is Elvis being forgotten?

[Señora Airi]

I think the Beatles are a lot like Nirvana. A "You had to have been there" sort of deal. The Beatles shook the world. Beatlemania seems bizarre to us now. But at the time there was nothing like it going on. Girls were literally pissing themselves in excitement. We probably will never see anything like it again. We should be glad that we live time-adjacent enough to experience it through footage and first hand stories. We got to live through the height of rock and roll or close to it for the younger people. Elvis is a big part of music history. I can't see him disappearing any time in the near future.

Wasn't Michael Jackson a bit larger? Like people legitimately fainting just by being in his presence?
I do agree with Elvis being a large part of music history, or just that era of history in general. You couldn't really talk about post WWII and pre Vietnam without at least mentioning him.

Is CD being forgotten?

I'm seeing physical media having a small form of revival, though mainly for analogue aesthetics. I do collect CDs as well, and it's nice to have somewhat of a ritual for entertainment. But it's also good to have a digital library if you're on the go or at the gym.

 

[TV's Adam West]

Elvis gave it all away and became a pastor named Bob Joyce.

https://youtu.be/YKXJf4PSPJQ

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

Just go to an average K-Pop boy band's concerts and Beatlemania will make sense.

Kpop even has fans who are willing to kill their idols. The guy who killed John Lennon was a disillusioned fan.

 

[cleanerfromvenus]

Wasn't Michael Jackson a bit larger? Like people legitimately fainting just by being in his presence?
I do agree with Elvis being a large part of music history, or just that era of history in general. You couldn't really talk about post WWII and pre Vietnam without at least mentioning him.

I'm seeing physical media having a small form of revival, though mainly for analogue aesthetics. I do collect CDs as well, and it's nice to have somewhat of a ritual for entertainment. But it's also good to have a digital library if you're on the go or at the gym.

There's a video of tribes in the amazon being shown apollo mission footage, and they ask a few questions about foreigners. One of the only people they know about is Michael Jackson. He was absolutely massive in the 70s through to the 00s. Elvis was the same way from 50s - 80s, even after his death since the national enquirer kept running stories of people "seeing Elvis." He was like a cryptid.

The craziest shit is all of the stuff about how the Memphis Mafia (his entourage) basically controlled his life. One of the main reasons he was on so many drugs was because people peddled him around to get what they wanted in life and kept him narc'd up so that he wouldn't fire his goons.

 

[Lovely Kin]

Kpop even has fans who are willing to kill their idols. The guy who killed John Lennon was a disillusioned fan.

Generation 1 fans, yes. Especially towards Baby V.O.X who got the nastiest hate, and violent threats and actions. One of their members got sprayed with hot sauce and vinegar in the eye, and I think in envelopes the people who hated them put razor blades in them.

 

[Señora Airi]

The craziest shit is all of the stuff about how the Memphis Mafia (his entourage) basically controlled his life. One of the main reasons he was on so many drugs was because people peddled him around to get what they wanted in life and kept him narc'd up so that he wouldn't fire his goons.

Outside of the underage incest marriage, I've felt bad for Elvis. Grew up poor and around blacks, gets called a culture vulture for playing the music he listened to growing up, the infamous quote about blacks only being good for shining his shoes was attributed to a man who wasn't even at the supposed interview (therefore made up a quote just to spite him), and the entourage stuff you mentioned.

 

[cleanerfromvenus]

Outside of the underage incest marriage, I've felt bad for Elvis. Grew up poor and around blacks, gets called a culture vulture for playing the music he listened to growing up, the infamous quote about blacks only being good for shining his shoes was attributed to a man who wasn't even at the supposed interview (therefore made up a quote just to spite him), and the entourage stuff you mentioned.

Not only that but he has the most greedy two faced jewish hairdresser spouting lies about him for decades after his death. We know he wasn't nearly as racist as people say due to how he bought his live in cook Mary a house and Cadillac, then stayed employed by the household until the day she died long after Elvis's death.

My grandfather was from Marion Arkansas right outside west Memphis, and although he was a complete and total asshole he was not racist. Which surprised people.

 

[Art Corvalay]

Outside of the underage incest marriage

Are you sure you arent thinking of Jerry Lee Lewis? I know that he married his 13 year old cousin

Elvis's marriage to Priscilla was still creepy as hell and he definitely groomed her, but I cant find anything about them being related. And she was of-age at the actual time they married.

 

[PonderosaPete]

I'm seeing physical media having a small form of revival, though mainly for analogue aesthetics. I do collect CDs as well, and it's nice to have somewhat of a ritual for entertainment. But it's also good to have a digital library if you're on the go or at the gym.

CD nuts, gottem

 

[R00T]

Black people do not consider them culture vultures for this reason unlike Elvis who was teetering into Pat Boone levels of acting like a wigger.

trust me a lotta black people do. entire group at my university considered them even more egregious because it was at least obvious that Elvis was pulling from the negro music.

 

[GloryHole Stalker]

Good. He was a shit human being. He married a child, and would make his friends kneel and kiss his ring. He was one of the first pop culture idols, and wasted no time becoming a fat glutton. He even tried to get the Beatles deported. The only good thing to come out of Elvis' existence is the cinematic classic Bubba Ho-Tep.

LOL, almost all of this is so wrong.

1. His ex-wife was of legal age when they got married (19 or 20, I believe). On the other hand, he did meet her when he was in the Army, in Germany. He was 23/24 and she was 14. Yeaaah, pretty sketchy, but there does need to be a touch of context here. Elvis grew up in the southern US at a time when the attitudes were damn near "old enough to pee, old enough for me". Doesn't make it right, but his upbringing (which included the fact that his dad was 17 when he married his mom, who was 19 or 20 herself) dictated that it was no big deal. Jerry Lee Lewis got most of his shit in the 50s because the 14-year-old he married was his cousin... the age thing wasn't as much of a factor.

2. Kneel and kiss his ring?!? You've seen too many Elvis parodies. I'm a big Elvis fan, read a lot of the books, and he never did this as a common practice, if at all (and if he did, he was just fucking with someone).

3. Certainly his diet (Southern cooking mostly) was pretty appalling. Consider this, though: he grew up, literally, dirt poor. His dad went to prison when Elvis was a toddler for forging a check, so they could make their meager ends meet. Until Elvis hit it big in the music business, they had to live in subsidised housing. Can't blame a guy for hitting the trough when he had the money to. Having said that, he managed his weight fairly well until the mid-70s when his frequent crash dieting lost its effectiveness.

3. He never tried to get the Beatles deported, never. Context- In 1970, on a whim, Elvis went, by himself (something he hadn't done in years, lol), to Washington, DC, to get a DEA badge (he collected badges, strange, but harmless). He somehow found out that he might be able to wangle one from Nixon (the then US president). So on the plane, he wrote a letter to Nixon, to butter him up to get that badge. He filled the letter with buzzwords of the time ("hippies," "Black Panthers," etc.). In the course of this, he said that he felt that the Beatles were a bad influence on young Americans, which many conservative types in the US genuinely believed at the time, especially as they made no secret about their drug use. I don't know if Elvis genuinely felt this way himself; probably did. But he never tried to have them deported, lol. Christ, none of them were even living in the US at the time, lol.

4. Bubba Ho-Tep rocks.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THESE MATTERS!

 

[GloryHole Stalker]

Elvis was a good performer, but he wasn't a song-writer and his shit wasn't "ground-breaking". You can go back to shit like The White Album, Sgt Pepper etc and it still sounds very modern, same for Pet Sounds and Beach Boys. Elvis feels like you're listening to 50's and 60's music, Beatles' stuff after Revolver sounds pretty modern still (imo).

True, but Elvis came up in an era where most singers didn't write their own music. It could be said that his ability to reinterpret songs was effectively "re-writing" them, though. That was his genuine talent. Listen to songs that he did, especially in the 50s, that had been done by someone else previously. Night and Day difference. In the studio, with a couple of notable exceptions, he was his own producer.

You might be surprised to know that his most popular music these days is his 70's work. Mostly because it sounds modern...or more modern.

Also, since I'm still on page one of this thread, I suspect I'll come across the old canard that he wasn't a "real musician" and he didn't play "his own instruments" or some such bullshit. He wasn't what you'd call a virtuoso on any particular instrument, but he did play acoustic guitar often thru the early 60s (sometimes lead acoustic guitar, lol). And he was pretty handy on the piano.

 

[GloryHole Stalker]

If I'm feeling less lazy I can find it since I'm the biggest Beatles autist on the farms--basically John or Paul talked about merging Elvis and being disappointed in him being a total lolcow. They could tell Elvis was seething in jealousy since by the time they met his popularity was on the downturn while the Beatles were entering into international stardom.
The Beatles took over his place as pop culture icons pretty quickly. The reason why is probably because the Fab Four never disparaged black musicians, were always open about being inspired by them, and would help promote or build the careers of black musicians. Black people do not consider them culture vultures for this reason unlike Elvis who was teetering into Pat Boone levels of acting like a wigger.

And I'll take the mantle of being the site's ":Elvis Autist". I'm also a massive Beatles fan. Not sure where you're getting your info, but the accounts I've read, their meeting was just kind of meh. Elvis may have been a bit put off by one of them (probably John) asking why he didn't make records like his 50s ones anymore. Pretty rich coming from those guys if you consider the dogshit music John went on to make with that screeching harridan Yoko, and George with his Hare-Krishna horseshit, lol.

They jammed a little, and that was mostly it. I can imagine Elvis did feel like he was being supplanted in the pop music mainstream, but there was a host of reasons I really don't care to go into an even longer sperg about here, for why there wasn't much he could do about it at the time. Even if he wanted to.

 

[Womble of Wimbledon]

Elvis' best music (the '50s stuff) doesn't appeal to the kids of today because they all have autism and are obese and cannot appreciate good music. Unfortunately as the above poster has noted his more "MOR" or "adult-contemporary" music from the post-'68 comeback period gets played a lot more nowadays because the recordings are clean and modern-sounding. The '50s rock and roll is legendary but it sounds rougher and more 'dated' to contemporary brain-rotted ears.

The argument that Elvis isn't as important as Chuck Berry/Little Richard/Bo Diddley etc. because he didn't write his songs is retarded. Those guys may have been credited with writing (some of) their songs, but they were basically re-writing the same thing over and over with variations. "Maybellene" and "Tutti Frutti" are bangers but they're hardly complex compositions. Rock and roll was essentially stripped-down rhythm and blues songs with rockabilly guitar instead of a horn section. Rock and roll wasn't about virtuosic musical inventiveness, it is pure energy music. It's about the feel, the way the music gets into your blood and makes you want to dance! Elvis understood that and made it work as well as any musician of his day.

Elvis made rock and roll that was palatable for a mainstream audience without watering it down à la Pat Boone. He wasn't a culture vulture, he was there at the beginning and had a profound role in shaping the sound and especially the look of rock and roll. He had a huge role in transforming post-war American culture into something genuinely modern. He is part of the dividing line between "Leave It to Beaver"-style '50s Americana and the more daring, challenging pop culture that we associate with the '60s. If Elvis is being forgotten (and I don't think he can ever be forgotten), it is a terribly sad indictment on our culture today.

 

[Nigger Cattle]

True, but Elvis came up in an era where most singers didn't write their own music. It could be said that his ability to reinterpret songs was effectively "re-writing" them, though. That was his genuine talent. Listen to songs that he did, especially in the 50s, that had been done by someone else previously. Night and Day difference. In the studio, with a couple of notable exceptions, he was his own producer.

You might be surprised to know that his most popular music these days is his 70's work. Mostly because it sounds modern...or more modern.

Also, since I'm still on page one of this thread, I suspect I'll come across the old canard that he wasn't a "real musician" and he didn't play "his own instruments" or some such bullshit. He wasn't what you'd call a virtuoso on any particular instrument, but he did play acoustic guitar often thru the early 60s (sometimes lead acoustic guitar, lol). And he was pretty handy on the piano.

I mean, won't disagree with you because i used to listen to Elvis A LOT when i was a kid. I had a cousin that liked Elvis, he showed his music to me and i thought it was the coolest thing ever, Heartbreak Hotel was actually one of the videos i first saw on Youtube back in 2006 that i was like: "Damn, i want to learn how to play the acoustic guitar!". I think he was an AMAZING singer, and, as you said, his reinterpretations pretty much made most of the songs he touched become, pretty much, an "Elvis song" - like you could say Johnny Cash did with Hurt from NiN.


Also, i think Elvis is probably "forgotten" now because he died too young, he was only 42 in '77, meanwhile Paul McCartney and Ringo are still alive to talk about the Beatles, not to mention that the Beatles' breakup is somewhat more intriguing than Elvis' death. Elvis just died, for a long time people especulated who broke up the Beatles and why (which i think we can all agree it was John and Yoko), they sorta disbanded at the peak of their popularity, maybe leaving people wanting more also played a role, i don't know.

He wasn't a culture vulture, he was there at the beginning and had a profound role in shaping the sound and especially the look of rock and roll.

Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet. Was he pro-civil rights at the time? Did he do shit like "i won't play here because blacks are not allowed in" or was he quiet about it? Maybe people also don't wanna give Elvis his "flowers" now because there's that shit narrative that he was a "culture vulture".

 

[GloryHole Stalker]

Also, i think Elvis is probably "forgotten" now because he died too young, he was only 42 in '77, meanwhile Paul McCartney and Ringo are still alive to talk about the Beatles, not to mention that the Beatles' breakup is somewhat more intriguing than Elvis' death. Elvis just died, for a long time people especulated who broke up the Beatles and why (which i think we can all agree it was John and Yoko), they sorta disbanded at the peak of their popularity, maybe leaving people wanting more also played a role, i don't know.

Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet. Was he pro-civil rights at the time? Did he do shit like "i won't play here because blacks are not allowed in" or was he quiet about it? Maybe people also don't wanna give Elvis his "flowers" now because there's that shit narrative that he was a "culture vulture".

I'm not sure I'm the one to properly argue this one, but IMO, The Beatles broke up for a myriad of reasons beyond "John-n-Yoko". Sure, having her sitting there in the studio, looking bored and miserable, while the lads are trying to work, must have been off-putting, but that was merely a sign that they were all growing up, and apart. I believe the straw that broke the camel's back was 3 of the Beatles wanting Allen Klein as their manager, and Paul wanting his father-in-law Lee (?) Eastman.

To the best of my knowledge, Elvis never played segregated shows in the 50s, and in the 70's there were documented instances where Elvis would refuse to stay at hotels that had an issue with his backup singers, The Sweet Inspirations (all black girl group) staying there too.

 

[Womble of Wimbledon]

Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet. Was he pro-civil rights at the time? Did he do shit like "i won't play here because blacks are not allowed in" or was he quiet about it? Maybe people also don't wanna give Elvis his "flowers" now because there's that shit narrative that he was a "culture vulture".

He heaped praise on black musicians and championed black music at a time when Jim Crow laws were still in place. Beyond that I don't think he was especially pro-civil rights but he was progressive for a Southerner at the time.

Growing up I was told a bullshit myth that Elvis had been quoted as saying "the only thing a nigger can do for me is shine my shoes." He never said it, but I wish he had. It's a line I've jokingly used myself many times.

 

[GloryHole Stalker]

He heaped praise on black musicians and championed black music at a time when Jim Crow laws were still in place. Beyond that I don't think he was especially pro-civil rights but he was progressive for a Southerner at the time.

Growing up I was told a bullshit myth that Elvis had been quoted as saying "the only thing a nigger can do for me is shine my shoes." He never said it, but I wish he had. It's a line I've jokingly used myself many times.

Yeah, I had a lil nigress tell me that one in 4th grade, lol. Complete bullshit. The original quote came from a "negro" oriented magazine in 56/57, can't remember the name offhand. Soon afterward, Jet magazine went to track the story down. And it came up as bullshit. Elvis was to have said the quote in Boston. He had never played Boston to that point. Also, in the original article, the quote came from this question. "Why don't you have any blacks in your band?" Elvis did have one guy, Dudley Moore (who was a negro), I believe his name was, who played piano in the studio with Elvis and went out on the road with him from time to time, at time.

Elvis did have his "racially problematic" moments from time to time, like when he infamously referred to the Hawaiian Karate instructor His wife had been cheating on him with, for years, then ultimately left him for (Elvis wasn't an angel, but Pricilla was/is a manipulative whore) as "that nigger Karate instruction", lol. Ultimately, though, Elvis wasn't really a racist, at least by Southern standards.

 

[Mortin Shart]

Oh my god who gives a fuck? Between this faggot and the queer assed beatles I can't decide who is actually more unlistenable.

 

[rosecig]

I'm so glad we don't have a modern equivalent of mj or elvis or any of these people and that they're being forgotten. Stop worshipping these morons like gods.