Elvis Film Review
In the past couple of weeks I have observed, silently, the reaction of fellow Elvis fans to ‘Elvis,’ the biographical film directed by Baz Luhrmann that is now in the theatres. The response has been overwhelmingly positive, but here and there the odd Elvis fan has expressed a critical view. I don’t like to rain on people’s parade, least of all Elvis fans happy to see their idol back in public view and being introduced to a new audience. Many are reacting to the film as a film and are happy to see Elvis being portrayed in positive light. I can understand the excitement and would like to share in it. But I see, too, how enthusiasm and emotion can distort perceptions of reality, creating a warm, happy feeling that can lead us to overlook the frankly problematic. I think that the film is flawed. Most films are. It is a movie and not a book, some of the film’s defenders contend. Fine. But it is not the poetic licence that is taken in all story-telling that is my concern, it is the nature of that story that is being told. I don’t care for it, in the same way I don’t care for it in certain books on Elvis. I have no problem with inaccuracies and omissions (where is Mississippi Slim, not to mention Linda Thompson, who saved Elvis’ life on at least one occasion?) It’s a movie and not a book; it is meant to entertain rather than inform. I have a problem with the story. Or, more to the point, the approach. There is less a narrative in the film than a series of snapshots, all surface level set-pieces but little substance. There is little here that is of enduring value, and remarkably little of Elvis’ music.
Beyond particular quibbles (which I shall address shortly), I think it is clear that the movie was made to be entertaining and attention-grabbing, generating interest and therefore money. And why not? It’s the movie industry after all, where it’s all about putting bums on seats. Wasn’t that what the Elvis movies themselves were about? And didn’t we all go out to watch them? But it strikes me as shallow and deeply unsatisfying.
There is so much that is written about Elvis – and so much that is portrayed in the movies – that bears such little relation to the actual Elvis as to be pure fiction, saying more about the story tellers and the age they appeal to than they do about Elvis.
The film imposed a contemporary focus that won’t lead to a recovery of Elvis at all, merely set up a false narrative which will continue to bury the real Elvis. To that extent, the movie says more about present-day preoccupations than they do about Elvis. Every age reinvents Elvis anew, of course, and the fact is that there is so much in the Elvis story and catalogue as to enable this endless recreation. But I would prefer to be entertained by the real Elvis than any particular age’s own personal Elvis.
I hate to be a curmudgeon, and rain on people’s parade, especially when we are talking Elvis fans who are happy to see Elvis’ name in lights again, heading the Hollywood lists. But I am long past the phase of cheering something on because it has Elvis’ name on it. I don’t cheer images and illusions and, if truth to be told, part of Elvis’ tragedy is that too many of his fans did. And some still do. There is little to be gained from introducing Elvis to new generations, only to have them find out later that the real Elvis was nothing like the story they had been sold. Cue more disillusionment and Elvis deconstruction, Elvis as the fallen idol once more.
I’ll put it this way. I have friends who are musicians and big music fans, but who don’t really know too much about Elvis. They are serious musos who are into classical and folk music, people who see pop music as very low culture indeed. They know I rate Elvis the artist very highly indeed and, here and there, having given him a listen, can hear the appeal. Would I recommend this film to said friends? Simply, no. There is just too much of the essential Elvis missing. We should bear in mind that a half-truth can be a downright lie when it is comes to be presented as the whole truth. I’m not interested in hipsters and rebels, the presentation of Elvis as an outlaw challenging the authorities. This is a complete misreading of who Elvis was, giving us an Elvis for this age of permanent protest.
The problem of film and story-telling is that it allows people the licence to recreate Elvis in their own image, tailoring the facts to contemporary preoccupations that weren’t Elvis’. It’s an age of protest so, naturally, we are presented with the image of Elvis striking a blow for individuality and authenticity against the authorities. Elvis was different and blaze a trail for people to be themselves. But his individuality was something that was affirmative rather than negative, being more concerned to present his authentic self than to challenge the authorities. The problem with portraying Elvis as a conscious rebel in this way, as someone who set out to break the rules and give the authorities the – wiggled - finger is that it allows critics to accuse him of ‘selling out’ the rebellion as soon as he made it. Elvis never ‘sold out’ for the very reason that he never ‘bought in’ in the first place. John Lennon said that Elvis died when he went in the army, but the truth is that it was John Lennon’s fantasy of Elvis that died that day, not the real Elvis. Just as all fantasy Elvises will die a death in confrontation with reality.
I’m leery of reading Elvis through a present-day lens. He was a rebel in a far deeper sense than gestures. Elvis transformed the culture, certainly, and has yet to receive true recognition for his achievements here. He was a liberator and an integrator and is to be celebrated for all these things. But the Elvis I love is the Elvis who dared to be different from first to last, the Elvis who would confound the expectations of all who would fit him to a favoured narrative. And by ‘all’ I mean all would-be authorities. The Elvis I love is the Elvis who would enter Stax studios Memphis, with half of Booker T’s MGs available, and go on to record ‘Spanish Eyes’ and the French ballad “My Boy.” That’s not quite what the hipsters would have wanted. But Elvis didn’t care about people with such impeccably good taste that they never put a foot wrong, never risked deviating from the set grooves, never mixed and blended different genres and styles, never broke new ground. The critics who love Elvis the fifties rebel were the same critics who were complaining about Elvis’ ballads in the seventies. Again, this is a case of imposing musical tastes that were not Elvis’. Elvis loved ballads from the very first. One of the very first things Elvis recorded was “Blue Moon.” Sam Phillips didn’t like it and didn’t release it. He didn’t much care for Elvis’ other ballads, and didn’t release them either. Elvis’ “Blue Moon” is a classic, an eerie, haunting rendition that exists in a world of its own. That keening, yearning, longing quality was present throughout Elvis’ ballad singing. Some purists consider Elvis at Sun as the authentic Elvis, the rockabilly Elvis, with everything that followed mere commerce. But the Sun Elvis is far from being the complete Elvis, giving only glimpses of Elvis the incomparable ballad singer. As much as we can praise Sun producer Sam Phillips, Elvis’ own musical range and vision was far greater, and greater still than all those who try to squeeze him into a narrative.
The movie makes the point that Elvis was dangerous and a transgressor. This is true enough. But beware of limiting this danger and transgression to the juvenile fantasies of a John Lennon. Elvis could no more remain twenty-one than anyone else could. I’m also leery of portrayals of Elvis' transgressing as part of some deliberate strategy on his part. His transgression was his affirmation of his genuine multiplicity of music in a culture that sought to separate genres and people. There are people who are still segregating culture in this way. Elvis was transgressing in his own special way to the very end, in ways that the conscious rebels loathed and I loved. Critics hated “The Last Farewell,” but I loved it. And I loved that Elvis would record such material, knowing fine-well the complaints he would attract from the critics. That’s the Elvis I love, the Elvis who sang “all kinds” for all kinds of people to the very end, and not just for rebels and hipsters in some musical cul-de-sac. That’s the key to his massive popularity in his lifetime and his enduring popularity to this day. He sang for the people without distinction. And he struck a very human chord in the process. That's why he was so loved by so many and still is to this day.
How strange that there is so little of Elvis’ actual songs in the movie. It is noteworthy, too, that when it comes to rock’n’roll, the focus in the film is on Little Richard. I have absolutely nothing against Little Richard. I was honoured to see the great man in Liverpool in 2001, and his explosive, electrifying performance that night is one of the greatest shows I have ever seen. But this is a film about setting the record straight on Elvis, without whom rock’n’roll would not have broken through.
Like “The Seeker,” which painfully laboured Elvis’ debts to black music, the movie clearly framed Elvis’ story through contemporary preoccupations. Yet again, for the umpteenth time, Elvis’ primary musical influences seem to be exclusively black. This hoary old myth should be nailed once and for all.
The issue of the origins of rock’n’roll and who owes what to whom is a complex and contentious one. In recent decades the pendulum has swung far too far against Elvis, with it becoming the conventional wisdom that Elvis was a derivative, second-rate, second-hand artist who made his name on the back of much greater talents. This is demonstrably false. Instead of looking backwards from a vantage point in the present, go back to the 1950s and follow events in real time. Chuck Berry, who was born in 1926 and therefore much older than Elvis (born in 1935), had a career than ran parallel with Elvis, although much less prolific in terms of chart hits. The accusations levelled today that Elvis made his name by ‘stealing the blues,’ Arthur Crudup’s ‘That’s all Right,’ can be countered by the accusation that Chuck Berry ‘stole’ country music, his first hit, 1955’s ‘Maybelline’ being a re-write of the country song ‘Ida Red’ (a ‘traditional’ song made famous by Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys in 1938). The whole notion of ‘stealing’ here misses the true significance of what was going on here. Chuck Berry with ‘Maybelline’ was doing from the blues direction what Elvis was doing from the country direction, mixing supposedly black and white forms to deliver a new ‘pop’ music that was entirely without cultural and ethnic implication. Sam Cooke, arguably, was doing the same thing with gospel and soul. The next point to establish is the impact of the new ‘rock’n’roll’ music. Critics who debate origins and engage in a comparative analysis based on artistic merits are examining a separate issue entirely. Such debates tend to be entirely arbitrary, involving the rewriting of history to suit personal taste and preference. That there is something amiss in the approach can be gleaned from the impression given that just about everyone was better that Elvis, including miscellaneous mysterious unknowns such as Peg Leg Pete, Blind Bob, and Wild Willie Whatsisname. It’s as if rock’n’roll would have happened even if Elvis had never existed. There is just one thing wrong with that narrative – everything. It was Elvis who created the biggest impression, Elvis who broke the doors down, Elvis who stormed the charts, generated the massive fan base, and stood toe-to-toe against the old pop establishment, creating the space for others to follow. Contemporary cultural reinterpretations are robbing Elvis of his cultural importance, giving Elvis’ achievements to others. Compare the chart impacts of Elvis to other artists and the facts are crystal clear – Elvis was the major hitter. A quick look down Chuck Berry’s chart profile reveals five – that’s 5 – US top ten hit records in the years Elvis was active before national service – ‘Maybelline’ (#5 1955); ‘School Day’ (#3 1957); ‘Rock and Roll Music’ (#8 1957); ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’ (#2 1958); ‘Johnny B. Goode’ (#8 1958). My point is this – as great as Chuck Berry was, he didn’t have the same heavyweight popular impact that Elvis did: Elvis’ impact in 1956 alone packed a far greater punch. Elvis had five – that’s 5 – US #1 hits in 1956 alone, ten top twenty hits in total that year. Chuck Berry had four singles in 1956, all very excellent – ‘No Money Down,’ ‘Roll Over Beethoven,’ ‘Brown Eyed Handsome Man,’ and ‘Too Much Monkey Business’ – only ‘Roll Over Beethoven’ made the charts, at a modest US #29. I could repeat the exercise with Little Richard – six top twenty hits in the 1950s, three top ten hits, zero number one hits.
You still think rock’n’roll could have made it without Elvis? Elvis had seven top ten hits in 1957, five at #1, four top ten hits in 1958, when he was active only for the first four months of the year. In total, Elvis had twenty seven top twenty hits in the four years from 1956 to 1959, twelve at #1, seventeen in the top five.
Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers, Fats Domino, Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly, the various vocal groups … These all produced undeniably great records, certainly influential and enduring – but not the same popular impact which counts when it comes to leading a transformation in the musical landscape. It took them all, of course, to effect that transformation. But it took someone to lead the breakthrough.
The idea that Elvis was a somewhat ephemeral, secondary, derivate talent has been repeated so often in recent decades that this point needs to be hammered home and hard. The facts are emphatic.
I’ve laboured the point a little too long here, and wandered far from the Elvis movie under review. But I do think it a point worth labouring given the pronounced tendency in recent decades to bury Elvis in ‘black music.’ It is good to honour one’s debts and antecedents. But as can be seen from the above, the classic singles issued by Little Richard and Chuck Berry were contemporary with Elvis rather than before, with most coming after Elvis’ breakthrough. Elvis’ influences were as much country as blues, a fact that has tended to be occluded. And the whole point of the new form of popular music that Elvis fashioned and made available to all across the world was that it was neither black nor white but beyond both racial and musical segregation.
The constant reference to Elvis’ black influences beg a huge number of questions. Nearly always the people who emphasise Elvis’ drawing on black artists go the blues. Things are nowhere near as direct and simple as this. It took Elvis an awful long time during his Sun ‘audition’ to pull Arthur Crudup’s blues out of the bag, and when he did it was because he had tried and failed with most everything else. Blues was not Elvis’ first port of call. He was trying all other kinds of things first, ballads mainly, pop hits, country. I employ a rule of thumb here, with respect to discussions of Elvis’ black influences – if people don’t mention Roy Hamilton, I know they are just skating on the surface. Nearly always, such people go to Willie Mae Thornton and “Hound Dog,” and more often than not they stay there. The controvery over “Hound Dog” is the biggest non-issue in music history. Much more interesting is the much neglected figure of Roy Hamilton, a man who if anyone was Elvis’ key black influence. But to underline Hamilton’s importance in this way is actually to reduce the man’s enormous talent as a singer. Hamilton wasn’t a ‘black singer,’ he was a great singer pure and simple. Hamilton was more than an R&B singer, blending soul and gospel in an operatic style. Later in life, Elvis looked to Hamilton as he sought new musical directions beyond fifties rock’n’roll. A number of the standout performances of the later Elvis were directly inspired by Roy Hamilton – ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone,’ ‘Hurt,’ ‘Unchained Melody.’ Hamilton rarely, if ever, gets a mention in the controversies over Elvis’ influences and the reason is clear – Roy Hamilton was a ‘black’ singer who doesn’t fit the blues and rock’n’roll racial stereotypes the critics of cultural appropriation love. Learn this lesson and learn it well – human beings of any type and category are not monoliths, objective ‘its’ which conform to a set list of characteristics. And Elvis if anyone was the one who broke all those barriers down to allow individuals to be themselves, regardless of class, race, culture, geography. It was because of Elvis that white boys in the UK could try this newly blended pop music on for size and take it further. I think those four ex-skifflers from Liverpool turned out rather well.
The point can be developed further. Elvis had at least as many white influences as black. Although his love of Jake Hess, Dean Martin, and Mario Lanza is well known, it rates barely a passing mention. This requires an explanation, given that Elvis’ career as a whole contains many more ballads – often Latin and operatic –than blues. And, without ever having done a breakdown, his songbook contains at least as much gospel and country.
Critics and hipsters accuse Elvis of ‘selling out’ (or of being sold out by his management), which simply means they want a particular Elvis that fits their tastes. And that’s my point about Elvis being ‘different,’ different in the sense that he would confound expectations. He would perform Ned Miller’s ‘From a Jack to a King’ at the home of blue-eyed soul, American Sound Studios Memphis, in 1969 because he wanted to and because his dad loved the song. He recorded a lot of country at the same Sound sessions, too – ‘Gentle on my Mind,’ ‘It Keeps Right on a Hurtin,’ ‘I’ll Hold you in My Heart,’ ‘After Loving You.’ He did the same a year later in Nashville, with enough material to fill one very strong ‘Elvis Country’ album. If you are prepared to go back long enough, you will see that Elvis first came to notice as a ten-year old warbling about a dead dog, winning a prize at a state fair. That’s about as country as it gets, but it’s not the stuff of appealing myths and legends, and so gets ejected. But there’s a reason why Elvis became so big the world over, and it wasn’t his version of ‘Milkcow Blues’ (as great as that is, and one of my eight most favourite Elvis songs, which is saying something). Elvis became so popular with so many people because he struck a very human chord on all kinds of material, country, ballads etc.
It is true that Elvis lived in a ‘black’ neighborhood and heard early R&B, jump-blues and swing tunes and loved it. The same with respect to black and white gospel. The notion of cultural theft here is completely inappropriate. Elvis was born in this area, lived in the midst of gospel and blues. The Presley family picked cotton, Gladys dragging a young Elvis behind her on the ground. Hell, Elvis’ father Vernon even spent time on Parchman’s Farm. I mean, how more blues could it get? You cannot steal what is yours. The Presleys were dirt poor, downtrodden, and deprived. That Elvis is now considered privileged and dominant owing to the colour of his skin says more about the age we are living in than it does about Elvis and the age he lived in and did more than anyone to change for the better.
If you go back to those early days, you will find that Elvis was singing country songs on country packages. He had a long stint on the Louisiana Hayride, where he picked up his long-term drummer D.J. Fontana. Had Elvis really been a conniving, calculating Machiavellian plotting his rise to fame and fortune, he would have stayed with country music, because that is where the money was. You only need to see how many big hits the biggest pop stars of the day were having with country songs at the time. Patti Page owned the #1 spot with ‘Tennessee Waltz,’ Bing Crosby, Tony Bennett #1 with Hank Williams’ ‘Cold Cold Heart,’ Rosemary Clooney likewise with ‘This Ole House,’ Frankie Laine with ‘You’re Cheatin’ Heart.’ Theft? Cultural appropriation? Hilariously, in the early days, Elvis was accused of getting his lift-off from Bluegrass music, his version of Bill Monroe’s ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky.’ That tends to be forgotten now, with the focus that has come to be placed on the blues on the flipside, Crudup’s ‘That’s All Right.’ So who is being ripped off and how, white people or black people, country artists or blues artists? And what about Elvis, born in Tupelo, Mississippi, brought up in Memphis – what is his musical root, what musical antecedents is he allowed to draw upon and make his own? I would suggest country, blues, and gospel. But Elvis’ real crime for critics is that he was a pop star rather than a folk artist. And here we should underline that Elvis would listen to the radio and develop a taste for pop, ballads, and even operatic songs. Put it all together and you have Elvis. Take it apart and seek to reduce Elvis to his influences, some more than others, and you have a nonsense.
Elvis died when he went into the Army, said John Lennon. And there’s the problem – everyone has their own personal Elvis.
I don’t wish to sound like I am picking on this film. I tend to grumble at attempts to convey the Elvis story. They rarely seem to fit the facts, all the facts, and miss plenty out. I have a similarly irascible reaction to various other reconstructions of Elvis’ life, films, documentaries, books. I thought even Peter Guralnick’s two volumes to be deficient, because Guralnick clearly wanted Elvis to be a blues-based hipster and was indifferent to a lot of material Elvis – and the fans - loved. I didn’t much care for “The Seeker,” either. The danger of going so heavy on Elvis and the blues as that documentary did is that it leaves him wide open to the charge he took it all from black people etc. As if there were nothing more to Elvis than the blues! There was much more in Elvis’ musical make-up than the blues. A strong case could be made for Elvis having had more musical sides than pretty much most any other artist. His only rival here, I would say, is Ray Charles, but with this difference – Ray Charles always sings with the same voice, whereas Elvis possessed a voice that could change with the music. The failure to appreciate that multiplicity in music not only fails to honour the sheer richness and depth of Elvis’ talent and achievement, by reducing him he is rendered vulnerable to utterly baseless criticisms. I’m already seeing all the usual garbage in light of this film, the now automatic claims that Elvis ‘stole’ black music, was a derivative artist etc.
Hence my problem with a narrative that locates Elvis so firmly in ‘black music.’ It reduces Elvis to just one of his many influences and does so in a way that risks rebounding upon Elvis big time in the future. If this was real rock’n’roll, then what need was there of Elvis, except as a whitener for commercial gain out of a mass audience? The decision to use hip-hop in certain scenes seems designed to incite comment on Elvis’ ‘controversial’ relation with black music. How about introducing some European classical and opera, given the number of adaptations from those sources that found their way into Elvis’ songbook? It might not fit the narrative but it certainly fits the expansive musical profile of the real Elvis.
Instead of starting with the concerns and (mis)conceptions of the present-day age and reading backwards, we need to start with Elvis as he emerged and effectively made himself in a process of self-discovery. Here, I go back to the facts as they unfolded in time and place. And that means going back to Elvis’ appearance at the Mississippi-Alabama State fair in 1945 at the age of ten, winning a prize for singing ‘Old Shep.’ It means going back to the young Elvis who would follow his idol and mentor around, country star Mississippi Slim. There’s an awful lot of country music in Elvis’ make-up, far more than the myth-makers and mischief-makers are prepared to allow. I give Elvis his agency back, the very thing with his manager Parker, RCA, Hollywood, the fans, critics, fame and fortune, and story-tellers of all kinds took away from him.
Elvis was at least as much country as he was blues, with a whole lot of ballads, pop, and gospel besides (Mario Lanza, Dean Martin, Roy Hamilton, Jake Hess etc etc). Let’s celebrate Elvis for his genuine multiplicity in music, not some fashionable but ephemeral image. Let’s take Elvis whole and see who can stand comparison.
I could go on. I’ll simply say that the Elvis tale really hasn’t been told yet and there is plenty essential facts that aren’t well known – for the very reason it doesn’t fit the tales people want to hear. The movie has a very present-day focus, and so should make money, which is the entire point. It’s a movie, after all. And Elvis? He’s long gone. And by now, so am I.