Inside the Rockers Studio: Elvis Costello's "Spectacle"

Click above for a clip of Elton John on Spectacle

• Watch: Costello and Elton John play "Border Song""

• Watch: Costello and John team up for "Down River"

Perhaps a guy like Elvis Costello will never completely mellow, but these days he's not so much about biting the hand that feeds. Instead he's shaking the hands of fellow music icons, as they join him onstage at the Apollo Theater where he interviews, jokes and jams with them. The storied Harlem venue has been the site this fall for much of the production for Spectacle: Elvis Costello With ..., Costello's new talk-music show that begins airing on the Sundance Channel on December 3rd. The lineup suits Costello's unbridled musical curiosity and ambition: Guests range from Lou Reed and the Police to Smokey Robinson, Tony Bennett and Rufus Wainwright.

From punk provocateur to pop crooner, Costello has played many parts over three decades, but TV host? Well, yeah, even that. He sat behind the desk at the Late Show one night in 2003, filling in for an ailing David Letterman. Veteran music writer/producer Stephen Warden took notice, and a few years later — with Elton John joining the gig as a co-producer (and a guest star) — Costello is free to let his inner musicologist rock out.

"I'm not really thinking of the show in larger terms," Costello says. "I'm hoping that the conversations will be entertaining and may reveal something we didn't know about the subject, and perhaps about myself in the nature of the questions that I ask."

For this, his rep as a musician's musician pays off. The famously aloof Lou Reed picks up a six-string and demonstrates how he came up with the chord pattern for "Sweet Jane": "I mean, there are so many ways to do it," Reed says matter-of-factly. Rufus Wainwright lets on that he'd love to have his songs covered by Annie Lennox or Björk. Jakob Dylan describes casting off the weight of his dad's legacy to do some solo acoustic tunes.

Much of the show is scored against an all-star display of live music. Backstage one night, veteran Attractions drummer Pete Thomas talks about a particularly charged performance with Smokey Robinson, who had done his first gig at the Apollo as a teenager. "He described 50 years of playing on this stage," Thomas says. "So by the time we came on to back him, it was like, we'd better be pretty fucking good, you know! It was incredibly exciting."

Then there was the convergence with the Police. Costello and the band had just been opening for Sting and the boys on their farewell tour. "We had a few jam sessions on the tour," Thomas says. "You know, they're really nice people. All that stuff about how they all hate each other, it's nonsense." Now the two bands were jamming together onstage at the Apollo. "Back in the day, nobody would have ever believed that would happen." And drumming alongside Stewart Copeland? "It was great fun, and really interesting getting inside his playing."