Elvis Presley: Classic Or Dud?

Isn’t there one school of thought that the Memphis Mafia were not enablers but were actually trying to encourage him take better care of himself? I am will willing to entertain such a notion but...

it seems plausible, esp in the final years. his excesses would have been more than a little alarming to just about everyone close to him i would think

And those guys got fired as soon as they started making a big deal about that stuff, hence Elvis: What Happened?

VG et al. otm ... it's worth emphasizing how poor the Presleys really were, especially after Vernon did time for writing bad checks ... nothing against East Tupelo, but if you drive around that area today and imagine what it was like during the Depression, it becomes clear that just making it to Memphis was a huge upward climb

add to poverty and Vernon's patchy success as a provider Gladys' reaction to the death of Elvis' twin and the intensity of their bond, and her death the day after he got home from the army ... it's no wonder he clung to Parker and Graceland for the rest of his life

Gladys is a huge key to his psyche, even long after her death. Kinda like those radiation shadows burned into the concrete after Hiroshima.

the photos of him & Vernon the day of her death have stayed with me - ghoulish as it is to see that moment captured, there’s something about seeing such a tragic turning point imo

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f7/e0/f1/f7e0f14874980853a8f268e450900208.jpg

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/c4/f5/ab/c4f5ab956d8345cd8213c27de6a26615--elvis-death-family-homes.jpg

Yeah, fascinated by that photo.

Also, loving the term “movie gulag.”

And pondering this statement from Jon Landau: “Because I believe he was a genius from start to finish, even when he was recording the soundtrack to ‘Clambake.'”

The account of their grieving in Last Train To Memphis is pretty intense, in a grimly funny and extravagant way—“mama ain’t gonna feed those chickens no more!” Reminds me of Leland Palmer in season 1 of Twin Peaks.

Also still pondering this Peter Guralnick quote about Sam Phillips:

Sometimes in the middle of the night he arrives unbidden. He even sets me riddles. In one dream he said to my bewilderment (both then and now), “I am nothing if not an idealist.… I am everything but an idealist.… The boy cannot fully understand.” I dream of Sam. I dream of my grandfather. I dream of Solomon Burke and the songwriter Doc Pomus. All gone. They come around less frequently now. But whenever Sam arrives, as often as not rattling at the window in the midst of a torrent of conflicting concerns, I always listen.

/Growing up poor creates the fear of losing it all if he breaks away from Parker. Having all that incredible wealth & fame IS the dream, theoretically, and in that kind of mindset “happiness” is a luxury that runs second fiddle. You might secretly dream of doing something more fulfilling but those thoughts get dismissed as being greedy or hubris etc /

Someone asked Eddie Murphy (himself an Elvis fanatic) about the string of awful movies he’d made, Pluto Nash, Daddy Day Care, Meet Dave, etc. He said something along the lines of, “Look, when you grow up with nothing, turning down offers of millions of dollars simply doesn’t make sense.”

Earlier today was texting that exchange back and forth with a friend.

It's infectious and never seems to get old.

so classic. the fat elvis walk gets me every time

reading that peter guralnick quote right after sciatica's post has made me realize that sam phillips would have been right at home, somehow, in twin peaks

Was visiting a friend in Brooklyn. One of the girls from Girls lives around the corner and was having a sidewalk sale. My friend picked up a huge pile of Elvis trading cards, each packed with facts on the back. My favorite I saw re: the famous meeting with Nixon, captured in Black and White. But supposedly Elvis's suit was bright purple, like something Prince would wear!

Well, Prince died the same year as David Bowie, who had the same birthday as Elvis and sent out various encoded signals throughout his career acknowledging this and so... *scratches chin*

Da Presley Code

Exactly

Haven’t heard every recorded note, but starting to subscribe to Landau’s “Clambake” theory. And still amusing myself thinking of Sam Phillips in Twin Peaks

We need an Elvis Presley poll.

I can start it next week!

Yes!!!!!

watched part one, really well done

one thing that's I think making it pretty affecting for me on another level is there are so many quotes by Tom Petty and it's just so nice to hear him talk and hear him say things I've never heard before almost like he's alive ;_;

yeah it’s a nice added layer

Loved this HBO doc. As someone who was only familiar with the Sun Records era, hearing tracks like A Mess of Blues and Crawfish were revelatory for me.

About 3 hours into this, how did everyone not know Parker wasn’t born in the States? When he speaks he sounds like Goldmember.

Parker looks like such a cigar chomping sleazy manager type it's almost like he's a made up character

there was one photo where he was wearing this ridiculous jumpsuit with the Girls Girls Girls logo on it and he looked like a bad guy from the Batman series, like they tried to mix the Riddler and Penguin

Yeah he looks like such a total huckster

I just recently watched part 2. The whole thing is great, but there were some curious omissions.

For example, since they pin just about everything bad that ever happened on Col. Parker, why would they omit the fact that he was a degenerate gambler who lost just about everything he took from Elvis (a 50/50 split!) in the casinos? Wouldn't that be a relevant point if you want to show how bad he was?

Another issue is the relentless focus on his creative output, all those movies etc. I understand they were trying to stay away from the Memphis mafia, peanut butter and banana sandwiches, karate Graceland kitsch which has been covered ad nauseum, but that played a big part in his decline and demise. Blaming it all on his tour schedule doesn't seem accurate. He took plenty of pills at home too.

3rd, Larry Geller should have been interviewed. He plays a big part in Careless Love. He was Elvis' hairdresser, who was deeply interested in spirituality and mysticism. He got Elvis, who was always spiritually bent, even deeper into it. They spent a ton of time together in the 60s. It drove the Memphis mafia crazy. A bunch of good ol' boys who loved to party and chase women were losing Elvis to this guy.

Yeah, also the doc frames the decision to record in the Jungle Room of Graceland in 1976 as some kind of bold creative choice on Elvis's part whereas Guralnick paints a more pathetic picture, suggesting it was at the Colonel and RCA's request given that Elvis had apparently "developed a pathological aversion to the recording studio."

Yes. The last 3 years of his life, based on Careless Love, were basically a death spiral, capped off by him dating Ginger Alden, who was cheating on Elvis with her high school boyfriend.

This doc made me check out the 2nd gospel album and it's pretty great stuff

finished last night...really affecting.

i don't know enough to talk about the accuracy of the later days stuff mentioned itt...

though i will say that -- just from a cinematic standpoint -- ending with "if i can dream" then pulling back to the television in graceland was amazing way to end

one thing i REALLY liked:
even though they had some really big names like springsteen and petty etc, i liked the fact that they never actually appear onscreen as talking heads, all the footage kept me in the world of elvis and didn't break the spell (though many of the people had very interesting things to say, i'm just glad they weren't onscreen)

just dropping in to say that those Guralnick books are essential reading

^

Springsteen was a bit of a mixed bag – his comments about the creation and performance were generally really insightful but the ones about Elvis’s artistry were often a bit much...

This is why he didn't want Elvis to perform across the border---Parker couldn't go with him, couldn't extend the reins much:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/colonel-parker-managed-elvis-career-but-was-he-a-killer-on-the-lam-108042206/

Thats is the most complete version I've come across.

Petty and Bruce were just distracting

(a 50/50 split!)

Louis Armstrong had the same deal with his manager, Joe Glaser. Ostensibly, at least in the beginning, it was accepted by Armstrong, as Glaser kept gangsters at bay. I don't know how Armstrong felt about the percentage in later years, and Glaser, not unlike Parker, pushed Armstrong into situations he was decidedly against, and which made lots of money ("Hello, Dolly!" most notoriously).

Without looking at his catalogue to check for sure, it’s infuriating to think that Elvis never covered Bob Dylan, the Beatles, or did a record of (non-religious) standards because of Colonel Tom Parker.

It’s also a little stunning that his whole career more or less mined the same early R&B, gospel and country influences he loved as a kid. One of the reasons I was never really a fan was that once you got past 1965 it all seemed so backwards looking. Now it looks more to me like stunted growth – again, thanks to Colonel.

For a guy who was a “searcher,” Elvis sure spent a lot of his career wandering around his manse doing very little searching. Odd.

Elvis did a few Dylan's--"Tomorrow Is Long Time has been kicking around ILX as of late. And iirc, he covered "Something" live.

...but yeah, lots of blown opportunities to be sure.

"I need a drink of water. My mouth feels like Bob Dylan spent the night in it."

About all I can add to this is banal and you've probably heard it a million times. But I feel like I've lived it, so indulge me. that Elvis epitomizes the Memphis approach to everything. The casual psychodrama of Memphis. The sublime and insane assurance that you are right and the rest of the world is wrong. The will to make a joke out of the most serious things and something serious out of the most inane shit. I don't really trust anyone who's a pop intellectual who has to slot Elvis into some scheme of "he blew it" or "he wasn't an idealist." Like I would say about Dean Martin, whom I think Elvis was the spiritual brother to, Nothing Matters. Except money, creature comforts, blowing the whole fucking thing off and being glad you can afford to do it. I don't ever listen to Elvis Presley; once in a while I do screen his greatest work, Clambake, the kind of dada I can relate to. I also sometimes listen to "Kentucky Rain" or "True Love Travels on a Gravel Road," and his Dylan cover is really good. I plan on never listening to the guy again as long as I live. I don't believe in him and I think the Guralnick approach, fine as Guralnick is, as good a man as he apparently is and humane, is beside the point when it comes to Elvis. I think anyone who's ever spent time in Memphis, I lived there for almost a decade, gets this pretty much immediately. He's a copy of a copy of a copy and yet real, and he's a joke. Which is how the city is, it might as well not even exist. But Dean Martin! He's great in Rio Bravo, and he's also just as inauthentic as Elvis but somehow far more real. Elvis never got close to the scene in that film in which Dean, drunk for a year, starts to fish around in the spittoon for the silver dollar piece, and Wayne kicks him away. But Dean never sang a musical-comedy number, one of the worst songs ever written, while riding a motorcycle thru Florida with a bad Jerry Reed lookalike. That's my two cents on Elvis.

xps Elvis also covered "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright"

great post edd

Elvis did "Get Back" live

He definitely had a great understanding of hearing a song and knowing it could be an Elvis song

So then by your lights, edd, Alex Chilton is some sort of Elvis through the cracked looking glass filled with Brandy or something

I usually think of myself as a "Sun Sessions, Suspicious Minds, and a couple of other songs" type of Elvis fan, but last night for no particular reason other than the topic of Elvis somehow came up and I was trying to explain to my 6-year old who he was, I decided to put on "Golden Records" for the first time in a couple of years, and I'll be durned if those hammy, hokey songs didn't all sound pretty great. Those ham-fisted arrangements might not win points for authenticity or sublety, but no matter how hard he drives his thoroughbred of a voice, Elvis never really sounds like he's breaking a sweat selling the shit out of those tongue-in-cheek Lieber/Stoller lyrics.