Elvis Costello Talks Personal Reasons Behind New Alzheimer's PSA

[Miles Archer]

Elvis Costello Talks Personal Reasons Behind New Alzheimer's PSA

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/elvis-costello-talks-personal-reasons-behind-new-alzheimers-psa-w465152

Elvis Costello first witnessed the power of music on Alzheimer's and dementia sufferers in his own grandmother, Molly MacManus. Her husband, Costello's grandfather, had been a musician and she was able to hold on to memories of key events in his career. "She could recall both slights and achievement from many years earlier when she was not always certain about the identities of family members around her in the present moment," he tells Rolling Stone.

It was this experience that inspired "Veronica," an urgent-yet-optimistic song that he had cowritten with Paul McCartney and topped off with trumpet playing for his 1989 album Spike. "Veronica sits in her favorite chair and she sits very quiet and still," he sings. "And they call her a name that they never get right."

"When I wrote 'Veronica,' it was in the hope that the loops and misfires of recollection in which my grandmother was often trapped were in some way comforting to her," he says. "It was a wildly hopeful song about a dismal subject."

He'd hinted at the personal nature of the song in the intro and outro to its music video, expressing that Alzheimer's was "something we don't understand, not yet anyway." Now he's appearing in a video that supports Music & Memory, a charity that helps people suffering from Alzheimer's and dementia by playing them personalized playlists of songs that could trigger memories. "The experience of dementia and Alzheimer's in my family has given me a chance to appreciate how the elusive and fragile mechanism of memory can be attended and even ministered through music," Costello says. It's a concept that was the subject of a six-and-a-half–minute YouTube video that became a viral hit, with musicians like Carole King and Kenny Chesney throwing their support behind the initiative.

[shenmue]

1. ...

[JudyM]

2. One of the only things that seems to help with dementia. There's another, too.

Good documentary on it: http://www.aliveinside.us/#land

Here's an NPR segment on the science behind it, too: https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-08-08/secret-weapon-fight-against-alzheimers-might-just-be-ipod

Studies are also just revealing that medical marijuana shows promise! Check it out: http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/25/health/alzheimers-medical-marijuana/

[pressbox69]

3. Thanks for posting this.

[Loryn]

4. My father has dementia.

He sings along to old songs, and remembers the words. Frank Sinatra is a big favorite of his.

It makes him happy, which makes me happy.

What more can you hope for?