Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood—Elvis Costello
#365Songs: March 29
I fell in love with this song the first time I heard it.
Not this version, mind you.
The one by The Animals.
It was so minor-chord-forward, Eric Burdon’s vocal was so raw and soaring, and the lyric was so human and so pathos-laden. It was perfection, and it felt tailor-made for me.
I was barely a teenager at that point, but my love for this song has stayed with me ever since.
When I first heard the Nina Simone version, I assumed (wrongly) that she was covering The Animals. And I was astonished. It was just about the most beautiful and haunting thing I’d ever heard.
Imagine my surprise when I discovered the song had actually been written for her!
Fast forward to 1986. I didn’t know who Tom Waits was yet, and I wasn’t much of an Elvis Costello fan. But I had a friend who had MTV, and it was at his house that I saw the video for Elvis Costello performing “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.”
Holy shit.
The White Falcon. The upright bass. Costello in the leather jacket, black fedora, and round-lensed shades. And the vibe. The tremolo-laden guitar. Those ghosty marimbas. Costello’s impossibly hoarse voice. I felt like I’d found my new hero.
I bought Costello’s King of America as quickly as I could. Needless to say, I was disappointed. Nowhere on the rest of the record was there anything even close to that level of vibe. Don’t get me wrong, there’s some good stuff on there, and it’s grown on me over time. But “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” was on a whole other level.
As it turns out, those marimbas were played by Michael Blair, who had been busy lending his skills to Tom Waits the previous year for the Rain Dogs album.
Once I discovered Tom Waits myself, the origin of the vibe on Costello’s “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” became pretty obvious—it was clearly Costello trying to do Waits.
I’ve only seen Tom Waits in concert a couple of times. The first time, I had amazing tickets. Almost front row. Elvis Costello was sitting several rows behind me. I suspect we both enjoyed the show.
Fast forward to today, and I’ve definitely become an Elvis Costello fan. His talent level is absurd, and I deeply admire his risk-taking sensibilities. Like any risk-taker, not everything he tries works. And with a career that now spans six decades, he’s probably had more misses than successes. But when he’s succeeded, he’s created some genuinely astonishing music. “Shipbuilding” alone has got to be one of the greatest lyrics ever written. And from his debut in 1977 up through Spike in 1989, I don’t think he released a single album that lacked at least one incredible song. Many of them contained many masterpieces.
So it’s perhaps odd that my favorite Costello performance of all times remains a cover. But I think something about it being someone else’s song freed Costello up in a way. And what he delivered is truly timeless. A timeless take on a timeless song.
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