Write for God

Elvis Costello

Elvis Costello is one of my favorite artists, as a songwriter and as an interpreter. He’s had a long career marked by tremendous live performances and albums that always take chances. Born Declan Patrick McManus in England, but of Irish heritage, he is gifted with a facility for wordplay that makes him the perfect songwriter for writers to listen to.

Costello wrote the lyrics to Shipbuilding, an antiwar song from the perspective of working people who survive by working in defense industries but who also lose their children to the wars that employ their handiwork. (There’s a live performance here.)

He wrote Shipbuilding during the runup to the Falklands War  between the United Kingdom and Argentina in 1982 over possession of a group of islands in the Atlantic. In the midst of a struggling economy and high unemployment, politicians like Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher used national pride and the prospect of shipyards reopening and bringing more jobs building weapons of war to rally the British. Costello still considers the lyrics some of his best, as he told Q magazine in March 2008:

“It’s a pretty good lyric, yeah. The key line for me is, ‘Diving for dear life, when we could be diving for pearls.’ That we should be doing something beautiful, better than this. I wrote the lyric before the Belgrano (Argentinean Navy cruiser sunk by British forces during the 1982 Falklands conflict in controversial circumstances). I’ve been to see the monument, stood and read the names of all the men… well, boys, who died. Whatever you say about the conflict of war, that crime alone will see Thatcher in hell.”

Here are Costello’s lyrics to Shipbuilding, a haunting song with music by British producer Clive Langer and separate interpretations by Costello himself and Soft Machine vocalist Robert Wyatt:

Is it worth it?
A new winter coat and shoes for the wife
And a bicycle on the boy’s birthday.
It’s just a rumour that was spread around town
By the women and children
Soon we’ll be shipbuilding.

Well I ask you
The boy said “Dad they’re going to take me to task, but I’ll be back by Christmas”
It’s just a rumour that was spread around town
Somebody said that someone got filled in
For saying that people get killed in
The result of this shipbuilding.

With all the will in the world
Diving for dear life
When we could be diving for pearls.

It’s just a rumour that was spread around town.

A telegram or a picture postcard
Within weeks they’ll be re-opening the shipyards
And notifying the next of kin.
Once again
It’s all we’re skilled in
We will be shipbuilding
With all the will in the world
Diving for dear life
When we could be diving for pearls.