The Songs of Bacharach & Costello, personally compiled by Elvis Costello, brings together the entire published songs that Costello has written with the legendary Burt Bacharach, certainly one of the nice composers of popular music within the twentieth and now twenty first Century.
Releasing March 3 via UMe, The Songs of Bacharach & Costello, celebrates a collaboration which began in 1995 and which continues to today.
Those that were surprised by the writers of “I’m Not Offended” and “What’s Recent Pussycat?” working together perhaps ignored that Bacharach was engaging in musical collaboration for less than the second time in his storied profession – the primary leading to only a handful of songs musically written with Neil Diamond.
It was Costello who wrote the primary musical draft of “God Give Me Strength,” communicating from Dublin to Los Angeles by fax – back within the twentieth Century – and removed 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 varieties 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’ movie, “Grace Of My Heart,” and though each song and movie were ignored by the Academy Awards, the song did place within the GRAMMY nominations of the next 12 months, as Costello remarked in his book “Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink”: “To have written a song like “God Give Me Strength” and easily stopped would have been ridiculous.”
So began a series of face-to-face songwriting sessions in each California and Recent York City.
Their working methods ranged from one author responding to the opposite’s opening musical statement to Costello attempting to put lyrical substance and definition to a whole Bacharach composition that didn’t need any such musical reply. By the tip of their initial sessions, there have been occasions after they were seated across the room at two pianos, writing successive bars of the brand new tune.
Recorded in Hollywood in 1998, the album, Painted From Memory – orchestrated by Bacharach apart from the title track which was arranged by the nice 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 each Celine Dion and Van Morrison – no easy task within the crowded field of the “Best Collaboration With Vocals” category of the forty first Awards.
The concept the songs and lovelorn themes of Painted From Memory may be realized on the Broadway stage were perhaps an unlikely prospect, on condition 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 assumption of dedicated Painted From Memory aficionado and tv comedy mogul, Chuck Lorre, who along with Tony Award-winning author, Steven Sater, set about threading a story through the unique folio of songs, making a tale and set of characters who demanded that Bacharach and Costello write greater than a dozen additional songs.
Writing the lyrics of those recent songs, Costello told us, “These reflect the stories and impulses of a bunch of people who find themselves, obsessive and vain, who’re betrayed and turn into disenchanted in life but long tenderly for a happier time, who’re unfaithful, dishonest, destructive and become the inventors of a dangerous past, who’re guilty, haunted and romantically deluded, desperate, vengeful and even cruel.”
“Of their musical form they’re different sorts of dark love songs that anyone might sing in the event that they happened to be an artist, his model, a wife, a fantasist, a lover, a philanderer or disillusioned daughter.
You realize, fun for all of the family.”
These songs are all found on Taken From Life, opening and shutting 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 rating from the E.P. Purse and the Decca Records release, The Sweetest Punch, on which guitarist Bill Frisell arranged the then brand recent 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 gathering is accomplished by startling and delightful vocal performances of other songs from the “Painted From Memory” musical rating 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 within the set.
Together 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 on the Royal Festival Hall, London, after only a handful of television and radio appearances.
Nevertheless, Costello and Steve Nieve began the “Lonely World Tour” – taking its title from a line within 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 put the Bacharach/Costello songs central to their concert repertoire from Toronto to Tokyo, and shutting in Osaka on December 18th, in a concert by which forty songs were performed.
A number of these performances could be heard on the third disc of the box set: “Because It’s A Lonely World – Live.”
Bacharach’s songs written along with his best lyricist, Hal David (in addition to those written with Bob Hilliard and Mack David) were heard on English radio and tv from his latter collaborator’s earliest memories.
Costello’s 10,000 word essay is illustrated by numerous photographs including detail from a shot of your entire company of the Royal Variety Performance of 1963, by which The Beatles – who had recently recorded Bacharach’s “Baby It’s You” – are seen flirting with Marlene Dietrich, whose accompanist, Bacharach could be present in the third row back, just 4 places along from Costello’s father, Ross MacManus, who was also heard on the famous “rattle yer jewelry” show, singing with The Joe Loss Orchestra.
Except for this strange coincidence that his father appeared on the bill with two songwriters with whom “Elvis Costello” would write greater than thirty songs, Declan MacManus’ upbringing was like anyone else who grew up in England throughout the early Sixties in that he lived within 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 lots of other great American vocal artists.
From his first concert hall dates with the Attractions as a 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 primary performance of a tune apart from his own to make it on to vinyl.
The fourth disc of the box set, “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 of the method to a trio of Bacharach/David classics performed on the Royal Festival Hall in 1999, including “Make It Easy On Yourself,” “My Little Red Book,” and “Anyone Who Had A Heart.”
One other studio collaboration yielded a rendition of “I’ll Never Fall In Love Again” recorded for the Austin Powers – The Spy Who Shagged Me soundtrack, by which each 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 as much as fifteen more songs, certainly one of which might have been a “secret track” back on this collection within the carefree days before algorithms ruled the waves but which is tucked on the tip of the Taken From Life album, in the shape of Bacharach’s tender and intimate vocal and piano performance of certainly 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 twenty fifth anniversary from the unique tapes by Bob Ludwig at Gateway Mastering Studios. The brand new remaster is presented on CD in addition to 140-gram 2LP black vinyl. Side D of the double vinyl showcases six songs from Taken From Life, including the three newly recorded compositions.
Pre-order The Songs of Bacharach & Costello
The great 45-song set also includes live performances of Bacharach and Costello performing several of the songs from Painted From Memory, in addition to other beloved Bacharach numbers, with orchestras in Recent York and London; Costello performing stripped down versions of the songs on his “Lonely World Tour” with Nieve (the classically trained pianist and keyboard player in each The Attractions and The Imposters); and a number of Bacharach and Hal David songs Costello has performed and recorded through the years, including “I’ll Never Fall In Love Again,” which Bacharach and Costello famously performed together on screen in “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.” Housed in a lavish 12.75” x 12.5” box, the expansive set incorporates a 20-page booklet with photography from William Claxton and Rankin, out and in of the studio, early drafts of lyrics, studio notes, pages from the “Painted From Memory” musical script, and a newly written 10,000-word essay by Costello that beautifully details his nearly three-decade long friendship and prolific musical partnership with Bacharach, and the way influential the legendary songwriter has been throughout his life.
The Songs of Bacharach & Costello is being previewed today with the discharge of three rare and unreleased live performances from 1998 and 1999, including a stark and gripping “In The Darkest Place,” recorded as a duo with Nieve on the piano in Australia on the Lonely World tour, and an arresting performance of “Painted From Memory,” recorded in Stockholm, Sweden with Nieve and The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Finally, we hear Costello and Bacharach live with an orchestra at London’s Royal Festival Hall, performing a sensational version of the latter’s 1963 Dionne Warwick (and Cilla Black’s) 1963 smash, “Anyone Who Had A Heart.“ Hearken to the live tracks here: https://elviscostello.lnk.to/TSOBACPR
Along with the Super Deluxe Edition box set, which will even be available digitally for streaming and download, The Songs of Bacharach & Costello will even be available in quite a lot of abbreviated formats, including on 2CD, which features each the newly remastered Painted From Memory and everything of Taken From Life; and on 2LP, with Painted From Memory and selections from Taken From Life, available with an exclusive lithograph or without. Moreover, Painted From Memory has been mixed in immersive Dolby Atmos. For more information concerning the formats and to pre-order visit: https://elviscostello.lnk.to/TSOBACPR
Of Painted From Memory, Pitchfork raved, “The album’s second and most lasting surprise is the standard of the teamwork. This project is clearly not hurried studio time geared toward selling scads of records, but reasonably the very precise, determined work of two gifted artists,” adding, “Because of this, attempting to decipher and describe where one’s contribution begins and the opposite’s influence ends is a virtually unattainable task– Painted from Memory’s most eminent tales of loss and bitterness, ‘I Still Have That Other Girl,’ ‘Toledo, ‘The Sweetest Punch,’ and the album’s title track are harking back to Costello’s most clever and haunting work, and Bacharach’s memorable piano melodies stretch the old punk’s voice to recent limits.”
Entertainment Weekly exclaimed, “neither their checkered histories nor that initial duet are preparation for the sublime and subtle great thing about much of Painted From Memory,” while the Recent York Times hailed it as “a finely crafted collection of lovelorn ballads by which Mr. Costello flaunts his gift for quirky imagery,” and “finds Mr. Bacharach returning enthusiastically to the hyper-romantic signature type of the 1960’s hits he wrote, arranged and produced with the lyricist Hal David for Dionne Warwick.”
The Los Angeles Times enthused that the “Costello-Bacharach synergy sparkles, and demands a sequel.” Bacharach and Costello capped off an exciting 12 months with the GRAMMY Award for “Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals” for “I Still Have That Other Girl.”
Meticulously compiled and thoughtfully sequenced with the invaluable help of compilation producer, Steve Berkowitz, The Songs of Bacharach & Costello is the whole picture of the 2 songwriters enduring partnership and friendship.
THE SONGS OF BACHARACH & COSTELLO – SUPER DELUXE EDITION TRACKLISTING
CD1 – Painted From Memory
1. Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach – In The Darkest Place (2023 Remaster)
2. Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach – Toledo (2023 Remaster)
3. Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach – I Still Have That Other Girl (2023 Remaster)
4. Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach – This House Is Empty Now (2023 Remaster)
5. Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach – Tears At The Birthday Party (2023 Remaster)
6. Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach – Such Unlikely Lovers (2023 Remaster)
7. Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach – My Thief (2023 Remaster)
8. Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach – The Long Division (2023 Remaster)
9. Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach – Painted From Memory (2023 Remaster)
10. Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach – The Sweetest Punch (2023 Remaster)
11. Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach – What’s Her Name Today? (2023 Remaster)
12. Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach – God Give Me Strength (2023 Remaster)
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 – Because It’s A Lonely World – Live
1. Elvis Costello & Steve Nieve – Toledo (Live In Tokyo, Japan, Nakano Sunplaza Hall – February 8, 1999) *
2. Elvis Costello & Steve Nieve – In The Darkest Place (Live In Melbourne, Australia, Athenaeum Theatre – February 16, 1999)
3. Elvis Costello & Steve Nieve – My Thief (Live In Tokyo, Japan, Shibuya Hall – February 10, 1999) *
4. Elvis Costello & Steve Nieve – I Still Have The Other Girl (Live In Tokyo, Japan, Shibuya Hall – February 10, 1999)
5. Elvis Costello & Steve Nieve – I’ll Never Fall In Love Again (Live In Toronto, Ontario, Massey Hall – June 16, 1999) *
6. Elvis Costello & Steve Nieve – God Give Me Strength (Live In Toronto, Ontario, Massey Hall – June 16, 1999) *
7. Elvis Costello, Steve Nieve & The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra – Painted From Memory (Live In Stockholm, Sweden, Berwaldhallen – January, 5, 1999) *
8. Elvis Costello, Steve Nieve & The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra – What’s Her Name Today? (Live In Stockholm, Sweden, Berwaldhallen – January, 5, 1999) *
9. Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach – This House Is Empty Now (Live In Recent York City, Late Night with Conan O’Brien – Nov. 27, 1998) *
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 Recent York City, Sessions at West 54th – October 18, 1998) *
2LP – Painted From Memory
Side A
1. Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach – In The Darkest Place (2023 Remaster)
2. Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach – Toledo (2023 Remaster)
3. Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach – I Still Have That Other Girl (2023 Remaster)
4. Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach – This House Is Empty Now (2023 Remaster)
Side B
1. Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach – Tears At The Birthday Party (2023 Remaster)
2. Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach – Such Unlikely Lovers (2023 Remaster)
3. Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach – My Thief (2023 Remaster)
4. Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach – The Long Division (2023 Remaster)
Side C
1. Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach – Painted From Memory (2023 Remaster)
2. Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach – The Sweetest Punch (2023 Remaster)
3. Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach – What’s Her Name Today? (2023 Remaster)
4. Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach – God Give Me Strength (2023 Remaster)
Side D – Selections From Taken From Life
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 *