Elvis freed people's bodies in the way that Dylan freed their minds
Sunday August 19 2007
Irish Independent
http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/music/elvis-freed-peoples-bodies-in-the--way-that-dylan-freed-their-minds-1062038.html
Elvis Presley was like nothing on earth. American film director Sidney Lumet felt that there was something "other-worldly about him".
Looking down from Heaven -- presumably with Jesse Garon, his twin brother who was stillborn, leaving him as an only child -- Elvis Presley is doubtless pleased at all the fuss over the 30th anniversary of his passing from the planet he left such an impression on.
He seemed, at the end, happy to be rid of this world: like the narrator of Suspicious Minds, Elvis was caught in a trap he couldn't get out of. His demons had got the better of him. The most famous man in the world was lonesome almost every night.
He could, his ex-wife Priscilla said, retreat into an intense loneliness the like of which she'd never seen. Perhaps he wanted a way out of that lonely sadness.
On August 16, 1977, at the age of 42, he died in his bathroom at Graceland -- a prisoner in his own palace, a victim of his own phenomenal success.
He was no longer snake-hipped and lean; bloated, ugly, depressed, drugged-up, washed up. He was no longer The King. Burger King.
In that dark moment, it must have seemed to Elvis centuries previous when he exploded on to 1954 with That's All Right, thus triggering a cultural revolution. They filmed from the waist up on the Ed Sullivan Show on 1956 because he threatened to scandalise young America so much; the animal desire was barely kept in check during Hound Dog.
The young truck driver with a toothpaste grin from Memphis who loved his mother and mashed banana sandwiches was suddenly an Antichrist whose diabolical crotch could only be shown on TV from the waist up. Elvis the Pelvis was born.
"Performing is like a surge of electricity going through you. It's almost like making love," he said. "But it's even stronger than that."
"If any individual of our time can be said to have changed the world, Elvis Presley is the one," Greil Marcus wrote in his 1975 book, Mystery Train. "In his wake more than music is different. Nothing or no one looks or sounds the same. His music is the most liberating event of our era because it taught us the new possibilities of feeling and perception, new modes of action and appearance, and because it reminded us not only of his greatness but of our potential."
You can't reduce his appeal to mere nostalgia. Elvis was the most carnal and potent communicator of emotion in popular song. He was the purest embodiment of rock 'n' roll. His voice and the way he used it in songs such as In the Ghetto, Heartbreak Hotel, Moody Blues, Patch It Up, Polk Salad Annie, This Time, Lord You Gave Me a Mountain, Blue Suede Shoes, Suspicious Minds was literally timeless.
That's why Elvis has endured for so long. Not because he married Priscilla. Or because the National Enquirer sees him every other week at a coffee shop in Tupelo ordering a soda. Or because Albert Goldman wrote that book about him.
"It was not until the decade of the Seventies that Elvis finally laid claim to his royal prerogatives, the tardiness of his coronation being balanced by the extravagance of the ceremony. Once the King felt the crown upon his brow, he could not have enough of the prerequisites of royalty, each new claim to princely prerogative or assertion of kingly privilege leading immediately to an even more audacious feat of self-aggrandisement," Goldman slimes.
"As King Elvis contrived his costumes and elaborated his rituals, as he enlarged his court and extended his largesse, as he viewed himself even more fixedly as a man with a vast if ill-defined mission, his people responded by according him more and more of the honour and glory owing to a king.
"The immense crowds that gathered everywhere he appeared, the fanatical devotion, amounting to worship, with which he was adored, the mad passion to make contact with the royal body -- a mania he sought to gratify by tossing sweat-stained scarves to the people -- make it obvious that his regal posturings were as much a fulfilment of his public's deepest longings as they were expressions of his own megalomania."
Listen to the haunting melancholia of Always On My Mind or the biting carnality of Hound Dog or the depressing sadness of Suspicious Minds and you soon forget Goldman's poison. Listen to the edgy kick of Jailhouse Rock with drummer DJ Fontana imagining he was on a chain-gang smashing rocks for the recording and you hear what Elvis was all about.
Hear the bawling R 'n' B bluster of I Got a Woman which inspired guitarist Chet Atkins, who played on the session, to ring his wife to tell her to come down to the studio because she'd never see any thing like this again . . . and if you don't get up to dance, there's something wrong with you, or your legs.
I listened to Heartbreak Hotel last night. It chilled me. Its spookiness is inspired by a newspaper story of a man who committed suicide, leaving a note which read: "I walk a lonely street . . . "
The late DJ John Peel recalled the strong sense of awe at hearing Heartbreak Hotel for the first time: "It might sound pretty safe now but in the context of what was happening in the Fifties, hearing Heartbreak Hotel was as shocking as if someone was dancing naked in your living room."
Others weren't so impressed. The Memphis DJ Fred Cook played Blue Moon of Kentucky for 25 seconds in 1954 before proclaiming it "the worst piece of shit I ever heard". And that was one of the better reviews of early Elvis Presley. His schoolteacher told him he couldn't sing. "Popular music has reached its lowest depths in the grunt of one Elvis Presley," screamed the Daily News in 1954.
The Miami News expressed its disapproval by describing Elvis Aaron as "the biggest freak show in show business history." Brimstone-and-fire preachers in the South bet their bibles with the solemn belief that Elvis had booked his passage straight to Hell with that white-negro voice.
Elvis didn't just sound black, of course, he dressed black too. His cousin Billy Smith recalled that his family began to think: "Well why doesn't he just go and live with them [the African-Americans]?"
It was, in every sense, the Devil's music. If this was true, the Devil had all the best songs. The irony is that Presley's earliest musical influence emerged from listening to the psalms and gospel songs in the Pentecostal Church as a young boy.
They would eventually beat their Bibles harder when they heard the young truck driver from Tupelo, Mississippi, sing his homoerotic meisterwerk Jailhouse Rock (with Spider Murphy blowing on more than his saxophone possibly): "You're the cutest jailbird I ever did see -- I sure would be delighted with your company."
Bruce Springsteen once said that Elvis freed people's bodies the way Bob Dylan freed their minds. Without the fat Elvis in the star-studded jumpsuit in Las Vegas, or in Aloha from Hawaii, we would never have had Bono (the U2 singer's black leather Zoo TV persona was Elvis's NBC TV comeback special by another name and don't let Bono tell you any different).
John Lennon probably wouldn't have picked up a guitar to sing had it not been for hearing Elvis sing.
Elvis inspired me to sing too, but it turned out to be the most embarrassing moment of my life. My sister Karen walking in on me when I was a six-year-old, dancing and singing along with a broom in my hand to Elvis's woe-is-me classic, like I was the tragic anti-hero of the song, You Gave Me a Mountain. Karen still ribs me about it to this day . . .
"Born in the heat of the desert
My mother died giving me life
Deprived of the love of a father
Blamed for the loss of his wife
You know I've been in a prison
For something that I never done
It's been one hill after another
I've climbed them all one by one
But this time, Lord you gave me a mountain
A mountain you know I may never climb
It isn't just a hill any longer
You gave me a mountain this time."
And Elvis is still climbing that mountain up in Heaven.
19th August 2007 01:42 PM
Kilroy
quote:Chuck wrote:
You used the expression 'true southerner'; yet, when politely asked to explain what that means, you refuse to do so. I can only conclude that you know not of what you speak, and that you are not a 'true southerner', whatever that may be.
Do you often use words or expressions that you cannot define?
I very politely explained it to you, It's a "lost cause" to explain something to one who cannot understand. Sorry again. This little expressons seems to really bother you, let it go.
[Edited by Kilroy]
19th August 2007 01:47 PM
Bruno
quote:Gazza wrote:
Yep...the singer was called Tortelvis
Reggae versions of Led Zep songs sung in an Elvis voice. Their cover of "Immigrant Song" is incredible..LOL
Holy shit, that´s funny:
19th August 2007 01:58 PM
Chuck
quote:Kilroy wrote:
I very politely explain to you, It's a lost cause to explain something to one who cannot understand. Sorry again. This little expressons seems to really bother you, let it go.
You did not explain it---no need to lie about it.
19th August 2007 02:28 PM
steel driving hammer
quote:Left Shoe Shuffle wrote:
Nice of you to post an article verbatim and not credit the author.
Elvis, did that all the time! lol
19th August 2007 03:10 PM
Gazza
quote:steel driving hammer wrote:
Elvis, did that all the time! lol
Stop talking absolute bollocks.
19th August 2007 03:12 PM
Gazza
Thanks to Beelyboy on IORR for this collection of quotes.
"Before Elvis, everything was in black and white. Then came Elvis. Zoom, glorious Technicolor." - Keith
"Elvis is my religion. But for him, I'd be selling encyclopedias."- Springsteen
"I'm just a singer. Elvis was the embodiment of the whole American culture." - Sinatra
"When I first heard Elvis' voice I just knew that I wasn't going to work for anybody; and nobody was going to be my boss ...
Hearing him was like busting out of jail." - Dylan
"Nothing really affected me until I heard Elvis." - Lennon
"Elvis was God-given. There's no explanation. A messiah comes around every few thousand years, and Elvis was it this time." - Little Richard
"Last time I saw him, we sang 'Old Blind Barnabus' together, a gospel song. I love him and hope to see him in heaven.
There'll never be another like that soul brother." - James Brown
"He was a unique artist ... an original in an area of imitators." Mick Jagger
"...all we ever wanted to be was Elvis Presley." - {aul McCartney
"Elvis was such a nice guy, and so talented and charismatic" - Johnny Cash
"Elvis was the King. No doubt about it. People like myself, Mick Jagger, and all the others only followed in his footsteps." - Rod Stewart
"The cutting edge of it was Elvis singing 'Hound Dog.' There was something about that music that got me excited.
Elvis was dangerous in a way that even Buddy Holly wasn't." - Eric Clapton
"Elvis is the best ever, the most original. He started the ball rolling for us all." - Jim Morrison
"His phraseology, his way of looking at a song, was as unique as Sinatra's...
Had Elvis lived, there would have been no end to his inventiveness." - B.B. King
the prosecution rests it's case....
19th August 2007 03:47 PM
steel driving hammer
Please love me tender, lol.
19th August 2007 03:54 PM
Left Shoe Shuffle
quote:steel driving hammer wrote:
Elvis, did that all the time!
"The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I'm doin' now, man, for more years than I know... I used to hear old Arthur Crudup bang his box the way I do now and I said if I ever got to the place where I could feel what old Arthur felt, I'd be a music man like nobody ever saw."
Elvis in 1956 about "That's All Right Mama".
19th August 2007 04:01 PM
steel driving hammer
quote:Left Shoe Shuffle wrote:
"The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I'm doin' now, man,
So why then is Elvis the king and not the colored folk?
Please tell.
19th August 2007 04:09 PM
Left Shoe Shuffle
quote:steel driving hammer wrote:
So why then is Elvis the king and not the colored folk?
Please tell.
What exactly does that have to do with Elvis giving props to black artists?
19th August 2007 04:36 PM
Kilroy
quote:Chuck wrote:
You did not explain it---no need to lie about it.
Lie Lie Lie Let it go go go. It hurts you man, let it go, you'll never get it, it's a lost cause. Don't let the hate consume you, be true to yourself, understand that you'll never understand. True = Real
Southerner = a native or inhabitant of the south
This definition will work for you. but be advised it's way more than this son.
[Edited by Kilroy]
19th August 2007 05:40 PM
Chuck
quote:Kilroy wrote:
Lie Lie Lie Let it go go go. It hurts you man, let it go, you'll never get it, it's a lost cause. Don't let the hate consume you, be true to yourself, understand that you'll never understand. True = Real
Southerner = a native or inhabitant of the south
This definition will work for you. but be advised it's way more than this son.
[Edited by Kilroy]
Hmmm. I asked you a simple question, which you repeatedly refused to answer, and this makes me hateful and incapable of understanding. How so? How is it that I will never understand what you, so far, have refused to define or explain? How exactly does this make me hateful?
Can you imagine a student asking his teacher a question, and the teacher repeatedly refuses to answer, all the while lecturing the student about being hateful, and telling the student that they will never understand? That would be a pretty bad teacher, don't you think?
Aren't you just projecting (hate and confusion) because you know you're cornered?
I think your belated, partial definition is a cop out. You say "but it's way more than this"---well, what is it? What other criteria must be met in order for someone to be considered a 'real southerner'?
Do you have some kind of check-list? If so, who gets to decide what's on the checklist? Is it a secret? Would you have to kill me if you told me?
19th August 2007 05:56 PM
BONOISLOVE
The King?
19th August 2007 06:21 PM
robpop
The King:
19th August 2007 06:27 PM
BONOISLOVE
The Boss?
19th August 2007 06:31 PM
robpop
The Maestro:
19th August 2007 06:35 PM
BONOISLOVE
The Big Cheese?
19th August 2007 07:44 PM
Kilroy
quote:Chuck wrote:
Hmmm. I asked you a simple question, which you repeatedly refused to answer, and this makes me hateful and incapable of understanding. How so? How is it that I will never understand what you, so far, have refused to define or explain? How exactly does this make me hateful?
Can you imagine a student asking his teacher a question, and the teacher repeatedly refuses to answer, all the while lecturing the student about being hateful, and telling the student that they will never understand? That would be a pretty bad teacher, don't you think?
Aren't you just projecting (hate and confusion) because you know you're cornered?
I think your belated, partial definition is a cop out. You say "but it's way more than this"---well, what is it? What other criteria must be met in order for someone to be considered a 'real southerner'?
Do you have some kind of check-list? If so, who gets to decide what's on the checklist? Is it a secret? Would you have to kill me if you told me?
Ok Your Right It was A Code Word For "Real Southerner"
That's What I really meant. Get over it. It was a post about Elvis living in the hearts of everyone from the South, the word true adds that it was a "list" of true Elvis Fans' That's all. You had to make it something that it was not.
I'm sorry I offend you, I really must have struck a nerve. I feel so Cornered
by your questioning of my use of "real" In this case if you are a real southerner you would have ELVIS IN YOUR HEART. Does that satistified you.
[Edited by Kilroy]
19th August 2007 07:51 PM
BONOISLOVE
The Duke?
19th August 2007 08:32 PM
robpop
The Big Man?
19th August 2007 08:36 PM
robpop
Luca Brasi?
19th August 2007 08:36 PM
BONOISLOVE
The Egg?
19th August 2007 08:40 PM
robpop
The Fish?
19th August 2007 08:47 PM
BONOISLOVE
The Fatso?
19th August 2007 08:58 PM
mojoman
quote:BONOISLOVE wrote:
The Fatso?
I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies. I remember when I was with Special Forces. Seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate the children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for Polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought: My God... the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters. These were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us
19th August 2007 09:19 PM
Chuck
Kilroy wrote:
"Ok Your Right It was A Code Word For "Real Southerner"
That's What I really meant. Get over it. It was a post about Elvis living in the hearts of everyone from the South, the word true adds that it was a "list" of true Elvis Fans' That's all. You had to make it something that it was not.
I'm sorry I offend you, I really must have struck a nerve. I feel so Cornered
by your questioning of my use of "real" In this case if you are a real southerner you would have ELVIS IN YOUR HEART. Does that satistified you."
No. You are being dishonest. All you did was swap the word 'real' for 'true'.
You are saying that someone is not a 'real' southerner if they don't care for Elvis, and that's a bunch of horse shit.
I asked you repeatedly to define/explain what constitutes a 'real' southerner, beyond your Elvis criterion, and all you did was throw up some ad hominem in order to cover your inability to answer the question. Pathetic, really.
One could just as easily say that a person is not a 'real' southerner if that person doesn't eat cracklins, or doesn't like Skynyrd, or doesn't like hunting and fishing, or doesn't (fill in the blank).
You see what I'm gettin' at, hoss?
19th August 2007 09:46 PM
Kilroy
quote:Chuck wrote:
Kilroy wrote:
"Ok Your Right It was A Code Word For "Real Southerner"
That's What I really meant. Get over it. It was a post about Elvis living in the hearts of everyone from the South, the word true adds that it was a "list" of true Elvis Fans' That's all. You had to make it something that it was not.
I'm sorry I offend you, I really must have struck a nerve. I feel so Cornered
by your questioning of my use of "real" In this case if you are a real southerner you would have ELVIS IN YOUR HEART. Does that satistified you."
No. You are being dishonest. All you did was swap the word 'real' for 'true'.
You are saying that someone is not a 'real' southerner if they don't care for Elvis, and that's a bunch of horse shit.
I asked you repeatedly to define/explain what constitutes a 'real' southerner, beyond your Elvis criterion, and all you did was throw up some ad hominem in order to cover your inability to answer the question. Pathetic, really.
One could just as easily say that a person is not a 'real' southerner if that person doesn't eat cracklins, or doesn't like Skynyrd, or doesn't like hunting and fishing, or doesn't (fill in the blank).
You see what I'm gettin' at, hoss?
Yes if one was from the South and That felt real strong about grits or anything else. That's what it WOULD MEAN TO THEM> Your SAYING IT WAS CODE WORDS IS WHAT STARTED THIS> IT WAS NOT A CODE WORD
Man, I'm sorry I offended you, it was about E that's all don't get upset. If you don't like him that's cool. You don't have to call people names if they don't agree with you, get over it. True Real Southerner's forgive but never forget.
Is that helpful. It's my little quote I've giving you 3 or 4 definitions of the term, youve showed me over and over again you will refuse to understand. You Understand you just want to fight on this forum because you don't agree. That's cool. This really hurts you doesnt it Hoss. Are you a fan were you a fan?
19th August 2007 11:40 PM
Promo
When I first discovered the Stones it was when "Get Off Of My Cloud" came out.
Sometime later, probably 66-67...there was a clip of Elvis on TV.
My parents laughed and said..."Oh look, there's Elvis"
And I thought.."Is this what you used to watch?" I could'nt believe it.
Elvis always looked like a Karaoke singer next to the British bands of the 60's.
20th August 2007 12:21 AM
Stonesthrow
quote:Promo wrote:
When I first discovered the Stones it was when "Get Off Of My Cloud" came out.
Sometime later, probably 66-67...there was a clip of Elvis on TV.
My parents laughed and said..."Oh look, there's Elvis"
And I thought.."Is this what you used to watch?" I could'nt believe it.
Elvis always looked like a Karaoke singer next to the British bands of the 60's.
If you started to follow the music scene in 1965 (with Get Off My Cloud), you should be old enough to have heard and maybe appreciated what Elvis meant to the culture in the mid to late '50's and '60's. Yeah, he was a white boy singing black tunes. Yeah, he did not write his own music. However, he was and is right up there with the most records sold and the most #1 hits. Also, he changed the culture (not just music) in a way nobody (including the Beatles) has done either before or since. He was not my favorite performer, but he did affect the culture in a way only two others--Muhammad Ali and Martin Luther King--did.
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