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Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink
Elvis Costello
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Description for Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink
Paperback. Born Declan Patrick MacManus, Elvis Costello was raised in London and Liverpool, grandson of a trumpet player on the White Star Line and son of a jazz musician who became a successful radio dance band vocalist. This book describes how his career has somehow endured for almost four decades through a combination of dumb luck and animal cunning. Num Pages: 688 pages. BIC Classification: AVGP; AVH; BGFA. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 130 x 197 x 41. Weight in Grams: 504.
'Fantastic' Nick Hornby 'Beautifully written' Sunday Times 'Truly remarkable' Rolling Stone Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink is the long-awaited memoir from Elvis Costello, one of rock and roll's most iconic stars. Born Declan Patrick MacManus, Elvis Costello was raised in London and Liverpool, grandson of a trumpet player on the White Star Line and son of a jazz musician who became a successful radio dance band vocalist. Costello went into the family business and had taken the popular music world by storm before he was twenty-four. Costello continues to ... Read moreadd to one of the most intriguing and extensive songbooks of the day. His performances have taken him from a cardboard guitar in his front room to fronting a rock and roll band on your television screen and performing in the world's greatest concert halls in a wild variety of company. Unfaithful Music describes how Costello's career has somehow endured for almost four decades through a combination of dumb luck and animal cunning, even managing the occasional absurd episode of pop stardom. This memoir, written with the same inimitable touch as his lyrics, and including dozens of images from his personal archive, offers his unique view of his unlikely and sometimes comical rise to international success, with diversions through the previously undocumented emotional foundations of some of his best known songs and the hits of tomorrow. The book contains many stories and observations about his renowned co-writers and co-conspirators, though Costello also pauses along the way for considerations on the less appealing side of infamy. Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink is destined to be a classic, idiosyncratic memoir of a singular man. Show Less
Product Details
Place of Publication
London, United Kingdom
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 5 to 9 working days
About Elvis Costello
Elvis Costello has written and recorded legendary albums including My Aim Is True, This Year's Model, Armed Forces, Imperial Bedroom, and King of America, and songs including Alison , Watching the Detectives , Oliver's Army , Almost Blue , Shipbuilding , I Want You , Tramp the Dirt Down and Jimmie ... Read moreStanding In The Rain . He has collaborated with The Attractions, Paul McCartney, the Brodsky Quartet, Burt Bacharach, Allen Toussaint and The Roots, and has written songs for George Jones, Chet Baker, Solomon Burke and Johnny Cash. He has enjoyed the acclaim and the infamy that comes with a forty-year career in show business. Show Less
Reviews for Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink
Studded with entertaining anecdotes
Evening Standard Best Music Books of 2015 His book is almost essential as an idiosyncratic history of 20th-century pop music
Express
With an encyclopedic knowledge and appreciation for, and deep love of, music, and with an expressive power and heart, Costello's memoir will take its place in the highest echelons of the genre ... Read more
Library Journal (starred review)
The story unfolds like a movie that jumps across time, more thematic than chronological, as boyhood anecdotes and obsessions intersect with mature songs and adult reckoning.... The book doubles as a selective mini-history of 20th century music, as told by a discerning guide. He addresses artists both towering (Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Johnny Cash) and relatively unheralded (David Ackles, Robert Wyatt) with a fan's affection and music scholar's insight
Greg Kot
Chicago Tribune
Costello['s] book is capacious, clever, and full of heart and soul
Dan DeLuca
Philadelphia Inquirer
[Costello] pens books with the same clever writing that he uses in song
Kathy Flanigan
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
Enthralling ... This is family history as musical encyclopedia, and to listen to Costello recount his life is to be buttonholed by an enthusiastic fan. Fandom for Costello is inseparable from the compulsion to write songs and, it seems, to understand his own life ... Fortunately for the fan of Costello's music the topic of discussion is often his own songs, and he is, unsurprisingly, a witty and eloquent guide
Paul Grimstad
New Republic
Elvis Costello delivers an impeccably detailed autobiography. He's often as brilliant at turning a phrase in prose as he is in his lyrics
Paste Magazine
Vivid ... It's not surprising that one of rock's most literate songwriters would pen such a deep, free-form memoir
Houston Chronicle
Punctuated with sardonic and self-aware truths
Pitchfork
A winningly droll and good-natured guide to his life and many works throughout
Clark Collis
Entertainment Weekly
Revelatory, evocatively crafted, [and] highly entertaining
David Fricke
Rolling Stone
Often brilliant and wholly idiosyncratic
David Ulin
Los Angeles Times
Plenty of tales to keep the pages turning. Readers will be fascinated by Costello's stories...his book feels like a discussion between friends over a pint.
Publishers Weekly
Costello's prose cuts with the same spiky wit and observational power as his well-known lyrics ... packed with great lines, vivid anecdotes ... a treat for his many fans.
Kirkus Reviews
This is a big book, literally, by one of the best rockers in the business. Given the singular, and eclectic, nature of his career, it is no surprise that Elvis Costello's anecdotal autobiography is an idiosyncratic journey through his music and the people and places that have inspired him ... A must for Costello fans everywhere.
Booklist (starred review)
Writers like Costello because he's always taken writing seriously. That's obvious to anyone who pays attention to his lyrics, and it's even more apparent to anyone who reads Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink, his charming new autobiography. The book is refreshingly free of salacious gossip and needless name-dropping; it's an intelligent self-assessment from a musician who went from angry young man to elder statesman of pop ... a defiantly fun autobiography.
Michael Schaub
NPR Books
For serious music fans? It has to be Elvis Costello's Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink (Viking). Utterly definitive and clearly, painstakingly penned by Costello himself, who doesn't want to miss a detail
Kitty Empire
Guardian
The writing is as good as you would expect from such an accomplished lyricist. The tone is wise, warm and often rueful, befitting a 61-year-old elder statesman, and the story a compelling one
Mail on Sunday
Typically sharp and funny on songwriting
Telegraph Books of the Year
It really is stunning. Hugely illuminating, fiercely passionate, funny, moving and beautifully written.
Mark Billingham The greatest songwriter of our generation ... a tremendous read
Jonathan Ross One of the finest musical biographies I have ever read ... an engrossing and rewarding read
Keith Bruce
The Herald
Without doubt, one of the greatest self-penned appraisals of a popular entertainer's life and work...What makes this book a classic (yes, you heard me) is the beauty of the writing, the seemingly effortless imagery of situations, saints and sinners (EC puts himself in the latter category, often), and the persuasive nature of the text that should make even the most casual reader clamour for more after 670 pages
The Quietus
A series of wryly comic tales that surely deserve the full Penguin Classic treatment randomly afford Morrisey
GQ
A truly weighty rock memoir ... There's plenty of insight into his art here, a smattering of gossip, a wealth of pop-cultural knowledge, and just enough self-flagellation to keep things interesting
NME
His witty, word-playing voice transmits loud and clear....there are smart snapshots of vanished worlds...all his sins and virtues are displayed in this stylish, astute book
Victoria Segal
Sunday Times
Remarkable for its breadth and candour about everything: childhood, family, marriages, musical collaborations, love life, heroes, villains, screw-ups (even the most painful) and his songs...there are treasurable moments in profusion for admirers panning for gold...or diving for pearls
MOJO
Every page exudes his deep love and knowledge of modern music
Guardian
Written elliptically, episodically beautiful ... this man's knowledge is breath-taking
Observer
Costello ultimately emerges as a clever, compassionate, self-aware man, brave enough to acknowledge his faults and fortunate enough to have overcome the worst of them
Sunday Telegraph
In a world littered with uneven (and largely ghosted) celebrity memoirs, Disappearing Ink is a beautifully written revelation ... The book is not just for fans. Unfaithful Music is a lyrical tale that stretches across generations, geography and a century of popular song.
Washington Post
Long one of music's wittiest, smartest, and most perceptive lyricists, Costello has done his legacy proud with his new book, which, thankfully, goes far beyond his angry-young-man days, most movingly in its frequent reminiscences about the relationship between the singer and his musician father
New York Magazine
[Unfaithful Music] is truly remarkable in the way it presents a riveting, honest portrait of the author and the many A-listers he's tread the boards with, while ricocheting through the years at an almost breathless pace ... even the most ardent Costello fan will come away having learned more about the man than any of us ever dared hope to discover
Jeff Slate
Rolling Stone
Streaked with some of the best writing - funny, strange, spiteful, anguished - we've ever had from an important musician ... dark gems twinkle here in abundance.
New York Times
By turns lachrymose, self-flagellating and impassioned. Unsurprisingly, it is beautifully written. It is also often extraordinarily moving.
Dan Cairns
Sunday Times
Better written than your average rock memoir ... Costello is one the greatest writers of the 20th Century. It's funny, observant and clear of purpose
Times
The book is fantastic - maybe the best about music by a musician that I've read....The stuff about the collaborations alone - McCartney, Burt Bacharach, Allen Toussaint, the Roots, the Brodsky Quartet - is riveting
Nick Hornby
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