Fact #154459
When:
Short story:
After a gig at the Agora Club, Columbus, Ohio, USA, Elvis Costello and Attraction Bruce Thomas retire to the bar of the local Holiday Inn. Within hearing of Steven Stills and Bonnie Bramlett, Costello describes Ray Charles as "a blind, ignorant nigger." He is immediately set upon by Bramlett and knocked to the ground.Full article:
Elvis Costello : Bruce Thomas and I were in the bar after the show in Columbus, Ohio, USA. And we were very drunk. Well, we weren’t drunk to begin with. We were reasonably drunk. And we started into what you’d probably call joshing. Gentle jibes between the two camps of the Stills Band and us. It developed, as it got drunker, into a nastier and nastier argument. And I suppose that in the drunkenness, my contempt for them was probably exaggerated beyond my real contempt for them. I don’t think I had a real opinion. But they just seemed in some way to typify a lot of things that I thought were wrong with American music. And that’s probably quite unfair but, at that exact moment, they did.
I said the most outrageous thing I could possibly say to them - that I knew, in my drunken logic, would anger them more than anything else.
Bonnie Bramlett : I slapped his face good. He was being disrespectful and out of line, stupid and drunk. It was my press conference and he was saying nigger all over the place. For the first time in twenty years, we had brought these Cubans here, who are now some of the best jazz musicians here. We took them to New York to be reunited with their family and the revolution had broken out in Cuba. Here's Elvis Costello going to call them a nigger. Please. Come on. Anyway we had a big confrontation and everybody in the press was there, Chet Flippo and his wife. If I had hired a press agent I couldn't have gotten more press out of it.
You have not seen a lot of interviews on me talking about it, but just to get it out of the way. It would be a crying shame for someone as talented as Elvis Costello to go down in history as the one who got the crap slapped out him by Bonnie Bramlett. I would like to do a duet. I challenge him to come sing with me, you little butt-head, come live here in this country you said you hated. We can do a duet of Peace, Love and Understanding. That's not a historical event. That was the event of someone being drunk and someone being fed up with it. That was my first year of sobriety. I was in the bar of the hotel and I took so much verbal abuse from him. If I had been drinking I would have slapped him a long time before that. I had taken it to the limit and I didn't care. If anyone thought I had been drinking I didn't care, but they knew I wasn't because they had been on the road with me and watching me like a hawk in my first year of sobriety.
Elvis Costello : The minute the story was published nationally, records were taken off playlists. About 120 death threats - or threats of violence of some kind. I had armed bodyguards for the last part of that tour.
Paul McCartney : I get misquoted a lot. It's like Elvis Costello's thing in America where he was shouting all that black stuff about Ray Charles. I was working on with Michael Jackson and Elvis Costello was in the same building. Michael said, "That stuff was big trouble. They still won't forgive him for that." They (the Americans) totally misread it. From what I understand, Elvis was doing this typically British kind of humour - if someone says, "Do you love me?" you answer, "You? I wouldn't love you!" which means "Yes, of course I do!" They do this bluff-double bluff thing. When someone in a bar said, "Do you English guys like Ray Charles?", he (Elvis) shouted, "No, he's just some silly nigger." But what he really meant, "Yes, I love Ray Charles. Why even ask me?" So he got misinterpreted, and apparently, if Quincy Jones ever catches up with Elvis, he's gonna bop him.
(Source : interview with Ray Bonici in Music Express, April 1982)
Elvis Costello : I’m not saying I wasn’t responsible for my actions; that sounds like I’m trying to excuse myself. But I was not very responsible. There’s a distinct difference. I was completely irresponsible, in fact. And far from carefree - careless with everything. With everything that I really care about. And I think that, inasmuch as it was said that we fed ourselves to the lions, you could say that whatever the incident was, it was symptomatic of the condition I was in, and that I deserved what happened regardless of the intentions of the remarks.
But it was only quite recently that I realized that it’s not only the man on the street, as it were, who’s never heard of me otherwise, who’s only read People - that it’s not only people like that who know only this about me. When we were recording Imperial Bedroom, Bruce Thomas was in the next studio while I was doing a vocal. Paul McCartney was there, and Michael Jackson came in to do a vocal - everything was very nice Everyone was getting along fine until somebody introduced Bruce as my bass player. And suddenly - there was a freeze-out. Michael Jackson was - “Oh, God, I don’t dig that guy… I don’t dig that guy.”
He had heard about it third hand, from Quincy Jones. Two guys I have a tremendous amount of admiration for. It depressed me that I wouldn’t be able to go up to him - I wouldn’t be able to go up and shake his hand, because he wouldn’t want to shake my hand. Or James Brown, for that matter. But what could I say? What could I say? How could you explain such a thing? But there is nothing I’d like more.
(Source : interview by Greil Marcus, Rolling Stone, 1982)
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I said the most outrageous thing I could possibly say to them - that I knew, in my drunken logic, would anger them more than anything else.
Bonnie Bramlett : I slapped his face good. He was being disrespectful and out of line, stupid and drunk. It was my press conference and he was saying nigger all over the place. For the first time in twenty years, we had brought these Cubans here, who are now some of the best jazz musicians here. We took them to New York to be reunited with their family and the revolution had broken out in Cuba. Here's Elvis Costello going to call them a nigger. Please. Come on. Anyway we had a big confrontation and everybody in the press was there, Chet Flippo and his wife. If I had hired a press agent I couldn't have gotten more press out of it.
You have not seen a lot of interviews on me talking about it, but just to get it out of the way. It would be a crying shame for someone as talented as Elvis Costello to go down in history as the one who got the crap slapped out him by Bonnie Bramlett. I would like to do a duet. I challenge him to come sing with me, you little butt-head, come live here in this country you said you hated. We can do a duet of Peace, Love and Understanding. That's not a historical event. That was the event of someone being drunk and someone being fed up with it. That was my first year of sobriety. I was in the bar of the hotel and I took so much verbal abuse from him. If I had been drinking I would have slapped him a long time before that. I had taken it to the limit and I didn't care. If anyone thought I had been drinking I didn't care, but they knew I wasn't because they had been on the road with me and watching me like a hawk in my first year of sobriety.
Elvis Costello : The minute the story was published nationally, records were taken off playlists. About 120 death threats - or threats of violence of some kind. I had armed bodyguards for the last part of that tour.
Paul McCartney : I get misquoted a lot. It's like Elvis Costello's thing in America where he was shouting all that black stuff about Ray Charles. I was working on with Michael Jackson and Elvis Costello was in the same building. Michael said, "That stuff was big trouble. They still won't forgive him for that." They (the Americans) totally misread it. From what I understand, Elvis was doing this typically British kind of humour - if someone says, "Do you love me?" you answer, "You? I wouldn't love you!" which means "Yes, of course I do!" They do this bluff-double bluff thing. When someone in a bar said, "Do you English guys like Ray Charles?", he (Elvis) shouted, "No, he's just some silly nigger." But what he really meant, "Yes, I love Ray Charles. Why even ask me?" So he got misinterpreted, and apparently, if Quincy Jones ever catches up with Elvis, he's gonna bop him.
(Source : interview with Ray Bonici in Music Express, April 1982)
Elvis Costello : I’m not saying I wasn’t responsible for my actions; that sounds like I’m trying to excuse myself. But I was not very responsible. There’s a distinct difference. I was completely irresponsible, in fact. And far from carefree - careless with everything. With everything that I really care about. And I think that, inasmuch as it was said that we fed ourselves to the lions, you could say that whatever the incident was, it was symptomatic of the condition I was in, and that I deserved what happened regardless of the intentions of the remarks.
But it was only quite recently that I realized that it’s not only the man on the street, as it were, who’s never heard of me otherwise, who’s only read People - that it’s not only people like that who know only this about me. When we were recording Imperial Bedroom, Bruce Thomas was in the next studio while I was doing a vocal. Paul McCartney was there, and Michael Jackson came in to do a vocal - everything was very nice Everyone was getting along fine until somebody introduced Bruce as my bass player. And suddenly - there was a freeze-out. Michael Jackson was - “Oh, God, I don’t dig that guy… I don’t dig that guy.”
He had heard about it third hand, from Quincy Jones. Two guys I have a tremendous amount of admiration for. It depressed me that I wouldn’t be able to go up to him - I wouldn’t be able to go up and shake his hand, because he wouldn’t want to shake my hand. Or James Brown, for that matter. But what could I say? What could I say? How could you explain such a thing? But there is nothing I’d like more.
(Source : interview by Greil Marcus, Rolling Stone, 1982)