Here at Doc40 we always celebrate the birthday of Elvis Presley. Why? I have told it too many times to repeat how Elvis quite literally changed my life and ambitions. Other seminal cultural revolutionaries played their parts, but it was Elvis who initiated me into the strange and personal rock & roll insurrection that has continued to this very day, and shows no sign of abating even as antiquity catches up to me, and has taken me, at the very least, in my imagination, to the stars and beyond, and to secret places of sometimes bizarre revelation and the companionship or many other gilded rebels that made me know I was not alone in the gleeful, exalting madness. That, on it’s own, is surely enough to give the man and his mythology one day out of the year for remembrance of how I started my half century on this wild lost highway. In August of 1977, I wrote Elvis’ cover story obituary for NME. I feel the same way as I did then.
“I think, to be absolutely truthful, any grief for Elvis Presley has to be bound up with a grief for my own early youth. It's grief for that long vanished innocence, that virgin state in which it was possible to discover rock and roll for the very first time.
The moment when I first heard 'Heartbreak Hotel' coming out of the radio was an experience that's impossible to reproduce. It was a time when the radio didn't add up to much more than The Archers, Journey into Space and The Goon Show. The readily available music was all 'Que Sera', 'Love And Marriage' and 'How Much Is That Doggie In The Window?'
After 'Heartbreak Hotel' all that changed. Music had the power. It may have taken another six or seven years for Bob Dylan to articulate it, but right from the start it was obvious that the times were changing. If it needed a confirmation, it was right there in the way Elvis was condemned out of hand by parents and pulpit. Elvis Presley was far more than just an entertainer. He was something different to Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby. He'd picked up the teenage banner that had been dropped by James Dean. He not only picked it up, but he picked it up and ran with it. From the way he combed his hair to the sneer and the snapping knee, he was the beginning of the rebellion. You stopped thinking about being a chartered accountant and began to wonder if, just maybe, you could be Elvis.”
Click for clip. (Which says one whole lot.)
The secret words are Thank You – Thank You Very Much
“I think, to be absolutely truthful, any grief for Elvis Presley has to be bound up with a grief for my own early youth. It's grief for that long vanished innocence, that virgin state in which it was possible to discover rock and roll for the very first time.
The moment when I first heard 'Heartbreak Hotel' coming out of the radio was an experience that's impossible to reproduce. It was a time when the radio didn't add up to much more than The Archers, Journey into Space and The Goon Show. The readily available music was all 'Que Sera', 'Love And Marriage' and 'How Much Is That Doggie In The Window?'
After 'Heartbreak Hotel' all that changed. Music had the power. It may have taken another six or seven years for Bob Dylan to articulate it, but right from the start it was obvious that the times were changing. If it needed a confirmation, it was right there in the way Elvis was condemned out of hand by parents and pulpit. Elvis Presley was far more than just an entertainer. He was something different to Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby. He'd picked up the teenage banner that had been dropped by James Dean. He not only picked it up, but he picked it up and ran with it. From the way he combed his hair to the sneer and the snapping knee, he was the beginning of the rebellion. You stopped thinking about being a chartered accountant and began to wonder if, just maybe, you could be Elvis.”
Click for clip. (Which says one whole lot.)
The secret words are Thank You – Thank You Very Much
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10 comments:
Excellent Mick
Didnt you also write
What happened to the greasy haired hoodlum who entered the army.. and never returned
Just think how different things would have been if his twin brother hadn't been stillborn.
http://fufkin.com/columns/gold/gold_08_03.htm
I get tired of all the "without Elvis" bullshit year after year, namely because nobody ever wants to say that Elvis wouldn't have done much if not for southern gospel.
Nobody likes to mention that the king of rock-n-roll used to go see the Statesmen Quartet as a teenager, that he was a choir-boy. That at the heart of the 'rebellious devil's music' was a strong christian influence.
The real irony being that Elvis had, for the most part, been a better christian with greater ethics & morals than the majority of the people who were slandering his musical & performance styles as being ungodly & corrupting the youth.
I think it is important to say, he was his own person, as we all are, our influences do not make our decisions & choices for us. Surely we may look to our idols for inspiration or emulate the mannerisms of another, though as we all stand on the shoulders of giants, we cannot attribute our vantage to others for we independently choose where we stand & how.
What's this? Jesus taking credit for Elvis?
Although Elvis was a honky-tonk-on-Saturday-night-and-church-on-Sunday, Baptist boy, the Elvis phenomenon was nothing short of a 20th century neo-pagan occurrence.
Absolutement, Mick!
Since my first rock 'n' roll record was Deep Purple's Machine Head, I guess I should be grateful that Ritchie Blackmore has not joined Elvis in the Big Blue Baptist Sky.
So well said Mick, as always!
He blew the lid off & exposed what was so delicious underneath and got the wheels-a-rollin'
At age 64, my brain can't stop the train. Thank goodness!!
Pete - Mornington Australia
The point of the message had been that southern gospel can't take credit for Elvis anymore than Elvis can take credit for Dylan or Lennon or anybody he had influenced... Everybody would have gotten along without Elvis just as Elvis would have without southern gospel & the statesmen quartet.
Things may have been different, though, probably not so different as if Elvis's twin had survived birth.
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