Allusion and Influence in Elvis Costello
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.v2i2.201Keywords:
allusion, Elvis Costello, musical historyAbstract
At a certain point in musical history, perhaps the post-modern moment, past styles were made available, especially by recording technology, with the result that allusion to past works became a common feature. This paper unpicks the consequences of allusiveness in an artist’s work, leading to the idea that what is gained in playful or scholarly allusion might be lost in the potential to influence others. Three ways in which Elvis Costello alludes to the past are reviewed, systematically: in words, in music, but also in deed, actions that look back to a prior model. In order to draw consequences for the writing of musical history, finally, a distinction is made between ‘talking about influence’ and ‘talking about inter-textuality’, representing different premises on the part of the historian.
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Zollo, Paul. 1997. Songwriters on Songwriting. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press.
Bauldie, John, ed. 1992. Wanted Man: In Search of Bob Dylan. London: Penguin.
Brackett, David. 2005. ‘Elvis Costello, the Empire of the E Chord, and a Magic Moment or two.’ Popular Music 24/3: 357–67.
Bruno, Franklin. 2005. Armed Forces. London: Continuum.
Burkholder, Peter. ‘Borrowing.’ In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 2nd edn, Macmillan, 2001. Accessed via www.grovemusic.com.
Carr, Roy, Brian Case and Fred Dellar. 1986. The Hip: Hipsters, Jazz and the Beat Generation. London: Faber.
Clarke, Victoria Mary, and Shane MacGowan. 2002. A Drink with Shane MacGowan. London: Pan.
Cook, Richard, and Brian Morton. 1996. The Penguin Guide to Jazz. London: Penguin.
Costello, Elvis. 2000. ‘Costello’s 500.’ Vanity Fair, November 2000: 60–78.
—2002. ‘Rocking around the Clock.’ In Da Capo Best Music Writing 2003, ed. Matt Groening and Paul Bresnick, 277–88. Cambridge. MA: De Capo.
Eddy, Chuck. 1997. The Accidental Evolution of Rock ’n’ Roll. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo.
Elam, Helen Regueiro. 1993a. ‘Influence.’ In Preminger and Brogan 1993, 605–608.
—1993b. ‘Intertextuality.’ In Preminger and Brogan 1993, 620–22.
Frith, Simon. 1988. Music for Pleasure: Essays in the Sociology of Music. Cambridge: Polity Press.
—1992. ‘The Cultural Study of Popular Music.’ In Cultural Studies, eds Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson and Paula Treischler, 174–81. London: Routledge.
—2004. ‘Does British Music Still Matter?: A Reflection on the Changing Status of British Popular Music in the Global Music Market.’ In European Journal of Cultural Studies (February 2004): 43–58.
Gallagher, Tom, Michael Campbell and Murdo Gillies. 1995. All Men Have Secrets. London: Virgin.
Griffiths, Dai. 2004. ‘History and Class Consciousness: Pop Music towards 2000.’ In The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Music, eds Nicholas Cook and Anthony Pople, 557–83. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
—2007. Elvis Costello. London: Equinox.
Gudas, Fabian. 1993. ‘Originality.’ In Preminger and Brogan 1993, 869–60.
Guralnick, Peter. 1995. Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley. London: Abacus.
Hinton, Brian. 1999. Let Them All Talk: The Music of Elvis Costello. London: Sanctuary.
Jameson, Fredric. 1991. Postmodernism or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. London: Verso.
Lacasse, Serge. 2000. ‘Intertextuality and Hypertextuality in Recorded Popular Music.’ In The Musical Work: Reality or Invention?, ed. Michael Talbot, 35–58. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.
Marcus, Greil. 1993. In the Fascist Bathroom: Writings on Punk 1977–1992. London: Viking.
Marcus, Greil, ed. 1979. Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island. New York: Knopf.
Miner, Earl. 1993. ‘Allusion.’ In Preminger and Brogan 1993, 38–40.
Moore, Allan F. 1993. Rock: the Primary Text. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Pattenden, Mike. 1999. Last Orders at the Liars’ Bar: The Official Story of the Beautiful South. London: Gollancz.
Preminger, Alex, and T. V. F. Brogan, eds. 1993. The New Princeton Encyclopaedia of Poetry and Poetics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Reynolds, Simon. 1991. ‘Elvis Costello and Martin Amis: Prophets of Doom.’ First published in Arena accessed through Elvis Costello Information Service. www.elviscostello.info
Ricks, Christopher. 2002. ‘Plagiarism.’ In Allusion to the Poets, 219–40. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rosten, Leo. 1971. The Joys of Yiddish. London: Penguin.
Sheppard, David. 2000. Elvis Costello. London: Unanimous.
St Michaels, Mick. 1986. Elvis Costello: An Illustrated Biography. London: Omnibus.
Thompson, Graeme. 2004. Complicated Shadows: The Life and Music of Elvis Costello. Edinburgh: Canongate.
Zollo, Paul. 1997. Songwriters on Songwriting. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press.
Published
2007-12-19
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Griffiths, D. (2007). Allusion and Influence in Elvis Costello. Popular Music History, 2(2), 201-221. https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.v2i2.201
