time" the initial interest in the album had cooled somewhat and a wider audience received a very sketchy idea of the music on the album.
"Perhaps inspired by Columbia's bizarre "masterpiece ?" ad campaign (the question mark was surely asking for trouble) and secure in the knowledge that commercial success was unlikely, many U.S. review were extremely positive. I believe The New York Times ran an article making a flattering, if rather far-fetched, comparison to George Gershwin. Several years after initial release I was in a Los Angeles hotel bar when the man who had been informally performing at the piano introduced himself as Michael Feinstein, who I later learned was a respected singer, pianist and connoisseur of the arcane and obscure among the songs of the Broadway era. He told me that he had assisted Ira Gershwin for a time and that Mr. Gershwin had been intrigued by the reference to his brother in the review of a new pop record and requested that Mr. Feinstein obtain a copy. As this comparison was probably based on a mere two tracks I could only imagine the horror on Mr. Gershwin's face when confronted with some of the remaining music and the idea that it conjured up thoughts of his remarkable brother in the writer's mind. Mr. Feinstein was far too tactful to elaborate on this reaction but having read some of Gershwin's own volume of annotated lyrics (a recommendable, if intimidating read for any lyricist) I think I can imagine the worst.
EXTENDED PLAY:
"FROM HEAD TO TOE" (F-beat single)
"THE WORLD OF BROKEN HEARTS" (B-side of the above)
"NIGHT TIME" (realeased on the B-side of the 12 inch single of "Everyday I Write The Book")
"REALLY MYSTIFIED" (previously unreleased)
These tracks were recorded at Matrix Studios, London shortly after the completion of "Imperial Bedroom". Inspired by Demon Records re-release of various "Merseybeat" recordings I selected a few songs that would provide a contrast to the production approach of the album. "From Head To Toe" was originally recorded by Smokey Robinson and The Miracles, but as the backing vocals here are by "The Indulgences", this version owes more to the Liverpool group The Escorts, who also recorded the original "Night Time". The Merseybeats' "Really Mystified" had been in our repertoire since our first London club dates but this was our first studio recording of this song, although we had once included it on a B.B.C. radio session. The odd song out is the Pomus/Shuman composition "World Of Broken Hearts" which I learned from an Amen Corner record.
"I TURN AROUND" (previously unreleased demo)
"This is a re-working of a chorus written when I was 19, although the words were a recent stab at the esperanto of pop. A few lines survive to re-appear in "The Invisible Man". The demo, also recorded at Matrix features Bruce and Pete on bass and drums but as Steve was away on holiday I added the piano and organ as well as the guitar.
"SECONDS OF PLEASURE"
The third part in the continuing saga of a wandering song. This version was rewritten as a woman's song with the addition of a bridge and along with "I Turn Around" and "Imperial Bedroom" were sent to Anni-Frid Lyngstad (or "Frida") for possible inclusion on her first solo album after the break-up of our beloved ABBA. I never found out what she made of this rather odd selection of songs, but I know that her producer, a certain Mr. P. Collins didn't think much of any of them as I heard it from his own lips. The rest, as they say, is history. Steve played the piano, I added the bass and vocals. What was rescued from this song may be found in its final resting place on the album "Punch The Clock" under the title "The Invisible Man".
"STAMPING GROUND" (Pathway Studios demo - released on the Demon Records Compilation "Out of Our Idiot")
"SHABBY DOLL" (Pathway Studios demo - previously unreleased)
Both of these tracks came from a solo demo session shortly before we began work on "Imperial Bedroom". "Stamping Ground" never got beyond the rough version, but "Shabby Doll" has something odd in this six-string bass part that sets it apart from the album version.
"IMPERIAL BEDROOM" (Eden Studios Demo - Released on Demon Records compilation "Out Of Our Idiot")
This "title song" was actually written after the completion of the album. I have always avoided naming any album after any one song, as it asks a lot of that tune to the possible detriment of others. However the lyrical possibilities of the title were too tempting, just as I had written "Almost Blue" after our return from Nashville having been inspired by Chet Baker's instrumental version of "Thrill is Gone". "Imperial Bedroom" the song is supported by comical percussion, the result of my first encounter with a Linn Drum Machine. The vocal features some truly rotten French.
1982, Imperial Bedroom sleevenote
Re: 1982, Imperial Bedroom sleevenote
http://tfw5.com/2013/04/03/have-you-hea ... -costello/
Have You Heard? – (36) “Imperial Bedroom” by Elvis Costello
John Sills
April 2013
Have You Heard? – (36) “Imperial Bedroom” by Elvis Costello
John Sills
April 2013
Re: 1982, Imperial Bedroom sleevenote
My review, now updated and expanded:
https://everybodysdummy.blogspot.com/20 ... droom.html
https://everybodysdummy.blogspot.com/20 ... droom.html