When My Aim Is True was released on July 22, 1977, the odds against it being a work which would still be appreciated nearly half a century hence appeared considerable. This was no reflection on the album itself – the reviews were generally delighted, Melody Maker’s Allan Jones correctly noting an adept affinity for ’50s rock’n’roll, ’60s rhythm and blues and a “mordant, Ortonesque humour”.
But it seemed an unlikely proposition. The singer and songwriter was a 22-year-old Irish-Liverpudlian cosmetics company data-entry clerk who moonlighted as a pub rocker, who had been suddenly dressed up like a feral Buddy Holly, endowed with a wilfully provocative pseudonym, and backed by long-haired Californian country rockers Clover, who’d picked the dawn of punk rock as their moment to try breaking Britain (their singer and harmonica player, one Huey Lewis, did not contribute to the sessions).
The label whose imprint appeared on My Aim Is True was an upstart punk endeavour – Stiff Records – which had only released two previous albums, one by a bunch of rowdy delinquents called The Damned, and a compilation of their own roster entitled, with characteristic baleful self-mockery, A Bunch Of Stiffs. And then, on August 16, 1977, Elvis Presley died, aged 42: Costello’s alias suddenly seemed not so much cheeky iconoclasm as downright sacrilege. Stiff leant into the awkward coincidence, running ads declaring “The King is dead, long live the King”. Not everybody appreciated the joke: some newspapers cancelled features.
Despite all of the above, My Aim Is True finds itself, 49 years later, abundantly deserving this five-disc monument – and not just because, as it turned out, it was the inauguration of an extraordinary and influential career. My Aim Is True absolutely holds its own, a masterpiece of taut, snappy new wave lent extra musical and lyrical depth by the ruggedly – but not entirely – suppressed classic country inclinations of its composer (the tie-up with Clover was, in this respect, a happy accident).
The 49th Anniversary Edition breaks down as follows: Disc One is a remastered My Aim Is True, including its subsequent breakthrough single “Watching The Detectives”, on which Costello was backed by Andrew Bodnar and Steve Goulding of The Rumour. Discs Two and Three, respectively subtitled “The Blue Print” and “The Stranger In The House”, collect primordial noodlings of the songwriter still known as Declan MacManus, with and without his early group Flip City. Disc Four, “Becoming The Attractions”, is live tracks and radio sessions recorded with the mighty trio who would back Costello for the next decade and beyond. Disc Five, “Covered In Clover”, is a 2007 show recorded at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, at which Costello reunited with Clover to perform the album they’d made together 30 years previously. Of the 104 total tracks, 52 have never previously been released.
To fossick through the hitherto buried treasure is to be astonished anew at the speed, comprehensiveness and confidence of the transition from MacManus to Costello. In 1976, on the likes of “I Turn Around” and “Walk On”, recorded in the Hope & Anchor studio, MacManus presents as an earnest strummer to whom punk has not yet happened, somewhere between Harry Chapin and Graham Nash. Within two years, Costello is tearing it up in the United States with The Attractions, barrelling through the My Aim Is True material with the frantic fury shortly to be bottled on This Year’s Model (live versions of “Pump It Up” and “Lip Service” both feature on the “Becoming The Attractions” disc, and both sound like they’re being performed in the act of being fired out of a cannon).
He is also abruptly rerouted from a European tour to Nashville to record his country shuffle “Stranger In The House” with George Jones, no less (that version does not appear here, but a stark demo of the song does). This moment is drolly recalled, along with much else, in an extensive essay by Costello included with this reissue. Among other cameos, Bruce Springsteen at one point asks him how he’d got the sound on My Aim Is True: “I replied honestly: ‘No money’.”
If it’s miraculous enough that My Aim Is True happened, never mind succeeded, it’s astonishing to consider that its peaks still loom among Costello’s highest: “I’m Not Angry”, “(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes” and – especially – “Alison”. The knock-kneed, pigeon-toed figure on the cover, whether he realised it or not, had landed on his feet.
Extras: 72-page book featuring extensive essay by Costello, plus contributions from Nick Lowe, Steve Nieve, Pete Thomas, Bill Flanagan, Rosanne Cash and others.