‘We’re treading the boards trod by Houdini, Charlie Chaplin … and Frank Carson and Ken Dodd,” yells Elvis Costello, at Leeds’ famous 19th-century music hall, now restored, dipping between songs into the venue’s more comedic traditions. There’s the one about the difficulties of explaining Blackpool to Americans. There’s the one about how miming on Top of the Pops meant “the BBC didn’t know what I sounded like till Live Aid. Then when they did they didn’t let me on again.” There’s even a cheeky one about how his father – the late singer Ross MacManus – “got to that age where men lose all decorum” and revealed to a friend that he had learned Spanish in bed. “Which would be fine,” chuckles Costello, “but my mother didn’t speak a word of it.” Cue much laughter, although the esteemed singer-songwriter isn’t giving up the day job. Here, he’s performing 15 Songs from 50 Years – four sets, two nights, an astonishing 60 different tunes in all.
With longtime Attractions sidekick Steve Nieve alternating between exquisite piano playing, keyboard, melodica and electric accordion and Costello switching between a variety of very expensive and dirt-cheap guitars, the setlist ranges from 1977 (Mystery Dance, delivered as a slow blues) to 2024 (the theme song from forthcoming musical A Face in the Crowd, which gets as loud a reception as any of them). Costello just turned 70 – when someone yells “Happy birthday Elvis!” he quips “Don’t remind me” – and his voice is starting to strain occasionally, but this gives the sublime Country Darkness, from 2004’s The Delivery Man, more melancholy and vulnerability.
Perhaps another hit wouldn’t go amiss, but Almost Blue and Man Out of Time are marvellously intimate and fragile. Costello straps on an electric guitar and shares verses with Nieve for a timeless (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding and the crowd powers the chorus of A Good Year for the Roses. “Until the next time …” he yells, raising his hat and exiting the stage to the sound of – but of course – Ken Dodd, singing Happiness.
• Elvis Costello and Steve Nieve play City Varieties Music Hall, Leeds, tonight, then tour. A Face in the Crowd is at the Young Vic, London, 10 September-9 November
