Complicated Shadows (38 page)

Elsewhere during the evening’s entertainments, John Doe joined in on The Troggs’ ‘Wild Thing’, Waits duetted with Elvis on a cover of ‘I Forgot More Than
You’ll Ever Know’, and three-quarters of The Bangles replaced The Attractions mid-set, adding backing vocals on The Beatles’ ‘Yes It Is’, their own ‘If She Knew
What She Wants’ and Elvis’s ‘Next Time ’Round’. Then The Attractions roared into the second half with ‘You Belong To Me’, before closing on the irresitible
one-two of ‘Everyday I Write The Book’ and ‘Pump It Up’. In the
LA Times
, Chris Willman called the hugely entertaining proceedings a ‘spectacle akin to a
meeting of PT Barnum, any slick TV game show host you want to name and The Troggs. It was all warm, witty and wonderful.’

It was also difficult to top, but that wouldn’t stop him trying. The final night’s performance at the Beverly Theater was designed to showcase the
Blood & Chocolate
material. Elvis and The Attractions played nine songs from the record, but there were other delights: ‘The Beat’, ‘Man Out Of Time’, ‘Clubland’, ‘Suit Of
Lights’, ‘Kid About It’ and a medley of ‘Ferry ’Cross The Mersey’ and the ultra-rare ‘Tiny Steps’ to name a few. The encore featured Tom Petty on
‘(What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding’, ‘American Girl’ and ‘So You Want To Be A Rock & Roll Star’.

The shows were an undoubted triumph, but it wasn’t all sweetness. Elvis was having a fractious time with the media. First, he had banned news photographers from the concerts, attracting
widespread criticism. Jake Riviera claimed that photographers would ‘ruin the show for the
1300 people who bought tickets’, adding with typical forthrightness
that ‘most newspapers and magazines in this country aren’t worth reading’.
⁹
Instead, one photographer was hired to distribute
syndicated photos to all the papers.

Then there was a one-sided spat with Robert Hilburn from the
LA Times
, whose review of the opening night’s show – though largely positive – had attracted Elvis’s
ire for its charges of the ‘predictability’ of the setlist. In response, Elvis had taken a few over-sensitive pot-shots at Hilburn from the stage during the five-night run. Clearly not
a man to hold a grudge, Hilburn was brave enough to review the final show, and declared the entire five nights ‘one of the most memorable engagements ever in Los Angeles rock’.

It was a tall claim, but true. The diversity of Elvis’s shows defied the predictability of standard rock convention, leaving virutally every other live act around looking tired and
unadventurous. But then only an artist with an enormous repertoire of quality material and a loyal and willing audience could have pulled it off: over the entirety of the US tour, Elvis would play
over 125 different songs in wildly differing formats.

No matter how artistically fulfilling it would prove to be, however, Columbia had finally come to the conclusion that their new wave goose was not going to deliver any more gold records. They
were also tired of throwing good money after bad in what they perceived as bizarre and commercially suicidal moves, like releasing two six-minute singles or playing five nights with two bands in
tiny theatres. Elvis’s Spinning Songbook may have sown the seeds for the infinitely more hi-tech but equally chaotic, ironic and inventive rock shows of the ’90s, such as U2’s
‘Zooropa’ tour, but it was the end of the road for his record company.

* * *

After the highs of Los Angeles, everything else risked becoming anti-climatic. They played only three nights in San Francisco, Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia, and the
sets were compressed and adapted accordingly. There was also a dearth of musical celebrities. Huey Lewis was a solid MC in San Francisco, but in Chicago it was left to
members of the Chicago Bears NFL football team to spin the wheel. In New York, magician-cum-comedians Penn and Teller were co-MCs, and the show at the Broadway Theatre ended with Penn riling Elvis
by shouting for Bruce Springsteen songs, calling Bruce ‘the greatest rock ’n’ roller the world has ever seen’. Elvis kicked him off stage and played ‘Pump It Up’
instead.

However, there were numerous musical highlights: Cait played bass on ‘Poor Napoleon’ and added backing vocals to ‘Crimes Of Paris’; in Chicago, the Spinning Songbook
threw up a nostalgic cover of ‘I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself’, while Elvis dedicated a new piano ballad called ‘The Last Time You Were Leaving’ to Cait; in
Boston, there were solo versions of ‘Shipbuilding’ and ‘Tokyo Storm Warning’ and a rare outing for the superior
King Of America
out-take ‘Shoes Without
Heels’.

In New York, there were solo versions of ‘Party Girl’ and ‘You Little Fool’, covers of Bob Dylan’s ‘I Threw It All Away’ and Buddy Holly’s
‘True Love Ways’ – dedicated to Columbia and Cait respectively, with very different motivations. The final three dates in Philadelphia saw Mitchell Froom depart and Benmont Tench
take over keyboard duties in The Confederates. ‘King Horse’ got a one-off airing with The Attractions, while Elvis performed ‘Hoover Factory’ solo and ‘Shot With His
Own Gun’ with Steve, neither of which were played anywhere else on tour.

The budget didn’t stretch to bringing The Confederates over to Europe and anyway, their contribution was probably the least inventive of all the creative elements of the tour. It was just
Elvis and The Attractions again, and left alone they finally began to fall apart. ‘My relationship with the band had now soured almost beyond repair,’
¹⁰
Elvis admitted.

At Dublin’s Olympia Theatre on 2 December, Elvis opened his solo set with a short story, called ‘How Joe Soap Got Into Everyone’. This followed on from the set
in London on 28 November, where he had begun with a short story entitled ‘Getting Into Showbiz’. Both were pointed responses to the fact that Bruce Thomas had begun
writing about his life on the road, extracts of which were being published in instalments in London’s
Time Out
magazine. These loose memoirs would eventually become a book called
The Big Wheel
, and the portayal of Elvis was not necessarily flattering. Thomas disparagingly called him ‘The Pod’ while also referring to a certain lack of thoroughness in
aspects of his personal hygiene. ‘I knew what corns to tread on,’ he admits.

When the tour ended in Liverpool on 9 December, Elvis quickly followed through on the decision he had made back in 1984. He took The Attractions out to dinner over Christmas and essentially told
them their time was up, that he could no longer afford to keep them on salary and that he wanted a break from the responsibilities of being a band leader to do new things. In future, he envisaged
occasional
ad hoc
projects, essentially using them as session musicians.

It was delivered with all the coolness of a straightforward business decision. ‘We were never particularly friendly,’ Elvis later explained. ‘We didn’t spend lots of time
together when we weren’t on the road. We were thrown together so much because we were touring, so you assumed there was a very strong bond. But what it really was was me
and
a really
great group. It had to be my decision the way we went, because I was the mug out front.’
¹¹

After almost ten years, the band took it very badly. ‘It did hurt,’ said Pete Thomas. ‘It
really
hurt, and I’m sure he knew it would.’
¹²
Steve Nieve was the worst affected. Always the least bouyant member of the group, Steve had been badly hurt by the deterioration of the group’s
spirit, and the fact that, musically, he had been made to feel superfluous to requirements for some time. The most innovative and often inspired member of The Attractions – and certainly the
most instantly identifiable contributor – his sidelined role on
Blood & Chocolate
and the subsequent manner in which The Attractions were jettisoned was a hammer blow. ‘It
was a shock,’ he later admitted. ‘It
resulted in a depression that eventually caused me to take a long, hard look at myself and make some difficult
changes.’
¹³

In the circumstances, The Attractions’ three-night last stand at the Royal Albert Hall between the 22–24 January was the last thing the pianist needed. Both Steve and Bruce felt
strongly that Elvis was less than supportive in the way he responded to Nieve’s depression, a belief which played a significant part in the resentment that lingered over the ensuing years.
Little wonder that the Albert Hall shows were some way short of peak performances. The Attractions knew their time was up and the manner in which the parting of the ways had been conducted left
them playing with pent-up bitterness rather than the euphoria of a final fling.

Thankfully, there was a chance for one final goodbye later in the year, a long-standing contractual obligation to play at the Glastonbury Festival on 20 June 1987. Elvis played the longer
opening set solo, as if to delay the final showdown as long as possible. Los Lobos’s David Hidalgo came in on backing vocals on ‘American Without Tears’, while Elvis added a
beatbox to a raucous ‘Pump It Up’, which also took in Prince’s ‘Sign ‘O’ The Times’ and Bob Dylan’s ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’.

Then The Attractions appeared, bursting into ‘I Hope You’re Happy Now’, and this time they blazed. It was a short eleven-song set, savage in its intensity. Elvis seemed happy
to veer off at tangents, morphing ‘Less Than Zero’ into ‘Twist And Shout’, while ‘You Belong To Me’ explicitly acknowledged its debt to ‘The Last
Time’. It all ended with ‘Poor Napoleon’ sidestepping into a violent, improvised ‘Instant Karma’: ‘I’m sure it was suppposed to mean something at the
time,’
¹⁴
said Elvis, ruefully. And that was that. It would be their last concert together for over seven years. It was time to move on.

PART THREE

Having It All

IN AN ATTEMPT TO ALLEVIATE THE TENSION
and pressure of almost continual touring during the early years of his career, Elvis had visited a masseuse.
‘You’re all wound up, just relax,’ he was told. ‘It’s my
job
to get wound up,’ replied Elvis. Throughout the ’70s and first half of the ’80s
there was a real sense that this was a man who was rarely happy within his own skin. But now, freed from the responsibilities of being a band leader and settling into domesticity with Cait, the
idea of living a life filled with tension and upheavals, and putting everybody else through the wringer in the process, seemed to have lost a substantial amount of its appeal. ‘He became
really friendly and a completely different man, almost,’ says Bob Geldof. ‘I suppose it’s a function of age. We all change. But he became really
overtly
friendly and
chatty and helpful. I [started to] like him as a person a lot.’

As his ten-year relationships with both Columbia and The Attractions reached acrimonious ends, Elvis felt unfettered, free to write, record and perform in any style he wanted. It was the perfect
opportunity to explore all the options before committing himself to making a record, and throughout the spring and summer of 1987, he continued playing and composing instinctively, with little
agenda. Having released two magnificent records in the previous twelve months, he was in no hurry to return to the fray just yet.

He was spending much of his time in Dublin. Cait had a part in an Irish film called
The Courier
, and Elvis had allowed his arm to be twisted into writing much of
the incidental music. Over the summer, the couple spent a few months in the Gresham Hotel on O’Connell Street, and the first batch of new songs began to take shape.

Elvis had performed ‘Any King’s Shilling’ throughout both The Confederates’ first UK tour in January and early February, and the short solo tour of American university
halls he undertook with Nick Lowe in April.
³⁵
The song was a restrained, sincere narrative detailing his grandfather Pat’s experiences as an
Irish-blooded British soldier in Ireland. ‘He fell in with a couple of brothers who – shortly before the 1916 Rising – warned him to keep his head down,’ Elvis recalled.
‘They were aware of what was gonna go down and didn’t want to see one of their own getting their head shot off.’
¹