‘A Girl Anyone Might Know’: Elvis Costello’s ‘Alison’
‘200 Greatest 70s Rock Songs Vol. 2’ Book Excerpt
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“Alison” is one of Elvis Costello’s most popular songs but did not chart in 1977 when released as a single from his debut album My Aim Is True. Costello explains the song’s inspiration in his 2015 autobiography Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink.
“I’ve always told people that I wrote the song ‘Alison’ after seeing a beautiful checkout girl at the local supermarket. She had a face for which a ship might have once been named. Scoundrels might once have fought mist-swathed duels to defend her honor.
“Now she was punching in the prices on cans of beans at a cash register and looking as if all the hopes and dreams of her youth were draining away. All that were left would soon be squandered to a ruffian who told her convenient lies and trapped her still further.”
Costello patterned his phrasing of the song after the Spinners’ “Ghetto Child” and revealed that “the other song that was playing in my head when I wrote ‘Alison’ was ‘The Wind Cries Mary’ by Jimi Hendrix. It had been playing in there for a long time.
“The name that I chose was almost incidental. I knew it couldn’t be a name of a glamorous, sophisticated woman, like Grace or Sophia, or a poetic heroine, like Eloise or Penelope. I needed a name that sounded like a girl anyone might know, and ‘Alison’ fitted the tune.”
Frank Mastropolo is the author of the new eBook 200 Greatest 70s Rock Songs Vol. 2: The Stories Behind the Music of the 1970s, the latest in the 200 Greatest Rock Songs series.
