Elvis

[gridlore]

OK, it's 25 years since Elvis keeled over. So what? He was at best a moderately talented singer. I have never understood the cult surrounding him. You want a King of Rock? Try Mick Jagger! A career that is approaching 40 years of great music and a life that epitomized rock excess. Elvis was a lounge act when he died.

Elvis? feh.

Comments

[lysana.livejournal.com]

Realizing that Elvis was in large part a tool of a conniving manager who ripped off every songwriter he worked with, I think you're neglecting something. Elvis helped make rock and roll palatable to a culture which would have ignored it almost utterly otherwise. He also paved the way for the more explicit performance styles of the artists of the 1960's. Without him, there would have been no Mick Jagger. White artists would've been stuck with Buddy Holly as an archetype. If they were lucky, Jerry Lee Lewis might've had bigger influence without Elvis (and still might have except for the bad move of marrying his teenage cousin). Did Killer deserve it more? Fuck, yeah. He wrote his own stuff, if nothing else. Doesn't change the fact that the Pelvis gained the largest mindshare of any rock artist of his time.

And he'd have become a better musician, I think, if The Colonel hadn't insisted he become a movie star. Gods, what a misapplication of talents.

[thebitterguy]

God, the movies. What were they thinking when they did the movies?

I gotta disagree with Our Humble Host, but The King rocked. I think he had a good voice, and a stage presence you could use to immolate a small country.

Personally, I think Col. Jimmy Hart (no, wait. The other one. The Swede) gets into the top 11 most evil people in the 20th century, after Hitler, Stalin, and Ringo.