Elvis Costello Tickets

Elvis Costello
Declan Patrick MacManus a.k.a Elvis Costello, an English musician, singer, and songwriter of Irish ancestry was born on August 25, 1954, in London and started off from London's pub rock scene in the mid-70s, and afterwards, became associated with the punk rock and new wave musical genres.

Declan MacManus was born in St Mary's Hospital, Paddington in London, and lived in Twickenham, where he attended now St. Mark's Catholic Secondary School in neighbouring Hounslow. MacManus's first television appearance was alongside his musically inclined father Ross MacManus in a television commercial for R.White's lemonade.

MacManus moved with his mother to Birkenhead in 1971. there he formed formed his first band, a folk duo called Rusty. After completing secondary school in Birkenhead, he moved back to London where he next formed a band called Flip City, which had a style very much in the pub rock vein. They were active from 1974 through early 1976. Around this time, MacManus adopted the stage name D.P. Costello.

To support himself, he worked a number of office jobs, most famously at the Elizabeth Arden cosmetics firm - commemorated in the lyrics of "I'm Not Angry" as the "vanity factory" - where he worked as a data entry clerk. On the basis of a demo tape, he was signed to noted independent label Stiff Records. His manager at Stiff, Jake Riviera, suggested a name change, using Elvis Presley's first name and his mother's maiden name to form Elvis Costello.

In 2001, Costello was entitled as the featured "artist in residence" at UCLA and wrote the music for a new ballet. He produced and appeared on an album of songs for opera singer Anne Sofie von Otter, For The Stars. Appropriately enough, this album came out on Deutsche Grammophon.

In 2002 he released a new album, When I Was Cruel, this time on Island Records, and toured with a new band, the Imposters. On February 23rd, 2003, Costello, along with Bruce Springsteen, Steve Van Zandt, and Dave Grohl performed a version of The Clash's "London Calling" at the 45th Grammy Awards ceremony, in honor of legendary Clash frontman Joe Strummer, who had died in December of the previous year. In March 2003, Elvis Costello & The Attractions were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In May, his engagement to Canadian jazz singer and pianist Diana Krall was announced. In September he released North, an album of piano-based ballads concerning the breakdown of his former marriage, and his falling in love with singer Diana Krall.

In 2004, the song "Scarlet Tide" was chosen for an Academy Award; he performed it at the awards ceremony with Alison Krauss, who also sang the song on the official soundtrack. Costello co-wrote many songs on wife Diana Krall's 2004 CD, The Girl in the Other Room, the first of hers to feature several original compositions. In July 2004 Costello's first full-scale orchestral work, Il Sogno, was performed in New York. The work, a ballet after Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, was commissioned by Italian dance group Aterballeto, and received critical acclaim from the classical music critics.

While composing it, Costello intentionally avoided listening to the previous versions by Mendelssohn and Britten in order to ensure his own originality. A range of musical moods and styles are used to represent the different elements of the cast - satirical pomp for the courtiers, jazz for the faeries, and for Bottom a deliberately intrusive "brass band" motif and was released on CD in September by Deutsche Grammophon.

Costello released another album that same month: The Delivery Man recorded in Oxford, Mississippi, and released on Lost Highway Records. Mainly blues, country, and folk, The Delivery Man received early acclaim as one of Costello's best albums.

In July 2005, a CD recording of association with Marian McPartland on her show Piano Jazz was released, featuring Costello singing six jazz standards and two of his own songs, accompanied by Marian McPartland on piano. In November 2005 Costello started recording a new album with Allen Toussaint and producer Joe Henry - The River in Reverse, which was released in the UK on the Verve label on 29 May 2006. Also released in 2006 was a live recording of a concert with the Metropole Orkest at the North Sea Jazz Festival, entitled My Flame Burns Blue.

Costello's success in the U.S. was battered in the late 70s when, during a drunken argument with Stephen Stills and Bonnie Bramlett in a Columbus, Ohio, Holiday Inn hotel bar, Costello referred to James Brown as a "jive-ass nigger," then upped the ante by pronouncing Ray Charles a "blind, ignorant nigger."

A remorseful Costello apologized at a New York City press conference a few days later, claiming that he had been drunk and had been attempting to be obnoxious in order to bring the conversation to a swift conclusion, not anticipating that Bramlett would bring his comments to the press.

Costello has been married three times. In 1974, MacManus married Mary Burgoyne. The couple had a son, Matthew, and split up in 1984. In 1986, Costello married Cait O'Riordan, then bassist for the band The Pogues. The couple split at the end of 2002. Costello became engaged to singer Diana Krall in May 2003. In December, Costello and Krall married at the London estate of Sir Elton John. Their twin sons Dexter Henry Lorcan and Frank Harlan James were born December 6, 2006 in New York City.

In addition to his major recorded collaborations with Bacharach, the Brodsky Quartet, and von Otter, Costello has frequently been involved in other collaborations.

In 1987, Costello collaborated with Paul McCartney in songwriting and together they wrote a number of songs together.

In 1987, he appeared on the HBO special Roy Orbison and Friends, A Black and White Night, which featured his long-time idol Roy Orbison, and was invited back to Saturday Night Live for the first time since 1977.