Midway through the Eighties things started to change. Bands
you’d been listening happily to were no longer around or no longer doing their
best stuff. Some who had been off their game for a while went completely off
the rails, trying things they would never have done in saner times. Everything
became “blockbuster” minded, wholly without irony. You could see it, if you
were paying attention, in the terms by which everything was judged.
Around that time Elvis Costello got tired of being Elvis
Costello. Granted, “Elvis Costello” was the perhaps not entirely sensible name
dreamed up, on the spur of the moment seemingly, by one Declan McManus. And now
he was beginning to regret borrowing the King’s name, or maybe he was just beginning
to regret getting stuck with all that Angry Young Man baggage that had suited
him so well in the late Seventies, but which he was already trying to ditch for
lounge-lizard savvy and Geoff Emerick-engineered pyrotechnics. Was he hitting
the mid-career slump, something that even Stax-style horns or a dose of Darryl
Hall or Paul McCartney couldn’t fix?
He’d already tried a Country sojourn with an album of
covers, 1981’s Almost Blue. But maybe
there was still something to be found there, and anyway maybe it was time to find
other musicians than the erstwhile Attractions, who had seen him through all
the changes to date. So, inspired by working with T-Bone Burnett, a rather
eclectic dude in his own right, McManus/Costello booked time in LA with guys
who used to play with the real Elvis as well as Gram Parsons (Costello had
already done an amazing job on two Parsons tunes, “I’m Your Toy” and “How Much
I Lied” on Almost Blue). The result, released in 1986, is one of
Costello’s best albums of the Eighties (billed as “The Elvis Costello Show”).
And why not call it The King of America
just to rub a bit of salt in.
Today’s song is one of my favorite tracks from the album,
showing how Costello can work a ballad with torch-song pretensions, making it
an occasion for getting misty at the right moments, and keeping twang at bay
even while inviting it with his very sensitive acoustic guitar. It would be a
great C&W song, almost (except its lyrics are a bit too sophisticated, so,
OK, maybe it could be a Gram Parsons’ song—it would’ve been interesting to hear
him do it as a duet with Emmylou).
The song sets up the idea that “indoors fireworks” are what
happen when lovers are getting it on. Though it may be hard not to think of “skyrockets in flight,”
Costello cleverly makes the fireworks not so safe—“can still burn your fingers,”
“we swore were safe as houses.” Not spectacular like those in the sky, they “can
still dazzle and delight,” then the kicker: “or bring a tear when the smoke
gets in your eye.” Smoke in one’s eye has long been a figure for not seeing
clearly in love affairs (see the song by The Platters: “when a lovely flame
dies / smoke gets in your eyes”), so here the smoke of those fireworks—little orgasmic
sparks—can bring a tear (from being moved) but also the tears of knowing what
one would rather not. It’s all “parlour games” and “make believe.” And EC even
throws in a sop to the soap opera nature of all lovers’ spats: “everybody loves
a happy ending / But we don’t even try / We go straight past pretending / To
the part where everybody loves to cry.” Break out the hankies!
It’s going to end sadly, and badly. But EC keeps so much
brio in the game, it’s hard to see this as a depressed or despairing song. It’s
full of a joie de vivre (“You were the spice in life / The gin in my vermouth”)
that should equate to well-worth preserving amours. “Though the sparks would fly / I thought our love
was fireproof” he quips, then gives a bit of the old push-and-purr: “Sometimes
we’d fight in public, darling / With very little cause / But different kinds of
sparks would fly / When we got on our own behind closed doors.” The contrast
between public and private is something that endeared this song to me, being,
myself, a veteran of both public and private conflagrations. It was good to
hear EC work the relation between the two things so well. It’s the difference
between giving a shit and not.
Of course, one might say it’s always better when it’s all
simpatico, but. Me and EC in this song know better. I’m with him on this one
and, in 1986 when this song became one of my go-to songs, there already had been
and would be again just those kinds of scenes.
Which is why, I suppose, the ending of this song is one I’m
very fond of. Indeed, I like to sing this song quietly to myself when no one’s
listening. Let’s face it, you can’t be much of a performer if you can’t milk
that last verse for all its worth:
It’s time to tell the
truth / These things have to be faced / My fuse is burning out / And all that
powder’s gone to waste (bear in mind I’ve been singing this since I was
27).
But don’t think for a
moment, dear / That we’ll ever be through / I’ll build a bonfire of my dreams /
And burn a broken effigy of me and you.
Burn a bro-ken ef-fi-gy
of / me’n’you. You see the figures
of the two of them collapsing together in a little bonfire, a bonfire of the
dreams of something more or else or other. From fireworks we get to fire, the
all-consuming kind, the kind that just leaves ashes for someone to sweep up
later (see Gram Parsons: “We’ll Sweep Out the Ashes in the Morning”).
And the long delay at the end of the final chorus is choice
too: “when the smoke gets in . . . your . . . . . . . eye.”
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