Ok now here are some of my favorite official VIDEOS of his. (I include liner notes where I could find them)
The Other Side of Summer -1991
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This album opens with “The Other Side Of Summer”. The arrangement is a pastiche of The Beach Boys after the fashion of The Beatles’ “Back IN The U.S.S.R.” In our case, the music and vocal parts take their cue from some of their early ‘70s album tracks like “The Trader” and “Funky Pretty”. The words are a catalogue of pop conceits, deceits, hypocrisies, and delusions. I include myself in this parade of liars and dupes.
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Good Year for the Roses(originally a hit for George Jones, but Costello NAILS it and it remains one of my favorite performances.) - 1981
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The video for “Good Year For The Roses” was filmed the day before the Aberdeen gig at Meldrum House, a National Trust listed building that accepted guests. The people running the place were adamant that we couldn’t drag an organ or piano into the wooden-floored salon in which we had chosen to film. This meant that Steve Nieve had nothing to play. The only solution was for him to mime the string parts with a violin, an instrument that Steve had probably never held in his life. Only we didn’t have a violin. The rather spooking girls miming the backing vocals were the daughters of the music teacher from the local village who lent us the violin that Mr. Nieve is seen playing.
Perhaps the charm or sheer weirdness of this clip helped make a big hit single out of “Roses”, reaching No. 6 in the U.K. charts and becoming one of the most played records of the year. I found myself approached in supermarkets by what I then regarded as “older women” who thought that the record was “very romantic”.
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OK Finally, I challenge you not to get a little choked up watching this last one...
Veronica -1989
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I began writing with Paul McCartney, for his album "Flowers in the Dirt", in 1987. We went on to compose a dozen songs together. "Veronica" was one of the very first songs that we worked on. It is a wishful song about my Grandmother’s failing hold on memory and reality. As the subject was so personal, I didn't find it so easy to edit the song. Paul put some shape into the music of a rambling bridge and tightened up a few of the lyrical lines in the verses.
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