Getty Elvis Costello
Born Declan Patrick MacManus and known by the stage name Elvis Costello, the 63-year-old musician, composer, songwriter, singer, composer, record producer, writer and actor cut short his European concert tour with his longtime backing band The Imposters as he recovers from surgery for a “very aggressive cancerous malignancy.”
The punk-pop-pub artist, part of the British New Wave in the late 1970s, posted to his website that he was “forced” to cancel his tour because his weeks of post-op recovery don’t work with the demands of a stage performer.
Costello said his doctor said the surgery “defeated” the cancer he doesn’t name but offers this advice: “Take very good care of your loved ones but Gentleman, do talk to you friends – you’ll find you are not alone – seek your doctor’s advice if you are in doubt or when it is timely and act as swiftly as you may in these matters. It may save your life. Believe me, it is better than playing roulette.”
Costello had performed a few dates after his May surgery but canceled the remaining dozen shows. He is still scheduled to go back on the road in November through December for 20 U.S. shows.
Costello has three sons. Matthew MacManus with then-wife Mary Burgoyne in 1974 and in 2006, twins Dexter Henry Lorcan and Frank Harlan James MacManus with current wife singer Diana Krall.
Here’s what you need to know:
1. Costello Has Been Married Three Times and Has Three Children
10th September 1977: Elvis Costello at the microphone during the 10th annual garden party held at Crystal Palace Concert Bowl. (Photo by Gary Merrin/Keystone/Getty Images)
Costello wrote in his autobiography ‘Unfaithful Music,’ that he was that, unfaithful to his first wife Mary Burgoyne confessing he was a serial adulterer. He married Burgoyne in 1974. While married to her, he began an affair with Bebe Buell, mother of Liv Tyler and then rocker Todd Rungren’s girlfriend. He had a longtime relationship with Pogues bassist Cait O’Riordan; they married in 1986 and divorced in 2002.
There is little written about his marriage to Burgoyne and even less photographic evidence of that marriage. Indeed, on one fan page, questions about Burgoyne remain.
2. Born in the 1970s, Costello’s Eldest Son Matthew MacManus is Also a Musician
GettyBritish singer-songwriter Elvis Costello in the 1970s.
Costello and Burgoyne had a son, Matthew MacManus, now in his 40s. There’s little available online about MacManus. But that he is a musician is known.
MacManus did appear on the track “The Bridge I Burned” playing Fender bass and drum loop for the album “All this Useless Beauty” by Costello and The Attractions, Costello’s 17th studio album, released in 1996.
3. Costello Married Jazz Singer Diana Krall in 2003 & They Had Twin Boys in 2006
Singers Elvis Costello and his wife Diana Krall attend the Elton John AIDS Foundation’s Fifth Annual Benefit “An Enduring Vision” at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel October 3, 2006 in New York City.
Dexter Henry Lorcan and Frank Harlan James and were born on the couple’s third wedding anniversary, the BBC reported. The twins are the couple’s first children together. They were married in 2003 in Elton John’s British mansion.
Their statement read: “We are ecstatic…mother and sons are doing splendidly.”
Now age 11, the twin boys Dexter and Frank have been kept out of the public eye. The New Yorker reported Krall and Costello, who met when they were co-presenters at the 2002 Grammy awards, live in New York City and in West Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and make sure that one is always home with the kids or they are with them on the road. In the 2010 interview, Costello wouldn’t allow the magazine to speak to or meet Krall or their sons. “He said that they try to keep their careers separate and the twins unexposed.”
There’s nary of foot print of either twin online. Indeed, Costello has called social networks a “parasite.”
Diana Krall and Elvis Costello with their twin boys
But in a People interview in 2007, Krall and Costello shared photos of the boys and spoke about parenting the twins and Krall said at 6-months-old the babies went on tour with her.
4. Costello Called James Brown & Ray Charles Ni**ers 40 Years Ago While Involved With Rock Against Racism. He Apologized Saying he Was Drunk
Children at an Anti Nazi rally in South London, August 1978. The Rock Against Racism concert includes Aswad and Elvis Costello. (Photo by Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Rock Against Racism was born in 1976 in England as a reaction to an increase in racial tensions and the emergence of white nationalist groups. Ironically, Costello was part of the RAR campaign that sought to address not just racism in the community but in music where rockers used racist language and exhibited racist behaviors. Following the incident, where he and other rockers were drunk, Costello held a press conference to explain and apologize.
Elvis Costello (L) and Nile Rodgers attend Songwriters Hall Of Fame 47th Annual Induction And Awards at Marriott Marquis Hotel on June 9, 2016 in New York City.
Decades later, following a collaboration with Questlove of The Roots, Costello said he was sorry during an interview. Ray Charles for his part said at the time things people say while drunk are not news. In his autobiography he wrote, “…it took just five minutes to detach my tongue from my mind and my life from the rail it was on…”
5. Impresario Costello, Who Has an Enigmatic List of Alter Egos, is a Longtime Humanitarian
lvis Costello performs during the Who Cares Benefit For Teen Cancer America Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center at The Theater at Madison Square Garden on February 28, 2013 in New York City.
Napoleon Dynamite, decades before Pedro for President, Howard Coward, which is, as The New Yorker said, “an alleged long-lost son of Noël Coward and a brother and touring partner of Henry Coward, a.k.a. T Bone Burnett,” the Beloved Entertainer, the Imposter (hence the name of his band), Little Hands of Concrete for his strumming and picking style, and the Emotional Toothpaste among others.
Costello has played benefit concerts for myriad charities and aid agencies including the Elton John AIDS Foundation, Little Kids Rock, Go Red For Women, the Global Citizen Festival in Central Park to End Extreme Poverty, is on the Jazz Foundation of America board and has performed benefits to help save the homes of elderly jazz and blues musicians, especially those that survived Hurricane Katrina.
Elvis Costello performs onstage during the Little Kids Rock Benefit 2017 at PlayStation Theater in New York City.