♪♪ -Tonight on "PBS Arts Talk"... -Hello!

[ Laughs ] -[ Laughing ] Hey.

-...the incomparable Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Elvis Costello.

-We must keep meeting like this.

[ Laughs ] -I know.

What's going on?

-He sits down with Grammy- and Pulitzer Prize-winning musician Rhiannon Giddens... -What is it about you that you got -- -...on this edition of "PBS Arts Talk."

♪♪ -Well, I would love to start this whole shindig with the very first time we met... -Yes.

-...which was at Capitol Records in... -I know.

Wow.

-...Los Angeles, recording "The New Basement Tapes," you know?

-I know, just casually say, you know, 24 unpublished Bob Dylan lyrics... -[ Laughs ] -...that we were given free license to run riot with.

-Have a look.

-A year ago, what he was doing and -- -I like the one with the drawings.

-I love all of these musicians, not all of whom know each other, and they're trusting us to make a safe place for them to have freedom.

-You know, it's a project with, what, Jim James, Taylor Goldsmith, Marcus Mumford, you, a very scared banjo player... -[ Scoffs ] -...and we were all kind of in this room with all these different approaches and one of the things that I remember so clearly, my first impression of you, was that you were playing a demo that you'd made in the bathroom... -Of a plane, yeah.

-...of a plane up in the air.

And I just remember like, "How did I get here with these crazy geniuses?

[ Laughs ] Like how am I in this room right now?"

-The range of people -- I mean, Jim James is really a vibe guy... -Mm-hmm.

-...so he wants to get in the room and come.

Taylor Goldsmith and myself, probably more like structured songwriters, came with prepared like music and everything and try to find a role.

So, we had a band, such an interesting band, and I got the sense, right away, that you were somewhere between the two because you have so much musical facility at your disposal.

-Oh.

-Well, that's what it seemed to me... -[ Laughs ] -...just voice and instrument.

But I didn't know anything about how how each person would come.

And Marcus, who I knew could write a song, he made the conscious decision to leave it to be spontaneous, which was a choice.

You know, he could've gone either way.

He could've gone into either world.

-Which I was really grateful for because it kind of set me at ease.

It was like, "Oh," because like you guys came with all these demos and I was like, "Aah!

", you know.

And he was like, "No, I don't have anything either."

I was like, "Okay, okay, okay," you know?

And it was like it took all of those approaches together, I think, to make that unique set of recordings.

-♪ I got lost ♪ ♪ On the river ♪ ♪ But I didn't go down ♪ ♪ I got lost on the river ♪ ♪ But I got found ♪ -I've heard from a lot of people who have seen that and they're really struck by the spirit of collaboration.

-Well, hopefully, that comes through in the end.

-I just want to talk about collaboration, in general, because I think -- I mean, I'm a huge collaborator.

I come alive with collaboration.

And I wonder, when you were looking for collaborators -- you've collaborated with everybody from like The Roots to Paul McCartney -- what do you look for in a collaborator?

-Well, I mean, the one thing is I didn't start out to look for those, you know.

I'm thinking that the first collaborative work that I did was, perhaps, in the mid-'80s.

I had written a group of songs which I could tell would be served by some different sounds.

And my friendship with T-Bone Burnett dates from that time, from about 1984 and we toured a few solo tours in that time and it ended up I made a record called "King of America," in Hollywood, that had people ranging from James Burton, who had played with Elvis Presley; to Ray Brown, the jazz bass player who was married to Ella Fitzgerald and played with Oscar Peterson.

To me, people who were just names on record sleeves I could never imagine, but I wouldn't really call that collaborative, in the sense that the collaboration really was between T-Bone and myself because he understood that I wanted to portray the songs differently and surrounded me with musicians, including my own band, and that, of course, created quite a lot of tension, you know.

And then that, perhaps, opened the door to the idea of making records in a different way.

The next thing was the invitation to write with Paul McCartney.

You can't knock on Paul's door and say, "Hey, man, do you fancy writing some songs?"

It had to come the other way.

-Yeah.

-So, for whatever reason, my name was put forward and I honestly thought it was a prank, at first... -[ Laughs ] -...but our rapport was immediate.

♪ Eee eee eee eee ♪ It's a very odd sound these cans have got.

[ Clacking ] -Cans by Odd.

-You got me?

-There's an odd sound in your cans.

-[ Laughs ] "Cans by Odd."

Okay.

-♪ Do do do ♪ -On the first two days that we were writing together, we wrote, you know, a couple of really good songs.

I took the precaution of taking an unfinished song with me to that first, so I had, maybe, two-thirds of a song there.

But the things that he added to those two-thirds are what makes "Veronica" a good song.

♪ All the times she laughs at those ♪ ♪ Who shout her name and steal her clothes ♪ ♪ Veronica ♪ [ Cheering and applause ] ♪ Veronica ♪ ♪ Oh!

♪ To say that the first song we wrote and the second song we wrote were both hits proved that it worked, in itself.

Now... -Pretty good.

-...can't say that every song that we wrote had that same fate, but there were, you know, 15 songs that we wrote over a couple of years of writing.

That is something I never could've imagined.

You know, you could have a fantasy about it as a kid, "Oh, maybe, one day, I'll get to meet one of the Beatles," much less sit and fire ideas back and forward and complete each other's musical phrases.

-Well, I mean, what's really interesting is because, yeah, I mean, it's Paul McCartney, huge personality, huge star, huge musician, and you're coming in at an invitation to write with him and it was interesting -- I love this -- he says that, you know, a lot of people were too intimidated to give him any kind of negative feedback.

-I'm not.

-Not you.

There's a great clip of him talking about this, you know.

Should we run that?

-So, I normally would kind of say to people, "No, go on, I encourage you to tell me if it's rubbish," you know?

I'd set that as like a condition.

-Trick him into it.

-Well, there's no problem with that with Elvis.

He's going to tell you.

-He stood up to you, did he?

He stood up to you.

-Yeah, yeah.

Well, I mean, you know, it's not as if he's got to stand up to me because I'm not trying to put anyone down, but it's just the reputation I've got that kind of walks ahead of me a bit and spoils things, really, you know.

But with Elvis, with young Declan, you're not going to have too much shyness there.

That's one thing -- he's not shy, you know?

He's definitely got a very op inionated attitude, you know.

But I say, in this context, it's great.

[ Laughter ] -Wow, it's so strange to see that now.

I haven't seen that clip.

But that is, you know, that's pretty much the way it was.

He is actually very good at putting people at ease.

He's only wrong about one thing, is that I'm very shy, but I've just caused -- I've just created a lot of defenses to people being aware of that... -Interesting.

-...in working situations.

And, undoubtedly, I learnt a lot about vocal harmony.

You know, I didn't realize I was sort of learning a tradition of harmonizing from listening to the Beatles.

I didn't know, at the age of eight and nine, when they first appeared in the music scene, that they took so many cues from the Everly Brothers, who took, in turn, their cues from groups like the Louvin Brothers, who I heard about later, but at the time, I just thought John and Paul made this up.

And because of where my voice lies, even as a boy, I could always sing the Lennon part more than the McCartney part because it was too high.

-So, you're thinking about this, like you're young, you're listening to this, you go into the session with somebody like Paul McCartney, 99 out of 100 people are going to be like, "Yeah, yeah, Paul, whatever you think, whatever you think."

What is it about you that you got into that spot and you were like, "Yes"?

-Well, I'm glad that it -- Well, because it felt good.

I mean, it didn't feel that I had to make any allowances.

And the odd thing about the songs that we wrote was that we sometimes switched roles from people's assumed view.

I'd be, usually, said to be the one with lots of words.

If you listen to some of the songs, like there's a song called "Tommy's Coming Home Again," it's streams of words in the verses.

He wrote all of that.

He wrote those words.

-♪ She was counting out the window ♪ ♪ Of an outbound train ♪ ♪ All the poles of the telegraph ♪ ♪ And the rock-a-bye rhythm in the sound of the rails ♪ ♪ Couldn't make the sweeper laugh ♪ -And I wrote the melody that you would more typically think is a McCartney kind of cadence.

Also, Beatle kind of cadence.

-♪ Down, down ♪ ♪ Drowning in his sleep ♪ -But, obviously, I learnt a lot of those things and, again, when we harmonized, there was a natural tendency to land on some of these things that were very comfortable for me and he would give me a sort of what you might call an old-fashioned look occasionally, you know.

There's one song, which is in dialogue, in which I get all the sarcastic lines and you start to go, "Hang on a second.

-[ Laughs ] -I've seen this movie before," you know, and it got to be like a running joke with us and I think that humor leavened everything and it made it possible.

-Well, that brings me to, you know, you've collaborated with Burt Bacharach for like over 25 years and I know that there's a new box set.

Can you talk about that a little bit?

-It's a collection.

It departs from "God Give Me Strength," the song we were asked to write for a movie called "Grace of My Heart" in 1995.

-♪ Now, I have nothing ♪ ♪ So, God ♪ ♪ Give me strength ♪ ♪ 'Cause I'm weak ♪ ♪ In her wake ♪ -You know, the outcome of that invitation was such a song that, you know, a scale of song that it would just be -- it would've been cowardly not to attempt to write more because it was startling to me, how effective our collaboration was in that one song.

So, we set about writing.

From the get-go, Burt and I were taking shared responsibility for the music.

The proportions of these songs, musically, is long forgotten.

Like I can't remember who wrote what, but I know, I remember enough to know that some songs, which most people would assume were wholly his work, were actually 75% my writing... -Ah.

-...in the first draft.

In some cases, I would say, "This song needs a bridge," and Burt would write the bridge.

Now, he might've been, up until that point, thinking that song was complete in its form.

That song is "This House Is Empty Now."

♪ These rooms play tricks upon you ♪ ♪ Remember when they were ♪ ♪ Always filled with laughter?

♪ ♪ But now, they're quite deserted ♪ ♪ They seem to just echo ♪ ♪ Voices raised in anger ♪ And I learned so much from watching him.

The dispositions and confirm certain things I had guessed at.

And I'm by no means as musically literate as he is, you know what I mean?

I don't often know the names of the chords.

I've deliberately stopped myself from learning them, so that they're still surprises when I put my hands on the keyboards.

-Well, you know what they are, you just don't know what they are.

You know what I mean?

[ Laughs ] -I know what they are, but I don't know what they are, yeah.

That's right.

That's right.

So, in this case, I felt that, to start with an exchange of faxed manuscript and to end up sitting at the piano bench, completing each other's sentences musically, and for him to allow me to do that shows a degree of curiosity in him.

It's no compliment to me.

It's the curiosity that he had about what was to be had of working in this way.

And I was trying to puzzle, as the lyricist, what -- If somebody plays you a tune and it tells you a story in music, it makes you feel a certain way and you are the lyricist -- your responsibility is to give the definition to that feeling, something comprehensible for other people.

-It feels like, when you're collaborating with somebody, it kind of, when it's happening, like it was for the two of you, you have to go for the song.

The song has to win, right?

-I think, particularly, when you're working with somebody else, you can serve yourself, you know.

I mean, when people try to compliment you, if you have any kind of gift for words, they go, "You know, you're like a poet."

I go, "I'm not that much like a poet because, if I were a poet, I'd be a lot more accurate with my words... -[ Laughs ] -...and the words wouldn't need music because I'd be a poet."

-[ Laughs ] -Whereas, when you're writing with somebody as gifted a melodist as a Burt Bacharach, or a Paul McCartney, I wouldn't pick an argument with them about, say, whether there'll be a pickup phrase into the bar or that I could maybe make a triplet at the end of the line to accommodate some fancy rhyme that I'd come up with.

They would want the melody to stay the same.

Once the melody was set, it was set and I wasn't about to disagree with them about that because there's the evidence.

If you've written "Alfie," you have the authority to say that, you know.

-A lot of people outside of music -- You know, music looks like, when you're writing songs, when you're creating melodies, to a lot of people, as like magic or they've just sort of created the song out of out of air, you know?

But we both know there's a lot of work that goes into the creation of any art, but there is that inspiration.

So, like for you, how much of it, when you're working on a piece, is inspiration and how much of it is just craft and, you know, scratch throughout, "Let me let me try that.

Let me try that"?

-I don't think one condition pertains for every instance.

I also strongly feel that melodies that appear in the mind, particularly, if you're in an environment where there's a lot of competing information -- like you could be in an airport concourse and there could be music playing in a café and announcements that sound like music or sounds that sound like rhythm -- I will try and get somewhere and mumble the thing into the phone to capture it.

But here's the other thing.

I will sometimes wait longer than other people might do to have the tune put its feet down in the formalities to close off the melodic idea with a chord that both anchors it in harmony and in rhythm.

So that, if it's flowing freely in the air, with nothing defining it, there's the possibility of surprise.

It's the same reason that I don't, at a glance, know the interval on the guitar fretboard.

I've deliberately kept that information away from me.

I probably know more than I think I do.

But with the piano, I've watched classically trained people and jazz musicians fail to see the surprise in a chance arrangement of notes because they immediately see every harmonic relationship, where that is, in what increment of the scale that is.

For me, I try to keep that information away from my mind until I'm certain the tune is of no use and then I can try and make it better.

But if it is useful, don't define it with those by closing off.

Does it make any sense, what I'm saying?

-Totally, totally.

-Closing off, like this... That four, that suspended four, which is the first chord of "Alison," is not in that key.

It's not.

And the guitar is usually in tune when I play it, but, you know, that sounds like the end of something or the beginning of something.

That cadence is in a lot of things.

This cadence... ...that's all medieval music, all ends with that.

All Elizabethan music ends Tierce de Picardie, with that minor to major.

So, these simple things, that's just a simple illustration of two things that we've learnt, over the years, can turn phrases around.

But when you're writing a new original tune, I have the feeling that, if you let it float for a little while out there in the air, then you might end up with something better.

Not every time.

I'm more of a lyricist than I am a melodist, by reputation, but I've written a few good tunes.

I'm not going to get too sentimental Like those other sticky valentines ♪ 'Cause I don't know if you were loving somebody ♪ ♪ Only know it isn't mine ♪ ♪ Oh ♪ ♪ Alison ♪ -What strikes me, as we're sitting here talking, is that, no matter what the opportunity is, you're looking for that spark, that story, that way to communicate with people, like these emotions and these sort of human -- the human story, you know what I mean?

A lot of people, I would guess, get to a point where they get jaded or they get bored or they get, you know, and I'm sure you've had moments.

-I've definitely, you know, but I think, when you get to the point where you realize that the vocational side of music, the thing that makes it a vocation, is more important than the luck that it may make you some kind of fortune or give you a reputation.

I was a pop star for five minutes in England and had to, you know -- And it's bent, really, people's perception of what I do out of shape.

There are some people that know what I'm capable of doing.

There's other people that go, "Oh, it's that guy who had that song.

I remember it.

What was that?"

And then there's other places where people will come up to you where you least expect it and say, "This song, this is the one that mattered."

I go, "How did you even hear that song?"

You know, because it's from a record that's otherwise obscure to most people.

And it'll mean a lot.

So, which thing is, ultimately, more important?

I would say the one song fighting through all the unlikelihood of it reaching anybody to the fact, yeah, it's not that hard to have hit records.

It's hard to have hit records with good songs.

-Yes.

And that are really making a difference for people.

Like that's the moment that you're looking for.

It's not the statue, right?

It's that person who said, "This song changed my life because it's speaking to something that's very specific to me."

-I think if you want the other thing, it's a different set of tools you need to get there.

-Exactly.

-Because I'm sure you get, if you walk anywhere with an instrument case or any sense other people have seen your name, they will ask you like, "My son or my nephew really wants to, you know, be in music."

I said, "Ask them whether they want to be in music or whether they want to be famous."

-Yes.

-If they want to be famous, rob a bank... -[ Laughs ] -...get into Bitcoin, run for president or something, you know?

But being in music doesn't guarantee you these things.

And now would be the best time to do exactly what you want.

-I think the difficulty that, you know, people like you and I have, who are doing this because we can't do anything else, right?

[ Laughs ] You know, there's no driving a truck or whatever, like we are musicians, we have to make music., is to navigate all of that stuff, the trappings of celebrity, the trappings of, you know, idolatry and then, you know, copyright.

There was a thing with Olivia Rodrigo where she had taken -- I think there was a riff or something.

[ "Brutal" plays ] -♪ I'm so insecure, I think ♪ ♪ That I'll die before I drink ♪ -And you were like, "What's the big deal?"

-Folk music.

folk music.

-Yeah, right?

-Well, I mean, it would be idiotic for me to claim that.

For one, I don't believe, for a moment, that it was her idea.

I'm sure, given her age, that there's very little chance that she's ever heard that record.

I think there's every chance her producer had heard it and, perhaps, made that suggestion, "Hey, let's put this kind of figure in.

This could work."

It underpins the stream of words.

She's singing about something that matters to her the way I was when I wrote "Pump It Up."

♪ Pump it up ♪ ♪ When you don't really need it ♪ ♪ Pump it up ♪ ♪ Until you can feel it ♪ But "Pump It Up" is directly derived from "Subterranean Homesick Blues" by Bob Dylan... -♪ John is in the basement, mixing up the medicine ♪ -...which is directly derived from "Too Much Monkey Business," by Chuck Berry... -♪ Runnin' to-and-fro, hard workin' at the mill ♪ ♪ Never fail in the mail, you got a rotten bill, ha ♪ ♪ Too much monkey business ♪ ♪ Too much monkey business ♪ ♪ Too much monkey business for me to be involved in ♪ -...which is derived from 19 other songs from the 1920s, you know.

So, it would be stupid -- I mean, if it were the melody and the tune and the exact lyric of something I'd written, I'd have an issue.

But the idea of how to motivate something?

There would be no jazz, if you couldn't quote.

-Right.

-There would be no classical music, for that matter.

-Speaking of folk music... -[ Laughs ] -...I'm just going to grab this banjo.

-Just grab that banjo there.

-Because there's like -- just because it's kind of an irresistible idea to just grab something out of the air with these two instruments.

[ Playing mellow tune ] ♪♪ ♪♪ Just kind of -- It feels like you're waiting.

-Hm?

-It feels like you're waiting for something.

♪♪ -♪ I'm ♪ ♪ Waiting ♪ -[ Laughs ] ♪♪ -♪ For my ♪ ♪ Time ♪ ♪ I'm ♪ ♪ Waiting ♪ ♪ For ♪ ♪ My time ♪ ♪♪ -♪ Don't know ♪ ♪ How long ♪ ♪ Don't know ♪ ♪ How long ♪ ♪ To go ♪ ♪♪ -♪ I'm waiting ♪ ♪♪ ♪ For ♪ ♪ You to... ♪ ♪ ...morrow ♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ I'm ♪ ♪ Waiting ♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Laughter ] -All of a sudden, I'm transported back to Capital.

[ Laughter ] -That's one Bob didn't write.

[ Laughter ] -Thank you so much.

-Thank you.

-This was absolutely delightful.

-Thank you.

It's really been a pleasure.

It's really been a pleasure.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪