On May 6, 2008, Fender Musical Instruments released Elvis Costello
Jazzmaster, an exact representation of the late 1960s heavily modified
Fender Jazzmaster guitar he had used to record his first 1977 album, My Aim
Is True. Its features include a post-1968 neck design, a walnut stain finish
and a tremolo with easier and greater travel, essential for that "Watching
the Detectives" tone, or what Costello called "that spy movie sound".
Elvis Costello (born Declan Patrick MacManus, 25
August 1954) is an English singer, song writer. He came to prominence as an
early participant in London's pub rock scene in the mid-1970s, and later became
associated with the punk rock and New Wave musical genres. Steeped in world
play, the vocabulary of Costello's lyrics is broader than that of most popular
songs, and his music has drawn on many diverse genres; the critic Stephen Thomas
Erlewine describes him as a "pop encyclopedia," able to "reinvent the past in
his own image".