Elvis is Rubbish

Clare Newsome:

Gerrardasnails:

plastic penguin:

If Presley looked like Worzel Gummidge [or me] would he of been the icon he is today? I think I know the answer to that.

Course, it's down to taste, personally I only buy music based purely on the MUSIC, not image.

Couldn't agree more.

Me too - can't stand packaged, manipulated 'artists'. Goes back to my point about performers having passion and soul (rather than just a good stylist).

Elvis was dressing and dancing like he did from early teens (he got bullied at school for eschewing jeans and checked tops in true Southern US style for hot-pink silk jackets and drainpipe trousers, just like his Beale Street blues hereos), and retained that exuberance and flamboyance to the end of his career (with the infamous Bill Belew jumpsuits).

He also performed from an early age, and toured hard before getting his break - can't say that about a lot of today's straight-to-studio performers.

Yes, he was also possibly one of the best-looking people ever to walk this planet, but the people who kick-started his career by responding to radio airplay of That's Alright Mama etc had no idea of that: they just knew they were hearing something very, very different that they wanted to hear much more of.

Dismissing an incredibly talented performer that happens to be good-looking is cultural snobbery of the worst kind. 

JohnDuncan:

plastic penguin:

If Presley looked like Worzel Gummidge [or me] would he of been the icon he is today? I think I know the answer to that.

Course, it's down to taste, personally I only buy music based purely on the MUSIC, not image.

Furthermore, would he if he wasn't dead?

That's a question that no one can answer with any real confidence. What you can say is that 2 or maybe 3 years before his sad demise he was an increasingly out of shape pop singer. If he had lived would his later image endear or indeed expand his fan base? Or would he just fade away into oblivion and ended up a broken man?

I suspect it would be the latter Penguin. I imagine he would have continually been wheeled out for a succession of "TV Comeback Specials" in an attempt to rekindle past glories with a voice that was no where near the quality it used to be. Record sales would be no where near the posthumous sales and we'd be talking about how sad it was to see 'The King' as a characature of his former self and somewhat of a laughing stock.

There's no denying his legacy but I can't help but think that he is viewed somewhat through rose tinted spectacles. From what I can gather he didn't write much of his own material (I'm prepared to be shot down on this as I don't care enough to look it up on the internet), had a management team that gave him his material, told him where and when he would perform etc. which sounds pretty much like the modern day, mass market music industry of today.

I am prepared to concede that he had vast amounts of talent, charisma and stage prescence but he was not to my taste and no amount of listening to his music through high end hi-fi would change that.

Elvis didn't write - he arranged.

Certainly in the largely awful movie-soundtrack years he was being spoon-fed a lot of nonsense, but in earlier years - and in later years, when he was largely a touring act, rather than album/single maker - he had an incredible amount of say of what he sung and in what style.

He went near songs and styles that could have been seen as commercial suicide, but transformed them into something quite different. 

But no doubt he'd have had a lot more creative freedom without Col Parker (or having to go into the Army, but that's another story...) 

And another thing.... Why does Elvis get so much flak for not writing his songs? No-one gives Frank Sinatra the same kicking.

Or says of Ella Fitzgerald - "well, her Songbooks series were great and redefined jazz standards - but she didn't write a word you know! Loser..."

I agree with this actually. I obviously respect any artist who writes their own songs, but writing a song and performing one are two very different talents in my opinion and deserve equal respect.

No one argues with an actor who doesn't write his / her own movies!

Gerrardasnails:

Andrew Everard:

Gerrardasnails:

  Can any of these lot touch the songs of Radiohead though?

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahah. IMHO.

Lol! For me they have produced album after album (excusing Kid A) of brilliance.

Sorry for the history lesson, but if you look at that era, mid/late 50's, certainly in Britain, TV was a fledgling medium and for people to see such a fresh-faced, vibrant singer as Elvis must of been a revelation. Who were our stars? Lonnie Donnigan, Joe Brown and the Bruvvers. Hmm. . . .you can see why Elvis and his curled lip was so fantastic. Could he arrange and write songs? Was he a great singer? distinctive maybe. No one really cared. Two years later you had British imitators, Cliff Richard, Marty Wilde, so on and so forth. Not quite the same.

Now for a real star from the mid-fifties, look no further than Buddy Holly. Wrote and arranged all his own songs, produced his own material. . .even played the guitar on most tracks. Like Elvis did his apprentiship from a young age.

I like some if not all of Radiohead's stuff, and have seen them live in Victoria Park - Thom Yorke certainly puts his heart and soul into his work. It's just that his heart and soul's a little too unremittingly bleak for me on occasions!

Elvis get's the flak here because the question posed in the thread was about Elvis. My point was to counter that made earlier about dislike of 'packaged artists' of today by drawing parallels between Elvis and those packaged artists. Was Elvis, granted only at certain points in his career, the equivalent of those packaged artists.

As I said Elvis was talent but was he as talented as some would have us believe.

plastic penguin:

Sorry for the history lesson, but if you look at that era, mid/late 50's, certainly in Britain, TV was a fledgling medium and for people to see such a fresh-faced, vibrant singer as Elvis must of been a revelation. Who were our stars? Lonnie Donnigan, Joe Brown and the Bruvvers. Hmm. . . .you can see why Elvis and his curled lip was so fantastic. Could he arrange and write songs? Was he a great singer? distinctive maybe. No one really cared. Two years later you had British imitators, Cliff Richard, Marty Wilde, so on and so forth. Not quite the same.

Now for a real star from the mid-fifties, look no further than Buddy Holly. Wrote and arranged all his own songs, produced his own material. . .even played the guitar on most tracks. Like Elvis did his apprentiship from a young age.

I agree - i'm a Buddy Holly fan, too. He didn't have the raw edge of Elvis, though. And, of course, died even younger....

You could also argue that Holly had more influence on the Beatles than Elvis - their very name being a play on Buddy Holly and the Crickets, plus their early albums/gigs featuring several Holly covers. And now McCartney owns publishing rights to all Buddy's songs.

But I think the real unsung hero of early rock and roll is Chuck Berry....
 

dirtydawg1967:

Elvis get's the flak here because the question posed in the thread was about Elvis. My point was to counter that made earlier about dislike of 'packaged artists' of today by drawing parallels between Elvis and those packaged artists. Was Elvis, granted only at certain points in his career, the equivalent of those packaged artists.

As I said Elvis was talent but was he as talented as some would have us believe.

Clare Newsome:

But I think the real unsung hero of early rock and roll is Chuck Berry....

Was it something I said.....

professorhat:

Clare Newsome:

But I think the real unsung hero of early rock and roll is Chuck Berry....

And of course his inspiration was Marty McFly...

"Cousin Chuck? You know that new sound you were looking for?"