As his last album was a surprise hit, Elvis stuck to the formula and brought the same producers back for another go. The problem was that he had seemingly used up his capacity for pop; plus, his personal life was in the toilet. The songs he prepared for Goodbye Cruel World are dour and gloomy (hence the title), inspired by the country weepers and Richard Thompson songs he’d been obsessed with of late. Elvis himself has called this his worst album, but took the blame off his producers for his failure to rise to the occasion and indulging the current zeal for the Yamaha DX7 synthesizer, which everybody was using in those days.
The producers did what they could, reducing the previous album’s horn section to a single braying saxophone, which heralds “The Only Flame In Town”, which features prominent backing vocals by Daryl Hall, of all people. Despite the automated rhythm, it’s still a catchy tune, with a wacky video to match. Repeated listens will bring out the charms of such tracks as “Home Truth” and “Love Field”, but one also had to navigate through noisy tracks like “Room With No Number”, an unnecessary return to the cheaters’ rendezvous trope. “Inch By Inch” is more of a list than a song, notable only for its spy film arrangement, while “Worthless Thing” keeps toes tapping as it rails against game shows, MTV, and Elvis Presley fetishers.
“I Wanna Be Loved” is an obscure soul cover put through the sequencer, with the guy from Scritti Politti singing along, but it too is more notable today for its own influential video. The promise of “The Comedians” is torpedoed by a clumsy 5/4 arrangement, just as “Joe Porterhouse” and “The Great Unknown” would be a lot more appealing if we had any idea what he was on about. The trashy “Sour Milk-Cow Blues” deserves a better title and chorus hook, while “The Deportees Club”, a solid rocker, is taken at such a pace that the words are indiscernible. The album ends with “Peace In Our Time”, another political statement previously released as a quickie Imposter single a la “Pills And Soap” that fell on deaf ears (in America, anyway).
While a select group of fans still holds incredible affection for Goodbye Cruel World, it was skewered by the critics, and still gets slammed today. Just as the original album tried to replicate the success of its predecessor, the reissues aimed to make up for any mistakes. Along with superior B-sides like “Turning The Town Red”, Rykodisc included an early take of “I Hope You’re Happy Now” and a later acoustic rearrangement of “The Deportees Club” under its alternate truncated title “Deportee”. Much more interesting were the handful of live acoustic performances from a solo tour undertaken between the album’s completion and release, where he realized too late how the songs should have sounded.
Rhino went even further, adding two more live tracks from the same show—again, another candidate for an archival concert release—and several simpler demos along with most of the Ryko extras to fill up its bonus disc. (“The Comedians” appears in the Roy Orbison-styled arrangement the man himself would eventually use, but with different lyrics.) There were also two key outtakes: a ballad version of “The Only Flame In Town”, and “Young Man Blues” from a session that occurred after the Honeydrippers version came out (though they’d been playing it onstage prior to that). And perhaps because they forgot to make room for it on the reissue for the previous album, “Tomorrow’s (Just Another Day)” features Elvis singing with Madness on a rearrangement of their own song.
Covers show up in the demos and onstage: John Hiatt’s “She Loves The Jerk”, “What I Like Most About You Is Your Girlfriend” by The Special A.K.A., and “Sleepless Nights”, previously covered by his beloved Gram Parsons. Through these examples one gets a better sense of how and why the record turned out like it did, as well as insight into the inner turmoil and confusion that put him at odds with his chosen career. And in a small way, they provide a transition to his next grand experiment.
Elvis Costello & The Attractions Goodbye Cruel World (1984)—2
1995 Rykodisc: same as 1984, plus 10 extra tracks
2004 Rhino: same as 1984, plus 26 extra tracks
No comments:
Post a Comment