Elvis Costello just published his first memoir Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink, and he’s also released a big double-CD set as accompaniment. So that’s why Costello was on Conan last night, not as a musical guest but as a regular one, there to tell funny stories. Fortunately, Costello is a good storyteller; he does, after all, have his own talk show, and he’s been around long enough that he’s really been in some ridiculous situations. So he told a couple of self-deprecating stories, about hearing himself on the radio for the first time in goofy circumstances and about trying to make a splash in Japan by playing on a flatbed truck in downtown Tokyo. Watch the interview below.

Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink is out now, via Blue Rider Press.