[Costello], clearly, was not the kind of talent that came every morning free with a packet of crackers….

[The proposition that Elvis was reminiscent of Bob Dylan became clearer the more I thought about it.] It wasn't so much that Elvis was copping Dylanesque attitudes, lyrical stances or anything as specific as that (though it was clear that Dylan had left an emphatic mark on the boy). No; it was something a little deeper.

Later, I realised that this was something close to what it must have been like to have been drawn for the first time, in the Sixties, to Dylan's mesmerising universe….

[Here] was someone who could potentially provoke similar associations, similar sympathies, a similar correspondence of emotions and perceptions. Someone who could sound as rabidly angry as a barracuda with a psychotic temperament and yet still not lose sight of an articulate perspective and an...