{"id":917337,"date":"2026-10-05T19:52:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-05T19:52:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/917337\/"},"modified":"2026-10-05T19:52:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T19:52:17","slug":"elvis-costello-almost-became-stephen-colberts-late-show-bandleader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/917337\/","title":{"rendered":"Elvis Costello Almost Became Stephen Colbert’s ‘Late Show’ Bandleader"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tBefore Stephen Colbert<\/a>\u2018s Late Show settled on Jon Batiste as its first bandleader in 2015, it turns out another possibility for the house band came up: Elvis Costello<\/a> and the Impostors<\/a>.\u00a0 \u201cIt was an impulsive thing to put myself forward,\u201d Costello reveals on the new episode of Rolling Stone Music Now<\/a>, where he also discusses<\/a> his new box set, My Aim Is True (49th Anniversary Edition).\u00a0 \u201cSteve asked my advice about that role. \u2026 I said, \u2018What about me?\u2019 And I think he thought I was joking, and I said, \u2018No, I\u2019m not joking.’\u201d For a while, he says, there were serious discussions about the possibility for the now-defunct show. (A spokesperson for Colbert didn\u2019t immediately return a request for comment.)<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cI\u2019d watched what happened with the Roots<\/a>,\u201d says Costello, who recorded with The Tonight Show\u2018s own house band on 2013\u2019s Wise Up Ghost. \u201cI saw what the Roots had achieved across town, you know, that they had saved their own lives, and those of their family around them, by coming off the road. I thought maybe that would be good for us. \u2026 It hadn\u2019t inhibited them [from] making more records and working on things, and it put them at a center.\u201d (To hear the whole episode, listen on Apple Podcasts<\/a> or Spotify<\/a>, or just press play above.)<\/p>\n

\n\tCostello also felt he had history on his side. \u201cBranford Marsalis was the band leader of The Tonight Show,\u201d Costello says. \u201cLots of really great people have done that gig. \u2026 And don\u2019t forget, my dad was a radio dance band singer who appeared a lot on the BBC. So I had continuity with the idea.\u201d <\/p>\n

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\n\tReality set in quickly. \u201cI started to think about how much it asked of my bandmates, that they would all have to relocate,\u201d Costello says. \u201cI was the only one who lived in New York, so it would have never worked.\u201d Impostors keyboardist Steve Nieve lives in France. \u201cI don\u2019t see how that would\u2019ve worked, really, with Steve living in Paris,\u201d he continues. \u201cWe would\u2019ve been asking an awful lot, and the money involved and everything would\u2019ve been unbelievable \u2026 to relocate three band members to New York.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBatiste, Costello adds, was a perfect fit for the job: \u201cIt would have never worked for a whole number of reasons, but it was nice to put my name in it, and I don\u2019t think it exactly did any harm to the conversation and the search for somebody who was truly suited to it, and, of course, took it on to such a wonderful career outside of television.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEven if Costello had gotten the gig, he\u2019s now convinced it wouldn\u2019t have worked. \u201cI would\u2019ve got fired in about three weeks,\u201d he says. \u201cNot by [Colbert], but probably by the network. \u2026 I would\u2019ve said or done the wrong thing for sure. \u2026 It was like a dream I had for a minute.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCostello did make it onto the final episode of the show, which went off the air earlier this year. On the May 21 finale, Colbert sang the Costello deep cut \u201cJump Up\u201d with Costello, Batiste, and Louis Cato, Batiste\u2019s successor as bandleader. \u201cIt was his idea to do that song as a quartet, which was an extraordinary thing to me,\u201d Costello says. \u201cIt was a compliment, but it was also a beautiful arrangement that Louis Cato conceived with Jon Batiste and everything, and the three band leaders, as we joked about, \u2019cause I had briefly been in the frame. Stephen sang great. And it was funny to hear this song, which I think I\u2019ve performed maybe four times in public since \u201977, certainly.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe had a conference call about it,\u201d Costello adds, \u201cand I said, \u2018Look, this seems like a very downbeat sort of number to end the show on.\u2019 And I said, \u2018You know, if on the day of the final broadcast you get a call from Taylor Swift and Beyonc\u00e9 that they\u2019re prepared to come on and play table tennis against one another live on air, you can cut the number and I won\u2019t be offended.\u2019 \u2026 But of course, what I didn\u2019t know is they had a whole other card to play, which was Paul McCartney<\/a>. And then I got to be part of that band as well, which was terrific fun. It was kind of weird. You think about Paul\u2019s history with that theater. \u2026 I don\u2019t think he appeared in it as many times as me, but it was a lot more significant when he did. So it was kinda something to stand side-stage before we were going on, and there\u2019s Paul McCartney with his Hofner bass, and we\u2019re going on to sing a Beatles song. It was thrilling.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tIt was also Costello\u2019s final TV appearance, he says. \u201cIt\u2019s very, very different now. It\u2019s being squeezed by all sorts of forces, commercial forces, corporate forces, political forces. It\u2019s not something I could be involved in. I retired that night. That\u2019s a great thing. Take a good look at this picture here, \u2019cause you won\u2019t ever see me on television again, that\u2019s for sure. I\u2019m done. I thought, \u2018Well, I can\u2019t possibly beat that. It just ain\u2019t for me.\u2019 It\u2019s time for other people to do it, you know. I feel that pretty much about everything in this business.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDownload and subscribe to Rolling Stone Music Now, hosted by Brian Hiatt, on Apple Podcasts<\/a> or Spotify<\/a> (or wherever you get your podcasts). Check out 11 years\u2019 worth of episodes in the archive, including in-depth interviews with Mariah Carey, Bruce Springsteen, Questlove, Halsey, Neil Young, Snoop Dogg, Brandi Carlile, Phoebe Bridgers, Rick Ross, Alicia Keys, the National, Ice Cube, Taylor Hawkins, Willow, Keith Richards, Robert Plant, Dua Lipa, Killer Mike, Julian Casablancas, Sheryl Crow, Johnny Marr, Scott Weiland, Liam Gallagher, Alice Cooper, Fleetwood Mac, Elvis Costello, John Legend, Donald Fagen, Charlie Puth, Phil Collins, Justin Townes Earle, Stephen Malkmus, Sebastian Bach, Tom Petty, Eddie Van Halen, Kelly Clarkson, Pete Townshend, Bob Seger, the Zombies, and Gary Clark Jr. And look for dozens of episodes featuring genre-spanning discussions, debates, and explainers with Rolling Stone\u2019s critics and reporters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before Stephen Colbert\u2018s Late Show settled on Jon Batiste as its first bandleader in 2015, it turns out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":917338,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,202600,134,13683,27570,3869,485230,270781,427],"class_list":["post-917337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-elvis-costello","tag-entertainment","tag-paul-mccartney","tag-rolling-stone-music-now","tag-stephen-colbert","tag-the-impostors","tag-the-roots","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=917337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/917338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=917337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=917337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=917337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}