No Getting Over You

I saw the Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach tour at the Chicago Theater on State Street, in October 1998. Even for someone who has tried to heartily embrace EC’s stylistic journeys over the years, it was a strange night. 

Like so many before me, my entry point to Elvis had been as the knock-kneed, spastic songwriter and performer behind some of the great prickly albums of the late 1970s and 1980s. And even then, he wore his influences on his sleeves; he’d started performing the Bacharach/Hal David classic “I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself” in 1977 and a live recording saw release on the 1978 compilation Stiffs Live. 

My first Elvis Costello live experience was EC and Steve Nieve as a duo in the intimate confines of Chicago’s Park West. Later that same year, I saw the Attractions with EC at the Rosemont Theater, a suburban venue with all the charm of an off-brand casino at 3 in the morning. Then, two years after that, suddenly a full orchestra and a raft of new songs that blended EC’s pop wit with Bacharach’s singular way around a melody. 

There was a bit of whiplash for me, which wasn’t helped by the unexpected inclusion of a Bacharach-focused section of the concert during which backup singers performed a lengthy medley of his many, many hits, not just for pop radio but for stage and screen. Suddenly, a night devoted to the urbane melancholy pop of Bacharach/Costello expanded to include “Arthur’s Theme” from the film of the same name, and “(The Man Who Shot) Liberty Valance,” from that film of that same name. 

I did get the amazing Burt Bacharach box set for Christmas that year, The Look of Love, which opened my eyes to the wide influence he’s had on pop music across the spectrum over the course of decades. But even then, I skipped stuff like “The Blob,” another song from another film of another same name. (Maybe it’s just his movie songs that don’t click for me?) As much as I loved Bacharach’s classics and some of the deep cuts, there was always an element of easy listening schmaltz that didn’t quite line up with my own pop music preferences.

Long story short, “My Little Red Book” is a Bacharach/David composition originally recorded by Manfred Mann for the What’s New, Pussycat? soundtrack in 1965. A year later, Love would tackle it with a psychedelic garage flavor in a version that would become even more influential than the original take. When you hear later versions of the song, you can usually tell within about ten seconds whether they’re covering Manfred Mann or Love; Mel Torme chose the former, and Ted Nugent the latter. 

There’s something daffy, almost borderline novelty, about the original Manfred Mann version, which I attribute to the prominent use of kazoo. When EC covered the song with Bacharach for that fall 1998 tour, he eschewed the kazoo but embraced the Manfred Mann take on the tune. It’s a tremendous lyric, paired with a melody that gives the singer a chance to run up and down the scales chasing the emotional and musical resolution in the chorus. The EC/Bacharach take would be immortalized on Sessions at West 54th, a live performance series for PBS.