If I Can Dream
Elvis Presley's tribute to and support for Martin Luther King jr's dream of peace and brotherhood.
“As long as a man has the strength to dream
He can redeem his soul and fly."
I've just woken up in a cabin in the mountains of California to the sound of “If I Can Dream.” “If I Can Dream” was always my favourite Elvis song. It doesn't seem to be too well known outside of the Elvis world. It's not nearly as famous as The Beatles' "All You Need is Love," to take a song with broadly the same message from the same time. Each to their own, but I think "If I Can Dream" is far, far stronger than The Beatles' song, for all that the world joined in with John, Paul, George, and Ringo. In fact, I considered "If I Can Dream" to be the greatest song ever from the moment I heard it. Looking back, it's not so much the song that impresses as the raw soulful performance that Elvis delivers on it. Other singers have sung the song, but with nothing like the power of Elvis. Without Elvis' emotionally charged vocal performance, the song is a common plea for peace and love, banal and trite, even.
I've recently been cleaning up the house back home in the UK, and in the process found an old suitcase full of papers from the 1970's. In there was my list of the "best of everything Elvis," written, I would guess, very probably in 1978 or maybe 1979, when I was thirteen/fourteen. Top of the list, under the category of “best song,” was “If I Can Dream.” I think that shows remarkably good taste for a young teenager in the era of glam, stadium rock, disco and punk. I'll stand by the view of my young self on this.
I loved “If I Can Dream” so much that I asked my mother to request it on Radio City Liverpool for my granny's birthday. She said it would have her in tears. The request was refused in favour of a more jolly tune. Which was probably more appropriate for a birthday request. "If I Can Dream" was always my favourite Elvis song. I knew it was special from the very first time I heard it on the radio. I taped it and played that cassette to death. It wasn't just the lyrics, which critics could dismiss as trite, (but which I see as profound and meaningful, if meant and lived in relation to flesh and blood others); it wasn't just the music, either, for all of its powerful gospel soul sound. Most of all it was Elvis' delivery: flat out and raw, reaching for a true reality beyond anything that that was visible anywhere in these troubled times and places. For the dreamers, that world exists and is much more real than anything the 'realists' of politics and power could ever propose: the world as it ought to be, the real world that is.
I'll repeat that that's quite a choice for a teenage boy to have made in the middle of glam, stadium rock, disco, and punk rock. I don't doubt it made me so unfashionable at school as not be even worthy of insult in playground arguments. I just remember my Elvis obsessions being treated with sneering contempt. My choice has endured, though. "If I Can Dream" is immense, the words taking flight on Elvis' raw emotional power. Only Elvis could have pulled it off.
‘If I Can Dream:’ Lyrics
There must be lights burning brighter somewhere
Got to be birds flying higher in a sky more blue
If I can dream of a better land
Where all my brothers walk hand in hand
Tell me why, oh why, oh why can’t my dream come true
oh why
There must be peace and understanding sometime
Strong winds of promise that will blow away the doubt and fear
If I can dream of a warmer sun
Where hope keeps shining on everyone
Tell me why, oh why, oh why won’t that sun appear
We’re lost in a cloud
With too much rain
We’re trapped in a world
That’s troubled with pain
But as long as a man
Has the strength to dream
He can redeem his soul and fly
Deep in my heart there’s a trembling question
Still I am sure that the answer gonna come somehow
Out there in the dark, there’s a beckoning candle
And while I can think, while I can talk
While I can stand, while I can walk
While I can dream, please let my dream
Come true, right now
Let it come true right now
Songwriter: Earl Brown, If I Can Dream lyrics © Raleigh Music Publishing
Here are three articles that are well worth reading on the overlooked importance of the song, articles which somewhat vindicate my choice as a thirteen/fourteen year old. I kind of knew all along what these articles are saying much more explicitly and eloquently. (see "If I can dream: The Elvis tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr.")
The immediate context is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ‘I have a dream’ speech.
'Younger and more militant members of the civil rights movement grew increasingly frustrated with King’s caution and his commitment to non-violent resistance, but King pushed on. And in the aftermath of his assassination, millions of people paid tribute to his courage, his eloquence and his determination. Elvis Presley was one of them. He recorded the song “If I Can Dream” just two months after the murder, and the emotional intensity with which he delivers it still brings back the shock and grief that gripped America in the wake of King’s murder.'
It was unusual, in fact unheard of, for Elvis to make any kind of social or political statement. His failure to support the civil rights movement has been critically noted. Elvis shied away from statements that could alienate different parts of his massive fan base, and in any case didn't believe his views as a pop singer were any more worthy than those of 'ordinary' citizens. But he did make a statement in "If I Can Dream," and it was a big one and a significant one.
'Presley was just six years younger than King, and both were born and raised in the Deep South (King in Georgia and Elvis in Mississippi), where they were surrounded by institutionalized racism.'
Shortly after King's assassination, Elvis began to work on the NBC TV Special. As production of the show got under way, Sen. Robert Kennedy was assassinated too, on June 6, 1968). Elvis expressed his desire that the show end with a song that reflected his deep sadness at the racial and political strife dividing the country.
Steve Binder, the director of the Comeback Special, agreed. “I wanted to let the world know that here was a guy who was not prejudiced,” Binder declared, “who was raised in the heart of prejudice, but was really above all that.”
"If I Can Dream” was written to that end by the vocal arranger Earl Brown.
‘Why can’t my dream come true?’
Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is clearly Brown’s inspiration for the lyrics of “If I Can Dream.” Freedom, promise, redemption and darkness are at the crux of both, as King's speech is variously echoed, adapted, and rewritten in the lyrics to the song. The direct comparisons are clear: King’s image of “a great beacon light” reappears in Brown’s reference to “a beckoning candle”; King’s “solid rock of brotherhood” corresponds to Brown’s vision of “brothers” walking “hand in hand”; King’s “sunlit path of racial justice” prompts Brown’s invocation of “a warmer sun / Where hope keeps shining on everyone.”
Above all, of course, both King and Brown “dream” of a better, more equitable society and future. But there is a crucial difference between their views: King’s optimism (“I Have a Dream”) contrasts sharply with Brown’s tentativeness (“If I Can Dream”). King's cosmic optimism is born of his cleaving to God as transcendent source and hope for a better world; Brown's tentativeness is clearly the result of considering the fate of that hope in the context of real social division. In the fallen world of politics, the conditional tense is unavoidable.
Faced in 1963 with bigotry, gun violence, and police brutality, King remains convinced that “somehow this situation can and will be changed,” and that “my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.”
That 'somehow' is socially and politically vague, charging us with having to search and find the means of realization. But cleaving to the Love of a God that moves all things, somehow, somebody, we can hope that the means will be found one day. The "if" is dependent on more than power and power struggles.
Brown is not as confident as King. In 1968 he was confronted by the assassinations of King and Robert Kennedy. In contrast to King’s speech, his lyrics are suffused with “doubt and fear.” Nevertheless, the transcendent source of hope seems also to be firmly in place, as Brown writes that he is “sure that the answers gonna come somehow.” We may want for the answers in the politics of here and now, but answers must come sometime, someday, if we cleave to God's Love and God's Justice.
King did not deny “the difficulties of today and tomorrow,” but these difficulties are the difficulties of approximating, let alone realizing, the ideals of the transcendent standard in the social world through politics. He nevertheless had the courage to continue to imagine a better world despite the deficiencies of politics, and proceeded to elaborate on the legislative, moral, social, and cultural changes required to establish that world or, in the very least, bring us closer to it.
Following the lead given by King, Earl Brown asks the key question with such direct emotional vigor as to be unable to ignore: if Martin Luther King, through his words and deeds, inspires us to “dream of a better land,” and if King's example inspires millions of like-minded men and women to express their belief in that same dream and join together to act upon it, then “why, oh why, oh why can’t my dream come true?” In the process of answering the question, we come to leave the conditional tense behind us. The dream will come true.
Still, we dream.
The sentiments that Brown expresses in the lyrics to "If I Can Dream" are an impassioned reaction to the news of King’s death. However, as the article cited here argues, it is what Elvis does with those lyrics that transforms “If I Can Dream” into 'one of the most moving tributes ever paid to the bravery and vision of King.'
I agree completely with this. I am also interested in the fact that this is a tribute that is almost totally ignored outside the Elvis world, begging questions about the received wisdom on Elvis Presley.
Context and timing are important, too. It is significant that Elvis chose to close his 1968 NBC Television Special by honouring the country’s greatest Black leader, Martin Luther King jr. Elvis did not make political statements, either in person or in his music. So this was a big statement on his part.
Martin Luther King, Jr. had urged men and women to dream for a better land where all walk free as equals. With King's assassination, that dream seemed to lie in ruins. In "If I Can Dream," Elvis expressed the hope that still, despite the ruination of all hope grace of recent events, we “can dream.” He can do this precisely because he is drawing on the same transcendent source upon which King drew - God, whose Love and Justice is eternal and undying. If King's death reminds us of how far we still have to go to achieve the equality and justice he imagined, those ideals also should remind us of the transcendent source and hope sustaining those ideals for all times, places, and people.
King's words have continued to inspire people over the years. As these words and the way in which they were expressed continue to inspire people in today's divisive political climate to join together and engage in the common endeavour of human betterment, so they inspired Elvis at the time. That influence is evident in the raw, trembling, soaring voice which Elvis brings to “If I Can Dream.”
Elvis had given the lead on this. He didn't just passively receive the song as one of a number from which to make his selections for the show. Earl Brown went home with an explicit request from Elvis to write a song that could express his deep feelings about the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. The song was therefore explicitly written with Elvis' own views and commitments in mind. It was to be a positive statement of support from Elvis himself. Seeing his own views expressed, Elvis immediately identified with the song.
The lyrics, in truth, are quite neutral, expressing a hope for human unity, peace and brotherhood with which all men and women of good will could agree. But they gave Elvis scope to invest them with an emotional charge all of his own. This raw passion was Elvis' own unique input to the song, wringing much more out of the song than was actually contained in the lyrics. When he recorded the vocal track, he was found by the director to be totally in the dark and in a fetal position as he delivered the last line. The comment below this article describes it as 'without a doubt the most extraordinary performance by Elvis Presley, and a tribute to his colour blindness.'
Whilst there is no doubt that the title and the sentiment of “If I can Dream” were directly inspired by Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, there are other influences too. In an interview, writer Earl Brown stated that Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come” was a song that came immediately to mind. He thought about the concern Elvis had expressed for the troubling events taking place in the world, he was drawn to reflect upon Sam Cooke’s great song of prophecy of better times to come, and then turned to Martin Luther King’s speech. It was all of one piece, a seamless, interconnected trail of thought, and the song was written in short order.
The song was a big statement on Elvis' part, and many of those with a direct concern picked up on its significance immediately. It is worth taking note that Elvis delivered this powerful statement on a TV Special that earned the highest TV ratings of that season, being watched by more people than any other show. Little Richard, who had cause more than most to resent any white singer being called 'king of rock'n'roll' over him, underlined the importance of Elvis' impassioned performance of "If I Can Dream." In a Rolling Stone interview from 1970, he praised the impact of Elvis’s 68 TV Special, particularly its closing song and its message. Little Richard knew precisely the meaning of that closing performance, and expressed great respect for Elvis in expressing his support with such passion and vigour.
The lyrics of the song do not express an overtly political message; the words don't take sides, don't analyse the causes of division, and don't divide people into political sides. Instead, the lyrics express a dream of peace and unity in terms with which all men and women of good will could agree. It's not the lyrics but what Elvis does with them that makes all the difference, singing them with a force and vigour as to invest them with a deeper, greater meaning, a meaning that could not be overlooked.
Given all of this, it is remarkable that the song came to be overlooked for a very long time, being rediscovered only very recently. "If I Can Dream" was a hit record, stopping just outside the top ten in 1968, but never really achieved iconic status in the way, for instance, The Beatles "All You Need is Love" did around the same time. The song was rarely played for decades after its release. I'd suggest that one reason for the greater popularity of The Beatles' anthem was that The Beatles delivered that fairly bland message concerning love - who disagrees with love? - in a fairly bland and passive way. We could all join in, without any risk. I remember writing at length on social media on the philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre. More fool me, I know. I received a comment that, 'at the end of the day, Peter, all you need is love.' So much effort on my part for something so stupidly bland. 'So The Beatles thought,' I replied, 'and the band split in acrimony a couple of years later.' That reply no doubt identified me as a cantankerosity of the highest order. But at least I wasn't being free and easy sharing the love. Nothing of any worth is so easily obtained. Love needs to be ordered to its true object. What is true love? Love of money?
Elvis did not sing "If I Can Dream" in passive and bland tones. He roared the song out.
'His voice is full of raw emotion that seems at times almost to overwhelm him, and that drives him in the bridge (“the strength to dream”) and at the climax (“right now”) to an intensity that approaches a scream.'
It is that raw emotional power that makes the song so much more than it is on paper. That is significant.
Someone comments underneath the article: 'It is almost criminal that over the years when so many people list powerfully emotive message songs that speak to the times, Elvis “If I Can Dream” is often left off the list. This really needs to change and the song itself deserves to be better known.' I completely agree. In the Music of the Millennium poll of 2000, I nominated Sam Cooke's “A Change is Gonna Come” as the best song of the Millennium. In truth, I'd put “If I Can Dream” joint top with "Change."
I'll add another article that is worth reading here.
An Irishman’s Diary about Elvis Presley and ‘If I Can Dream’
The King and I
by Joe Jackson
Redeem your soul and fly
Jackson comments that whilst Elvis Presley was often accused of singing ‘the devil’s music’, he was, in truth and in essence, 'a spiritual seeker.' That much is obvious from his love of gospel music and the obvious emotional commitment he brings to it.
I'll quote some key passages from the Jackson article and comment as and when.
In Jackson's diary of 1968 on December 4th, there is the following entry:
“God, how brilliant can a singer get? After twelve years as the reigning king, Elvis releases his masterpiece, If I Can Dream. It’s all about a time when there will be peace all over the world, or somewhere. I nearly passed out when I heard it for the first time tonight.”
That was the effect the song had on me, too, when I first heard it on the radio (I had the same feeling and more when I first saw it when the '68 Special was shown on TV). And I have never lost that feeling listening to it many times over the years. I saw it on a big screen at The Elvis Exhibition in Las Vegas 2015. Words don't exist to express the intensity and the immensity.
Jackson takes up the story of Elvis' NBC TV Special:
'On June 5th, 1968, two days after Presley attended the first meeting about the TV special – he warmed to the idea that it would be based on the theme of Maurice Maeterlinck’s 1908 play, The Blue Bird, which tells of a young man who travels the world only to find true happiness when he returns home – Robert Kennedy was assassinated. This disturbed Elvis as deeply as the fact that three months earlier Martin Luther King had been murdered in Memphis. Binder talked with Presley about such matters and decided the show needed a closing song that would “capture something of his unexpectedly idealistic sentiments”. Maybe something along the lines of You’ll Never Walk Alone, a song Elvis had always loved and recently released as a single.'
Jackson discusses the nature of Elvis' spiritual interests, writing that 'the phrase “idealistic sentiments,” barely scratches the surface of the true nature of Elvis Presley’s soul. Although raised in a Pentecostal religion – it gave him his life-long love of gospel music which informed all his singing and songs – by 1968, Presley was four years into his exploration of alternative theologies and ideologies, largely New Age. He loved Joseph Benner’s book, The Impersonal Life, and Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi, and often visited the latter’s Self Realisation Centre in LA.'
In fine, whilst Elvis was so often accused of singing “the devil’s music," when not being dismissed as plain dumb by those who presume themselves to know better, he was, 'in truth, and in essence, a spiritual seeker, in a pan-denominational even post-denominational 21st-century sense.' Some time around 1964, Elvis wrote these words on a page of David Anrias’s book, Through the Eyes of the Masters: Meditations and Portraits: “God loves you. But he loves you best when you sing.” He sang with that belief in his heart.
In possessing and attempting to articulate this deep soul, Elvis was up against the narrow vision of his manager Tom Parker (I'll be damned if I call that vulgar carny huckster a Colonel!). Elvis recorded "If I Can Dream" in the teeth of opposition from Parker, who sought always to steer Elvis in the direction of the bland and the cheesy, the safe and uncontroversial. Parker declared his opposition loudly: “That ain’t Elvis’s kind of song.” What he meant was that it was not the kind of song Parker wanted Elvis to be singing. The same opposition occurred a year later when Elvis came to record "In the Ghetto." This is the same manager who had no objections whatsoever to Elvis recording "Old MacDonald" and "Yoga is as Yoga Does" and trashing his reputation in the process.
Elvis identified with the song so much that when he recorded it he ended curled up in foetal position on the floor of a darkened studio wailing out its soulful lyrics. All of the backing singers, the Blossoms, had tears streaming down their cheeks. Darlene Love, one of the Blossoms, reported on Elvis, “He really loves the song, really believes in the song, he means every word.”
One of the most interesting parts of this very interesting tale is that Elvis changed a word in the song, revealing something about himself. Brown wrote:
“As long as a man has the strength to dream
He can redeem his soul and life.”
Elvis changed 'life' to 'fly.' And he screamed the lines out:
“As long as a man has the strength to dream
He can redeem his soul and fly."
A fairly innocuous line thus took wing and soared to the heavens.
The only thing to point out here is that, in strict theological terms, it is not for any of us to redeem our souls alone, we cannot do this without God's grace. 'And sings my soul,' as the line from How Great Thou Art has it, when that song itself flies. It is on God's Love that we take flight. Elvis knew this.
That word change, though, tells us a lot about Elvis. As Jackson comments:
“What if our differences could be laid aside for a bit?
What if we could….dance together?
Just once?
What then?
'Standing in Los Angeles, in the burning hot summer of 1968, Elvis could not have missed knowing what everyone else knew–that the world he had dreamed into being, the one where we might find out what was possible once it was proven we could dance together, the world that transcended the politics which had put boundaries around everyone from John Adams to Martin Luther King, was crashing down around him, accompanied by a mocking chorus of history’s oldest rhyme–mayhem.
There was a choice to be made and, on “If I Can Dream,” Elvis made it. He determined to sing the song on the '68 Special. There was also a choice to be made on how the song was to be sung. He could sing these fairly general lyrics neutrally or passively, as The Beatles sang "All You Need is Love." And the world would surely agree, in the way that millions agreed with the way that The New Seekers sang "I'd like to teach the world to sing .." Pleasant and unthreatening and unchallenging. Gutless, in fact, saying nothing we didn't already know and agree with.
Instead, Elvis sang the song raw, impassioned and angry: 'he sang it in the voice of a man who was pleading for everyone around him to stop and take a look at what they were throwing away.' He sang it so as to force the issue and make people face the question that confronted them. And, maybe, he sang it knowing that too many would prefer not to answer that difficult question. As Jackson comments: 'he sang it knowing no one would listen. Knowing that even his own future self wouldn’t listen–because his own self wouldn’t be able to bear it any more than anyone else could bear it.'
I'm not sure. I'd say it's more that he sang it suspecting that too few would listen, and fewer still would act on its message. That's why he roared it out. He didn't want agreement on something so vague and so bland as to demand nothing of people and make no practical difference in the world. Elvis went out on a limb and risked discomforting people in order precisely to make a difference, should the sentiment catch fire and create a movement for change. And that decision comes with the risk of being ignored - for to hear such a message is to feel compelled to act upon it and make the dream real.
Here is another article on “If I Can Dream,” which emphasizes the power of Elvis' performance as the decisive factor, saying something of Elvis' own commitments in his music.
HOW MUCH CAN ONE RECORD MEAN (Volume 12: “If I Can Dream”)
Walter Earl Brown was not a particularly inspired songwriter, neither before nor after his writing of "If I Can Dream." The lyrics and melody of the song were hardly works of genius, either. But they were thoughtful, inspirational, and strong all the same. It was a song to make Elvis relevant again after years unravelling his reputation in a series of 'sun'n'fun' films.
Here, in this song, all the threads in Elvis' musical make-up are tied together:
The song clearly evoked Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech from the March on Washington in 1963 and fed into Robert Kennedy’s "I dream things that never were and ask why not?" moment. The song was also a natural sequel to Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come,” which itself was Cooke's explicit response to Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind.” All of these songs stand in direct line of descent from Elvis’ recording of the Reverend Thomas A. Dorsey’s “Peace in the Valley” in 1957, a song which was written in 1937 when the threat of war was engulfing the world.
A song that evoked all of that was powerful indeed. It was also just what Elvis needed at this time. And if a song that evoked all that didn’t bring him up to date, then nothing would. In 1968, Elvis' career was in the doldrums. Lost in Hollywood, Elvis' critical reputation had plummeted, artistically he was considered an irrelevance. He sounded antiquated. He needed something big to bring him back, and to recover his name.
We don't know whether Elvis considered “If I Can Dream” to be the song to make him relevant again. Those around him making the recording could offer some insight here. For Jackson, we can never know: 'It’s one of the many questions no one thought to ask, and part of the reason Elvis the Man remains an enigma. Another reason the Man remains an enigma is because the crit-illuminati have never quite got a handle on the Artist.'
That's a perceptive observation. Critics and intellectuals have consistently demonstrated a fairly snobby attitude to Elvis and his music: Elvis is pop, commercial, and showbiz, all cheap and shallow things, and not authentic folk or blues. So there is no point in anyone looking for any kind of emotional or, still less, social or political depth in Elvis and his music, so the depth that there is is never seen. Critics have their prejudices confirmed.
I'd say that Elvis is socially and politically vague for the most part, but culturally potent and emotionally deep. All the emotions are in there, hence he had the ability not merely to attract millions of people the world over, but move them in their depths. I'd go further and point to the fanatical devotion he inspired. Elvis' voice cuts deep. The precise quality of that emotional charge is much harder to judge.
“If I Can Dream” is almost always described as a soul inflected gospel type song, a song of uplift. As such, the song is a natural for Elvis given his love of and talent for gospel. But that's far too pat. Elvis never sang gospel in such a raw and impassioned manner. His gospel style was quite formal, his diction and intonation refined and pure. Jackson is having none of the usual interpretations of "If I Can Dream" as a gospel type song of uplift. Whilst people routinely draw attention to the gospel root, Jackson says that 'that isn't quite true, nor even half-true. Whilst the song is a song of uplift, Elvis’ interpretation of it is anything but.'
Jackson nails it:
'He no more knew how to walk a straight line through “If I Can Dream” than he had known how to move like anybody else when he hit a television stage for the first time on the Dorsey Brothers’ Stage Show in the early months of ’56. The key to Elvis at his best, from first to last, was that he looked at a confined conjunction of time and/or space–a TV stage, a recording studio, the length of a record, the meaning available in a lyric–and imagined it differently than anyone else did.
'It was one reason Sam Phillips took such a long time getting a handle on him (a year or more, lest we forget–not Phillips’ usual modus operandi).'
That is such an important point that it is worth emphasizing and underlining, and in big capital letters in loud colours. The critics who so often pass Elvis by do so precisely because they are incapable of getting a handle on him. They understand Elvis in their own limited terms, which is to say not at all. Elvis cuts across the boundaries. Those who stick to the boundaries will just declare Elvis plain wrong and move on. People with particular tastes will declare him tasteless. Phillips came eventually to see the depths in Elvis. At first, he was extremely unsure, suspecting Elvis had some depth, in talent and soul, but not really having much idea as to what it was or where it was. And the truth is that even after Phillips had "discovered" Elvis, he still passed on Elvis' ballads, his beautiful but very different renditions of "Blue Moon" and "Tomorrow Night." He didn't release them, didn't even finish the last one, and passed them on to RCA when he sold Elvis' contract. And that's the man who discovered Elvis! So no wonder critics have continued to miss and misunderstand Elvis. The people got him, though, and in their millions. He was a heart and soul singer; he had interpretive skill and a beautiful voice. Most of all, though, he struck a human chord and moved people from within. Music is a sensuous experience, not a cerebral one. Elvis gets inside and moves you from there.
Elvis isn't singing to impress the critics. So they rarely heard him. But he is not easy to interpret. It is easy to conclude that Elvis went amiss through being unable to handle fame and fortune. There's truth in that. But as an explanation it is far too trite. People forget how high Elvis soared and how early. He handled a greater fame and fortune that any had seen, and for a long time. Jackson thus goes deeper, pointing out that Elvis could never take anything for granted, and never really be at ease, no matter how far he rose, no matter how much material success he achieved.
'Most Big Thinkers have concluded it was the poverty–the fear it could return at any moment–that kept Elvis insecure, on edge, in need of a constant fix. There’s not much to support that. From everything I’ve read, Elvis, once he made it, was generally contemptuous of the idea he wouldn’t keep making it.
It's true; Elvis spent money like he thought it would never stop coming in.
'What he clearly did worry about was whether he would fit into the next space–the next hole in the time-space continuum that he, and he alone, had opened up in American culture, but which, once he had punched through, could not stop expanding, or perhaps simply running way from the latest, fastest version of itself.
'How many times can a man re-invent himself, after all…and still be a man?
'There were plenty of roads left to travel when Elvis confronted “If I Can Dream” for the first time, but he didn’t need to be any Master of Prescience to know that this turning point was special–that it wasn’t just another fork in the road.
'So, faced with a song that fit squarely into existing traditions–he could take it as uplift (like King’s speech), as cautionary tale (like Dylan), as a means to look beyond the stars (like Kennedy), as the running of a secret tide that won’t be turned back (like Cooke) or even as an excuse to give in to the moment and re-orient the Protestant Reformation, with its promise of moving man’s Golden Age (which America now represented full-blown), from the past to the future, and simply realizing it in the Present–what was a poor boy to do?
'The song would have fit any of those other interpretations. And the relative few who have taken it on since have chosen one of those conventional paths.'
Listen to them. The artists who have covered the song sing it well, with not a note out of place. They’ve had to. They weren’t Elvis. Elvis, unlike anyone else, had a choice. The conventional here would have been a copout. It could have been a profitable copout, given that people prefer bland appeal to views that challenge them. But a copout all the same.
'Standing square in the middle of 1968, the most volatile year in American history since the end of the Civil War, standing there, according to many, as a curiously moribund icon, waiting for his wax statue, with his place as a permanently employed Entertainer set out neatly and securely before him, Elvis did what he always did at a crisis….the unexpected.
'He seized the song by the throat.
'And he didn’t let it go.
'If I could have his ear for a moment now, though, the question I’d ask, is whether, by the time he made his soon to be famous promise, he already knew what he was going to do with the song?
Because it was not a song that invited the interpretation he gave it. It was not a song that was asking to be grabbed by the throat. Commitment would have been enough.
'Elvis was a non-pareil vocalist. He could always do things no one else could do, form connections no one else could form, build bridges no one else could build. “If I Can Dream” was a good enough song, he could have taken the easy way out–any of several forms of reassurance or what’s-this-life-really-all-about wistfulness that the lyric made available and the melody reinforced. He could have done any of the things such songs are almost inherently meant to do, and got away with it. It might still have been a hit. I’d almost bet it would have been a bigger hit–#1 maybe, instead of #12.
'If he had chosen not to invest it with a particular kind of anger, the only person who would have known, would have been him. We don’t have to speculate whether anyone else would have found that quality in it, because, even with his example before them, no one else has.
'If he had chosen not to sing, in any version you hear, a line like the answer’s gonna come, somehow, not exactly with a sneer in his voice, but with no hint of a plea either, would we know what we had missed?
'If it’s possible now to hear it rather as a demand, delivered in the voice of a man who is tired of his life’s worth of New Testament style asking and has replaced himself, instead, with an Old Testament Prophet demanding–knowing full well that the change cannot be walked away from, either by him or any audience he might command, then or in the future–then it’s only because he made it possible.
'You can still choose not to hear it. No one, not even Elvis, can make that sort of demand and expect it to be heard by all. It is enormous after all, the very idea of it.
'And Elvis was the only man left standing in American life by the summer of 1968 who could have made it.
'Left as a dream–as the series of questions contained within the lyrics–and delivered with the tried and true delicacy of “Crying in the Chapel,” the only Top Ten hit he’d had since the Beatles arrived in America (and that recorded years before, just after he came out of the Army), it might have been that natural #1 I mentioned. Same for the careful phrasing and straightforward empathy of “In the Ghetto” which would return him to the Top Ten the following year.
'But it wouldn’t have been true. Not coming from the heart of 1968 it wouldn’t. Coming from that place–and coming from Elvis Presley–only Old Testament anger would do.
'It was his dream after all, that was falling apart at his feet in 1968. Oh, yes, others had dreamed it, too. By the millions.
'And better men than Elvis had called upon the dream in the years since. We know they were better men because so many have told us so. It isn’t hard, in America, to be a better man than a Tennessee hillbilly.
Every single word here rings so true that I really had no alternative but to quote this passage at length. But it is the next passage that is key, establishing precisely what it is that makes Elvis so important, despite the many failures on his part, which the critics, of course, are able to see. Here is what makes Elvis different, and important, here is what raises his mere pop music to immense cultural and, ultimately, political significance:
'Only he had made the dream common, though. Only he had brought it within what seemed such easy reach when he walked into those recording studios, or strode those television stages, in the mid-fifties, and made it sound like everything fit. Made it sound like rhythm and blues and country were really one thing (why, hadn’t blacks and hillbillies always gotten along?…playing to teenagers no less?….well, sure they had!). And not only that, but Tin Pan Alley and gut-bucket gospel and white church music and light opera and show tunes and “Old Shep” could be thrown right in there, too.
Bingo! Bullseye!
That line is so smack on the point that it bears repetition, only Elvis had made the dream common and brought it within the reach of all. That is why Elvis matters. He moves people from within and does so in vast numbers. That is why I always say that Elvis is a democrat and not a king, even if that democratic affirmation that each man and woman is capable of expressing their individuality and uniqueness did make him extraordinary rather than ordinary. He wasn't a god, he wasn't a king, but maybe he was some kind of icon after all, as Liverpool blues-jazz artiste George Melly concludes in a very good, critical but sympathetic reading of Elvis and his importance ("You ain't nothin' but an icon", highly recommended!)
Elvis is a democrat, one of the common people, expressing and thereby affirming the extraordinary qualities possessed by supposedly ordinary people. 'Just like everybody had suspected, right along.' Expressing the hopes of those inspired by him, and the fears of those seeking to preserve an iniquitous and unequal status quo.
'Why once a Tennessee hillbilly showed it could be done, wasn’t it obvious that it was an idea whose time had simply come?'
Bob Dylan certainly thought so.
“When I first heard Elvis Presley’s voice I just knew that I wasn’t going to work for anybody and nobody was going to be my boss. Hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail.”
Dylan wasn't alone in that feeling. You can find similar quotes from very many others. Anyone can do it! Even white kids in Britain can do something with the blues. Take this from Keith Richards’ autobiography Life:
“I think the first record I bought was Little Richard’s “Long Tall Sally”. Fantastic record, even to this day. Good records just get better with age. But the one that really turned me on, like an explosion one night, listening to Radio Luxembourg on my little radio when I was supposed to be in bed and asleep, was “Heartbreak Hotel”. That was the stunner. I’d never heard it before, or anything like it. I’d never heard of Elvis before. It was almost as if I’d been waiting for it to happen. When I woke up the next day I was a different guy....
Then, “Since my baby left me” – it was just the sound. It was the last trigger. That was the first rock and roll I heard. It was a totally different way of delivering a song, a totally different sound, stripped down, burnt, no b***s***, no violins and ladies’ choruses and schmaltz, totally different. It was bare, right to the roots that you had a feeling were there but hadn’t yet heard. I’ve got to take my hat off to Elvis for that. The silence is your canvas, that’s your frame, that’s what you work on; don’t try and deafen it out. That’s what “Heartbreak Hotel” did to me. It was the first time I’d heard something so stark. Then I had to go back to what this cat had done before. Luckily I caught his name. The Radio Luxembourg signal came back in. “That was Elvis Presley, with ‘Heartbreak Hotel.'” S**t!”
Elvis encompassed and articulated a vision for all people. Hence the connection with the dream of Martin Luther King Jr. Elvis' 'pop' appeal stands him in good stead in this respect:
'Underneath, without anyone needing to do a white paper on it, Elvis–and no one else–had called forth the most dangerous and exhilarating parts of the good old, American Dream.
What if our differences could be laid aside for a bit?
What if we could….dance together?
Just once?
What then?
'Standing in Los Angeles, in the burning hot summer of 1968, Elvis could not have missed knowing what everyone else knew–that the world he had dreamed into being, the one where we might find out what was possible once it was proven we could dance together, the world that transcended the politics which had put boundaries around everyone from John Adams to Martin Luther King, was crashing down around him, accompanied by a mocking chorus of history’s oldest rhyme–mayhem.
It was in this context that he expressed his thoughts and concerns and solicited a song that enabled him to say precisely what was on his mind. Earl Brown went away and wrote "If I Can Dream" at Elvis' request. There were choices to be made and Elvis made them - he wanted a song that expressed his views and, when presented with that song, he determined to sing it in a way that would make its central message impossible to ignore.
There was a choice to be made as to which way as to sing the song, and Elvis made it: He sang the song angry, he sang the song raw until he went hoarse and flat, and he refused to re-sing it to clean it up and hit all the right notes. It was a deliberate choice: 'he sang it in the voice of a man who was pleading for everyone around him to stop and take a look at what they were throwing away.'
In live performance in the 1970's, Elvis would close his concerts with “Can’t Help Falling In Love With You.” His seasons at Las Vegas and his relentless touring set a killing schedule. Overworked and exhausted, Elvis died in 1977. But had he decided to close his shows with “If I Can Dream” – and put into his performances what he put into the song the one time he did it in 1968 then 'he’d have been dead in a year.'
'Dead because he’d have known by then what we all know now – that the Dream had died on his watch. That we would never walk away from 1968. That he was, after all, a prophet not for this time, but for another time – the one that will be born out of what we’re watching die around us now.
'One that will be worthy of an ice cream suit, covering a man who still moved like nobody else.
….If we’re lucky.'
I think these passages identify precisely what I had instinctively grasped all those years ago when I heard “If I Can Dream” as a young teenage boy. I named it immediately as my favourite Elvis song. Simple as that. It moved me like no other song.
In terms of music and lyrics, the song is simple enough. The plea for unity is a familiar enough refrain, and the gospel inflection is also familiar. In the hands of others, the song could be trite. But Elvis wasn't others. He sang it raw and angry and, being who he was, packed a hard punch. I heard the anger and passion all along. And I saw the vision which drew that emotional commitment.