Wall Street Journal article:
Elvis Costello Explores His Roots
By JOHN JURGENSEN
When the Roots took a job as the house band on "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" in 2009, one of their biggest incentives was to share a stage with their musical heroes, as they have with Herbie Hancock, the Beastie Boys and more. With guest performer Elvis Costello, the band also got to make a record with one of those heroes.
Their collaborative album, "Wise Up Ghost," melds Mr. Costello's jagged vocals and deep catalog of songs with the Roots' taut rhythms and inventive funk. Pieces of Mr. Costello's old songs were diced up and spliced with new songs that the acts co-wrote, with seasoning by a hip-hop group whose past collaborators range from Jay Z to Al Green. It's a pairing that may never have occurred to their respective fans, but the results make sense.
The musicians' courtship began with Mr. Costello's first performance on "Fallon" in 2009, where he was backed by the Roots, a rap collective formed in 1987 in Philadelphia. They surprised him with canny suggestions for his songs such as "High Fidelity," reworking the biting original into a bottom-heavy jam.
His encyclopedic approach to music history clicked with the band's, especially that of drummer and band leader Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson. "Over the three appearances I made over as many years, we worked out a methodology for this record without even realizing we were doing it," Mr. Costello says.
In fact, it was all part of Mr. Thompson's plan. He says he and longtime producer Steven Mandel strategized about how to win Mr. Costello's confidence and ease him into an artistic relationship. "I was concerned that if he knew the level of fandom that Steve and I had for him, he'd get a restraining order on us," says Mr. Thompson, whose fixation has a lot to do with Mr. Costello's role at the epicenter of his favorite era of music, circa 1977.
Their rapport developed during Mr. Costello's routine after-hours visits to the band's NBC studio, where they often played together past midnight. After about a year of such experimentation and recording, Mr. Thompson recalls, "He popped the question: 'Is this an album?' "
Sometimes the collaborators worked separately, with Mr. Costello recording some early parts at a studio near his home on Vancouver Island. Often they worked together in the New York studio, building off Mr. Costello's lyrics, or his melodic sketches in reaction to beats by Mr. Thompson. Songs took shape as Mr. Mandel rearranged, erased or accentuated various parts.
They used a hip-hop methodology, deconstructing existing Costello songs and then using the fragments to build new ones. The title track, "Wise Up Ghost," begins with a descending orchestral phrase lifted directly from Mr. Costello's 2003 song "Can You Be True?" As that sample repeats, additional layers pile on, including brand new lyrics and the squalling electric guitar and backing vocals of Roots member "Captain" Kirk Douglas.
For his 2004 album with the Imposters, "The Delivery Man," Mr. Costello recorded a song called "Bedlam," singing about biblical matters at a headlong pace. The Roots set a more languid tempo with Mr. Thompson's snare drum and vamps by a horn section, giving the singer more room to stretch out. With his old verses grafted to the chorus from his 2006 song "The River in Reverse," the result is essentially a new song, called "Wake Me Up."
To the delight of Mr. Costello, who has worked with everyone from Burt Bacharach to the Royal Danish Opera, his trademark lyrical style was well suited to a hip-hop structure. "I know how to put a lot of words in a small space," he says, adding, "These are verses that I've sung before to much more frenetic music, but here I have the space to make those images all count. I'm quite prepared to explore another way to say it, with a more spacious groove."