Elvis Presley on the Playlist

 

 

 The early death of Lisa-Marie Presley only adds to the burden brought about not only by excess fame but by those inheriting its legacy. I was never convinced that Elvis was particularly talented and he certainly wasn't that bright and the machinations of the pop music industry exploited his charisma and what were described as the looks 'of a Roman God', so maybe Lisa-Marie had only the resultant difficulties to deal with.

Elvis is on the playlist twice, with Heartbreak Hotel because it is in the 1971 Pick of the Pops chart show as a re-release and with The Girl of My Best Friend in the Rock Show that isn't as rocky as some old rock fans would think appropriate. But whereas it is quite proper to understand Elvis as the original and the template for so many imitators from Cliff Richard, down through Shakin Stevens and Les Gray never mind the market for kitsch look-a-likes, that's not how I see it.

The Girl of My Best Friend is a great record but represents that gentler, 'pop' Elvis rather than the 'raw' one, that makes it closer to a Cliff song. Music, and everything else, takes up from where its precursors were and develops it, sometimes improving on it. Thus, in the same way that Motown took doo-wop and gospel to make such great pop records, how The Beatles fused rock'n'roll with Tin Pan Alley, how Lover's Rock made mainstream successes out of roots reggae and even Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span made folk-rock, More Hits by Cliff is, for me, where it all comes together and Elvis was a contributor to that. I realize not everybody will see it that way.

Elvis was reported as thinking he thought Tom Jones was a black singer when he first heard him but he didn't sound like Smokey Robinson or Sam Cooke to me. Heartbreak Hotel is an impassioned piece and, as we were told by a trendy teacher in the sixth form in 1977, he had been just as shocking as the Sex Pistols were then, much to our disbelief, but once the penny dropped circa 1997 with Firestarter by The Prodigy and I saw it was just Johnny Rotten and another cartoon all over again the shock value has diminished to hardly anything and doesn't work any more.

It is on I Just Can't Help Believing that Elvis achieved some majesty for more than just a day. I'll always take Wooden Heart, His Latest Flame, Suspicious Minds and You Were Always on My Mind as the foundations of a tremendous Greatest Hits but, like others accorded the status of gods or kings, before and since, it did him no favours and wasn't much help to those around him either.