Liberator
In his autobiography Born to Run, (2016) Bruce Springsteen identifies the liberatory qualities of Elvis:
‘FUN … it is waiting for you, Mr. and Mrs. Everyday American, and guess what? It is your birthright,” writes Springsteen of that galvanic Elvis moment. Springsteen’s familiar stage voice, his corny carny barker way with action verbs, leaps from the page in assessing what Elvis promised: “The life-blessing, wall-destroying, heart-changing, mind-opening bliss of a freer, more liberated existence.”
Bruce Springsteen, in his autobiography, "Born to Run" published in 2016
Those qualities were identified by millions of others. When dreams of liberation are backed by talent and genius, we get a Bob Dylan:
“When I first heard Elvis' 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.”
- Bob Dylan
‘It was like he came along and whispered some dream in everybody’s ear, and somehow we all dreamed it. When I heard it, it just shot straight through to my brain. And I realized, suddenly, that there was more to life than what I'd been living. I was then in pursuit of something and there'd been a vision laid out before me. You were dealing with the pure thrust, the pure energy of the music itself. I was so very young but it still hit me like a thunderbolt.’
Bruce Springsteen
The great poet-singer Leonard Cohen acknowledged Elvis as a great singer and liberator, summing up what Elvis represented:
‘I was relieved that all the stuff we'd been feeling for so long found expression in Presley and in rock in general. I was playing his records all the time to friends when they'd come over. I'd say, 'This guy is a great singer' - and they thought this was some kind of inverse snobbery, but it wasn't. Presley had that special kind of voice which makes your heart go out to a singer. I was a huge fan of Elvis. In fact, I was in town until today and bought a compilation LP of the man. Soon you will hear me sing “Don’t” and “Are You Lonesome Tonight” – but not at the plate. My voice is too deep, with 20,000 cigarettes leading my tone of voice three to four notches down too far.’
Leonard Cohen, as told to Bard Oses in an interview published on March 26, 2012 at "Leonard Cohen Jukebox" internet page. )
Elvis broke all the barriers, and inspired others to do the same. It was dangerous and it was thrilling, depending which side of the line you were on:
‘Elvis was danger, and passion and sex, and he broke all those barriers.’
M. Tye Comer, Editor for Billboard, in an interview with Geraldo Rivera for Fox's Rise to Fame, as broadcast on January 8, 2015.
Charles Paul Conn, President of Lee University in Cleveland, TN, recalls his younger days transgressing under the influence of Elvis:
‘All the Christians felt Elvis was a sin, so my sister Sarah and I loved Elvis, We obtained an Elvis record, sneaked it into dad's study to listen to it, BUT NOT BEFORE placing a towel across the bottom of the door to muffle the sound. I then obtained an autograph from him while I visited Memphis, which remains one of my treasured possessions.’
Charles Paul Conn, in an article published in the Cleveland Daily Banner, on October 21, 2017
Elvis explored and exploited his contradictory persona to the full. He was both sage and simple, subversive and innocent. He was forever pleading his innocence, and remained the epitome of the polite, well-mannered country boy:
‘The first thing you think of is his cool charisma, his electric personality, the larger than life thing that all those figures embody. But there’s also that little wide-eyed, innocent, naive country boy that is as much a part of it as anything. Elvis embodied both of those.’
Mike Cooley, songwriter, singer, and guitarist from Tuscumbia and a member of the band Drive-By Truckers. talking about Elvis in an installment of the “Birthplace Sessions,” filmed on the front porch of the Presley home in Tupelo, Mississippi.
"I liked watching Elvis sing and act in his movies. He showed the world you don't have to be like everyone else. Step out! Be different. I loved that."
- Reba McEntire
Elvis was different. I make an issue of this, and it seems like causing trouble for the sake of causing trouble. Everyone knows and loves the Elvis film ‘Loving You.’ The image of Elvis in blue denims knocking audiences dead with rock’n’roll is iconic. To many this is the authentic Elvis, the young Elvis that everyone says is the best Elvis. Except that it isn’t Elvis, it is every bit as much a Hollywood construction as any of those in his later films. Elvis was the poor white country boy who did not wear blue denim and jeans, Elvis dared to be different!
‘It seems like since the early days of rock and roll, there's been a uniform that's consisted of jeans, T-shirt and black leather jacket. Elvis Presley, though, served his version with a twist: He was very much influenced by African American style on Beale Street in Memphis and incorporated everything from shiny suits to the poet-sleeved shirts his mother made for him into his wardrobe. But Presley wasn't exactly one for playing by the rules.’
Meredith Rutledge-Borger, associate curator at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, tracing the origin of 2017's rock outfits in an article published on October 17 2017, on FASHIONISTA.
Precisely. As great as ‘Loving You’ is, certainly the music and its performance, that is Elvis as the Hollywood Hillbilly. Elvis stood out in country areas for his style and dress. As Carl Perkins recalls:
‘This boy had everything. He had the looks, the moves, the manager, and the talent. And he didn’t look like Mr. Ed like a lot of the rest of us did. In the way he looked, way he talked, way he acted - he really was different. We have sadly lost the most popular man to have ever walked on this earth since Christ. But even back then, when people would laugh at his sideburns and his pink coat and call him 'sissy' -- he had a pretty hard road to go. In some areas motorcycle gangs would come to the shows. They would come to get Elvis, but he never worried about it. He went right out and did his thing and before the show was over, they were standing in line to get his autograph too. God intended for Elvis Presley to do what he allowed him to do. That's why he made him so good looking. I used to get close to him, tried to find a fault so I could go out and tell the world that he had a big mole back here, but, nah, he had no mole back there. Rock and roll is where it is today because the front door of this studio was opened and that kid walked in here and moved an awesome mountain that sat in the way for people like me who might never have gotten anywhere. And he was my friend..’
Carl Perkins, as published in www.graceland.com and about education.com
That’s quite an image. Elvis had the voice to pull it off:
‘He arrived on the scene when the young needed a romantic image. He filled the bill and on top of that, he can sing.’
Marlene Dietrich, in The Last Word, 1999, page 27
Marlene Dietrich had seen it all come and go. I think the fuss over Elvis was entirely down to the way he brought things out into the open and obtained such a massive popular audience. That gave him an influence and a power that made him a rival and a threat to the leaders and authorities in politics and religion. That made him dangerous. He wasn’t avant-garde and counter-culture, a figure that could easily be confined to the margins. Elvis was hell bent on the mainstream, and commanded the numbers and support that gained him entry. That made him a public menace to some and a liberator to many more.
‘It was scientist Isaac Newton who told us in his "Three Laws Of Motion" that each action has an equal and opposite reaction. One could say the same about the behaviour of human societies. Glance at history and you will see what I mean. The Regency period, with an example of a randy slob who later became George IV, was a time of loose morals and widespread immorality. Then came the Victorian era. This we are told was a time of rigid prudishness. That lasted for more than a hundred years. I recall it as a provincial shopkeeper’s son in the 1940s. Back then, respectability was all. When did British society revert to its natural preference for randiness? There were three impulses. One was the arrival of The Pill. Another was the arrival of marijuana. And yet another was the arrival in the mid-1950s of pop music. I recall the utter horror of the older generation and the forecasts of the end of civilisation and teenage girls swooning at the wildly gyrating hips of Elvis Presley. The pop fraternity was king and the pop stars “screwed around”. In short I wish the sudden legion of moralists (where have they been all these years of Playboy and Penthouse?) would put two short words on their bucket list of chores to accomplish before they drop off the perch. A simple resolution: Grow Up.’
Author and CBE Frederick Forsyth, in an article entitled "We need grown-up thinking on morality", as published in The Express on February 10, 2018.
Elvis was licence for society to revert to its natural preference for randiness, then. No wonder he caused a stir.
For all that, I insist that there is more than licence to Elvis’ liberation. I fully recognize in saying that that Elvis himself lost his talent and his life to excess. His success was such that he had the power to indulge dreams to the extent that, beyond the recognition of limits, they become delusions. He wasn’t the only one to be claimed this way. The difference with Elvis is that the temptations put before him, and the power to realize them, were greater. As was the need. Elvis was pretty much alone from the moment he hit big. Enduring through it all is the voice:
‘Presley's early days represent a kind of liberation in his fans own lives, which to that point were painted in black and white and dominated by their parents' conservative views. His music gave them an art form, and to a degree, an identity all their own. More than anything else though, it's the uniqueness of Presley's voice and talent that shall prevail. There's never been anyone like him and likely won't be.
Bob Kealing, in his book “Elvis Ignited: The Rise of an Icon in Florida,” as published in Florida Today, on March 28, 2017
When all the arguments over music and culture have faded away, the voice will endure.
But I wish to go back to this idea of the potential of the liberty that Elvis asserted taking perverted forms as licence. There is an excess in Elvis’ striving, something that is forever pushing against boundaries.
‘As an artist, he always personified total unrestraint.’
Singer Luis Miguel, Mexican singing superstar, a huge Elvis fan, as noted in page 195 of the book "The rituals of chaos".
This is an assertion of liberty, but the extent to which it is actually liberatory depends upon the extent to which we succeed in reconciling individuality and communality. I see Elvis’ return to the country and gospel roots of his music in the seventies as an attempt on his part, increasingly isolated and adrift, raised above ties to significant others, to recover am identity rooted in a sense of belonging. If you push against boundaries so hard and so long that they cease to exist, then life becomes merely an endless and meaningless transgression. If anyone reached that far, then it was Elvis.
I’m interested in the extent to which communist critiques of Elvis converge with conservative and religious critiques. It confirms to me that the idea of ‘rational freedom’ that I develop in my philosophical work is both socialist and conservative, aiming against libertarian notions of freedom. Fidel Castro was not an Elvis fan and disliked the notion of freedom he thought Elvis symbolized. That opened up a conflict between politics and music/culture that troubled Cuban artists who admired Elvis, enjoyed his music and felt him to be a liberation and a joy. Silvio Rodríguez is one of Cuba and, indeed, Latin America’s, greatest musicians and singer-songwriters, steeped in his country's folk music. You would think he would have an antipathy for Elvis and his music. Quite the opposite:
‘I must confess that when Fidel spoke disrespectfully about “elvispreslians”, I felt a conflict within me because since I was a kid, I loved both Elvis and his songs. I felt that more than the music itself, Fidel wanted to criticize the old youth in Cuba, those that did not think like he did. It was a truly awkward moment for me, but I was able to get over it, perhaps because my political hierarchies were always more mature than my musical ones...’
Silvio Rodríguez, explaining why he chose, at age 15, to continue being a follower of Fidel Castro in spite of the latter's opinion of Elvis followers, like he was, and of rock music in general, as published in Cuba Debate on August 14, 2017.
Elvis was in the unique position of being equally loathed and feared by the conservative establishment in America and by the authorities of America’s communist enemies. He must have been doing something right. Such authorities pretend to fight each other in order to bully their own populations into submissive unity:
‘Elvis Presley is a means of seduction, a tool of US imperialism, to make the Communist youth lose its values in the midst of a possible atomic war.’
Willi Stoph, the then East Germany's Minister of Defense, in a communique signed in April of 1959, coinciding with the time Elvis was serving with the US Army in the then West Germany.
They must have been apoplectic when Elvis recorded an old German folk song as ‘Wooden Heart.’ They were. The German public loved it and sent it to the top of the charts. There’s a lesson here: instead of hectoring and lecturing and moralizing, inspire and enthuse the people from within. Like Elvis did:
‘It is not enough to reject the capitalist decadence with words, to speak out against the ecstatic singing of someone like Elvis Presley. We have to offer something better...’
Walter Ulbricht, East German Communist Party leader, in a speech delivered at a cultural conference in April of 1959, and as published by EIN's online page on October 20, 2012
We still await something better than Elvis. Is there such a thing? Can such a thing be imagined? I will have to remind myself of St Anselm’s proofs for the existence of God to answer those questions.
In truth, Elvis was far more radical and subversive than his communist critics could ever be. He could appeal to, reach, and move people with his message much more than they ever did or could. He changed more and for the better than they did with their stilted and sterile politics. Politics with a small ‘p,’ as in culture and music, will still fall short of the deep and broad social transformations required to deal with division and iniquity. We do need politics with the big ‘p’ for that. But Elvis’ small politics changed a lot all the same:
‘White teenagers embraced rock and roll, when the civil-rights struggle cultivated an awareness of African-American culture. Youths such as Elvis Presley listened to late night, rhythm-and-blues radio shows that challenged and broke down racial barriers. During the Sixties, white teens readily accepted African-American performers such as the Ronettes, the Temptations, and the Supremes who had been carefully groomed for success in a mainstream market. At the same time in Britain, teenagers such as the Rolling Stones became obsessed with Chicago blues and brought their version of the blues back to adoring fans in America. Later in the decade, white youth bought soul records and revered Jimi Hendrix as the ultimate guitar hero. By the Eighties, young white suburbanites wore baggy pants and chanted the lyrics of inner-city rappers. In the new century, American teens danced at massive festivals to the African-American sounds of house music and techno.
David Szatmary, in the introduction to his book Rocking in timeː A Social History of Rock and Roll
I’ll pick up on that breaking down of racial barriers. Those barriers are still in place, hence a righteous anger. Unfortunately, Elvis has become a target for that anger. Elvis can’t win on this. The more that, at last, Elvis comes to be accorded the recognition he has long since merited, the more he appears to be a symbol of white oppression and appropriation. So Elvis is feted never to be given his proper due. The fact is that Elvis was a liberator and integrator who challenged the boundaries that separated people from each other:
‘Before Elvis, white America was shackled by crippling conservatism. Then, four years into the 1950s, a singer from Tupelo, Mississippi, had what record producer Sam Phillips was looking for, a “white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel”, language that makes us cringe now — but at the time, Elvis' "sound" and "feel" did more to break down color barriers in popular music than any white singer ever had. Elvis’ low, trembling transmission to teenage America was emancipation in the form of rockabilly, gospel, schlocky love songs, Christmas standards and muddy blues. In the ’60s, his voice was muted by forgettable films, but in 1968, wearing a leather jumpsuit, he reminded America that the suffering in his voice was sex in a sexless society — a pink Cadillac crashing into daddy’s station wagon.’
Art Tavana, for LA Weekly, in an article entitled the 20 best singers of all time.
Scottish Civil Rights writer Susan Dalgety clears Elvis of charges that he stole black music, crediting him instead with blending different music forms together:
‘Growing up with the Beatles, then Bowie, I used to think Elvis Presley was an old-fashioned crooner, someone your auntie liked, a hillbilly rocker with greasy hair who starred in cheesy films. I had no idea that before Elvis, blues music was played by black people, country by their white neighbours, and gospel by both, but never together. I was blind to the fact that, before Elvis, radio stations and record labels, like everything in the south, were divided by colour. It was Elvis who, as if by magic, merged the blues, country and gospel and created the soundtrack to the modern world. He didn’t “steal” black music. He absorbed it from an early age, growing up in poor neighbourhoods in Tupelo, MS, then Memphis TN. He lived and breathed rhythm and blues. He had soul.’
Susan Dalgety, for the The Scotsman, as published in July 21, 2018 in an article entitled "Embrace legacy of Otis and Elvis in the name of freedom"
Elvis has always had his defenders, those who heard his message and enlisted to his cause. His cause was theirs. His influence has spread far and wide. Executive Director of the Women's Law project, Carol Tracy declares:
‘My first political act was to get kicked out of class for arguing with a teacher for criticizing Elvis.’
Carol Tracy, in an article published by the Daily Philadephian on October 16, 2017
Author and historian Marty Jezer writes of Elvis as shining a light and leading the way in the ‘Dark Ages’ of the United States between 1945–1960:
‘Presley brought rock'n'roll into the mainstream of popular culture, as he set the artistic pace, other artists followed. He, more than anyone else, gave the young a belief in themselves as a distinct and somehow unified generation—the first in America ever to feel the power of an integrated youth culture.
Marty Jezer in his book, The Dark Ages: Life in the United States 1945–1960. South End Press; 1982.
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command, sang Bob Dylan in ‘The Times They are a Changin’ in 1964. Elvis led the way. In response to the question as to who was the most influential teenager in history, Paula Fass, History Professor at the University of California, at Berkeley, named Elvis:
‘Teenagers dominated the mid-20th century, the term being invented only in the 1930s, and no one gave them more visibility than Elvis Presley, who began his own career at 18, embodying the teen desire for liberation from their parents’ culture and mirroring their more open sexuality, as he gave youth everywhere in the world music to call their own.’
Paula Fass answering The Atlantic Magazine's Big Question, on who was the most influential teenager of all time, as published in their April, 2015 edition.
Elvis was openly identified as the leader of a unified on the move to the future:
‘I mean Elvis made us move, instead of standing mute he raised our voice. And when we heard ourselves something was changing, you know, like for the first time we made a collective decision about choices, America hurriedly made Pat Boone a general, in the army they wanted us to join. But most of us held fast to Elvis and the commandants around him Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Gene Vincent, you know, like a different Civil War all over again. Man, like he woke us up, and now they’re trying to put us back to sleep. So we’ll see how it goes, Anyway, look at the record, man, Rock ’n’ roll is based on revolutions, going way past 33⅓, you gotta understand, man, he was America’s baby Boom Ché. I oughta know man, I was in his army.’
Native American author, poet, actor, musician, and political activist John Trudell's words of wisdom, as annotated in ‘Baby Boom Ché’, a song he dedicated to his idol Elvis.
There are many who were teenagers at the time who would agree.
Former University of Mississippi Quarter Back and songwriter Jim Weatherly was asked as to what turned him away from a career in football and into one of music:
‘Elvis Presley. That lit the fuse for me.’
Jim Weatherly, as published on the Clarion Ledger on October 12, 2018.
‘What drew me to him was that his music was subversive. When the Beatles came around, grown-ups saw them as four mop tops, and didn’t take it very seriously. But when he came on the scene, it was different, the adults really didn’t like his stage performances and dancing. I soon asked for a guitar and got one for Christmas. It wasn’t an expensive guitar. A few years later my mom, who was a single mother, got me a nicer guitar when she saw I was very serious about it. It was a Harmony.’
Canadian Rock-blues singer and songwriter David Wilcox, on his early decision to be a musician, as reported at the Cornwall Seeker on its July 14, 2017 edition
Elvis was subversive. Not consciously and deliberately so, as a political intention and commitment on his part. But on account of taking freedom seriously and affirming the equality of each and all in a society of division, hierarchy, and subordination. He was made a king, which always struck me as odd given his evidently and inherently democratic affirmation of the extraordinary capacities of supposedly ordinary folk, folk like himself. Folk singer Phil Ochs baffled an audience trying to get some such point over to his audience at Carnegie Hall in 1970. The audience didn’t get it, just as a lot of people still don’t quite get Elvis Presley:
‘As you know, I died in Chicago. I lost my life and I went to heaven because I was very good and sang very lyrical songs. And I got to talk to God and he said, 'Well, what do you want to do? You can go back and be anyone you want.' So I thought who do I want to be? And I thought, I wanted to be the guy who was the King of Pop, the king of show business, Elvis Presley. If there's any hope for America, it lies in a revolution. If there's any hope for a revolution in America, it lies in getting Elvis Presley into becoming Che Guevera. If you don't do that, you're just beating your head against the wall, or the cop down the street will beat your head against the wall. We have to discover where he is, he's the ultimate American artist."
Phil Ochs, addressing the audience, from his album "In Gunfight at Carnegie Hall", a concert recorded at Carnegie Hall in New York on March 27, 1970. Ochs was referring to his being in Chicago, during the Convention demonstrations, in 1968.
But instead of revolution, maybe the rich should pay their taxes and support the public realm:
‘But better Elvis should pay those multimillions in taxes (thereby doing as much for the War on Poverty) than you or I. "If his manager", said Goldman, "had sheltered his income from the taxman and invested it intelligently, Elvis Presley could have been as wealthy as Bob Hope". Well, I ask you. But I think we can be grateful to Elvis for his grin, his pelvis, his leap, and for the punky, biracial, engaging, ineluctably erotic and still mysterious tenor of his voice.’
Roy Blount Jr., reviewing Albert Goldman's Elvis, for the NYT in 1981. See also Kelly Phillips Erb's essay on Forbes, focussing on Elvis being his country's highest personal taxpayer for almost a decade.