How a racist outburst nearly ended the career of Elvis Costello in 1979
Columbus, Ohio, March 19th 1979. A date that, to this day, makes rock legend Elvis Costello wake up at night with a cold sweat.
We all do things we regret from time to time, but they’re normally things like having a few too many Deliveroo orders in a month. The worst of it is normally kissing someone you really shouldn’t, but some of us roll nat 1s in our charisma checks and at the worst possible moment, act up in a way that is quite literally unforgivable.
Costello was on tour. He and his band, The Attractions, had played that night and were doing their post-it ritual of getting blackout drunk as a result. Then, the other parties involved in the story arrive. Playing in a venue no doubt considerably larger in the same city that night was Stephen Stills and his band. The Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills and Nash legend represented a very different kind of rock stardom than Costello and co.
Principally in that people actually referred to Stills, then a near two decade veteran of rock ‘n’ roll, as an actual rock star. Costello was still some specky pretender who couldn’t sing, making scrappy little songs too slow to be punk, too caustic to be pop and too rigid to be rock. As time went on, this would come to be known as indie rock, but this was the 1970s. ABBA were still together, indie rock as a movement was still a long way off. and
No one let this perceived disrespect more than Costello, and when confronted with a member of the Old Guard like Stills, Costello did what he thought he did best. He lashed out. An altercation started between him and Stills’ backing singer Bonnie Bramlett, seemingly based around Costello trying as hard as he could to insult America and American music. When Bramlett brought up the likes of James Brown and Ray Charles, Costello called them the most disgusting racist slurs he could think of, all for the sake of pissing people off.
Bramlett went to the press with this. For all of Costello’s insecurity about his place in mainstream rock, he was about to find out how far he had to fall. He was on the cusp of something quite special in the states but his racist outburst put a thoroughly deserved kibosh on that. Which leads to a troubling conversation. Because ever since, Costello has taken possibly the best stance on the whole sorry situation that anyone could. That he was drunk and trying to shock by saying things he didn’t mean, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve every ounce of scorn he gets from it.
An admirable stance on the surface. Ray Charles himself gave him a form of mea culpa on it, saying words to the effect of “drunk talk shouldn’t be repeated sober”, and a number of Black musicians, including no less a figure than The Roots‘ ?uestlove, have collaborated with him.
However, does that matter all that much? Being drunk doesn’t make you racist, it makes you honest. The guy still saw Black people, even legends like Ray Charles and James Brown, as beneath him enough to say unforgivable things about them for the sake of pissing off some people he didn’t know.
Costello himself talks a good game, and if he’s to be believed, he doesn’t begrudge anyone who doesn’t forgive him for what he said. It looks like many of his fans have, though. Which, to me, is as picture-perfect an example of white privilege that you’re ever going to get.