Entertainment For Lively Minds
Third post in a row! I do have a life, honest
Posted by Lucas Hare on 3 December 2008 - 11:10pm.
Forty years ago today, many people turned on their televisions with the cynicism of late 1968 running through their veins. It's fair to say that a few people had lost their faith in this man, and fairer still to say that most had it gloriously renewed in an hour of television that began like this:
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but...
do you actually enjoy it?
and THAT ...
... is why he'll ALWAYS be the King!
hmmmm
ok
I am no rabid Elvis fan but...
in my book, if you don't like Elvis then you don't like pop music. Period!
I'm with Lennon.
He died in the army. Everything he did after that was a complete embarrassment. Including this display of utter irrelevance.
Lennon talked bollocks a fair old bit...
...and his pat soundbite just happens to disregard Presley's best album by a country soul mile:
He could
have been so good but then the Colonel botched it all up. And, of course, His Maj went along with it. Duff movie. Duff record. Duff movie. Duff record. Duff movie....you get the B picture.
Still...you can't argue with 50,000,000 fans I suppose.
( Although I seem to have made a start ).
Thanks Lucas, you saved me the trouble!
The Lennon soundbite is exactly what you'd expect from the mouth of a cynical gobshite from Liverpool who turned out to be just as irrelevant as Elvis at the time of his death. How many on here even own Double Fantasy let alone play it!
So even
Elvis fans admit he was 'irrelevant'!
( 49,999,998 to go )
Only The Strong Survive
Do you really think this song is not worthy of comparison with Elvis' pre-army material, Eddie? Serious question.
Or this? They're both from the 1969 American sessions.
Yeah but yeah but yeah but
it was never his material.
He could never have written a decent song- let alone anything as ground-breaking as 'Strawberry Fields Forever' ( In fact he'd have probably struggled with 'strawberry' ). You get the impression that Elvis would always have been happy to just belt out whatever was placed in front of him. And by 1968 it was too late for a comeback. He might as well have been Acker Bilk.
Sorry to go on, but...
He didn't write any songs before he went into the army either. Are you judging him as a performer or as a songwriter? Don't worry, I'm not one of those people who think that Elvis could do no wrong. He could and he sure as hell did. But I genuinely think that the music he made in early 1969 in Memphis is his absolute best. Better than Sun, better than the early RCA stuff. I think it's a shame that Lennon couldn't look a little more closely.
To judge him as a songwriter seems strange to me. Nowadays we accept that such performers write their own stuff to gain credibility, but there were very few 'singer-songwriters' before the early '60s, until the advent of artists like Roy Orbison. To judge Elvis for not writing his own material is like, I don't know, getting at Bob Dylan because he didn't dance onstage.
The Lennon
thing was in response to the 'cynical Liverpool gobshite' comment- sorry- perhaps I should have made it clearer.
I'm afraid to say that I've never really understood the enduring appeal of Elvis. Guess it must be my own particular blind spot as I've heard he's terrifically popular. The Sun stuff was crucial and hugely-influential but, in G Towers, the party line is that by the time he'd squeezed himself into a leather catsuit ( leather for crissakes...in 68?? ) he'd turned into your embarrassing uncle who was still trying to prove he was 'in with the kids'.
I have painted a mod-type target on my ass for all your slings and arrers.....
Sheesh, was it that long ago?
Without doubt, one of the great performances of our time
Just read the Peter Guralnick biographies
Careless Love and Last Train to Memphis. Ok if you hold Elvis in low esteem then you're unlikely to plough through these two volumes as I did a few years back when I had bought the newest compilation but was otherwise uncommitted. The ease with which such a talented singer and performer let it all slide away from him (or have it stolen from under his feet)was incredibly sad. Yes he did try and get it back to some extent with material like Elvis in Memphis, though that was short lived, but the part of the 68 Comeback that really grates are the hangers on and yes men surrounding him when he is clearly quite uncomfortable in performing in a TV studio. As with Michael Jackson, there seems to be a level of solo stardom that just leads to misery and leeches for friends.
But unlike Michael Jackson
The poor man had no precedent.