the rix mix

By Peter Guralnick. Second book in  massive two volume biography of Elvis. The first, Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley, took the story up to Elvis' induction into the Army. This one goes the rest of the way.

 But for a few well-made movies & the '68/'69 comeback, this book is so bummer I read it as fast as I could. For all the careful research, the message is  pretty much "what you saw is what you got." From the time El came home from the Army (where he became permanently hooked on pills) there wasn't a prayer of getting through to him, not a chance he would become the kind of "serious" actor he fantasized. Everyone in his insular life was an enabler, including Colonel Parker, banished if they weren't.

He was incapable of sustained intimacy - not just sexual intimacy. Most of the Memphis Mafia were thugs. When the one thing that could keep him focused & creative became unimportant, his music, he was doomed.

I used to blame the Colonel for driving Elvis through those mid-Seventies tours & Vegas engagements when he was a bloated, sick addict & his fans - until the very last year - were such indiscriminate consumers of his increasingly ugly performances that Elvis felt as much contempt for them as he did for himself. But without the income both he & Parker really would have gone broke, realizing his father, Vernon's, worst fears. Elvis went, quite literally, insane. He was incapable of making sound, rational decisions. By 1975 a  judge may well have concurred & allowed his family to force him into rehab. Which of course they wouldn't do because Elvis was supporting hundreds of people & handing out cars, houses, jewelry & bags of money on any whim. The relatives & hangers-on lined up with their hands out. RCA had numerous opportunities to sue Elvis for delivering bad product or no product at all, Nowhere in the book does Guralnick say RCA was losing money on him. The profits kept on coming.  Elvis earned $60 million in 2011.

Perhaps the only thing that could have changed the outcome would have been a bust of him & his entourage for the massive amounts of drugs (including cocaine) & firearms they carried around on tour, across state borders. But he was Elvis Presley, not The Rolling Stones. Every cop at every stop was hoping for a new Cadillac. It is pointless to be discriminating about Elvis now. Love him or leave him be.

Guralnick is the kind of writer who doesn't analyze his subject, ot tell us  what Elvis is thinking, or imagine conversations, all part of Nick Tosches' style.

Labels: culture, Elvis Presley, music, what I'm reading

You knew it was coming eventually.

I stop in DD after the library, sit down with my decaf, with a view of the TV, CNN, hope to learn something about Iraq withdrawal, Iran, Honduras, health care bill, maybe a Karl Malden tribute or Al & Franni arriving in D.C.

Freakin' Michael Jackson.

Look, Michael lived under continuous stress for 50 years. For the first 21 or so, the stress was imposed from the outside. But after that the stress was increasingly of his own making. Poor career decisions. Clueless choices in his personal life. A prisoner of his own whims & obsessions. Whatever the doctor did, whatever drugs he prescribed, Michael Jackson wasn't murdered. There's no one else to blame. Not Papa Jackson, not Berry Gordy, although the "values" of those two exploitative men served him badly in the long run. Not his hangers-on & sycophants. Not Liz Taylor or the Sheik of Dubai, his "friends." Not the paparazzi. Doesn't matter who inherits his catalogue, estate & his debts & his test tube children. It's all product. Michael Jackson made product. Sometimes great product, all through his recording career. But he saw it as product.

He wasn't like Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, foundering on a "masterpiece" his damaged psyche wouldn't let him finish.

Michael Jackson had no sooner crowned himself "King of Pop" than three smarter, new megastars, Prince, Madonna, & Springsteen, damned near knocked the crown clear off his head. Hip hop rendered any "message" he had irrelevant. His own sister Janet wasn't messing around.

Which brings me to the opinion I've held for two decades. Following the unparalleled success of "Thriller," Jackson made a decision that revealed his tragic flaw & his Motown indoctrination. Rather than understanding the uniqueness of the achievement, the opportunity it presented, Michael set as his primary ambition the making of an album that would sell bigger than "Thriller." Not a better album. He had no clear idea how to accomplish this feat, & he didn't quite possess all the skills (or vision) he needed to do it. He didn't use the success of "Thriller" to develop his songwriting, to work on a point-of-view, to embark on some dreamed of personal artistic project, to get his life & finances on solid ground, maybe do some psychotherapy to control his demons. He bought a monkey & built Neverland & wrecked his face.

Michael Jackson was one fucked up man. In that regard, he truly did top Elvis. The other King, after a few years of bad movies & non-hits, shook off the indifference & a stifling manager, Colonel Parker, long enough to give us an incredible comeback, a trim figure, & some great records before he reverted to form, missing out on the beautiful support the new generation extended to Johnny Cash & Roy Orbison, & which would have revitalized him yet a third time.

A good king has a capacity for reigning wisely at least some of the time.

Labels: bully pulpit, Elvis Presley, media madness, music, obituary, Showbiz

Labels: culture, Elvis Presley, music

Back in the Eighties, when WFMU was broadcasting from a clammy basement at Upsala College, I occasionally did a silly bit in the low tech spirit of the place then. We had an album, Having Fun With Elvis On Stage, entirely of his absurd, stream-of consciousness stage patter. I set up a mic in the record library, cued the record on the library turntable, cranked up the monitors. Just before a mic break, I'd start the record, & at some point I announced, "Let's hear what's happening in the record library," & brought the remote mic on the air. The effect was startling, & funny. It didn't sound like a recording, but like Elvis was actually in the library doing a show, except he never got around to singing.

It was at WFMU that I learned to love Elvis, all of Elvis. Not just the classic Sun recordings & the scattering of great RCA singles released throughout the remainder of his career. Not just the two or three quality movies & the comeback TV special & Memphis sessions. Not just the lean young Elvis in the leather suit. Oh I have my personal favs: "Trying To Get To You," "Mystery Train," "Don't," "Heartbreak Hotel," "Kentucky Rain," "Polk Salad Annie," "Return to Sender," "Burning Love," the 1960 gospel LP, His Hand In Mine, & "I'm Coming Home," an early LP cut composed by Charlie Rich. But it's no fun to be too selective about Elvis. It's most fun just to embrace Elvis as he really was, "Do the Clam" & all. Elvis didn't like singing that crap, but he didn't think it was tragic. His own tastes weren't always an improvement.If you don't love Elvis unconditionally, you don't really love Elvis. I won't say that about Sinatra, he doesn't deserve that kind of love anyway. & I don't need to say it about Louis Armstrong.

1965: In high school, Elvis was invisible. It didn't matter that the British rockers idolized him. Elvis simply did not figure into teen culture in Jersey in the mid-Sixties. Nobody went to his movies, except at the drive-in with the speaker turned off. Elvis was out of sight & out of mind. There were no "oldies," everything was new, so we believed.

1968: The story is that TV producer Steve Binder, to prove a point, coaxed Elvis out on to Sunset Blvd. El was terrified The King would be instantly recognized & mobbed. The freaks totally ignored him. That's why the 1968 "Comeback Special" really is special. My reaction: Hey, where was this guy hiding?

1972: "My Way." Decline is obvious. Again. Weight problems. Pills. Frozen personna in Vegas & on tour. A cash cow. Lousy live albums galore. Elton John releases Honky Chateau, described by Jon Landau as "a rich, warm, satisfying album that stands head and shoulders above the morass of current releases." The bar is very low & getting lower.

1976: The Ramones.

1977: It's completely unraveling for Elvis. Memphis Mafia members exposé, Elvis, What Happened. Can The King go on like this for another 30 years? Will he let himself be rescued by Nick Lowe. Elvis Costello, or Steve Van Zandt? At the time, that's as likely as Ronald Reagan becoming President. On August 16, Elvis Presley saves his career by making the ultimate sacrifice for it.

With Elvis' passing, we got lucky. There was no reason to expect he would be guided into middle age by personal trainers & sharp management. Mick Jagger, only 8 years younger than El, was about to demonstrate the possibilities. Yet, the release of The Sun Sessions LP in 1976 had connected Elvis to the rockabilly inclinations of punk; he was an inspiration, not a target. Vegas soon underwent another transformation, becoming a sanctuary where every aging "star" could come & be renovated & given a long-term lease on a showroom stage & marketed like Elvis, free of the pressure of appealing to ever-changing "youth" demographics. In the Eighties, Nashville blended Elvis with The Eagles & the formula worked so well that it still dominates the country charts. Elvis could easily have covered the songs on this week's Billboard Hot Country Top Ten.

Labels: culture, Elvis Presley, music, WFMU

The only Elvis Presley movie I ever saw in a theater was G.I. Blues, & that was because mom made me go to the movies one rainy Saturday afternoon just to get me out of the house. It was awful & most of the slightly prepubescent audience hooted all the way through it. I was sitting next to Patty Clark, a cute Army brat, her father was on local recuiting duty, they rented a house & moved away the next year. Patty watched the movie quietly.

Labels: Elvis Presley, growing up

September 9, 1956,

I remember this because it was an event. I don't recall any of Elvis Presley's previous network TV appearances on the Milton Berle or Steve Allen Shows. Nor do I recall Charles Laughton substituting for Ed Sullivan that night. I remember little at all about it except for Elvis himself. I was 7 years old & Ed Sullivan wasn't my thing & it was probably around my bedtime anyway. I know how my family reacted.

Dad: Elvis was gawdawful music, just noise. He despised all rock & roll. This set the tone for the family. But he didn't even like the swing pop music of his own generation. He had a few peculiar tastes in music, & enjoyed Broadway show tunes & the "Victory at Sea" soundtrack (Broadway melodies dressed up as as pseudo-classical). I think he had a tin ear & no feel for rhythm. I never saw him dance, except briefly at a wedding.

Mom: Bemused. Mom understood & generally accepted the concept of a generation gap. Teen culture didn't rattle her for another decade, & even then not The Beatles but The Rolling Stones & The Animals.

Nana: Had her own TV in her bedroom.

Joe (age 15, high school sophomore): Unimpressed. Never got with the rock & roll. Gravitated toward jazz & hipster culture. Dad, believing he had an ally, gave him an "I Hate Elvis" button, which Joe promptly tossed in his sock drawer.

Jim (age 11): Liked Elvis but wouldn't admit it. Later bought rockabilly records with his paper route money.

Jean (age 9): She was fascinated by everything about teenagers. By the time she reached puberty, Elvis was out, Frankie Avalon & Bobby Rydell were in, dreary period in rock & roll, kind of like the early 70s. Or now.

Me (age 7): Huh? Where's that guy who paints the face on his hand & makes it talk?

The music I really liked hearing on the radio as a little kid was vocal harmony, doo wop or Four Freshmen varieties. It took smiling Fats Domino & twerpy Buddy Holly to interest me in individual rock & roll personalities.

Labels: Elvis Presley, growing up, music

I met him outside the 7-11. Shorter than me & just as thin, probably in his mid-60s, he had a 1970s Elvis Presley hair style & wore large amber-tinted sunglasses, you could see his eyes; neatly attired in a Heartbreak Hotel teeshirt underneath a light blue polyester long sleeve with medium high collar, quality jeans, tan sandals. He wore an Elvis watch on his left wrist, the words "Love me tender" tattooed on his right. He drove a maroon 1991 Corvette with the older blue New Jersey plates ELVIS56. I was impressed with the plates & said so. He admitted Elvis wasn't known to be particularly fond of 'vettes. He was looking forward to driving down to Memphis for the anniversary of El's death next month, an annual pilgrimage, but this one is the special 30th. He lives somewhere in the area. I'd have chatted with him more but we were interrupted by a loopy woman, & when I left he was patiently & kindly listening to her pouring out her life story of child abuse & being saved by Jesus. Completely comfortable with himself. Nice guy.

Labels: culture, Elvis Presley