Paul McCartney was at the microphone singing Ricky Nelson’s “Lonesome Town” to an almost empty Royal Albert Hall. Many of the other performers on the… - Elvis Costello

The people with the most resources are the federal government. If you can invade a country halfway across the world in a matter of days, you can surely come to the aid of your own citizens in a shorter order of time.

A senior BBC music programmer smarmed up to me and took this opportunity to remind me of my diminished status in his petty universe, “Of course, you’d have had a lot more hits if you’d just taken out all the sevenths and minor chords.” I suppose I would have had even more, if I’d only taken out all of the music entirely and most of the words, too.

I had a lot of problems with my name … my first name Declan is really not very well known outside of Ireland, MacManus is a name they could never spell ... if you think about the names of '76, '77 … I got off kind of lightly — with a name you could live with, you know, in time. … I kind of liked the dare of it. Of course we weren't to know that within a month of my first album actually being issued Elvis Presley would die, and it would actually be a talking point. … Let me put it this way — people don't forget you with that name. It's sort of receded as — and this may sound terribly disrespectful and heretical — but as Elvis Presley has receded as a musical force, people make much less of a case about it. Elvis is a sort of cultural figure but there is no direct line between the music of Elvis Presley and the music of today. There is none whatsoever, he's no influence whatsoever, that I can detect, on music made today. Other than people who consciously retro in styling themselves after his ideas. There is no direct impact in the way that you can hear the influence of The Beatles or Stevie Wonder or numerous other people.