Stupid about Elvis (1980 through 2001)
Elvis Stupidity enters the Frozen Silence . . .
(This is the third installment in my “Stupid about Elvis” series, covering the period from 1980 to 2001, when the Stupid gained new dimensions.)
THE ’80s WERE THE DECADE when America became, for the first time, benumbed, entering what I call the Frozen Silence. Whether we’ve since emerged is in the eye of the beholder but it certainly begat an interesting era in Elvis Stupidity, which did not go away or even decline but instead became subservient, for a time, to the vision of one man: Albert Harry Goldman.
No one should be surprised to learn that bio-porn was invented to explain Elvis.
Enter Albert Goldman and the “uncircumcised hillbilly pecker.”
Riding a reputation built by his 1974 biography of Lenny Bruce, Goldman turned a ballyhooed four years of research, much of it consisting of interviews with Elvis’s closest associates, into E’s first major bio post mortem. I’ve never found time to read the book so I don’t know how much it contributed to actual Elvis Stupidity, but everyone agrees that Goldman’s take was relentlessly negative, even sneering, and reviews suggest it was a compendium of the attitudes I detailed in the first two parts of “Stupid about Elvis.”
It made Goldman a new reputation, leading Gore Vidal — perhaps thinking of Goldman’s infamous reference to his subject’s “uncircumcised hillbilly pecker” — to coin the phrase “bio-porn.”
No one should be surprised to learn that bio-porn was invented to explain Elvis.
The key things to note about Goldman and Elvis, though, were a little more subtle.
First, the book that launched bio-porn created a sharper-than-ever dividing line between those who were at least willing to defend Elvis (however ineptly) and those who had dismissed him all along. In that sense, it provided an unwitting service: the gloves were off!
Second, it provided a bridge from the old narrative that acknowledged Elvis the Threat and, sometimes, Elvis the Artist, even while attempting to put him in his place, to a new narrative that, while hardly disregarding previous abuse, increasingly insisted on Elvis the Joke.
Once a joke, once the gloves were off, Elvis Stupidity was finally free to roam.
As always, rock critics stood first in line.
As always, rock critics stood first in line. Here’s Stanley Booth, quoting Calvin Newborn, brother of Memphis musician Phineas :
Elvis goes barefoot on Beale Street.
“One night, probably in late 1952, a teenaged white boy ‘came in there, didn’t have on any shoes, barefooted, and asked me if he could play my guitar. I didn’t want to let him, I don’t usually–I didn’t know him from Adam. I’d never seen him before. In fact, he was the only white somebody in the club. He made sure he won that one. He sang “You Ain’t Nothin’ but a Hound Dog” and shook his hair—see, at the time I had my hair processed, and I’d shake it down in my face—he tore the house up. And tore the strings off my guitar so I couldn’t follow him.’ The boy turned out to have a name even more rare than Phineas Newborn—Elvis Presley.”
(Stanley Booth, “Fascinating Changes” Rhythm Oil, 1991)
Newborn, a black man, is responsible for the “Elvis as L’il Abner” imagery. Booth, who spent decades floating in the “whites-only” margins of the crit-illuminati (not quite cynical enough to be Nik Cohn and not nearly disciplined enough to be Nick Tocshes), supplied the bit about 1952.
I’m sure Newborn meant no harm and he does seem to have had some sort of friendly relationship with Presley. But there are at least two things in his recollection which are far more hallucinatory than the idea of Elvis Presley singing “Hound Dog” in 1952: the song wasn’t written until 1953 and Elvis did not perform it in public until 1956.
However far one has to reach into The Twilight Zone to conjure up the notion of Elvis ripping the strings off another man’s guitar in a cutting contest in a black night club on Beale Street in 1952 might be, it pales next to the image of Elvis (who really did shop for his ultra-hip clothes on Beale Street) doing all this in his bare feet.
Note that Booth—who prides himself on never having taken a wooden nickel from anybody (and who, in his one great “right-place-right-time-right-subject” moment, parlayed this into a genuinely captivating account of the Rolling Stones at Altamont)—swallows every bit of it.
And if Newborn had finished off the imagery with E wearing some overalls with patches on the knees, you can bet he would have taken that as the gospel too.
In the world where a man’s uncircumcised hillbilly pecker was fair game, why not go all the way?
After that, why not bring the intelligentsia into it? And, having cut Elvis off from “roots” music, music that would have been laughed at in 1956 by the same crowd who worship it today, and which he had almost single-handedly transformed into the definition of Good Taste, why not take out after his music as well?
Clumsily Ersatz: The intelligentsia resorts to defining itself.
“Most Overrated Musician:
Elvis Presley. If we put aside the posthumous madness, Elvis had a pretty tenor voice and a distinctive way with ballads, but his rhythmic sense was often clumsily ersatz, and even within the idiom that declared him king, he is less inventive, daring, and satisfying than Little Richard, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, and others.”
(Gary Giddins, American Heritage Magazine, May/June 1998)
So by now, purely gratuitous Elvis-bashing had reached into scholarly history magazines, where, among other things, it inspired sloppy language: idioms do not make declarations and “Rock ’n’ Roll”—the “idiom” in question — did not declare Elvis king of itself, the RCA publicity department did. Quite a number of people (not Elvis) did and do accept this—but, of course, they are dismissed as being prone to “madness.”
Well, these Illuminati fellows are nothing if not thorough. Giddins has made the best part of his living and reputation writing about jazz and Bing Crosby. But, when the assignment came, he knew what he was supposed to think about Elvis.
As to “often clumsily ersatz,” that, too, is in the eye of the beholder. Let the wonders of the internet allow you to decide for yourself.
Elvis, sir, at long last have you no decency?
There was plenty more in that line throughout the ’90s. It all came to a head with James Wolcott, writing in Vanity Fair, just after the events of September 11, 2001, failed to shake us from our frozen slumber.
“It was while overseas that Elvis also met a nymphet named Priscilla Beaulieu, whom he would make the mistake of marrying in 1967 (a mistake because Elvis never wanted to behave as anything but a bachelor).”
(James Wolcott, “King of Kings,” Vanity Fair, November 2001)
We should be used to this by now. Elvis, married once, shouldn’t have been.
Imagine that directed at, say, Bob Dylan (married twice, father of six) or Frank Sinatra (married four times, father of three) or B.B. King (married twice, self-acknowledged father of fifteen, none by either of his wives)?
Wait, you can’t?
Neither can I.
There’s more than one way to keep the wrong sort of people out of your club.
And in case you’re wondering how Wolcott’s world view fit in at his magazine — whether marriage-exemption was only for Elvis — this is from another story in the same issue:
Dad, I’m moving in
“No one had more freedom than Mackenzie Phillips, now 42, sober and acting again. At 13, after running away from her mother’s house, she showed up at her father’s Bel Air mansion, where he was living with his third wife, Genevieve. In step with the latest trends, John Phillips answered the door wearing a floor-length, tie-dyed Indian caftan and a Jesus beard and smoking a joint.
“‘Dad, I’m moving in—could you pay for the taxi?’ Mackenzie remembers saying
“‘Sure kid, come on in.’
“‘What are the rules?’ Mackenzie asked.
“‘Well, let me see,’ he said. After a moment of heavy contemplation, John replied, ‘You have to come home at least once a week. And if you come home from going out the night before and it’s light out, always bring a change of clothing, because a lady is never seen during daylight hours wearing evening clothing.’
“She walked in to say hi to Dad’s friends—Gram Parsons, Keith Richards, Donovan, and Mick Jagger, most of whom she wanted to have sex with. Her little girl’s dream came true, when, at the age of 18, she found herself over at Mick’s place, making tuna sandwiches with her father. John left to go get mayonnaise, and ‘Mick turned around and locked the door, and looked at me, and said, “I’ve been waiting to do this since you were ten years old,”’ Mackenzie recalls. ‘My dad is banging on the door, “Mick, be nice to her! Don’t hurt her.” And I’m going, “Dad, leave us alone. It’s fine.” And we slept together.’ The next morning Jagger gave her a beautiful robe and fed her tea, toast and fresh strawberries.”
Evegenia Peretz (“Born to be Wild” Vanity Fair, November 2001)
There is no hint of disapproval in Peretz’s story. Why would there be? She wasn’t writing about Elvis, after all.
There is no hint of disapproval in Peretz’s story. Why would there be?
She wasn’t writing about Elvis, after all.
Laying aside whether James Wolcott (or anyone) could know how Elvis Presley “never wanted” to behave, it’s kind of creepy to say anybody else’s marriage is a “mistake” unless they themselves say it first (which I don’t believe either Elvis or his “nymphet” ever did).
It would be creepy to say it even about the multiple marriages of John Phillips or Mick Jagger, neither of whom—in keeping with a rather normal, albeit distasteful, standard for married celebrity males, which Elvis hardly challenged, let alone exceeded—ever gave the least impression of wanting to go about “behaving as anything but a bachelor.”
But then again, I doubt James Wolcott would say such things about Phillips or Jagger either and, reading him for years, I never saw the slightest evidence that he found their kind to be what he clearly considered the un-marriage-worthy Elvis—namely, the wrong sort of people—or that he could continue being published in any periodical as swank as Vanity Fair if he did.
In the ashes of 9/11 then, Wolcott had taken the blunt methods visible as far back as Time’s review of Love Me Tender in 1956, subject to varying shades of approval ever since — think ugly “hillbilly pecker,” think “barefoot on Beale Street,” think “the girls,” think whatever you like because when it’s Elvis, nothing is off-limits — to its logical extreme, finally writing the hillbilly peckerwood out of his own life.
Granted, Elvis never shopped his teenage daughter to friends who were only disappointed he hadn’t shopped her much earlier. He’d have been more likely to shoot them for thinking about it.
Nor did he ever dope and rape her and force a ten-year incestuous affair on her, as Mackenzie would later reveal (or, if you prefer, claim) her father, Papa John Philips, had done, beginning a year or so after the charming incident related above.
For that, you need the right kind of people.
Only those who can be counted on to do such things for the right reasons need apply.
You might think it couldn’t get any worse from there.
We shall see.
___________________________________________________________________
Thanks for reading! Below are links to three articles that are essential to knowing what Tell It Like It Was is all about. “Blogging with Tell It Like It Was” is my attempt to keep readers abreast of any changes happening here while “Introduction to Tell It Like It Was” is our mission statement for this publication.
And “Introduction to The Toppermost of the Poppermost” explains the project that John, Lew, and I embarked upon months before launching this publication: a series of articles that review every record to make it all the way to #1 on the Cash Box Top 100 charts from 1960 through 1969.
