LONDON ¨C I¡¯ve just mentioned to Elvis Costello the publicity stunt he pulled on his first trip to Japan in 1978.
¡°Ah, our attempt to get ourselves in the papers,¡± Costello recalls over the phone from his Vancouver home. It had seemed like such a fiendishly provocative idea: dress like Japanese schoolboys in Nehru jackets and brass buttons (¡°we thought we looked like the Beatles at Shea Stadium¡°), hire a truck, drive it through Tokyo¡¯s ritzy Ginza district playing as loud as amplification would allow, and throw your records at the growing crowds. What could go wrong?
¡°Nobody took any notice,¡± he laughs. ¡°It just goes to show what would make the papers in England wouldn¡¯t make a ripple in Japan. Too unprecedented I guess! We thought we¡¯d be hauled away and it would be a fantastic scandal and that¡¯s how we¡¯d make our name. But it didn¡¯t work out that way.¡±
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