Punk pretended that it was wiping everything away and starting fresh, like a Year Zero of music. That was bullshit. Punk was based on the Stooges and the New York Dolls. It just had a short memory. It didn’t invent it all again. It wasn’t atonalism. It wasn’t that radical. The radical aspect of it was to dispense with all the pomposity of stadium rock as it had become in the mid ’70s. That was a radical and a welcome, refreshing change. But to pretend that it was radical musically, in the sense that it completely swept everything away, there were very few bands that attempted to do that.

So I never bought this idea that we had to blow away everything. You don’t have craven respect for the past that is paralyzing. You just have a love of the past. You don’t want to recreate it and you don’t want to live in it, but it can be the foundation of something new. Pop music is just intelligent stealing.

From Performing Songwriter Issue 80, Sept/Oct 2004

Also, Elvis Costello is the cover feature of Issue 117, May 2009

Category: In Their Own Words