On October 2, UMe will release My Aim Is True (49th Anniversary Edition), a five-CD box set telling the story of how Declan MacManus became Elvis Costello – and how his debut album, recorded in a small London studio, was the first public step in a singular and enduring career.
A UME press announcement touted the October retail release.
“Across 104 tracks, demos, masters, outtakes, live performances, interviews, and other rare recordings (52 of them previously unreleased), plus a new 2026 remaster of the original album from the original analog tapes (the vinyl original album is AAA all analog), the collection traces Costello’s transformation from a young computer operator through his brief attempts to break into the London "singer-songwriter" scene while recording songs in his bedroom, dreaming of them being sung by other artists; to eventually recording three failed singles for Stiff Records; "Less Than Zero,” “Alison,” and “(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes” with members of the American band Clover, before forming the Attractions and having a U.K. hit single with “Watching The Detectives” on which only Costello and Steve Nieve appeared.
“Each of its five discs – My Aim Is True, The Blue Print, The Stranger In The House, Becoming The Attractions and Covered In Clover (the only live performance of Costello and Clover) – is accompanied by extensive new writing from Costello, alongside rare and unseen photographs, handwritten lyrics from his notebooks and diary entries from 1976, and lists of songs he was performing solo, as then he was being rejected by every publisher and A&R man in London before Stiff Records heard something in his songs.”
The collection was produced by Elvis Costello and Steve Berkowitz.
“When first proposed, I thought the whole idea of celebrating a 50th Anniversary of My Aim Is True was preposterous,” Costello writes at the beginning of the collection. “It made my teeth itch.” He continues: “It couldn’t just be set up like a venerable object in a glass case.”
“Instead, My Aim Is True (49th Anniversary Edition) presents the album as the beginning of a still-unfolding story. Its first disc pairs the original album with “Watching The Detectives,” creating a hybrid of the original U.K. and U.S. track listings. Recorded with producer Nick Lowe and the Marin County band Clover during four six-hour sessions at Pathway Studios, the album emerged with little budget, limited overdubbing and Costello singing live on nearly every track.
“Last night I listened to this wonderfully wonky record in its entirety for the first time in about 45 years,” Lowe writes in a new note for the set, recalling Pathway’s unforgettably heady atmosphere of “cigarettes, ill-laundered clothes, exposed electrical units, and urinal disinfectant.” He adds that making the album gave him “the priceless opportunity to observe at close range the extraordinary work of one of the foremost composers of popular song of this or any other era.”
“In his accompanying essay, Costello remembers slipping away from his day job at Elizabeth Arden under the pretense of illness to deliver an unsolicited demo to the newly opened Stiff Records, then encountering Lowe outside the nearby Underground station. Within weeks, Lowe was producing his first session. Soon afterward, Stiff founders Jake Riviera and Dave Robinson supplied a new name and a pair of black horn-rimmed glasses, completing what Costello calls “a Superman costume in reverse.” The tweed jacket and blue suit seen on the album cover had been given to him by his office manager; the tear in one sleeve, he later claimed, came from a narrowly dodged bullet.
“The second disc, The Blue Print, gathers 17 recordings from 1975 and 1976, including 13 previously unreleased. The songs span bedroom tapes, early Pathway recordings and 13 performances from a 1976 session at the Hope & Anchor Studio. Also included is a recording preserved by Costello’s ‘70s contemporary Charlie Dore, who just recently discovered a reel she taped of Costello trying out songs during a blazing London afternoon in 1976. Together, these recordings reveal ideas that would resurface throughout his work: a lyrical couplet and image which eventually found their way into “Accidents Will Happen,” "Watch Your Step," “King Horse” and "Just A Memory,” while "Radio Soul" - a song in praise of the power of broadcasting - later became a sarcastic song about the BBC called “Radio Radio.” “The more I’ve delved into these notebooks, the more I’ve come to the conclusion that these handwritten notes might actually be ‘The Blue Print’ for a lot of the work I did over the next five or six years,” Costello writes.
“The Stranger In The House contains 28 demos, outtakes and early band recordings, 15 of which have never been released, including every surviving outtake and demo from My Aim Is True. Costello’s early, rather unfashionable fascination with country music can be heard here, with the songs he imagined pitching as a backroom writer. The disc reaches back to Flip City, the band Costello describes as “Pre-Professional:” “In the so-called Pub Rock scene, we barely qualified as also-rans. We were ready and we were willing, but the bookings were few and our progress was slow.” It also includes more of Ms. Dore’s tapes, and follows the evolution of songs including “(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes” and “Living In Paradise” through the session that produced “Watching The Detectives.”
“Costello’s 72-page liners include commentary and recollections from Nick Lowe and Columbia Records' Gregg Geller, while Steve Nieve recalls his first ever recording session, providing the keyboards parts on "Watching The Detectives," and Pete Thomas tells the story of befriending Clover when he was working in California in 1975, introducing them to Stiff Records founder Jake Riviera in San Francisco and then playing drums with Clover in the same city on their only live performance with Costello of My Aim Is True in 2007.
“The fourth disc, Becoming The Attractions, opens with a solo performance of “Alison,” from Elvis Costello’s U.K. television debut to his first live appearances under his new name to the sudden velocity of America in late 1977 and 1978. Its 25 tracks, 12 previously unreleased, include live recordings, broadcasts and a Nashville Room soundcheck from the summer of 1977, when Costello and the newly formed Attractions used a four-Sunday residency to sharpen their increasingly fast and ferocious set.
“Music journalist, television producer and author Bill Flanagan chronicles Costello’s arrival in America, where listeners encountered a musical hybrid that resisted easy classification: country-rock, soul, reggae and terse British pop delivered by a singer who appeared at once confrontational and deeply romantic. Further recollections from Warren Zanes, Rosanne Cash, Peter Wolf (then of the J. Geils Band and Costello's friend of 49 years), and Jim James of My Morning Jacket (a bandmate in the "New Basement Tapes" studio collective) accompany Costello’s account of that first American trip – from seeing Iggy Pop in San Francisco and meeting Tom Waits in Los Angeles to replacing the Sex Pistols on Saturday Night Live and abruptly abandoning “Less Than Zero” for “Radio Radio.”
“The collection closes with Covered In Clover, an entirely unreleased recording of Costello’s 2007 reunion with Clover at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall. Performing My Aim Is True in its original U.K. sequence before concluding with “Watching The Detectives,” Costello and the musicians return to the songs they had recorded together three decades earlier, when he was 22 years old and had scarcely worked with players of their caliber.
“Making my first record seemed like the beginning of something that I’d imagined for a long time, before I had any sense of a potential audience, let alone the expectation and the assumptions of others about songs written and performed in mere minutes,” Costello writes. “Nevertheless, I raise a chaste glass to My Aim Is True and all who sail in her.”
“My Aim Is True (49th Anniversary Edition) will be released October 2 via UMe as a 5-CD/digital box set. The new remaster of the original album will also be released on 180-gram black vinyl and CD.”
Elvis Costello & The Imposters with Charlie Sexton also have September tour dates.
Sep 10, 2026 - American Music Theatre - Lancaster, PA
Sep 12, 2026 - OLG Stage at Fallsview Casino - Niagara Falls, Canada
Sep 13, 2026 - Agora Theatre - Cleveland, OH
Sep 15, 2026 - Packard Music Hall - Warren, OH
Sep 16, 2026 - Royal Oak Music Theatre - Royal Oak, MI
Sep 18, 2026 – Frauenthal Theater - Muskegon, MI
Sep 20, 2026 - Riot Fest 2026 - Douglass Park - Chicago, IL
Sep 24, 2026 - Botti at Sea III - Victoria, Canada
In 1998, for the now defunct Musician magazine, I interviewed Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach over a week-long period at Ocean Way Recording Studios in Hollywood, California, as they were mixing Painted From Memory.
Bacharach’s debut effort, co-writing with Costello on a recording of their song, “God Give Me Strength”, which was composed for the film Grace Of My Heart.
Getting the news about this upcoming My Aim Is True 49th anniversary edition, reading and hearing the original 1977 LP pressing, and previewing tracks from the October retail release, I am reminded of the influence the Beatles had on young Declan MacManus, pka Elvis Costello.
During my interview with Elvis, he cited the catalog of the Beatles.
“The stuff that my dad brought home was ‘A’ label singles. Like the Beatles ones I had were the non-single tracks like ‘Michelle’, and songs from Rubber Soul that they (Northern Songs) thought were better suited for covers than, maybe, ‘Drive My Car’ was. They were sent over on demonstration acetates. Rather than having the Parlophone label, which never pressed ‘Michelle’ as a single, Dick James Music (Northern Songs), the publisher, pressed an acetate. That was how small they were thinking about that ‘radio cover’.
“It’s very natural for me because I grew up also with my mother being a record sales person and really knowing the catalog backwards in a day when being a record salesperson was closer to being a librarian than it is now. And that’s how I know all the so-called ‘standards’ that I obviously didn’t grow up with, because they were just around me. I grew up with a band sound around the house, in the sense of my dad being a band singer. And I went to rehearsals, as you know, and BBC radio broadcasts with him. I knew my dad was doing something seriously, because he went to work in the evening and he wasn’t a burglar. When I was really young, I couldn’t go to the dance hall. I used to go on the weekend on the afternoon sessions and sit up in the balcony and watch the ballroom dancers, and he would get to play percussion, because the ballroom dancers didn’t like singers because they messed with the rhythm.
“And my poor old dad had to stand up there with the three singers on the side, sitting on chairs, getting up to take their vocal turn. My dad would play congas and maracas on the Latin American medley (grins). When my dad did the Royal Command Performance, in 1964 I think it was, I believe it was the one Burt was on, arranging for Marlene Dietrich. That was like a big thing! I told my friends, ‘My dad is going to be on The Royal Command Performance and, bigger still, The Beatles are gonna be on it’, you know. Only recently did I realize it was the same one Burt did with Dietrich. They were all on the bill together. All this music was rattling around in my head all the time I was growing up.
“Because the great thing about growing up in England in the sixties is that you could listen to The Beatles synthesizing Chuck Berry, The Everly Brothers, The Miracles, and then on the same radio station there would be actual Tamla-Motown artists; and then Burt’s records came out, and all of this stuff is going in my head at the time when I’m just getting my musical ideas. It’s all going in my head like at a million miles an hour. That’s the most exciting thing. It is deeply rooted.”
After our interview, Brian and Melinda Wilson invited me to their home. A documentary by director John Anderson was in production, and I asked Elvis to come along. Costello had recently produced Anne Sofie Von Otter’s version of the Beach Boys’ “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder),” penned by Wilson and Tony Asher for Pet Sounds.
My Aim is True (49th Anniversary Edition) Box Set - Track List
** Denotes previously unreleased
CD1: My Aim Is True
1. Welcome To The Working Week - 2026 Remaster
2. Miracle Man - 2026 Remaster
3. No Dancing - 2026 Remaster
4. Blame It On Cain - 2026 Remaster
5. Alison - 2026 Remaster
6. Sneaky Feelings - 2026 Remaster
7. (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes - 2026 Remaster
8. Less Than Zero - 2026 Remaster
9. Mystery Dance - 2026 Remaster
10. Pay It Back - 2026 Remaster
11. I'm Not Angry - 2026 Remaster
12. Waiting For The End Of The World - 2026 Remaster
13. Watching The Detectives - Single Version
CD2: The Blue Print
1. I Turn Around - Hope & Anchor Studio**
2. Losing You - Hope & Anchor Studio**
3. Leverman - Hope & Anchor Studio**
4. Citizen Junction - Hope & Anchor Studio**
5. I Hear A Melody - Pathway Studios
6. Poison Moon - Bedroom Recording
7. Wave A White Flag - Bedroom Recording
8. Mercury Wings - Ms. Dore’s Tape**
9. Jump Up - Hope & Anchor Studio**
10. No Star - Hope & Anchor Studio**
11. Walk On - Hope & Anchor Studio**
12. Radio Soul - Hope & Anchor Studio**
13. Clean Money - Hope & Anchor Studio**
14. Don’t Put A Levy On My Love - Hope & Anchor Studio**
15. Play It Safe - Hope & Anchor Studio**
16. Imagination (Is A Powerful Deceiver) - Hope & Anchor Studio**
17. I Can’t Turn It Off - Hope & Anchor Studio
CD3: The Stranger In The House
1. Radio Sweetheart - My Aim Is True Outtake
2. Cheap Reward - Bedroom Recording
3. Mystery Dance - Bedroom Recording
4. Stranger In The House - My Aim Is True Outtake
5. Running Out Of Angels - Hope & Anchor Studio**
6. Just Like A Jukebox - Hope & Anchor Studio**
7. I Don’t Want To Go Home - Pathway Studios
8. Blame It On Cain - Bedroom Recording
9. Blue Minute - Ms. Dore’s Tape**
10. Pay It Back - Bedroom Recording **
11. Exiles Road - Flip City - Hope & Anchor Studio**
12. Knockin' On Heaven’s Door - Flip City - Hope & Anchor Studio**
13. Sweet Revival - Flip City - Hope & Anchor Studio**
14. Pay It Back - Flip City - Hope & Anchor Studio**
15. Imagination (Is A Powerful Deceiver) - Flip City - Hope & Anchor Studio**
16. Living In Paradise - Hope & Anchor Studio**
17. Welcome To The Working Week - Pathway Studios
18. Miracle Man - Bedroom Recording**
19. Miracle Man - Pathway Studios
20. (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes - Ms. Dore’s Tape**
21. (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes - Pathway Studios
22. Waiting For The End Of The World - Pathway Studios
23. Living In Paradise - My Aim Is True Outtake
24. Call On Me - Pathway Studios
25. Watching The Detectives - Pathway Studios Trio Version**
26. No Action - Pathway Studios Trio Version
27. Poison Moon - Ms. Dore’s Tape**
28. Stranger In The House - Ms. Dore’s Tape**
CD4: Becoming The Attractions
1. Alison - What’s On Granada Reports
2. Introduction By Dave Robinson - Live, The Nashville Room
3. Mystery Dance - Live, The Nashville Room
4. Pay It Back - Soundcheck, The Nashville Room
5. Radio Sweetheart - Soundcheck, The Nashville Room
6. Sneaky Feelings - Soundcheck, The Nashville Room
7. Crawling To The U.S.A. - Soundcheck, The Nashville Room
8. Lip Service - Pathway Studios**
9. (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes- with Introduction Top Of The Pops**
10. Interview No. 1 - Good Afternoon with Mavis Nicholson
11. Watching The Detectives - Good Afternoon Broadcast**
12. Interview No. 2 - Good Afternoon with Mavis Nicholson
13. Hoover Factory - Good Afternoon Rehearsal**
14. I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself - Live Stiffs, University of East Anglia, Norwich, U.K.
15. Whole Wide World - Live Stiffs, University Of Leicester, Leicester, U.K.**
16. KSAN Intro - Old Waldorf, San Francisco, CA
17. Pump It Up - Old Waldorf, San Francisco, CA**
18. Lip Service - Unknown Field Recording**
19. Mystery Dance - Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco, CA**
20. Blame It On Cain - Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco, CA**
21. Less Than Zero (Dallas Version) - Warner Theater, Washington D.C.
22. Waiting For The End Of The World - The Agora Ballroom, Cleveland, OH**
23. Miracle Man - Warner Theater, Washington D.C.
24. Watching The Detectives - Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco, CA**
25. I’m Not Angry - Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco, CA**
CD5: Covered In Clover
1. Welcome To The Working Week (Live - Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA - November 8, 2007)**
2. Miracle Man (Live - Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA - November 8, 2007)**
3. No Dancing (Live - Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA - November 8, 2007)**
4. Intro To Blame It On Cain (Live - Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA - November 8, 2007)**
5. Blame It On Cain (Live - Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA - November 8, 2007)**
6. Alison (Live - Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA - November 8, 2007)**
7. Intro To Sneaky Feelings (Live - Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA - November 8, 2007)**
8. Sneaky Feelings (Live - Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA - November 8, 2007)**
9. Intro To Red Shoes (Live - Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA - November 8, 2007)**
10. (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes (Live - Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA - November 8, 2007)**
11. Less Than Zero (Live - Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA - November 8, 2007)**
12. Mystery Dance (Live - Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA - November 8, 2007)**
13. Pay It Back (Live - Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA - November 8, 2007)**
14. I'm Not Angry (Live - Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA - November 8, 2007)**
15. Waiting For The End Of The World / Gloria (Live - Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA - November 8, 2007)**
16. Watching The Detectives (Live - Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA - November 8, 2007)**
17. Mr. Moon (Live - Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA - November 8, 2007)**
18. Intro To The Love Trilogy (Live - Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA - November 8, 2007)**
19. Love Has No Pride (Live - Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA - November 8, 2007)**
20. Love Is Gone (Live - Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA - November 8, 2007)**
21. (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding (Live - Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA - November 8, 2007)**
(Harvey Kubernik is the author of 21 books, including 2009’s Canyon Of Dreams: The Magic And The Music Of Laurel Canyon, 2014’s Turn Up The Radio! Rock, Pop and Roll In Los Angeles 1956-1972, 2015's Every Body Knows: Leonard Cohen, 2016's Heart of Gold Neil Young and 2017's 1967: A Complete Rock Music History of the Summer of Love.
Sterling/Barnes and Noble in 2018 published Harvey and Kenneth Kubernik’s The Story Of The Band: From Big Pink To The Last Waltz. In 2021, they wrote Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child for Sterling/Barnes and Noble.
Cottage Industries in 2020 published Harvey’s Docs That Rock, Music That Matters. His Screen Gems: (Pop Music Documentaries and Rock ‘n’ Roll TV Scenes) was published in February, 2026 by BearManor Media. Kubernik is currently working as Creative Director on a book on the Beatles for a UK publisher scheduled for a 2027 publication date.
Harvey spoke at the special hearings in 2006 initiated by the Library of Congress in Hollywood, California, discussing archiving practices and audiotape preservation.
In 2017, he appeared at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, in its Distinguished Speakers Series, and as a panelist, where he discussed the forty-fifth anniversary of The Last Waltz at the Grammy Museum in L.A in 2023).
Brian Wilson, Harvey Kubernik, Elvis Costello photo by Maggie McGee
Album covers courtesy of UME
