Deluxe Edition

Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink

The deluxe eBook edition of Elvis Costello's Unfaithful Music &amp; Disappearing Ink features two hundred additional photos and images, including more from Costello's original lyrics notebooks and a selection of his family's most intriguing documents and vintage photographs. Pages from his father's scrapbooks from the early '50s Merseyside jazz scene are contrasted with a ledger of setlists and meagre fees from the author's early musical partnership in Rusty on the Liverpool club scene and other mementoes from Costello's musical apprenticeship. There are numerous candid shots of the artist and his collaborators, both on stage and behind the scenes, along with a touching collection of signatures, mostly dedicated to the young Declan MacManus in his autograph book from the 1960s, all of which charts a journey from fan to pop star and back again. Over an hour of excerpts from the audio edition are also featured, including several wonderful anecdotes that were ultimately omitted from the book. These additions serve to enrich the story of an incredible life in music, phenomenally well told. 
 
Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink is the long-awaited memoir from Elvis Costello, one of rock and roll's most iconic stars. 
 
Born Declan Patrick MacManus, Elvis Costello was raised in London and Liverpool, grandson of a trumpet player on the White Star Line and son of a jazz musician who became a successful radio dance band vocalist. Costello went into the family business and had taken the popular music world by storm before he was twenty-four. 
 
Costello continues to add to one of the most intriguing and extensive songbooks of the day. His performances have taken him from a cardboard guitar in his front room to fronting a rock and roll band on your television screen and performing in the world's greatest concert halls in a wild variety of company. Unfaithful Music describes how Costello's career has somehow endured for almost four decades through a combination of dumb luck and animal cunning, even managing the occasional absurd episode of pop stardom. 
 
This memoir, written with the same inimitable touch as his lyrics, and including dozens of images from his personal archive, offers his unique view of his unlikely and sometimes comical rise to international success, with diversions through the previously undocumented emotional foundations of some of his best known songs and the hits of tomorrow. The book contains many stories and observations about his renowned co-writers and co-conspirators, though Costello also pauses along the way for considerations on the less appealing side of infamy. 
 
Unfaithful Music &amp; Disappearing Ink is destined to be a classic, idiosyncratic memoir of a singular man.

The book is fantastic - maybe the best about music by a musician that I've read....The stuff about the collaborations alone - McCartney, Burt Bacharach, Allen Toussaint, the Roots, the Brodsky Quartet - is riveting

Better written than your average rock memoir ... Costello is one the greatest writers of the 20th Century. It's funny, observant and clear of purpose

By turns lachrymose, self-flagellating and impassioned. Unsurprisingly, it is beautifully written. It is also often extraordinarily moving.

Streaked with some of the best writing - funny, strange, spiteful, anguished - we've ever had from an important musician ... dark gems twinkle here in abundance.

[Unfaithful Music] is truly remarkable in the way it presents a riveting, honest portrait of the author and the many A-listers he's tread the boards with, while ricocheting through the years at an almost breathless pace ... even the most ardent Costello fan will come away having learned more about the man than any of us ever dared hope to discover

Long one of music's wittiest, smartest, and most perceptive lyricists, Costello has done his legacy proud with his new book, which, thankfully, goes far beyond his angry-young-man days, most movingly in its frequent reminiscences about the relationship between the singer and his musician father

In a world littered with uneven (and largely ghosted) celebrity memoirs, "Disappearing Ink" is a beautifully written revelation ... The book is not just for fans. "Unfaithful Music" is a lyrical tale that stretches across generations, geography and a century of popular song."

Costello ultimately emerges as a clever, compassionate, self-aware man, brave enough to acknowledge his faults and fortunate enough to have overcome the worst of them

Written elliptically, episodically beautiful ... this man's knowledge is breath-taking

Every page exudes his deep love and knowledge of modern music

Remarkable for its breadth and candour about everything: childhood, family, marriages, musical collaborations, love life, heroes, villains, screw-ups (even the most painful) and his songs...there are treasurable moments in profusion for admirers panning for gold...or diving for pearls

His witty, word-playing voice transmits loud and clear....there are smart snapshots of vanished worlds...all his sins and virtues are displayed in this stylish, astute book

A truly weighty rock memoir ... There's plenty of insight into his art here, a smattering of gossip, a wealth of pop-cultural knowledge, and just enough self-flagellation to keep things interesting

A series of wryly comic tales that surely deserve the full Penguin Classic treatment randomly afford Morrisey

Without doubt, one of the greatest self-penned appraisals of a popular entertainer's life and work...What makes this book a classic (yes, you heard me) is the beauty of the writing, the seemingly effortless imagery of situations, saints and sinners (EC puts himself in the latter category, often), and the persuasive nature of the text that should make even the most casual reader clamour for more after 670 pages

One of the finest musical biographies I have ever read ... an engrossing and rewarding read

The greatest songwriter of our generation ... a tremendous read

It really is stunning. Hugely illuminating, fiercely passionate, funny, moving and beautifully written.

Typically sharp and funny on songwriting

The writing is as good as you would expect from such an accomplished lyricist. The tone is wise, warm and often rueful, befitting a 61-year-old elder statesman, and the story a compelling one

For serious music fans? It has to be Elvis Costello's Unfaithful Music &amp; Disappearing Ink (Viking). Utterly definitive and clearly, painstakingly penned by Costello himself, who doesn't want to miss a detail

Writers like Costello because he's always taken writing seriously. That's obvious to anyone who pays attention to his lyrics, and it's even more apparent to anyone who reads Unfaithful Music &amp; Disappearing Ink, his charming new autobiography. The book is refreshingly free of salacious gossip and needless name-dropping; it's an intelligent self-assessment from a musician who went from angry young man to elder statesman of pop ... a defiantly fun autobiography.

This is a big book, literally, by one of the best rockers in the business. Given the singular, and eclectic, nature of his career, it is no surprise that Elvis Costello's anecdotal autobiography is an idiosyncratic journey through his music and the people and places that have inspired him ... A must for Costello fans everywhere.

Costello's prose cuts with the same spiky wit and observational power as his well-known lyrics ... packed with great lines, vivid anecdotes ... a treat for his many fans.

Plenty of tales to keep the pages turning. Readers will be fascinated by Costello's stories...his book feels like a discussion between friends over a pint.

Often brilliant and wholly idiosyncratic

Revelatory, evocatively crafted, [and] highly entertaining

A winningly droll and good-natured guide to his life and many works throughout

Punctuated with sardonic and self-aware truths

Vivid ... It's not surprising that one of rock's most literate songwriters would pen such a deep, free-form memoir

Elvis Costello delivers an impeccably detailed autobiography. He's often as brilliant at turning a phrase in prose as he is in his lyrics

Enthralling ... This is family history as musical encyclopedia, and to listen to Costello recount his life is to be buttonholed by an enthusiastic fan. Fandom for Costello is inseparable from the compulsion to write songs and, it seems, to understand his own life ... Fortunately for the fan of Costello's music the topic of discussion is often his own songs, and he is, unsurprisingly, a witty and eloquent guide

[Costello] pens books with the same clever writing that he uses in song

Costello['s] book is capacious, clever, and full of heart and soul

The story unfolds like a movie that jumps across time, more thematic than chronological, as boyhood anecdotes and obsessions intersect with mature songs and adult reckoning.... The book doubles as a selective mini-history of 20th century music, as told by a discerning guide. He addresses artists both towering (Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Johnny Cash) and relatively unheralded (David Ackles, Robert Wyatt) with a fan's affection and music scholar's insight

With an encyclopedic knowledge and appreciation for, and deep love of, music, and with an expressive power and heart, Costello's memoir will take its place in the highest echelons of the genre

His book is almost essential as an idiosyncratic history of 20th-century pop music

Studded with entertaining anecdotes

Evening Standard Best Music Books of 2015

Elvis Costello has written and recorded legendary albums including My Aim Is True, This Year's Model, Armed Forces, Imperial Bedroom, and King of America, and songs including "Alison", "Watching the Detectives", "Oliver's Army", "Almost Blue", "Shipbuilding", "I Want You", "Tramp the Dirt Down" and "Jimmie Standing In The Rain". He has collaborated with The Attractions, Paul McCartney, the Brodsky Quartet, Burt Bacharach, Allen Toussaint and The Roots, and has written songs for George Jones, Chet Baker, Solomon Burke and Johnny Cash. He has enjoyed the acclaim and the infamy that comes with a forty-year career in show business.

'I asked my dad if he needed "Please, Please Me" any more. He laughed and handed the record to me . . ." 
 
In a career spanning four decades, Elvis Costello (born Declan MacManus) has made himself a huge reputation through his tunes, lyrics and occasional bad behaviour. Now, for the first time, he is telling his story. 
 
From miming on Top of the Pops, to becoming one of the industry's elder statesmen, Costello's memoir - which he has written himself and will promote assiduously - is a one-man history of British music. A warm, deep and surprisingly funny insight into an amazing life, it is rich with anecdotes about family, musicians and the creation of his famous songs.

Elvis Costello

'I asked my dad if he needed "Please, Please Me" any more. He laughed and handed the record to me . . ." 
 
In a career spanning four decades, Elvis Costello (born Declan MacManus) has made himself a huge reputation through his tunes, lyrics and occasional bad behaviour. His long-awaited memoir finally reveals all about his mistakes and his marriages, his faults and his family. 
 
From his controversial early television appearances, to becoming one of the industry's elder statesmen, Costello's memoir - which he has written himself - is a one-man history of British music. A warm, deep and surprisingly funny insight into an amazing life, it is rich with anecdotes about fame, music and the creation of his famous songs.

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Praise for Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink

The book is fantastic - maybe the best about music by a musician that I've read....The stuff about the collaborations alone - McCartney, Burt Bacharach, Allen Toussaint, the Roots, the Brodsky Quartet - is ri ...

Better written than your average rock memoir ... Costello is one the greatest writers of the 20th Century. It's funny, observant and clear of purpose

By turns lachrymose, self-flagellating and impassioned. Unsurprisingly, it is beautifully written. It is also often extraordinarily moving.

The book is fantastic - maybe the best about music by a musician that I've read....The stuff about the collaborations alone - McCartney, Burt Bacharach, Allen Toussaint, the Roots, the Brodsky Quartet - is ri ...

Better written than your average rock memoir ... Costello is one the greatest writers of the 20th Century. It's funny, observant and clear of purpose

By turns lachrymose, self-flagellating and impassioned. Unsurprisingly, it is beautifully written. It is also often extraordinarily moving.

The book is fantastic - maybe the best about music by a musician that I've read....The stuff about the collaborations alone - McCartney, Burt Bacharach, Allen Toussaint, the Roots, the Brodsky Quartet - is ri ...

Better written than your average rock memoir ... Costello is one the greatest writers of the 20th Century. It's funny, observant and clear of purpose

By turns lachrymose, self-flagellating and impassioned. Unsurprisingly, it is beautifully written. It is also often extraordinarily moving.

Books by Elvis Costello

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