Alone Upon the Ferris Wheel

Elvis Costello has had a remarkable career, for many reasons. Today, let’s talk about the simple fact that he’s been able to write great songs for legendary artists and then actually hear those artists record those songs. 

It’s not always that easy, to just write a great song and hand it to a great singer and have them say, “Okay, let’s roll tape.” Bruce Springsteen famously wrote “Fire” for Elvis Presley, who would have recorded a legendary version, but it never came together before the King’s death. The indefagitable Elvis Costello Wiki tells us that even EC himself hasn’t always managed it; “Almost Ideal Eyes” was written for David Crosby, who never recorded it, while Johnny Cash declined “Complicated Shadows” and instead picked up “Hidden Shame.” 

Costello penned “The Comedians” for Roy Orbison but managed to record it first, on his 1984 album Goodbye Cruel World. As he writes in Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink: 

It’s fascinating to listen to the Costello original and the rewritten Orbison version back to back, because although they share melody and a chorus, they’re completely different songs. It’s not even fair to call the original much of an “original” since the Orbison version is so different; for his take on the song, EC crams as much lyrical flotsam and jetsam into every line of the chorus, before taking the chorus at a racing clip. If there’s feeling to be explored here, Costello seems determined to avoid it entirely, which may match up with his state of mind as he recorded the song. 

For Orbison, Costello doesn’t deconstruct the song so much as rip it apart and reassemble it around what works. The melody remains the same and the chorus is identical both lyrically and musically. But instead of his own herky jerky rhythm, Costello seizes upon that bolero rhythm and elevates a simple tale of a heartbroken person stuck on a ferris wheel into high romantic drama. 

It stands out on Mystery Girl, the 1989 album which contains Orbison’s studio version of the song. Music fans who have clicked past their local PBS station over the past twenty to thirty years may know it from its inclusion in A Black and White Night, a concert special recorded in 1987 and broadcast in 1988; it was released as an LP in 1989, after Orbison’s death and the posthumous release of Mystery Girl. 

While Black and White Night was spearheaded by producer T Bone Burnett, as was “The Comedians” on Mystery Girl, the bulk of that latter album was headed up by Jeff Lynne with support from fellow Traveling Wilbury Tom Petty and his band the Heartbreakers. 

All of which is a roundabout way to say that as an album, Mystery Girl is an inescapable late-eighties Lynne production, complete with outsized drum production slathered over with acoustic guitars. Lynne did this for other Wilburys like Petty (all the big singles from Full Moon Fever) and George Harrison (“Got My Mind Set On You” and the album Cloud Nine). It’s not a bad sound but you can spot it from forty paces and as it melds into the other Lynne work from that era, the distinguishing features of each artist get sanded down beneath the production. 

Burnett is maybe the only producer Orbison worked with in this era to create a new song that sonically could sit next to Orbison’s greatest moments of the fifties and sixties. He knows instinctively that voice is the centerpiece of Orbison’s magic, not anything happening musically around it. Every bit of instrumentation and arrangement is in service to that voice, carrying the melody. As Costello’s lyrics place the singer in a ghostly carnival of heartbreak, Orbison carries the melody aloft toward a fleeting moment of emotional release. 

But what makes Orbison’s songs so powerful isn’t always what you hear, but what you don’t; the mood they carry lingers long beyond the final grooves of the disc. Whether you want to or not, your mind hangs back at that carnival, on that ferris wheel, hoping for some other outcome that can never happen. 

Listen to “The Comedians” on the streaming service of your choice, by Roy Orbison or Elvis Costello.

BONUS: The song’s been covered a fair amount but few surpass the interpretation of Puddles Pity Party.