It’s cute, it’s snarky - it pokes fun at the crap that is part of the Elvis legend.
I have never been a huge Elvis fan - count me for Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Eddie Cochran, etc. - but to have a list like that and not acknowledge:
a) the MUSIC - we are discussing rock and roll, right? That’s music, right? So first, before you slag anything, comment on the music. And let’s be clear about this - Elvis rocked.
b) the IMPACT - I wasn’t alive back then, but talk to anyone who was and watch the documentaries (or read **The Last Train to Memphis by Peter Guralnick **which is a great, well-researched and highly-praised bio of Elvis’ early years) - when Elvis broke through, everything changed. And if each of the Beatles and many other of the Brit rockers have any say in it, Elvis was huge to them - sure some liked Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran, too - but read their interviews and they all cite Elvis. So don’t say “oh, the Beatles mattered more” - because without Elvis there would BE no Beatles. (and yeah, I happen to love the Beatles far, far more than I care for Elvis, but I respect my elders, darn it.)
That is all. No big deal, but I don’t like it when purported serious music magazines (I subscribed for about a year) place more value on snark than the facts…
I think the listed criticisms are basically complaining about things which were irrlevant to his significance. Yes, his movies sucked and his clothes became ridiculous, but movies and fashion aren’t what made him so culturally important. His voice, his stage presence, his performance style, his energy, his whole transgressive demeanor are what made him important, and I don’t think those aspects can be overrated. Without Elvis, there would have been no Beatles or Stones or Zeppelin. The Beatles worshipped Elvis, and they were the ones who were starstruck when they met him.
Many of the points have nothing to do with Elvis. I’ll agree he was overrated – he was good, certainly, but the idolization of him goes way beyond ability – but he was still a major talent.
The most insightful article I have seen on Elvis was that he really wasn’t all that new, and that he was heavily influenced by Bing Crosby and Dean Martin. He just used that sort of vocal styling with rock songs. The fact he didn’t write wasn’t a real issue: neither Crosby nor Martin wrote their own songs, and that wasn’t important when Elvis started out.
Elvis certainly cited Martin as a role model. The trick was bringing the R n’ B and Gospel phrasing and urgency to the mix, with the right amout of danger - Dean Martin and Bing Crosby were the *antithesis *of urgent and dangerous.
The stuff on the list is largely key to the legend, hype and bringdown that surrounded Elvis, so it makes a difference in his place in pop history.
Music is the one area where I think Elvis is overrated, in a rock n’ roll sense. Many of his songs are overproduced and cheesed up with syrupy background singers. I find that songs by people like Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis still sound relatively fresh and listenable by contrast. Elvis’ recordings are not as embarassing as those of Bill Haley & the Comets, maybe, but seem anachronistic.
I don’t dislike Elvis. But to me he was a performer/generational symbol/cultural phenomenon and his music was secondary.
I think the Sun recordings still sound phenomenal. It’s Elvis’ raw talent and originality before he got spoiled, and without any over production. You hear him doing a tired standard like “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” and it sounds like you’ve never heard it before. There’s a purity and energy to those early recordings that can still knock me out. You can almost feel the surprise and excitement from the rest of the band and the engineers as they realize what kind of talent this kid is. I think the live recordings raly help to preserve the vibe that was in the room, and the sense of discovery going on is palpable. You know a major star is being born, and the other guys in the rom know it too.
Exactly. I’m too young to have been around Elvis in his prime, and it’s sometimes hard to remember that he was doing things that no one had ever heard before. However, you clearly get a sense of that excitement you mentioned when listening to some of those old recordings. That’s the mark of an amazing talent.
I am of two minds when it comes to Elvis. I prefer the pre-Army Elvis. I wish Col. Tom never got a hold of him. Most of the stuff he did past '56 was lame, IMHO.
Anyway, though, we’re all looking at it with 50 years of hindsight and a world of artists to compare him to, and it’s not fair. When he first came out he was the undeniable shit, and he influenced pretty much every single great rock artist that came out for the next decade (as others have said).
Elvis can only be overrated if you ignore history, basically.
I agree with all of this. I wasn’t even born until thirty years after the Sun Sessions were recorded and I was blown away the first time I heard them. I think Elvis’ reputation would be warranted if that was the only thing he ever recorded.
“All” of them? Hardly. Out of Elvis’s dozens of Top Ten singles, he was credited as a co-writer on only a handful. To the two mentioned in the article, add “Heartbreak Hotel,” “All Shook Up,” and “Love Me Tender” (which was a 19th century song to begin with) and I think that’s about it.
Hot dog, now THAT’S iconoclasm! THAT’S cutting edge!
Elvis made awful movies? Wow! I NEVER heard anybody dare to say that before! What daring! What edge! Only the coolest of the cool would ever dare to say such a thing out loud!
And he worre silly, outlandish costumes? Way to go, Paste! Way to ‘speak truth to power"! NOBODY ever made fun of Elvis’ garish costumes before!
It takes one cool cat to make fun of Elvis! I’m astonished nobody ever had the originality or gumption to make such keen, pointed observations before!
Elvis had an almost unnaturally gifted voice. He was a phenomenal gospel singer and one need only listen to his many gospel albulms to confirm that. Indeed, I think he won more grammys as a gospel singer than as a rock singer.
Of course he copied from other singers and entertainers but who hasn’t? What Presley did was to merge a variety of styles, black blues music, white rockabilly, smaltz and raw energy with an astounding voice to basically create modern rock.
His list of admirers is a who’s who or rock talent. From James Brown to Neil Young to Bob Dylan they all cite him as a rock icon.
I think, however, that BB King put it best when after explaining how Elvis didn’t “steal” anything he said “there was a reason that they called him the King”.
A deeply flawed man to be sure. A man who produced some awful drek but still one of the most important cultural figures of our times.
I grew up not being an Elvis fan, at all. It seems like I was only exposed to the later, cheesier stuff, the bad movies, etc. I didn’t know anything about the Sun period until I heard cover of Mystery Train by a local Minnesota artist (Martin Zellar). I then went back and listened to more of that period and gained a bit more respect for why Elvis is historically important.
I have heard a lot of his albums. I find them too easy listening, and of mixed quality, except the Sun Sessions that I really like.
Still I don’t really see it. His songs, while good, don’t sound like groundbreaking rock to me, in the way that many of Chuck Berry’s songs do. What is it really Elvis made bands such as Beatles and Zeppelin realize they could do, while Berry and Little Richard didn’t?
Also, I don’t think I full understand what it is he actually did to those songs. (I’m not a musician.) Berry wrote his songs, sang them, played guitar, and made the guitar solos. At the same time, Elvis sang songs other people had composed, and played rhythm guitar on some of them. Is that correctly understood? Did he design the composition, or the guitar solos or something? Hmm, or just: What is it I don’t get?
this is a huge over-simplification, but: think of Elvis as the first teenager - as the person that put a crack in the American (and Global) definition of family.
Teenagers, before about WW2, didn’t exist as they do today, meaning as a separate “target consumer population” with their own money, their own specific things to buy, their own marketing campaigns. Elvis, when he broke, personified this new target population and split from tradition:
The music was “different” - and more importantly, most parents didn’t like it
The music was available - the 45 format, cheap and easy, and the newly-reborn U.S. economy, coming out of WW2 as a post-War Superpower meant that the teens had the pocket change to buy the 45’s
The music codified what it meant to be a “teen” - girls, cars, goin’ to the soda shop.
So, THAT is the importance of Elvis. But it all started with his music and persona.
He didn’t write the songs, but he sold them. And sales is *everything *in music. Sam Phillips, the owner/producer of Sun Records, had a definite “Sun Sound” featuring a LOT of reverb or early-generation tape echo. Scotty Moore, Elvis’ first guitarist, had a new sound (Gibson ES-295 guitar through a Fender amp - but playing with a flatpick and two fingers so he could snap the strings. He championed that rockabilly twang, alongside other players)…