His aim is true. Mine sucks.

Even if I had been given a few days' notice, as opposed to a few hours, that I had been granted an audience with the King, as in Elvis Costello, I'm not sure I would've had any easier time interviewing him. At least that's what I'm telling myself.

In one of the great all-time squanders of my career, I spent most of my 20 minutes with the host of the new Sundance Channel interview series "Spectacle" chasing a very smart and agile cat down a pitch-black alley. In fact, the most economical exchange I had with Costello was the first one:

AB: You didn't say in the press conference why the show was called "Spectacle."

EC: [points to his eyeglasses]

The rest of the session went downhill from there. After establishing that he and I had watched the same episode of Dave Stewart's "Off the Record," the one where Stewart interviewed Ringo Starr, I perceived a chance to tie Costello's career to Starr's — bad idea. (Starr said that by age 30 all he wanted to do was play the blues. Costello's response was more or less, I never got so successful that I couldn't play what I wanted.)

Then I tried the how-is-the-show-like-the-career angle. That went nowhere. Oh dear. I even prepped for this, and yet had forgotten a simple detail like whether Costello had performed recently in Kansas City or not (of course he had, opening for the Police on May 13).

I got a chance to regroup when Costello pulled out his phone in mid-question and said, "Hold on, I just have a little bit of family...." and left the room, presumably to speak with Diana Krall (whom he would not confirm as a future guest on his show). Things did go slightly better after that. But still.

At the end of the interview, I mentioned how I'd read on his blog the pride he felt in issuing a vinyl pressing of his latest album, Momofuku. I recounted the experience I had just the other night, of dialing up iTunes and playing, through my crappy computer speaker, one of my favorite all time jazz LPs, "Charlie Parker with Strings," which I had dubbed off scratchy bivyl. Not missing a beat, EC said, "Have you ever heard 'Clifford Brown with Strings'? You should get that?" I went back to my room and, ironically or not, downloaded it.

Sublime. Maybe we should've just talked about our favorite jazz records for 20 minutes. I could've filled him in on the historic Pender-McShann session.

As I emptied out my jacket pockets, I discovered that I had the pilot for "Spectacle." Apparently a publicist had handed this to me and I absent-mindedly stuffed it into my coat. I watched it. EC and the Imposters and Alvin Touissant performed "Border Song" before an audience at NBC Studio 8H (future episodes will tape at the Apollo, EC told me, because the "SNL" studio will be in use during the Beijing Olympics). They sounded wonderful. Then out came the guest, and the show's co-producer, Elton John, and the two masters talked about Elton's musical influences and his career effortlessly for almost an hour. Maybe it takes a master to interview a master.

Anyway, the show premieres in December on Sundance Channel, and by then I expect to have pulled something out of the mess of quotage. It's times like this I remember Murray Kempton's description of himself as "a terrible interviewer." You'd never know from his columns.

Comments

[Rob Poodiack]

Hi Aaron --

You may want to remark in your article that perhaps the reason he was even considered for such a show in the first place was because he did decently at filling in for Letterman during Dave's bout with shingles. (I don't know whether EC had any subsequent hosting gigs elsewhere ...)

If it makes you feel better ... As a music critic back in the early 90's, I had to interview guitarist Larry Coryell for a preview article on a concert of his ... he quizzed me for 10 minutes on what I knew about his music before granting a grumpy interview.

-- Rob P.

[Aaron]

Rob, you are correct! From the transcript:

STEPHEN WARDEN: You know, I’d been kind of noodlingaround with an idea for a show like this for yearsbecause I had worked as a music journalist and had theopportunity to interview some of the biggest music starsin the world and have kind of private time with them,long discussions about music and other things, sometimes acoustic performance. And I thought a show like this would be fantastic if you had the right person at the helm. And certainly seeing Elvis guest hosting on “Letterman” one night, the light bulb kind of went off like, he can do that too? It was pretty impressive.