You Bowed Down
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| "You Bowed Down" | |
|---|---|
| Song by Roger McGuinn | |
| from the album Back from Rio | |
| Released | January 8, 1991 |
| Genre | Jangle pop |
| Length | 3:52 |
| Label | Arista |
| Songwriter | Elvis Costello |
| Producers |
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"You Bowed Down" is a song written by Elvis Costello, first released by Roger McGuinn on his album Back from Rio. Costello recorded his own version of the song for his 1996 album All This Useless Beauty.
Having been acquaintances with Costello since the 1980s, McGuinn asked him to contribute a song to his next solo album. Costello then sent back "You Bowed Down" with detailed instructions on how McGuinn should perform the vocals. After McGuinn's version was released, Costello decided to revisit the song for a project originally intended to be a collection of songs Costello gave to other musicians. Costello's version, performed with the Attractions, reworked the middle-eight to more closely mirror Costello's original arrangement. It was released as a single in the US in 1996.
Both versions have attracted critical acclaim and Costello continues to perform the song intermittently live.
After meeting at a show in New Orleans in the mid-1980s,[1] Roger McGuinn and Elvis Costello first collaborated on the latter's 1989 album, Spike, which was produced by mutual friend T-Bone Burnett. In 1989, Costello explained, "Roger McGuinn ... wasn't originally scheduled to be on the record, but we met him while we were recording—and T-Bone [Burnett, one of Costello's producers] had met him on Dylan's Rolling Thunder tour in the 70s."[2] McGuinn stated that he found Costello to be "amazingly intellectual", noting, "It's hard to follow him sometimes. He just pops around from one idea to another."[1]
When McGuinn set out to record his 1991 album Back from Rio, he asked Costello to contribute a song. McGuinn recalls, "He sent it to me from Ireland with a three-page letter saying what it was about, and told me he wanted me to sing it like a combination of 'My Back Pages' and 'Positively Fourth Street.'"[3] McGuinn then recorded the song with Dylanesque vocals (with Costello contributing backing vocals)[4] and presented the final version to Costello:
Later I played it for him at Tom Petty's house in Los Angeles and he just looked at the floor, kind of frowning, until it was over. Then he walked over and shook my hand -- like, 'Yeah, that's okay.'[1]
As of 2011, Costello and McGuinn remain acquaintances. The latter commented, "We had a period a couple of years ago when we kept bumping into each other as one of us was checking into and the other out of, hotels then we kept meeting in Airport lounges; no one else in the whole music industry, just Elvis Costello. I've known Elvis for a lot of years and we can talk for hours; or at least he can talk for hours and I listen."[5]
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