The Beatles Bible - Topic: Remembering Elvis

Zig on Remembering Elvis

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 16:19:39 +0100

vonbontee said

Zig said

Many of the thoughts above are very true...

An average musician at best

I'm sure you mean his rudimentary guitar & piano playing and not his GREAT voice!

Oh, absolutely! His voice and his showmanship were the things that lead me to say "LLTK!".

meanmistermustard said
Anyway i think he did begin to write songs as time passed, tho im not sure which ones or if they are any good.

That is exactly why I wrote "He couldn't write a good song to save his life".

vonbontee on Remembering Elvis

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 17:11:55 +0100

(And as for Elvis dissing the Beatles - well, that's just a natural reaction to being eclipsed after being on top, plus generation gap and all that. Frank Sinatra said terrible things about Elvis ten years earlier. And I guess Elvis treated the Beatles fairly civilly during their meeting.)

meanmistermustard on Remembering Elvis

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 17:11:09 +0100

Regarding Elvis and songwriting, when he started in what 1955 writing your own songs wasnt the big thing, it was for people to write for you, it was beginning to change tho with guys like Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly and eventually John, Paul and then George completely changed the whole remit. I dont hold that against him truth be told, he was a great performer on stage and was a great singer. Things were different back then. Anyway i think he did begin to write songs as time passed, tho im not sure which ones or if they are ...

vonbontee on Remembering Elvis

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 17:01:36 +0100

Zig said

Many of the thoughts above are very true...

An average musician at best

I'm sure you mean his rudimentary guitar & piano playing and not his GREAT voice!

"Elvis' Golden Records", an old scratched copy originally bought by my aunt, was one of my favourite albums when I was a 7-8 year old (and only owned about 20 records total), and I still remember that day when that same aunt told me he had died - shocking news, as shocking as seeing how fat he'd gotten. He may have turned himself into a joke (with help from the Colonel) but for ...

Zig on Remembering Elvis

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 14:53:12 +0100

Many of the thoughts above are very true...

He couldn't write a good song to save his life
An average musician at best
Post army output was dissapointing
His jealousy of the Beatles was petty

I still say, "Long Live The King". I would stack him up against any of today's "American Idol" douchebags all day long.

minime on Remembering Elvis

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 14:04:36 +0100

It's hard for me to consider Elvis as a musician since he hasn't wrote a single song by himself, nor arranged anything ( as far as I know), he only plays guitar, and from what I've gathered, he's a rather average player in that. Therefore I'm hesitant to say that his post-army songs were crappy when they weren't his own to begin with. Of course, most of the songs he did in the sixties and seventies are soppy and quite melodramatic, but I wouldn't really call them bad. Just not my style.

His talent is, obviously, in singing. How he could ...

Ben Ramon on Remembering Elvis

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 13:45:40 +0100

I've never been a massive fan of Elvis's music although he did have a great voice. A very sad tale, really- having to cope with all that fame and iconic status destroyed him. In that respect it's a blessing the Beatles weren't together for all that long, because they never became washed-up figures or parodies of themselves.

meanmistermustard on Remembering Elvis

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 09:25:03 +0100

Elvis is a legend, what he did for popular culture is only bettered by The Beatles who took it further, but ive never been able to get into his music. John was right when he said that Elvis died when he went into the army, he came out and done all this pap soppy crap (Johns comments about Elvis on Juke Box Jury in 1963 are fabulous "...he sounds like Bing Crosby") and the movies stink - the same plot being regurgitated 200 times. Plus there are like 4 trillion compilations its impossible to figure out what is decent and what is crap, the same ...

mr. Sun king coming together on Remembering Elvis

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 04:53:57 +0100

I'm too young to remember anything, but I think Elvis is the caution tale for aging rockers. I always find it hilarious that, in starring opposite Elvis in 1969's Change of Habit, Mary Tyler Moore almost struck the final nail in her career coffin, and that doing a late 60's Elvis vehicle was such a hit to your reputation. I'm just glad nobody else famous has gone through that type of career arc.

SatanHimself on Remembering Elvis

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 04:43:11 +0100

I'll go on record saying that while I certainly respect what Elvis did for rock and roll in the beginning, I think that his post-army music and movie career was about 95% garbage and has watered down his legacy.

BUT... Credit where due, what he did from '56-'58 shaped modern music as we know it. There would be no Beatles without Elvis. I don't have much in the way of memories of Elvis' life (being only 40). I remember my Mom being sad one day. Years later, she gave me a picture he signed for her.

IMDeWalrus on Remembering Elvis

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 04:14:38 +0100

This will be the first thread I start in this forum... and who would have ever imagined it would be about Elvis. There were a number of songs of his that I liked -- and there's no doubt about the impact he had on a whole generation (including all four of The Beatles) and generations to come. But I was never a real Elvis fan.

But it was 35 years ago today The King died. I was a young man at the time, working at my first job, and one of the young secretaries in the office was sobbing ...