gridlore: Doug looking off camera with a grin (Default)
Douglas Berry ([personal profile] gridlore) wrote2002-08-16 09:03 am

Elvis

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.

[identity profile] allens.livejournal.com 2002-08-23 11:18 pm (UTC)(link)
Elvis was a bit more than moderatley talented as a singer..he just had a manager who ripped him off and gave him really bad career advice. I like Elvis...from 1954 to early 1958, and scattered tunes thereafter. what Elvis DID do was become so popular that he overcame the racism inherent in the music charts at that time, and paved the way for Motown, and the British Invasion, and a whole lot of music that came afterwards. Mick Jagger would be among the first to say that Elvis was King when he was in his prime; the kitschy image of the fat guy in the white suit has largely obscured the historical importance of the man who was the first rock idol.

"Anyone who ever saw Elvis and didn't want to be Elvis has to be crazy" (John Lennon)

"I always said if I could find a white man who could sing like a black man, I could make a million dollars." (Sam Phillips, owner of Sun Records...he actually ony made a couple hundred thousand, by the way).