Elvis Costello documentary “Mystery Dance” broadcast on BBC4

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It includes an interview of Paul McCartney.

From BBC Four – Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance – Interview with Director Mark Kidel on making the documentary:

What were some of the great moments in the filming?

Making a film about someone like Elvis Costello is a real treat. I just watched the film I made ten or so years ago about Ravi Shankar and I realize that I am amazingly privileged to be able to make these films about such incredible creative people. Elvis is the same – there is no one quite like him, in terms of range – you know stuff with a string quartet, or co-writing with Burt Bacharach. So although the mechanics of making these films are never easy-going, the reward lies in working with great people and great music. I never thought I’d stand in Paul McCartney’s studio, listening with him to demos he’d written and recorded with Elvis several decades ago. We’d just filmed the interview, and Paul suggested I might like to use some of the demos in the film: none of them had ever been released or heard in public, just rough versions with vocals and guitars and a bit of piano, recorded the very day they were written. So he got one of his engineers to pull the files out, and there we were, listening to the stuff, both of us finding the energy and rhythm of the songs irresistible, smiling away and moving to the music side-by-side. He was visibly moved – there’s something about the rawness of those recordings that you rarely get with stuff recorded more seriously.

Last updated on March 9, 2021