Audience treated to concert, Eloquent insights about craft

Friday, April 20, 2007 | 7:20 a.m.

Wearing a black suit and those familiar thick-framed glasses, Elvis Costello walked on stage, picked up an old Gibson acoustic and again implored Alison to "take off your party dress."

Then the 52-year-old songwriter settled on a high stool and bared his artistic soul in an experimental concert-interview. He and interviewer Warren Zanes turned the stage of The Pearl at the Palms into a living room for the first Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "The Craft," a sort of "Inside the Actors Studio: Unplugged."

During the next two hours, Costello revealed enough of himself to keep aficionados happy. And he sang more than enough to delight folks who were there just to hear the music.

Too bad only about 500 fans - mostly distributors for show-sponsor Miller who cringed when Costello confessed he hates beer - got to see the one-off show. Cameras rolled, so hope this turns up on TV.

The Las Vegas audience was lucky. When this tour moves on to other cities (to be determined) with other artists (to be announced), it will be hard-pressed to find anyone who can speak as eloquently about his craft as Costello did Tuesday night.

Costello pulled back the curtain immediately, pointing out snatches of the Spinners' "Ghetto Child" and his own "Imagination (Is a Powerful Deceiver)" in "Alison."

He talked about dumbing down the chord changes, then blasted out a bit of "Mystery Dance." He talked about using mirrors and disguises in his songs to hide himself but let listeners' imaginations run free. He talked about growing up and learning that "not everybody is listening to everything you say." Then he spun out "(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes," written in a burst on a train to Liverpool.

He talked about songwriters taking liberties, blending scraps from their notebooks. The New Orleans "cocktail murderess" from "American Without Tears" was really a Las Vegas cocktail pianist he'd heard on a 1980 visit. "Back then you couldn't walk between hotels because there were hookers who looked like Joe Frazier who'd beat you up if you turned them down."

Some talk was purely for the cognoscenti: explaining, for instance, why he changes from first to third person in the chorus of "Accidents Will Happen" and sings in the gaps between beats in "Country Darkness."

As an interviewer, Zanes was no full-of-himself James Lipton. Mostly he sat back and listened, but he gently guided the conversation through Costello's eclectic 30-year career.

Costello dropped little insights about working with Paul McCartney, Burt Bacharach, Nick Lowe, T-Bone Burnett, James Burton, the Attractions and Clover, the California band that backed him on his first album and then fed members into Huey Lewis and the News and the Doobie Brothers.

The father who fills his kids' Nanos with Bing Crosby, Howlin' Wolf and John Coltrane sang a verse of "Nellie the Elephant" to lullaby the crowd before slapping it awake with "The River in Reverse," his recent collaboration with Allen Toussaint. Then he churned out a feedback-soaked version of "Pump It Up" and closed the night with an encore of Nick Lowe's "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace Love and Understanding."

He thanked the audience for the opportunity:

"This is an unusual thing to do, talk about music like this. We do it when we sit around with friends but we don't often do it on stage."

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