I'd been to Memphis before, but we stayed out of Memphis early on in the late 70s for obvious reasons. People were very sensitive about Elvis Presley, and my stage name obviously would be provocative to some people in that area at that time.

The River in Reverse was released in the UK on the Verve label the following year in May. Also that year Costello made an appearance in the television series Frasier as a folk singer in the Cafe Nervosa sending Frasier and Niles on a search for a new coffee bar. In the intervening period Costello had served as artistic chair for the 1995 Meltdown Festival which gave him the opportunity to explore his increasingly eclectic musical interests.

They toured and recorded together for the better part of a decade though differences between Costello and members of The Attractions caused them to split by 1986. He began his career as part of London's pub rock scene in the early 1970s and later became associated with the first wave of the British Punk/New Wave movement of the mid-to-late 1970s.