| January 25th, 2006 01:06 PM |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
Since my baby left me
By Richard Jinman
Sydney Morning Herald
Jan 21, 2006
Fifty years ago, a young singer's lament to lost love irrevocably changed music.
To Sam Phillips, the founder of Sun Records, it was a "morbid mess", a record that was slow, depressing and badly recorded even by the lo-fi standards of 1956.
He had a point: Elvis Presley's Heartbreak Hotel, the ultimate paean to loneliness and lost love, is all of these things. The funereal blues is a radical departure from the frenetic rockabilly songs he recorded for Sun and the dour lyric, inspired by a suicide note, is the antithesis of chirpy teen anthems such as Rock Around the Clock. Even the quality of the recording is below par. In his book The Rise and Fall of Popular Music, Donald Clarke points out that Scotty Moore's guitar sounds "exceptionally, irritatingly tinny" and Floyd Cramer's piano is "too prominent". "The whole track sounds as though it was recorded underwater in a breadbox," Clarke complains.
But Presley believed in Heartbreak Hotel, predicting it would be a massive hit even before he recorded it. On the eve of the 50th anniversary of its release on January 27, 1956, the song still transcends its weaknesses, Presley's delivery sweeping everything in its path. "Well, since my baby left me/ Well, I found a new place to dwell," moans the 21-year-old superstar-in-waiting, his voice so drenched in reverb he appears to be performing inside a stone crypt instead of RCA's studios in Nashville, Tennessee. "Well, it's down at the end of Lonely Street/ That's Heartbreak Hotel."
In his rock history Almost Grown, author James Miller tries to describe the recording's histrionic allure. "Presley delivered them [the lyrics] with heartfelt conviction, in a heavily echoed, highly stylised wail, full of garbled gospel devices, as if the lovelorn singer no longer had the will to live," he writes. "It became the prototype for a new genre of morbidly self-pitying rock songs..."
Heartbreak Hotel, which is being re-released in the US to mark the 50th anniversary (but not in Australia, sadly), was not an instant hit. It wasn't until April 3, when he appeared on veteran entertainer Milton Berle's television show, that it was heard by a mass audience. About two weeks later, it hit No.1 and stayed there for eight weeks. The King had arrived.
For music commentator Glenn A. Baker, it's "such a bloody important record". "Nowadays, we all know about Sun Records and how important that was, but no one knew it at the time," he says. "Elvis arrived, as far as the world was concerned, with Heartbreak Hotel. It delivered Elvis Presley and rock'n'roll to the world."
Little River Band vocalist Glenn Shorrock was one of the many people who heard the call. He was about 11 years old at the time and staying with his family at a migrant hostel in Adelaide. It was a sweltering summer and Shorrock was lying in his bunk listening to the bakelite radio down the hall when he heard the heartwrenching strains of Heartbreak Hotel. Shorrock was smitten.
"It just sounded so different," he says. "I'm not sure if it was an epiphany as such, but it certainly grabbed me by the balls. I wanted to find out who Presley was and that took me on the [rock'n'roll] journey. I wanted to look like that, do that. Presley went up on my wall and became one of my idols."
The authors of this seminal song were Mae Boren Axton, a former schoolteacher turned Nashville publicist and songwriter, and Tommy Durden, a steel guitar player. They had already written a few songs together when Durden read a story in the Miami Herald about a man who left a one-line suicide note that said, "I walk a lonely street." Axton came up with the hotel metaphor. Presley also got a songwriting credit at the insistence of his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, and the royalties were split three ways.
Axton died in 1997 at the age of 82; Durden two years later, aged 79. In an interview in 1982, he said the song had "paid the rent for more than 20 years".
Durden would have been even better off if Heartbreak Hotel had been covered more extensively. Oddly, given the song's iconic status, that has not been the case. Guns N' Roses, Willie Nelson and '80s flash-in-the-pan Terence Trent D'Arby are among the artists who have taken a shot. And it has become something of a signature song for former Velvet Underground member John Cale, whose demented version makes Presley's reading sound almost coy by comparison.
Baker understands why artists tend to shy away from the song: the original recording is simply perfect. "It's not just a utility song - it was written for Elvis and he believed in it," he says. "Sure it was morbid, but it was also ethereal, compelling and even a tad sinister."
[Edited by Ten Thousand Motels] |
| January 25th, 2006 02:31 PM |
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| bon jovi |
Great song, but not as good as "You give love a bad name". |
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