Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach - The Songs Of Bacharach & Costello - 2 x Vinyl LPs + 4 CD box set

2023 release

4CD+2LP super deluxe edition which offers a 2LP vinyl set – of which three sides are the remastered Painted From Memory and the fourth and final side is ‘Selections from Taken From Life’ (6 tracks out of 16) – and 4CDs. The first two CDs are Painted From Memory and the full ‘Taken From Life’, while CD 3 and CD 4 offer rare live performances (with and without Bacharach).

 

 

The Songs of Bacharach & Costello, celebrates a collaboration which began in 1995 and which continues to this day.

Those who were surprised by the writers of “I’m Not Angry” and “What’s New Pussycat?” working together perhaps overlooked that Bacharach was engaging in musical collaboration for only the second time in his storied career – the first resulting in just a handful of songs musically written with Neil Diamond.

It was Costello who wrote the first musical draft of “God Give Me Strength,”communicating from Dublin to Los Angeles by fax – back in the 20th Century – and far from being offended by this presumption, Bacharach sent back an amended copy, laying out the signature intro motif for flugelhorn, adding the expansive bridge section and making all sorts of subtle but crucial amendments to the melodic and rhythmic phrasing of Costello’s first draft.

This song was a commission for the Allison Anders’ motion picture, “Grace Of My Heart,” and though both song and movie were overlooked by the Academy Awards, the song did place in the GRAMMY nominations of the following year, as Costello remarked in his book “Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink”: “To have written a song like “God Give Me Strength” and simply stopped would have been ridiculous.”

So began a series of face-to-face songwriting sessions in both California and New York City.

Their working methods ranged from one writer responding to the other’s opening musical statement to Costello trying to put lyrical substance and definition to a complete Bacharach composition that did not need any such musical reply. By the end of their initial sessions, there were occasions when they were seated across the room at two pianos, writing successive bars of the new tune.

Recorded in Hollywood in 1998, the album, Painted From Memory – orchestrated by Bacharach with the exception of the title track which was arranged by the great Johnny Mandel – has gone on to capture an appreciative worldwide audience far beyond its initial release. The song “I Still Have That Other Girl”even managed to wrestle a GRAMMY away from both Celine Dion and Van Morrison – no easy task in the crowded field of the “Best Collaboration With Vocals” category of the 41st Awards.

The idea that the songs and lovelorn themes of Painted From Memory might be realized on the Broadway stage were perhaps an unlikely prospect, given that, as Costello puts it in his essay, such a show might feel, “Like Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” only with less tap-dancing.”

Nevertheless, this was the belief of dedicated Painted From Memory aficionado and television comedy mogul, Chuck Lorre, who together with Tony Award-winning writer, Steven Sater, set about threading a story through the original folio of songs, creating a tale and set of characters who demanded that Bacharach and Costello write more than a dozen additional songs.

Writing the lyrics of these new songs, Costello told us, “These reflect the stories and impulses of a group of people who are, obsessive and vain, who are betrayed and become disappointed in life but long tenderly for a happier time, who are unfaithful, dishonest, destructive and turn out to be the inventors of a dangerous past, who are guilty, haunted and romantically deluded, desperate, vengeful and even cruel.”

“In their musical form they are different kinds of dark love songs that anyone might sing if they happened to be an artist, his model, a wife, a fantasist, a lover, a philanderer or disillusioned daughter.

You know, fun for all the family.”

These songs are all found on Taken From Life, opening and closing with “You Can Have Her”and “Look Up Again,”arranged by Vince Mendoza and recorded at Capitol Studios, Hollywood in September 2021 under the direction of Bacharach.

The Taken From Life collection also brings together performances on which Bacharach led The Imposters for the GRAMMY winning album, Look Now, and songs from the proposed score from the E.P. Purse and the Decca Records release, The Sweetest Punch, on which guitarist Bill Frisell arranged the then brand new Bacharach/Costello songs for the voice of Cassandra Wilson and the clarinetist, Don Byron.

The Taken From Life title track is a 2022 recording with The Imposters produced by Sebastian Keys and the collection is completed by startling and beautiful vocal performances of other songs from the “Painted From Memory” musical score by Audra Mae and Jenni Muldaur with the piano accompaniment of Jim Cox and Thomas Bartlett, including the tragic, “I Looked Away”and the deranged catalogue song,“Shameless,”just two of the 19 previously unreleased tracks included in the set.

Along with multiple lyrical drafts of “This House Is Empty Now” which reveal the harrowing disillusionment beneath the more measured tone of the finished lyric, pages from the draft script are also reproduced with pencil annotations proposing lyrical changes and even other unwritten songs.

Opportunities to see Bacharach and Costello perform on stage were rare. Their 1998 tour opened at Radio City Musical Hall, NYC and closed five shows later at the Royal Festival Hall, London, after just a handful of television and radio appearances.

However, Costello and Steve Nieve began the “Lonely World Tour” – taking its title from a line in the Painted From Memory song, “What’s Her Name Today?”– opening with an appearance with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra at Berwaldhallen in Stockholm on the Feast Of The Epiphany, 1999 and proceeded to place the Bacharach/Costello songs central to their concert repertoire from Toronto to Tokyo, and closing in Osaka on December 18th, in a concert in which forty songs were performed.

Bacharach’s songs written with his greatest lyricist, Hal David (as well as those written with Bob Hilliard and Mack David) were heard on English radio and television from his latter collaborator’s earliest memories.

Costello’s 10,000 word essay is illustrated by a number of photographs including detail from a shot of the entire company of the Royal Variety Performance of 1963, in which The Beatles – who had recently recorded Bacharach’s “Baby It’s You” – are seen flirting with Marlene Dietrich, whose accompanist, Bacharach can be found in the third row back, just four places along from Costello’s father, Ross MacManus, who was also heard at the famous “rattle yer jewelry” show, singing with The Joe Loss Orchestra.

Aside from this strange coincidence that his father appeared on the bill with two songwriters with whom “Elvis Costello” would write more than thirty songs, Declan MacManus’ upbringing was like anyone else who grew up in England during the early 1960s in that he lived in the shadow and under the spell of BBC Light Entertainment on which Bacharach/David songs were first heard sung by Cilla Black, Dusty Springfield or Zoot Money and The Big Roll Band before these renditions were chased up the hit parade by the “original” recordings by Dionne Warwick and many other great American vocal artists.

From his first concert hall dates with the Attractions as part of the “Live Stiffs” package tour in 1977, Costello turned to the Bacharach/David songbook for “I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself,” the first performance of a tune other than his own to make it on to vinyl.

“Costello Sings Bacharach/David,” traces the singer’s relationship from that date through a duet with Nick Lowe on “Baby It’s You,” a version of “Please Stay” recorded in Barbados, all the way to a trio of Bacharach/David classics performed at the Royal Festival Hall in 1999, including “Make It Easy On Yourself,”“My Little Red Book,” and “Anyone Who Had A Heart.”

Another studio collaboration yielded a rendition of “I’ll Never Fall In Love Again” recorded for the Austin Powers – The Spy Who Shagged Me soundtrack, in which both artists made a cameo appearance.

Indeed this in turn led to exploratory workshops with Mike Myers for a possible stage adaptation of “Austin Powers” and further songwriting sessions with the Bacharach/Costello team completing or sketching up to fifteen more songs, one of which would have been a “secret track” back in this collection in the carefree days before algorithms ruled the waves but which is tucked on the end of the Taken From Lifealbum, in the form of Bacharach’s tender and intimate vocal and piano performance of one of the more unexpected drafted subplots – the song of a disillusioned spy entitled: “Lie Back And Think Of England.”

Painted From Memory has been newly remastered for its 25th anniversary from the original tapes by Bob Ludwig at Gateway Mastering Studios.

 

Selections

2LP

Painted from Memory

Side A:

1. In the Darkest Place
2. Toledo
3. I Still Have That Other Girl
4. This House Is Empty Now

Side B:

1. Tears at the Birthday Party
2. Such Unlikely Lovers
3. My Thief
4. The Long Division

Side C:

1. Painted from Memory
2. The Sweetest Punch
3. What's Her Name Today?
4. God Give Me Strength

Selections from Taken from Life

Side D:

1. Elvis Costello - You Can Have Her
2. Audra Mae - Don't Look Now
3. Audra Mae - I Looked Away
4. Elvis Costello & the Imposters - Taken from Life
5. Audra Mae - What's Her Name Today?
6. Elvis Costello - Look Up Again

CD1 - Painted from Memory

1. In the Darkest Place
2. Toledo
3. I Still Have That Other Girl
4. This House Is Empty Now
5. Tears at the Birthday Party
6. Such Unlikely Lovers
7. My Thief
8. The Long Division
9. Painted from Memory
10. The Sweetest Punch
11. What's Her Name Today?
12. God Give Me Strength

CD2 - Taken from Life

1. Elvis Costello - You Can Have Her
2. Cassandra Wilson & Bill Frisell - Painted from Memory
3. Elvis Costello & the Imposters - Don't Look Now
4. Elvis Costello & the Imposters - Everyone's Playing House
5. Audra Mae - I Looked Away
6. Elvis Costello & the Imposters - Taken from Life
7. Don Byron & Bill Frisell - My Thief
8. Jenni Muldaur - Shameless
9. Elvis Costello & the Imposters - Photographs Can Lie
10. Audra Mae - In the Darkest Place
11. Elvis Costello & the Imposters - Why Won't Heaven Help Me?
12. Jenni Muldaur - Stripping Paper
13. Elvis Costello & the Imposters - He's Given Me Things
14. Audra Mae - What's Her Name Today?
15. Elvis Costello - Look Up Again
16. Burt Bacharach - Lie Back & Think of England

CD3 - It's A Lonely World Live

1. Elvis Costello & Steve Nieve - Toledo
2. Elvis Costello & Steve Nieve - In the Darkest Place
3. Elvis Costello & Steve Nieve - My Thief
4. Elvis Costello & Steve Nieve - I Still Have the Other Girl
5. Elvis Costello & Steve Nieve - I'll Never Fall in Love Again
6. Elvis Costello & Steve Nieve - God Give Me Strength
7. Elvis Costello, Steve Nieve & the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra - Painted from Memory
8. Elvis Costello, Steve Nieve & the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra - What's Her Name Today?
9. Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach - This House Is Empty Now

CD4 - Costello Sings Bacharach & David

1. Elvis Costello & the Attractions - I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself - Live in Norwich, UK, University of East Anglia - October 17, 1977
2. Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe - Baby It's You
3. Elvis Costello - Please Stay
4. Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach - I'll Never Fall in Love Again
5. Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach - Make It Easy On Yourself - Live in London, UK, Royal Festival Hall - October 29, 1998
6. Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach - My Little Red Book - Live in London, UK, Royal Festival Hall - October 29, 1998
7. Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach - Anyone Who Had a Heart - Live in London, UK, Royal Festival Hall - October 29, 1998
8. Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach - I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself - Live in New York City, Sessions at West 54th - October 18, 1998