07.14.2022
Liverpool F.C. And Beyond
Some 10 years or so ago, I was reading an interview in the music press about a new Costello album. Somewhere in there it mentioned his ‘beloved Liverpool Football Club’.
What a load of nonsense I thought. Where do they get this stuff?
He’s never been to a football match in his life.
How wrong can you be?
It turns out that during the time that Rusty were playing regularly, we’d have a gig on a Saturday night. When discussing what we had spent the day doing we’d both mumble something like….
‘Worked on a new song’, ‘practiced some new chords’, ‘scoured the local record shops’.
We were in fact kidding each other, in actual fact we’d both been at Anfield at the same game singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and shouting obscenities at the referee.
Luckily in a crowd of 50,000 we never ran into each other.
Football culture in England in the early 70’s was not something that a teenage super-cool musician would admit to having any part of.
In the present day, he knows more about flat back fours and a high line defense than I would ever be able to comprehend.
Even as a 50 year Liverpool fan myself, I’m more likely to criticize a player’s stupid haircut than his ability to overlap the midfielder. It’s all about winning and losing, my son.
The Record That Changed My Life
On this one I’ll stick by my guns.
Mojo Magazine the highly respected U.K. music monthly ran a feature where they asked high profile musicians which record had changed their life.
Declan prattled on about Hank Williams or some such nonsense.
I wrote to Mojo and told them, ‘he’s having you on’.
If it hadn’t been for Brinsley Schwarz’s “Silver Pistol” or “Despite It All”, the whole Nick Lowe/Stiff Records thing would never have happened.
Yes, he would have always been a great and committed songwriter and performer but would he have reached that goal as quickly without hounding Nick and Jake so doggedly?
Declan, I love you like a brother, but you’ve got to give me that on