Elvis Costello - UK Tour 2010

Some call him cantankerous, others call him Declan (probably his closer friends or his wife) but there's no denying Elvis Costello's influence on the UK music scene over the past 3 decades. Albums such as 'My Aim is True', 'Get Happy', 'Armed Forces' and 'Imperial Bedroom' have ensured the man has built up a considerable legacy of tracks.

The 55-year-old music icon Elvis Costello – real name Declan MacManus – will play gigs in Birmingham, Oxford, Cardiff and Liverpool marking the first time he has toured his latest studio album 'Secret, Profane & Sugarcane' on these shores. Achieving considerable chart succes with his songs steeped in word play, the vocabulary within Elvis Costello’s lyrics is broader than that of most popular songs.

Elvis Costello Tour Details are as follows:

21 June in Symphony Hall Birmingham
23 June in New Theatre Oxford
24 June in St David Hall Cardiff
28 June in Liverpool Philharmonic Hall

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Elvis Costello - Videos

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Elvis Costello - Pictures Gallery

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Elvis Costello - 2005-Present

In November 2005 Costello started recording a new album with Allen Toussaint and producer Joe Henry. The River in Reverse was released in the UK on the Verve label on 29 May 2006. On 6 May 2008, Fender Musical Instruments released Elvis Costello Jazzmaster, an exact representation of the late 1960s heavily modified Fender Jazzmaster guitar he had used to record his first 1977 album, My Aim Is True. On 22 April 2008, Momofuku was released on Lost Highway Records, the same imprint that released his last studio album, The Delivery Man. On 28 June 2008, Costello gave his first performance in Poland, appearing with the Imposters for the closing gig of the Malta theatre festival in Poznań. In July 2008, Costello (as Declan McManus) was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Music from the University of Liverpool.

Costello is the host for a Sundance Channel series entitled Spectacle in which Costello talks and performs with stars in various fields. It airs on Wednesdays, beginning 3 December 2008. Costello was featured on Fall Out Boy's 2008 album Folie à Deux, providing vocals on the track "What a Catch, Donnie", along with other artists who are friends with the band. Costello released Secret, Profane & Sugarcane on 9 June 2009. The album is a collaboration with T-Bone Burnett, who previous worked with Costello on his King of America and Spike sets. In May 2009, Costello made a surprise cameo appearance on-stage at the Beacon Theater in New York as part of Spinal Tap's Unwigged and Unplugged show, singing their fictional 1965 hit "Gimme Some Money" with the other members of the band backing him up.

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Elvis Costello - 2000-2004

In 2000, Costello appeared at the Town Hall Theatre, New York, in Steve Nieve's opera Welcome to the Voice, alongside Ron Sexsmith and John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants. In 2001, Costello was announced as the featured "artist in residence" at UCLA (although he ended up making fewer appearances than expected) and wrote the music for a new ballet. In 2002, he released a new album, When I Was Cruel, on Island Records, and toured with a new band, the Imposters.

On 23 February 2003, Costello, along with Bruce Springsteen, Steve Van Zandt, and Dave Grohl performed a version of The Clash's "London Calling" at the 45th Grammy Awards ceremony, in honour of Clash frontman Joe Strummer, who had died the previous December. In March 2003, Elvis Costello & The Attractions were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In May, his engagement to Canadian jazz singer and pianist Diana Krall was announced. In September, he released North, an album of piano-based ballads concerning the breakdown of his former marriage, and his falling in love with Diana Krall.

In 2004, the song "Scarlet Tide" was nominated for an Academy Award; he performed it at the awards ceremony with Alison Krauss, who also sang the song on the official soundtrack. Costello released another album that same month: The Delivery Man, recorded in Oxford, Mississippi, and released on Lost Highway Records. The Delivery Man was hailed as one of Costello's best albums.

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Elvis Costello - 1990s

In 1991, having grown a long beard, Costello released Mighty Like a Rose, which featured the single "The Other Side of Summer".In 1995, Costello released Kojak Variety, an album of cover songs recorded five years earlier, and followed in 1996 with an album of songs originally written for other artists, All This Useless Beauty. This was the final album of original material that he issued under his Warner Bros. contract.

In 1998, Costello signed a multi-label contract with Polygram Records, sold by its parent company the same year to become part of the Universal Music Group. Costello released his new work on what he deemed the suitable imprimatur within the family of labels. His first new release as part of this contract involved a collaboration with Burt Bacharach. This led the pair to write and record Painted From Memory, released under his new contract in 1998, on the Mercury Records label. In 1999, Costello contributed a version of "She", released in 1974 by Charles Aznavour and Herbert Kretzmer.

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Elvis Costello -1970s & 1980s

Costello's first single for Stiff was "Less Than Zero", released on 25 March 1977. Two months later, his debut album, My Aim Is True (1977), was released to moderate commercial success (No. 14 in the UK and, later, Top 40 in the US). Later in 1977, Costello formed his own permanent backing band, The Attractions, consisting of Steve Nieve (born Steve Nason; piano), Bruce Thomas (bass guitar), and Pete Thomas (drums; unrelated to Bruce Thomas). He released his first major hit single, "Watching the Detectives".

In 1981, the band released Trust against growing tensions within the band, particularly between Bruce and Pete Thomas. In 1983, he released Punch the Clock, featuring female backing vocals (Afrodiziak) and a four-piece horn section (The TKO Horns), alongside The Attractions. Under the pseudonym "The Imposter", Costello released "Pills And Soap", an attack on the changes in British society brought on by Thatcherism, released to coincide with the run-up to the 1983 UK general election. Punch the Clock also generated an international hit in the single "Everyday I Write the Book".

Tensions within the band were beginning to tell, and Costello announced his retirement and the breakup of the group shortly before they were to record Goodbye Cruel World (1984). In 1985, he appeared in the Live Aid benefit concert in England, singing the Beatles' "All You Need is Love" as a solo artist. By 1986, Costello was preparing to make a comeback. Working in the U.S. with Burnett and minor input from the Attractions, he produced King of America an acoustic guitar-driven album with a country sound. In 1989, Costello, with a new contract with Warner Bros., released Spike, which spawned his biggest single in America, the Top Twenty hit "Veronica", one of several songs Costello co-wrote with Paul McCartney in that timeframe.

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