Phill Jupitus on The Birds Will Still Be Singing

[johnfoyle]

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/ ... 515255.ece

The Sunday Times

March 18, 2007

Going for a song

Phill Jupitus on The Birds Will Still Be Singing by Elvis Costello

Being someone who is easily manipulated by emotions means that I am more than fair game for any artist who can spin a heart-wrenching turn of phrase or construct just the right interplay of chords to tip me over into floods of tears. I vividly remember falling to wet pieces in the Leicester Square Odeon at Sarah McLachlan singing Randy Newman’s When She Loved Me in Toy Story 2. After the initial deluge, such moments of weakness tend to make one feel somehow used. Emotional button-pushing is something anybody in the media can now do, seemingly at will. I shamefully recall, on one occasion, howling like a baby at a soup advert that had Ladysmith Black Mambazo singing on it. To be precise, it’s the moment the single mum leans against the doorframe with a cup of soup and looks at her sleeping children, I am welling up now just writing about it.

Having realised you have a predisposition to such a weakness, you try to prepare yourself for situations where there’s a risk of becoming tearfully incapacitated in public. One night *at BBC Television Centre, we were recording Never Mind the Buzzcocks when the genial former host, Mark Lamarr, informed me that Elvis Costello was filming a special performance for Later with Jools. We agreed to wander along and catch the final numbers. We snuck into the studio as Elvis introduced the Brodsky Quartet.

Not having heard The Juliet Letters, I wasn’t fully prepared for what followed. Costello has probably the best singing voice in contemporary music. With training and control sparring with passion and soul, it is a thing of pure savage beauty. There’s something comforting about being in the presence of such a talent. They did an amazing baroque version of Pills and Soap, and all seemed right in the world.

Then the sonorous cello introduction of The Birds Will Still Be Singing began. They were only a few bars in when I became dimly aware of a familiar tension in the jaw, and a slight soreness at the back of the throat slowly crept up on me. Then he sang one line that just shot through my heart like an arrow .. . “Eternity stinks, my darling / That’s no joke.â€

[Mike Boom]

Its a great song, and one of EC's most under rated. EC remains the one performer to make me cry during a concert and that was "Almost Blue", on the '82 Imperial Bedroom tour. This was before the record was released, so it was my first time ever hearing this song, and right from the beginning , it was just devasting -

"Almost blue
Almost doing things we used to do
There's a girl here and she's almost you
Almost
All the things that your eyes once promised
I see in hers too..."

- its a song that gets me everytime I hear it, but I know its coming now.

[Otis Westinghouse]

Good on Phil Jupitus. Sound bloke.

[johnfoyle]

Charlie Gillett , Elvis' early champion , had this reaction ( on his forum) to this piece-

http://www.charliegillett.com/phpBB2/vi ... php?t=4122

(extract)


.........., isn't it odd that Phill can write so beautifully about a voice that all contributors to this forum have agreed is now unlistenable, no matter how we have have liked him at an earlier time.

If we were to take Phill's piece, remove the name of the singer and the song, and then invite guesses as to whom he is writing about, who would ever have guessed Elvis C, even if we had a thousand tries? Not me.

[verbal gymnastics]

Thanks as ever to Mr Foyle for these items. I couldn't agree more with Charlie Gillett's latter comment.

[johnfoyle]

I couldn't agree more with Charlie Gillett's latter comment.

???????????!!!!!!

[Otis Westinghouse]

He's talking out of his bum!

[lostdog]

He's talking out of his bum!

Hmmm - presumably you haven't heard EC's contribution to the Joni Mitchell tribute yet, Otis!

[Mikeh]

Why is it that Phill Jupitus and Mark Lamarr are the "experts" on all sorts of music all of a sudden. You can't pick up a newspaper these days without reading thier pearls of musical wisdom, or pick up an CD without sleeve notes by them, or hear aRadio 2 documentary without it being presented by one of them! I say "Grr"

[Otis Westinghouse]

[Hmmm - presumably you haven't heard EC's contribution to the Joni Mitchell tribute yet, Otis!

No, but this is in ref to The Birds Will Still Be Singing, which is indeed a fabulous song to hear him sing live.

[lostdog]

Well, no.

Gillett wrote that 'All contributors to this forum have agreed [that EC's voice] is NOW unlistenable, no matter how we have liked him at an earlier time."

So his comment wasn't a reference to EC singing The Birds Will Still Be Singing in 1996. It was more along the lines of: 'How the mighty have fallen.'

For what it's worth, I think anyone with a good pair of ears can tell that Elvis is a far worse singer now than he was in 1978.

[Jackson Monk]

I don't think that his voice is worse...I think that he tries to hard to sing in styles and genres beyond his range. When he sings simple pop he's great. Some of his Jazzy or classical bollocks are just beyond him imho.

I bought My Flame Turns Blue and I think i played it twice. It now gathers dust.

[Neil.]

Exactly - he's as great a rock and pop singer as he's ever been - it's just that he sometimes attempts stuff that doesn't suit his voice.

I totally agree with Jupitus that he's one of the greatest voices in rock - but I can understand why people would scoff at that: if you've never got 'into' Elvis, the first impression is of a very weird voice. Takes a while to get into his very individual vocal sound/technique, but once you are, you're hooked.

He's a criminally underpreciated rock/pop vocalist, I think. He's up there with the best of them, but he didn't even make it into the recent Q magazine list of greatest vocalists - and I think that was a countdown from 100!

[Otis Westinghouse]

Well, no.

Gillett wrote that 'All contributors to this forum have agreed [that EC's voice] is NOW unlistenable, no matter how we have liked him at an earlier time."

So his comment wasn't a reference to EC singing The Birds Will Still Be Singing in 1996. It was more along the lines of: 'How the mighty have fallen.'

Well, yes! Verbie wrote 'the latter comment'! So I'm right, thank you!

[Jackson Monk]

Well, no.

Gillett wrote that 'All contributors to this forum have agreed [that EC's voice] is NOW unlistenable, no matter how we have liked him at an earlier time."

So his comment wasn't a reference to EC singing The Birds Will Still Be Singing in 1996. It was more along the lines of: 'How the mighty have fallen.'

Well, yes! Verbie wrote 'the latter comment'! So I'm right, thank you!

If you're lost (dog) or you're forgiven, the birds will still be singing.

It's my funeral song by the way....I love a bit of self-indulgence.

[mood swung]

I like his voice a lot but sometimes it gets to be too much. Like vocal wrestling. I think he secretly wants to be Nick Lowe.

[lostdog]

So I'm right, thank you!

Think you've just stumbled upon your epitaph there!

[oldhamer]

I think he secretly wants to be Nick Lowe.

Who doesn't?

[littletriggers]

I was nearly moved to tears myself when I read this Phil Jupitus article , I know he was a huge fan of Ian Dury and a fan of the Punk era generally. I could relate to his emotions felt while listening to lyrics that tie your heart in knots. EC is the man to tie our emotions any which way he can, I will always be a fan.

[johnfoyle]

http://living.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1129052007

The Scotsman

Fri 20 Jul 2007

What the Dickens?

LEE RANDALL

'OH DEAR, you come in with all your literary questions and I tell you I'm doing one show because I need a reason to get up in the morning, and the other because we're two fat guys!" Phill Jupitus is in superb form, a sharp dressed man from the brim of his hat to his red, black and white shoes. I compliment him on the effect, very Elvis. Costello that is. Five years ago Jupitus and I discovered a shared devotion to our musical king, one so all-consuming that before I can ask any questions we have a real fanatic's duel. How many Costello shows have you seen? Do you prefer the fast or the slow version of Temptation? What about the zippy rockabilly version of Battered Old Bird, have ever heard that one?

Pointing to his computer, he says: "If you type in Costello, there's 1.7 DAYS of music!" You can tell he's over the moon about that. Anyway, Jupitus always wins this contest because he actually KNOWS the guy. But later, because I've been a very good girl, he calls up a picture of himself alongside our hero for me to admire.

Not one to turn up empty-handed to a much-anticipated reunion, I've brought the Charles Dickens Encyclopaedia to get him started, for I've heard he's never read the great man. You have a treat in store, I promise. Despite this lack of previous experience, Jupitus will be spending this year's Fringe reading from Dickens' work every day at the Assembly Rooms. His excitement is building, but the show's genesis was pure functionality.

"I wanted something that would get me up in the morning, a low impact show I didn't have to pay much attention to, but something I'd want to watch. I thought wouldn't it be great, with all these wonderful people up, if at night they read books to people? My original idea was to read Kidnapped, but Bill Burdett Coutts [director of Assembly] said Edinburgh had already done that. Then he told me Dickens came and read at the Assembly Rooms."

Jupitus loves reading aloud, and laments that his south-eastern English accent has so far exempted him from audiobook work. Dickens' oeuvre has been cornered by the Simon Callows of this world, and he abandoned reading the Harry Potter books to his daughters once he realised that "Stephen did a better job", referring to Stephen Fry's epic readings.

"This three weeks is about me discovering Dickens. It's an awful kind of Woodstocky hippie attitude to have, but bear in mind that every audience is a different combination of people and moods that make an organic whole. There's something quite appealing about that, not knowing how they'll react. I'm going out cold. After all, when you're reading to your kids you don't take the book away and think, 'And I'll do this voice for that character.'"

Dickens is renowned for his social commentary, so if he were alive now, what might he be writing about? "I think he would write a lot about the Americanisation of the country, that negation of culture through corporate greed," says Jupitus. "Out of convenience's sake, people are allowing themselves to be subsumed in this aval-anche of corporate imagery. Every high street looks alike. It wouldn't be so bad if every mall looked like every mall, because they'd be confined, but the fact that it's leeched out into the high streets - it's all corporate American branding, Indian restaurants and estate agents."

Would he tackle celebrity culture? "Someone doing Dickens' job now would be forced to put in pop culture references, whereas he was culture, he was observing the world around him. How many people just observe the word around them without trying to be arch and postmodern about it? Would Dickens, if he lived now - here's the question to answer your question - consume himself in some kind of orgy of postmodernism? Would he be digesting himself? Would he write the same way in this day and age? Would he just be a critic making trenchant observations about human nature? Would Dickens even be read? He'd probably be a blogger!"

"I have a feeling I will warm to Dickens," he predicts. "It's that king-like attention to minutiae. And I like the idea that I'm reacting to it as I go along. Will the show become the annotated Dickens? Will it become me stepping out of it and saying, 'Oh my god, why don't people write like this now? It's so cool.' I'm looking forward to discovering an enthusiasm."

Asked to list some of the authors he already counts as favourites, Jupitus says at heart he's a misplaced American. "I'm very piecemeal on books. I have been grabbed by the man I think is the Dickens of America, Stephen King. It's that serial nature. He focuses very much on his characters and the novels are potboilers. He sucks you in on the first page. I avoid him sometimes because I know if I start I have to read it all. There are always things in them that are good. Why is it with a book that the whole thing has to be brilliant? Why can't you say 'that bit was just amazing!', like you would with album track?"

He's happy to take recommendations from friends, which is how he discovered Raymond Chandler when he was 22. "That's a good age for him. There's no teenage angst and you can really embrace it. I would giggle with delight at the turns of phrase. The only buzz I got from going to LA was seeing the names of streets and knowing you'd seen it in Farewell my Lovely or The Big Sleep and going" - he squeals with delight - "Yeah! Chandler has such a sense of place." Another novel that resonated was John Irving's Prayer for Owen Meany. "What I loved about it was that in essence, it was the longest shaggy dog story. It almost had the structure of a joke and at the end you're like, 'Awww, man!'"

Maybe that's something about comedians and the way we structure things in our heads. A then B then C and so on, and then," he sings out the next letter like ringing a bell, "G! It has to be sequential. And I loved the character himself, this tiny little kid who talks in block capitals." But if he were to turn to a book for comfort, he'd head straight back to the nursery. "In any emotional stress situation you regress to your childhood, so for me it's Winnie the Pooh. It's the first book my mum read out to me and I did a couple of documentaries about Milne for the BBC." What about the illustrations, I chime in, declaring myself a fan of both Ernest Shepherd and his daughter, Mary, who illustrated Mary Poppins. Jupitus bounces in his seat and tells me to get to Guildford post-haste. "All the Shepherd originals are at the University of Surrey. Every piece of work he did is in one room! I've seen all the originals!"

Is there one character he particularly identifies with, I wonder, thinking he's definitely having a Tigger moment today. "Some days you're Kanga, when you're lucky; you're very efficient and it's bang, bang, bang," he snaps his fingers for emphasis. "But more often than not I'm Pooh - really well intentioned but not as smart as I think I am." So not a Lewis Carroll fanatic, then, despite the fact that his main Fringe show is Waiting for Alice, which he's written and stars in alongside Andre Vincent? Out comes the computer again so he can show me pictures of their costumes: shoes with spats and tweed three-piece suits. "We wanted to get away from the Tenniel drawings, and thought of going all Berkoff and being skinheads, then we went for this classic 1920s look. As you saw, my friend there is a fat dude and five years ago he said, 'What I always thought you and me would do is a play about Tweedledum and Tweedledee called Waiting for Alice.' I said, 'What's it about?' and he said, 'I don't know, you write it.'

"Now, BBC money is very comfortable and I enjoyed my five years at Radio 6, but the whole reason I got into showbiz is that I didn't want to work; I see it as fun. Getting up every day at four o'clock turns it into a job, even though it's playing records - and you KNOW how I feel about music. I wanted a bit of liberation, so I quit that job and immediately wrote a play for the Fringe which has given me zero free time for the last four months." He laughs.

"We wanted to do pocket Beckett for people who aren't as ethereal as that," he explains. "The premise is, if the book's not being read, do the characters exist? That's the shorthand for the play. It's two characters arguing about their situation. One likes being in the book and the other doesn't. They haven't been read for 70 years, so they've not seen Alice in all that time - they can only see her if someone reads the book. It's one of those 'if a tree falls in a forest and no-one's there [does it make a noise]' kinds of things. Our standpoint is no, characters don't see other characters unless the narrative is performed. These two are with each other because their characters are intertwined."

Keeping busy during Edinburgh is key, he insists, but not content to tire himself out with two full-length shows, Jupitus is also doing Trumptonshire Tales, a celebration of the TV shows Trumpton, Chigley and Camberwick Green that will include extracts and onstage discussions with the show's original narrator, Brian Cant. He was, Jupitus says, "the first adult I ever thought was hip when I was a kid, because even though he was great with kids there was a small wink to the adults watching."

All in all, not an easy summer line-up for someone who's never done the full three weeks before. For consolation, his family will be up, including his 14- and 16-year-old daughters, who want to be actresses and have small roles in Alice. He took them to Glastonbury for the first time this year and, he says, they "f***ing loved it", though he found that being there to work and being there as a dad were somewhat incompatible. In any event, he's keeping Mondays sacrosanct, to spend with the girls and visiting friends.

Just one last question, then: who's the funniest guy you know? He thinks for a moment. "My brother-in-law Richard after the second pint. From pints three to about five is when to be with him. I've laughed until I have wept on more than one occasion."

• Phill Jupitus is appearing in three shows at the Edinburgh Fringe this year: Waiting for Alice, Phill Jupitus Reads Dickens (both at Assembly, 3-26 August) and Trumptonshire Tales (Pleasance, 7-14 August).