Conversations With Robin Page 3
August 20, 2009
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Conversations With Robin, Page 3
Conversations between R.E. Prindle And Robin Mark
Well, well, well. Robert Goulet. I should have known that filthy bastard would be mixed up in there somewhere. What amazes me is that Guralnik could write two fat volumes on Elvis and never mention the Mob once. I think we can begin to integrate Elvis’ Mob conflicts pretty clearly now, although research will have to establish the connections for sure.
For starters, entertainment is a Mob industry both records and movies; that includes both Jews and Sicilians. If you haven’t read Gus Russo’s Supermob yet, do so. The Sidney Korshak role at MCA is crucial.
Anent shooting out TVs remember that Sinatra had a plane he called Superwop or something to that effect so it is clear he bore a grudge against the Anglo world. The plane was a small ‘Lear’ if I remember correctly. Elvis went out and bought a 707. Big plane, big penis; little plane little penis. Not exactly true in Frank’s case, but you get the point. So at least Goulet and Sinatra. I can understand why Dean Martin tried to distance himself from those creeps.
Parker must have had the business dealings with the Outfit. As he ran into gambling problems the only commodity he had to barter was Presley. Thus he would have had to ’sell’ Presley to keep both his legs under him. Elvis’ rapid deterioration could have been because of his realization that he was ‘caught in a trap. I can’t get out.’ Devastating awareness. One could only retreat into booze and/or drugs.
Now, Leiber said that he and Stoller at one time worked for the Mafia. This wouldn’t be unusual nor should it be held against them because if you’re in entertainment you’re involved, like it or not. The question is when were they involved, for how long, and for what purpose.
We all know Fabian was a Mob creation. Why not others? If you haven’t seen and studied The Girl Can’t Help It, do so. The movie is an alegory of the record business. Everything you see in the movie is the Outfit in action. In the fifties every Juke Box in America was stocked by the Outfit. You didn’t get your record stocked unless you were Mobbed up somewhere along the line. Someone recently told me that the girls on the Dick Clark Show were prostitutes and Bandstand was used to showcase them for Johns. Don’t know that it’s true but I wouldn’t be surprised.
Leiber and Stoller could have been co-opted to write songs for, say, The Coasters. A Black act with interchangeable personnel. Kind of an early Back Street Boys. I don’t know but I’d like to hear Leiber talk about it. Might prove enlightening.
So, let us assume that the Colonel was drawn into the Mob scene from the beginning of Presley’s movie career. That might explain some of his stupid decisions and those dumb movies. Perhaps Parker didn’t have a free hand but was ‘wise’ enough to figure out that something is better than nothing.
Then after Vegas Presley was increasingly drawn into orbit until he learned the horrifying truth. Guralnik seems to have his head up his ass as far as I’m concerned.
As Presley learned the truth looking forward to forty more years of slavery he found drugs more comfortable than reality. Possible, it would make things make sense.
August 24, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Wow! You really let your imagination go kinda wild in some of those posts, but I don’t think Bob OR Greil “knew” of 9/11 before it happened ’cause I DO think that there may be a “friendliness” firmly demonstrated between Dubya and the Saudi Bin Ladin family, who were flown out of the country even when HIS OWN FATHER, the ex-prexy, couldn’t fly! If you don’t have the family to interrogate, you’ll probably have a “cold case,” which it what it quickly became. Even the ‘04 “tape” of the terrorist talkin’ seems to be a fraud: this was just uncovered, and it’s not any strange conspiracy stuff, either. Now, I’m not saying that Dubya didn’t have “deniability” because I think he did, and I don’t even thing ANYBODY thought the buildings would just dissolve {although there is the “implosion” theory, and when I saw it, it looked like it, but who knows for sure}. What I mean to say is that you gotta maintain credibility, and frankly Greil Marcus is NOTHING anymore, and while he had a little teensy bit of music biz power in the late 60s and early ’70s in the music biz, rock critics just don’t even matter anymore. If they’re lucky they’ve found something to do. Marsh hitched his wagon to Bruce. Compromises Bruce, totally. Greil writes unreadable books that reflect his own fantasy life. If you HAVE read ALL of Lipstick Traces, by the way, that little girl, Ladonna Jones IS WHITE. And now that she’s an adult, I hope I never run into the selfish brat after what just happened. Now THAT WAS a “conspiracy.” Seriously, to take a letter like that and blow it up to DESTROY a black artist who didn’t keep to his place, and push to CNN, and all whatnot, and after seeing the long-suppressed film of “the burning” I am PISSED OFF. I’d like to knock her on her can along with the Dallas Morning News, Marsh, Marcus, maybe CNN, and that whole crowd. Only Mikal Gilmore stuck up for him. You know who I’m talking about: it’s IN Lipstick Traces. It’s like they just got together and said “how do we get rid of the little {expletives and racial epithets deleted}??” And they come up with this poor and pitiful little girl {who turned out to be white, and seemed confused about the whole thing}, and all of a sudden, he has to give away, and I’m quoting the artist in question: “all my money.” He did the damn tour not only for free, with whatever proceeds were left to charity, but settled all the damn lawsuits. And this is what they wanted. Then Marsh writes “Trapped” which was one of the meanest biz hatchet jobs I have EVER seen. It was disgusting. Gilmore caught them talking amongst themselves and realized what they were doing. It was published in a black “teen” mag, for safety, really, but man, he showed that bunch for the hypocrites they are. Now, that’s not to say that Marcus doesn’t have interesting stuff now and again. But that whole crap about the Situationists and everything, well, I went to a panel in New York, and brought up a case in the news regarding a child abuse death. I said, ok, the woman never DID pick up the phone, but what about all the ones who DO, and you don’t know it, and isn’t that a HELL OF A LOT MORE “courageous” than a buncha overage college boys annoying Charlie Chaplin for reasons unknown? I mean, exactly what did they accomplished with those stunts? And what did they have to lose? NOTHING. He had no answer for me. He knew he was all smoke and mirrors with that crap. He wanted to be “accepted by academia” when in fact, he got dumped before his dissertation.
But to use whatever rage was going on in him to try to destroy a black artist who went further than any other was disgusting, and Gilmore exposed them. Now, 9/11?? Naw, I don’t think so. If you want to get into that stuff, fine – it’s protected speech, but more important to me is American cultural history of our time, and who tried to hijack it and why. It has some degree of “ethnicity” to it, but its mostly a race and class thing. Which is why they always damn Elvis with faint praise. Despite everything, he comes out, in their accounts, as DUMB. Until, of course, they felt even more threatened by a black artist.
It’s all so damned stupid: this elbowing for the GRAND PRIZE. Hell, it’s music!!!!!!! It’s sick to “rank” them. And that does lead to the cultural politics of destruction. And then everybody’s throwin’ rocks at everybody else. And the only ones who really pay are the artists themselves. {Well, Bruce knew where his bread was buttered, so he hooked up with the critics and let them run his life, his mind, even.) Dylan doesn’t really like these people, even if they like him. I’m serious. It’s why he plays with them in interviews. And he won’t be interviewed by the “old guard” anymore, ’cause it’s boring.
He and Greil, are not “in on” anything, in my opinion. But I don’t understand why he wrote that blurb on Guralnick’s book. It has got to be the MOST BORING. And also the most “fictional” about the earliest days in Memphis, and he tries to slide around the facts about Tupelo, but more is coming out, and it can’t be stopped. Two men who were boys when Elvis and they were 11, 12, and 13 described, and in some detail their friendship and musical goings on with Elvis in Tupelo. He was with them in some kind of little “string band.” Guralnick could only miss this by not wanting to interview any black people in Tupelo. Dundy didn’t try hard enough, and she should have. Staten’s book is racist, yeah, BUT we do have Dewey in Elvis’s life before he cut his first professional record: quite before. So, for some of the bluesmen to say “I met him through Dewey Phillips” means next to nothing. Believe me, a kid who would beat up a fellow movie usher {right near Beale!!!!!}, is not a kid staying home in the humid, hot Memphis nights. In Tupelo one of the former children {kinda akward, I know}, said that Elvis would entice them out “very late” to “peek” at the juke joints where “real low down” stuff was going on, musically and otherwise. And about gospel, he would have to enter the “white” entrance for an all day, all night sing, but ran to be with his friends: “he SURE didn’t want to sit over there with THEM.” They acted like he was another black kid who just LOOKED white. And they said, about the gospel music, as we should know, “he was FANATICAL” about it. Much more than they, but they went along. They sounded like the gospel obsession bored them somewhat. He was a real leader at that age, and when not in school, which he absolutely HATED. Always. If something doesn’t fit Guralnick’s idea, he either abandons it, says the people must be mis-remembering {excepting THE ORACLE: Dixie Locke, and he puts whole experiences that NEVER HAPPENED into her mouth to bolster his claims: in this, he’s no better than either Goldman or Vince Staten, who at least has some interesting info, even if his agenda is bad news to me). June Juanico is much more interesting, but he changes her story to fit what he thinks is right. She says that it was Elvis who leveled the guy in the fairgrounds, while Guralnick, who WAS NOT THERE, says it was Red, and that’s why Vernon fired him at that time {he got fired, rehired, quit, rehired, and then finally fired and wrote that mean-spirited book}. Vernon wanted to believe his son’s story: ‘RED DID IT!!’ But, the Good Son lied ’cause he was, uh, human, and June was there. He was being a brat and a liar, and she was open about that in her book, but Guralnick won’t accept that. And all this crap about his supposed “patriotism,” is sooooo silly. He was a STREET KID: he pulled the biggest hustle any street kid ever did. And that’s all. I mean, dressing Lisa in red, white and blue for the “wholesome family photos” with a little flag pin on his lapel {Priscilla wouldn’t play along} showed how over-the-top it all was. He LOVED “Dr. Strangelove” and must have seen the film like 500 times {ok, some exaggeration, but A LOT}, and he knew EXACTLY what he was pulling. When they write these biographies, they forget that the rest of the world is happening at the VERY SAME TIME!!!!!! When Janis and Jimi died, after the paternity suit against Elvis, especially, and Vernon, who like his son, watched TV A LOT, knew that rock stars were dropping like flies, and his son was lying and dodging his questions about certain “B-12 Shots” and other things. So he hired the P-I as a double agent, and he got paid by BOTH of them. O’Grady is a scuzbag, and Alana Nash called him, nicely, “unctious.” To put it mildly. Elvis played him like a violin. And Nixon actually gave him the damn badge. AFTER a Titanic fight with his father, which he clearly lost. I mean, don’t be as goofus as Jerry Hopkins in his second book {out of print, as it probably should be}. It’s so freakin’ obvious. The exact time EP went off the rails started when Jimi died, and then was sealed when Janis went a few DAYS later! Instead of backing off, he took a LOT more drugs. And thought these guys, these narc guys could help him gain “respectability.” So he could, uh, “Rip It Up,” meaning, HIS LIFE.
In late ‘70, in August, when That’s The Way It Is was shot, you see such tenderness and youth: you see playfulness and joy. Cut to just a little over two years later, to the ALOHA special, and that person has disapeared. Completely. And he’s in some kind of rage in the “after-sessions” when he could be “himself.” It was horrible to see the change. Until the Aloha thing was brought to him, he kept up the hope that he could really one day soon see the world: Europe, Asia, India, Japan {home of Karate!}, Australia, and yes, Africa. He was not kidding when in ‘57, he said he would like to escape there. One place they wouldn’t call him all kinda names. Anyway, he wanted, at the very least, to do what he saw Dylan and friends doing in “Don’t Look Back”: “ooooing and ahhhhing” over the instruments in London. The instruments were different then, in London, and Elvis, mail-ordered a single-necked electric twelve string. He was a musician, dammit!
But you’re right about the mob. They not only had a piece of him, but they were supplying coke. It’s in his FBI file, and corroborated in several Parker books. And Parker even contacted the 60’s version of the Miss. Klan to scare the bejeezus out of his easily frightened client. He didn’t WANT him recording real music in the ’60s, ’cause Sam Cooke annoyed RCA quite a bit, not to mention the mob, and the Klan, and all their various connections {Marcello is mentioned frequently}. The films were a way to keep Elvis occupied instead of, like, ALIVE, in the ’60s. And he SO wanted to be!! You gotta read ALL the books, really, to see the actual story make sense.
Like with Lisa, I’ve got ALL the interviews from “the marriage,” etc., and some really freaky stuff from her childhood in Memphis comes out. She was on the phone with MJ as an 8-year-old!! And maybe even a little after her dad died, ’cause Priscilla sent Lisa AWAY to Europe, thinking she would “avoid the press” which was ridiculous. Apparently, he contacted her there, and tried to cheer her on the phone. Greil and company tried to make MJ into a monster back in ‘84, but back in ‘77, he was concerned about a kid who just lost her beloved dad, and never tried to hurt her in any way, and she remembered that years later. Which is why she’s tore up right now. They keep changing the date of the REAL funeral: now it’s Sep. 3: maybe they want her to come or something. Gotta be a reason for keeping the dates changing. They’re not dodging the public, ’cause they can’t. I hope she can, privately, be there. At the very last of it. In a private, quiet moment. I think that would be good. Despite all the sturm and drang of growing up in sheer madness {her father abandoned her, really, and then her mom first sends her AWAY when grieving, then kicks her out at about 15. Talk about neglect.}
Anyway, I generally detest Greil for reasons other than your own, but I detest him nevertheless. Not that he isn’t sometimes useful as a reference. But he, like a lot of the Rock Critical Establishment of their time, did some really dirty deeds.
I guess he knows now that Michael Jackson is not “a black Johnny Ray to Prince’s Black Elvis.” I almost got arrested because of that, back in ‘84!!!! In NY City. I was reading the article in Penn Station and became so furious that I almost just walked out with the mag without paying. Stopped just inside the door. I felt like looking for the nearest bar! Johnnie Freakin’ Ray!!!!!!!! I mean, no harm intended, but Johnnie Freakin’ Ray!!!!!!!! I wanted to punch SOMEBODY! Seriously. I knew this was like planned or something, ’cause the other critics were joining in. Mikal Gilmore exposed the whole underbelly. He’s the only critic who wrote an appreciation in any Rolling Stone. Can you imagine them ignoring such a cultural watershed? The Internet crashed that day!!!!! And not for Johnnie Freakin’ Ray!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And then, all of a sudden, they come up with this “Ladonna Jones” idea, and Greil doesn’t even bother to LOOK at the TV of the girl, and she’s not BLACK! And she looked like she didn’t know why she was involved in this. They used a kid to deliberately ruin somebody. Ok, so he wasn’t actually “ruined,” but it kinda makes you think. I’m no fool: I don’t think he’s innocent as a new born babe, but he was an “innocent” in that he never meant any harm. He hurt. It’s not something THEY can understand: this concept of real people who HURT, and screw up, and have problems, and people all over the whole freakin’ world can relate to someone who speaks their hurt through music, through those Roy Brown moans he caught through Jackie Wilson without knowing it. He was the last of a vital tradition. These idiots missed it, and its too damn bad for them. The CRITICS, I mean. You should read what Ralph Gleason once wrote: it’s nauseating. And they worked hard to make it all come true. Album Oriented Rock, remember that? Well, it’s dead, and MJ killed it, thank God. NOT Prince. He killed all that narrrowcasting BS. And the very real hurts of very real people can take center stage now, because real people give a damn about their OWN hurts. He helped to do that, too. I could say a little more, but I’ll save it for . . . well, I’ll save it.
But Greil lives in his head. Guralnick, too, in a way. To dismiss B.B. King for Dixie Locke is brain-damaged! I’m sorry. And I love all these music-makers, the great ones, I mean. I know why Bob had such a “mad on” when he was younger. He came from a “house of Stone” and it’s hard to blame him. He lived through it, and I’m glad. But people should know he still plays some interesting head games. I’m glad he gave EP the credit of being able to “play with {the Beatles} heads.” A decent thing to do, even if he had to do it in a dodgy way. These young “kids” {not anymore, really} today, I think some of ‘em worship people like Greil, and Bob knows the truth about ‘em: he remembers what they did with Self-Portrait. Was it really necessary to commission a firing squad? ’cause he wanted to sing some sentimental ballads just to see what it was like? He wanted to stretch out a bit. So he could change and move on.
There may be a reason he’s mad at Cash, but I don’t know what it is. We’ll know, some day. Me, I think so much goes back to his teen years. And the things that happened. Cash had a “prison fixation” remember. That’s gotta be a big thing for Bob. Don’t forget. Maybe Johnny told something he shouldn’t have . . . who knows.
Yeah, Goulet: “that guy’s got no heart.” Well, musically speaking. Sinatra, I think, really did develop a soft spot for Elvis. He had a domineering mom, too, of course, but Elvis didn’t know himself, and Frankie knew a lot more about both of ‘em. And he saw the Death Fixation in a young man, and didn’t want him to die. I think that’s kinda decent. He went out of his way to drag that songwriter to the show to tell him that his “Softly” story was just that: a story, and to stop this Death Thing. It was scary.
As for Dino, yeah, he did distance himself, big time. But Gosh, when he saw his dressing room in 1968, after returning, he must have wanted to skin Elvis alive.
For now,
Robin
August 24, 2009 at 7:34 pm
…it’s protected speech… Well, I sure wouldn’t want to stray beyond the line into unprotected speech, would I? What kind and whose concept is ‘protected speech?’
9/11 is going to take some time to clear up. As for the Gummint knowing in advance of the attack it is possible but I can’t quite see it allowing the possible destruction of the Pentagon and White House, not to mention the WTC. As nutty as people in authority have become I can’t see that. If we allow that the planes didn’t bring the towers down why did the Gummint have charges in place and waiting to finish the job? If nobody thought it would happen why be ready to make it look like they did?
The third building requires some explaining. Why was that allowed to burn down and why was the fire so evenly distributed. As to the Arabs planning the whole escapade I find that hard to believe too. There are sufficient tracks leading back to Chicago to give plausibility for that scumbag Ayers being involved on some level.
One asks why Sarkozy just after being elected called in the opertives to be given awards. Dylan is the least implausible, Marcus seems unlikely while Lynch sems incredible. So what did this trio who are connected do to receive this recognition, not from the Franch, but Sarkozy and hence the Jews?
Marcus isn’t quite as slight as you seem to think. Using Dylan for plausibility his Old Weird America, which corresponds to pre-Obama America, has received a whole hearted reception by the generation. Yhe term Old Weird America takes its place up there with The Ugly American as derogatory to America and Americans in general. I’m part of the old weird America and I didn’t think it that weird. I do think Marcus is weird.
Critical Theory and the SI of which Marcus is a contributing element fulfills a Jewish program. I know you’re Jewish, Robin, but facts are just facts.
Remember Marcus is virtually the only person that Dylan names in Chronicles other than a few intimates and unavoidables. If you read Ayers, Dylan, Marcus etc. then some remarkable coincidences need explaining. Not denial. Denial is easy. Once again Ayers is the key. If you want to consider Marcus and Dylan as dupes that’s fine with me.
Lipstick Traces is coming up for a 40th issuance celebration and edition here where Marcus’ history of American Literature published by Harvard is due too. As far as I’m concerned not only is Rock dead but music is too. Back to backyard strumming.
Still, Marcus was able to morph into what passes for a serious scholar while earning a very comfortable livelihood by campus lecturing. Campus lecturing is only for the in crowd. How well his trashy books actually sell I don’t know but Lipstick seems to have been his high water mark.
As far as my own credibility goes, not that anybody has to but if they want to they have to argue the facts. I stand ready.
August 25, 2009 at 12:36 am
…more important to me is American cultural history of our time, ,,,It has some degree of “ethnicity” to it, but its motly a race or class thing.
Could you supply a little more detail on the above.
Critics and artists are natural enemies. Critics want to be artists so out of envy they tell artists how to do it right. As a critic I have no desire to be friends. Being friends would destroy that critical distance. One’s criticism would become debased and meaningless.
Dylan is quite right to belittle his critics. He should. They can’t tell him anything while if he listened too closely it would destroy his integrity. If Springsteen allowed critics to invade his creative space he was foolish. As a writer I examine criticism for anything of value that might save me from excesses however I don’t think ‘Fuck you, you idiot’ is valid criticism but many think it is. Mostly comments I’ve received are benign but, you know…
As far as Dylan and Self-Portrait goes it was quite clear what was happening. In two years ‘64-’66 he took his mystical style as far as it could go- it was fully developed with Blonde On Blonde. Even the musical style was fully exploited. The next LP in the same style would have begun to become boring as he would have done the same thing. Dylan imitating himself. I realized that at the time and expected a change in style.
Whether there was a motorcycle accident or not Dylan’s mind broke. He had a nervous breakdown or whatever- he threw it all away.
Oddly enough he produced some excellent songs coming down. If he had taken the best of the basement tapes he would have had a hell of a fresh sound. A retreat perhaps but a very good record. A smooth transition into a future.
He apparently hae other things on his mind putting them into the cornball John Wesley Harding. Barf.
Then it became clear that he was trying to distance himself from his halcyon years. I forget what came next whether Nashville Skyline or Self-Portrait. Anyway in Skyline as the cover clearly states he is reintroducing himslef as Texas Bob Dylan the Country singer. People just went, huh?
And then, or just before, he did Self-Portrait which I and others interpreted as an attempt to burn Bob Dylan down and build a new image from scratch. Thus the next one was, maybe, I wasn’t paying much attention, New Morning which following Self-Portrait was self-explanatory.
If the title Self-Portrait was sincere then Dylan was letting the music describe who he really was, or wanted to be. I don’t remember the album much, I don’t have a copy, but it was sort of a collection of songs and styles before he became THE Bob Dylan.
There’s one interpretation. There are others.
August 29, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Let’s not get into it, but Dubya was a dangerous force, in my view, more than any of ‘em. Everyone likes a dim puppet. Anyone could do anything with him. Anyone. I am talking specifically about a specific powerful Saudi family, not “the Arabs.” I am not a knee-jerk zionist by any means. I calls ‘em as I sees ‘em. That’s all. To me there are not “the Arabs” or “the indiginous Scots-Irish Americans” {I am assuming you fit in there somewhere; Scots-Irish is NOT Irish! These were folks who merely stopped off at Ireland for a period of time before continuing the journey to the New World.} And there was nothing “weird” about them any more than anyone else. Oh, you’d be surprised who he considers “old, weird.” Very inclusive-exclusive: typical Greil. He recently made a snide comment in the wake of MJ’s death about “he even married Elvis’s daughter” as if it was the traditional “assault on Southern Womanhood” thing. Elvis would’ve kicked the crud out of the weirdo {Greil, I mean}. He WANTED his daughter to met the young fellow, and under very specific circumstances so she’d get his idea of what is “ok.” He and both Jerry and Myrna were very, very close. And he told them everything to do and say. Her interest later did NOT happen by accident, ok? If you don’t dig that, cool. But he did. If people were right for each other, he felt that was the right thing to do. And she just said “I loved him desperately.” But all Greil see is her as an anonymous object of the equally anonymous traditional African Sex Beast. He’s got sheets in his closet, boy. Better that people come right out and say whatever is on their minds, and then folks can talk it over. But it’s the “goody-goodies” like Greil who can be dangerous. Truly. Besides, it wasn’t even a BOOK: a bunch of his Artforum and California piecees stitched together. Kinda fraudulent. Remember about that magazine “incident.” Well, it appeared in “Traces.” UNCORRECTED! Not that I give a damn about that Ladonna brat one way or the other. But it goes back to the punk-disco wars. I did a panel as a review of his book! I really toasted him. And then when he showed up in NYC, I showed up, too. As far as the SI, it was just adolescent B.S. and to take it seriously, you’re trying to make yourself look oh, so, smart. I mean Greil, of course. And that was my point to him. He was making something out of nothing and ignoring the real courage of ordinary courageous people in this not so weird America who go totally unsung. That’s why he’ll never really get it about Elvis or Dylan or any of the people he thinks he understands better than anyone else. Like the “Nixon letter” was just about “dope”: that’s how he explains it when it was profoundly complex, despite the dope. {Damn good speller that Elvis.} Anyway, there’s a line in there that is just brilliantly evasive and sort of a wonder. Because he was really into spirituality and read the Bible through and through, and saw Jesus more as a prophet, but the most significant one. And “love your enemies,” see. It was kind of saying what he knew he needed to say, BUT not going against anything he’d said or believed to that point. And I think the incident with Nixon talking to the kids on the Lincoln Memorial happened AFTER Elvis’s “visit”????? Dunno, but if so, that is quite profound. And the letter: it’s just kinda brilliant, I think. It’s so very craftily worded, but he makes his MAIN point: “I will be here as long as takes” to get those “credentials” he craved. He threatened the Prez, and like totally got away with it!! And if you’ve seen Strangelove and really paid attention, the whole affair gets a little scary, but this was someone who thought people like Marcus thought he was “weird” or a “freak” and not just in the fashionable sense of the time. He felt desperate during those times: he wanted to tour the world so very much, and well, I’ve written about it elsewhere and that will appear, I feel sure. It involves a lot about the America real people really live and struggle and die in. Hell, I got it right back ‘84, and he crapped out is how I see it now. Back then, he had still been “my idol” but now, blech! {No, that’s not Yiddish or anything; it’s just a kind of a yucky thing to say.} But if I read anything else he says about MJ, in the wake of the poor guy’s HOMICIDE {which is how it was ruled}, I might use some REALLY “unprotected” speech myself! He just should keep his damn trap SHUT about it, now. You said enough, Greilly, baby. You wanted him buried; fine, they will in about a week. {“You” meaning Greil.} That scarifying black necrotic infection on the poor guy’s leg that they showed haunts my nightmares. How could a human being be treated so inhumanely? And he had this thump in his head constantly; a neurological problem. Thanks to Daddy Deareast, of course. Greil doesn’t even give a flip; to quote EP: “that guy’s got no heart.” For real. And Lisa’s late husband, like her dad, was in with wolves. Lisa saw it, but of course she was helpless to do anything about it.
Some of Greil’s Elvis stuff is interesting for reference purposes. And some of it is SOOOO condescending. I don’t believe he actually likes Dylan; I’m serious. He’s obsessed to an extent, but there’s something else there. See, ’cause Dylan really KNOWS this world he thinks is “weird.” {And the title helps sell a book and a documentary!} I think he’s jealous of Dylan, and Elvis, and certainly he can only be described as, uh, racially insensitive {so nobody gets sued}. Man, I was there and a guy got up to ask about rap, and he said “that’s not in my area of my work . . .” The guy was just blown away: I’ll tell ya! I thought he was gonna get maybe violent, ’cause Greil was so flatly cold. He can be COLD in person. Seriously. I think the guy has suffered on account of his WEIRD NAME!!!! HA!!!!!!!!!!
Enough.
Maybe you wrote SOOOOO much that you’re wondering if I’ll read ALL of it, so you hid a “Robin’s got a big butt” in there somewhere. {giggle} {Seriously, I have NO butt; I generally buy guy-slacks in wild colors. Nobody ever knows.
And Redford’s company was selling “Beale Street Boots” last X-mas, and I asked Santa, and they were MONDO expensive, but it had been a HORRIBLE year, and Santa was kind.} Now I want to walk them boots down Beale! As I continue my research.
Ever get the bootleg “Cut Me and I Bleed”? It’s only the profane stuff, so it’s not a fair picture, but shoot, can’t people see that the profanity was a defense mechanism. Anytime he’d get a hankering to express himself, he’d dirty it up, so it couldn’t be released. But he was a warm, compassionate human being. Greil just thinks he’s smarter than everybody else, especially thinks he’s smarter than Bob. Get my drift?
August 29, 2009 at 10:11 pm
Clinton, Bush and Obama are and were merely employees of the Global Money Trust. The only difference is you have to go through the charade of electing them rather than just appointing them. Clinton played his cards in office, Bush shuffled his deck, Obama’s doing the same but the money is going into the same pockets. No reason to get into it. Where’s the money as Dan Hicks said?
You sure are tender on Jackson. Sure, tough childhood but great opportunities. On the ticket scandal: I happened to be back East for my mother’s funeral when the ‘Godfather’ died. As it happened I watched the whole Negro Minstrel Show on TV. I would have missed it otherwise. It was an interesting prelude to the Obamanation.
James laid out there in his coffin and everything, the arm wrestling for precedence and all and then at the critical moment Jackson and his thugs arrived. This was a very thuggy proceeding. Jackson makes the Grand Entrance, walking like a man, mounts the podium and announces that he’s the new Godfather. Dead silence if I remember. That was the critical moment in Jackson’s career and it terminated it. MJ was not the Man.
So, I wouldn’t blame anyone else for the ticket fiasco on the tour that was to eclipse Presley, the Beatles, the Stones and everyone else. This was the moment of Black Power. Black Power is thuggism in action so they grossly overplayed their hand. Fuck Love as they say, they went for the juggler to crush da White Boys. Whatever backstage maneuvering there may have been to embarrass Jackson this La Donna woman may have been part of it. Anyway the tour was brought down in the most humiliating manner. I doubt that Jackson was the innocent victim however. Compare the power play of the tour with the power play of Brown’s funeral. There might be some similarities.
Jackson made an unbroken succession of terrible career moves after Thriller. Thriller was just a lucky break, good timing, anyway. There wasn’t that much there. Marrying Elvis’ daughter was a major error in my estimation whether they were old friends or not. In the first place, right or wrong, everyone thought he was queer. No surprise at the quickie divorce.
Here’s a guy with hundreds of millions, who couldn’t control his spending and died near broke.
Everything about the guy was wrong and was the result of his own very poor business decisions. Luckily he bought all those copyrights. It’s true I never had any use for Jackson but boy, did he ever throw it all away. Dylan’s got cash in the bank.
September 1, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Well, I never heard about MJ crashing the Brown funeral and annointing himself “Godfather,” but if that happened, it’s clearly drug paranoia run amock. As for “Victory,” I think I did much, much, much more than my share of research {well, I had too, in a way}, and if you read my work on it, you might see it differently. First of all “The Man” has a variety of meanings {giggle}, but I too thought Thriller was NOT his best, most coherent album, although the highest lights are absolutely forever things. See, he had much better, tougher stuff that Quincy vetoed. Some has come out legit, some you could once get to hear on the ‘net, and other places. Quincy had him ALL WRONG. And, yeah, he was not the “fawn” people took him for, but he was NEVER a “shrewd businessman,” but liked the flattery. CBS, then when it became Sony, then Sony-BMG had a plan about that catalog, and they’ve almost got it all back. Look, there are some things we see a bit differently, and that will not change, nor really need it change. Divergent views produce new ideas. Or at least more insightful ideas. But I much prefered “Dangerous” as an album, but NOT necessarily the so-called “New Jack” cuts. “Who Is It?” is incredible, and “Give In To Me” is everything Quincy would not permit “Beat It” to have been. And the thinking on the very last one is all wrong, in my view. There are some masterpieces on their that dwarf a whole lot of the Thriller stuff. Too much grunting through clenched teeth on the loud stuff, but the softer stuff runs deeper than he probably ever went, except on cuts that were not permitted to be released.
Anyway, no point going over all that. We come from a different place vis-a-vis MJ, but Victory was something that simply done to him by absolutely everyone involved. Yeah, I know about the kids and everything, but hey: what about Jerry Lee, Chuck Berry, and even Elvis?? And others! And it was NOT all boys, but he was totally cool with Lisa, ’cause he had always REALLY liked her. Maybe it’s because of the way they were sort of “fixed up,” really, or whatever, but it was different than with Tatum. No matter who you believe, or what, it went from bad to worse. And she made NO statement, interestingly enough.
Look, I’m willing to listen to what you have to say, so, well . . . you know what I mean.
Several weeks ago, I started to realize that “the kids” were more of a “cover” for dope than the other way around. Everyone was hoodwinked with the oldest trick in the book: “clean living” which I should have known was B.S. There was a story where his two closest sisters found black tar heroin, but the authorities more or less rejected it because they don’t want to interfere with the case. And I’m cool with that in a way, ’cause those Vegas pushers in Lab Coats must be stopped. And, yeah, “thugs” began to gather ’round him, strictly on account of the drugs. He had that typical junkie attitude of “get out of my f’ing face!”
But he was a part of my life since I was little, and I loved the “mania” thing, and it was SUCH a joy, and I knew that other people were absolutely in joy, too, so let that stand, I figure.
But young kids with talent should watch that scene in that “Chatauqua” {sp?} picture that EP made in late ‘68 and was released throughout ‘69. There’s “Buffy” {you know, from that “Family Affair”}, and a boy about MJ’s age and ethnicity, and he’s “studying to be a dancer.” Elvis is wearing a white suit, a white fedora, and the EXACT color of shirt you see in “Smooth Criminal” in the ’20s scene. MJ had to have seen the picture as a little kid, I swear, even if he didn’t know who the star was. {Elvis was cuttin’ a rug in that picture, by the way. He did NOT move or dance like a “white” person, if you know what I mean: like Springsteen and that idiotic dance; I can’t remember the name except it was hilarious.} Anyway, the train stops, and there’s EP, absolutely radiant. The boy speaks first: “white folks still ahead.” Elvis kneels to the kids level, and pins a blue ribbon on the young boy. Then he hands him a gleaming silver dollar, and says: “that’s the fee, baby.”
Wow.
I can say no more than that, ’cause that says it all, really. ‘You really want it ALL, kid, huh? Well, there’s a BIG “fee” for it.’
And what galls me about bleecher dwellers like Marcus is that they have never had to pay any “fee” in their entire lives. While looking down on others.
That’s where I stand. You can stand where you wish.
Robin
September 2, 2009 at 11:23 pm
Hostility equates insecurity. I don’t stand; I lounge. I drape reality with my grace, if you know what I mean.
I’m one of those hillbilly boys you mentioned, on my father’s side, of course. De old folks come down from those Kentucky hills and settle in Bowling Green. Before I was born, for sure. Never seen Bowling Green. Pennsylvania Dutch and Polish on my mother’s side. The family denies it of course but my great grand parents who came from Galicia were Jewish. Chased down the street as a kid for being a yid.
Do I feel Jewish? Get serious. That stuff is not in the blood it’s in the education. I ain’t got that education. I was educated at the orphanage. Never saw a Jew or Goy who wouldn’t kick an orphan for sport. So how OK are Jews? Ask yourself that question. So, that’s creds for the religious part.
If Elvis ever danced like a White guy I never saw him do it. I never saw anybody move like him. James Brown could have taken lessons from Elvis. Probably did. Actually dance turns me off. Never understood it. Don’t still.
Elvis and Jerry Lee had short eyes? Hard to believe. What would Satana think?
These Dr. Feelgood’s have certainly had their day haven’t they? Max Jacob’s turning JFK and Lyndon on was too much. Imagine Jack up speeding a week in a row when the Cuban missile crisis was in progress. I read of one guy Jacob’s zapped who was completely conked for a week and literally blind for three days. Potent stuff compared to what Leary had to offer, eh what? JFk was supposed to have been in on that too.
So anyway Elvis, Jackson and drugs? Yawn. I knew my psychological limitations and stayed straight. Jesus, the things I’ve seen. And what I haven’t seen I’ve heard or read about. I’ve been around without gettin’ around. Street creds. Lose credibility? Dylan it was who said: When you got nothin’ you got nothin’ to lose. Of course he was quoting the street. Whole street corners said it before he did.
Musically I’m all hillbilly. If it ain’t got that twang it don’t mean a thang. All my heroes wore Suits Of Lights back when country was real. When the boys came down from the hills and wore Brooks Bros. they lost it. So, I like all that country rock. Burritos, later Byrds- early Byrds for that matter, Webb Pierce in spangles. Do I like soul music? NO! The only dance I ever learned was the Trouser Press.
As for Marcus you probably have him right. More annoying than anything else, but Dylan does or did look up to him. 2+2=Chicago. That’s enough Ramblin’ with Ron for today.
Well, I’ve rocked over Africa
And I’ve rolled over Spain…
Warren Smith- Rockabilly at its finest.
September 5, 2009 at 1:31 am
http://fakekarl.blogspot.com/
October 25, 2009 at 11:06 am
Been a while, ole buddy. I had my reasons, I guess. First of all, when I look at the date on top, it doesn’t seem so long ago anyway. There was something I wanted to say a while back about “all-American” but it’s more complex than that, and anyway, I had other reasons.
See, we had this memorial to do for my mom in Jersey, and we stayed on the Long Island that looks like a fish {I always loved Whitman, both the poet, and the shopping mall: my mom mainly loved to window shop the mall and go to the five and dimes they used to have. It’s an historical place now ’cause at least 2 young people died in fires there – 2 of ‘em in the ’80s. One was in the “basement” level of one of my mom’s favorite stores. The kids who work there now: they weren’t even born, and don’t know why the Whitman poem is etched on the outer wall exactly where the fires were. And where the people die. It was so perfect: it honored the young people with the poet who was born across the street, and for me, it honored my mom’s life. When we got to the . . . well, cemetary {amazing that I can even say that now, but boy, it still hurts anyway}, we found out that there were a glut of funerals and a big military one for a teenager, so there was no preacherman. {Uh, Rabbi.} Thank goodness: I had prepared a series of quotations from various poets and lyricists {I actually ended it with Elvis’s line: “That’s Someone You’ll Never Forget”; Red took the “‘ll” out for whatever reason, but Elvis sang as he wished to: he also tricked him on the melody. By changing the “arrangement,” he also completely took the melody in his own direction: he wanted it mournful. Also, there’s like a sort of “rule” in songwriting that is the opposite of printed poetry: songs end on an upswswing, almost always, even the saddest. Just at the end: you don’t droop them at the end. Elvis did. Red has recently commented: “that song has a WEIRD melody.” No joke.
Anyway, before each bit of verse {I gave Bob only one line, ’cause I said he’s a very “wordy” sorta guy}, but it’s from his most beautiful love song: “Love Minus Zero”: the last line, the one that ends “like some raven with a broken wing.” Because my mom never could go anywhere on her own: she couldn’t drive, and her world sort of got smaller and smaller, until, well, there it is now.
But it was ME in command of the ceremony, not some dude, expecting a tip or something to say a prayer, who didn’t know her, who probably wouldn’t have let me read my verses, with some explanation. These were our relatives, my relatives, and I think for the very first time, they got to know her. It was good. My uncle knew the prayer anyhow, and my dad tried to keep up: I merely babbled, and said the amen’s. They pronouce it weird, and I went along, but at the end of the prayer, I whispered to myself, but a little – just a little – aloud, the “a-men” from The Impressions. Just sort of under my breath. Not the day before, but the day before that, my dad, to my shock-horror, told them that my mom was half-Christian. I swear to God, or whomever, I thought I heard him say “her father was Romulan.” {giggle, but really, I did think I heard for a bit} I thought was gonna get dizzy and pass out or something, ’cause I know my uncle, he knows everything, I think, but my aunt by marriage had NO idea. And she’s not the most open minded person {I can sorta relate to some of Bob’s angst, in a way}, and I swear, I was so in shock, I thought, for a moment, he said “Romulan.” You know: the shoulder-padded meanies from Star Trek with the green glowing vehicles. It was cool, though, because when I did my thing and read my verses, none of it mattered any more. I broke through all of that B.S. and they saw HER, finally.
In any case, when we got back, after two plane rides, within a day, I came down with the flu. The doc said it was NOT “swine” but it was bad. My dad had a stomach thing, so we did not have the same thing.
Anyhow, while in NYC, I gave in to the Beatles-hype because I needed a verse from “In My Life.” I think, now, that it WAS about his mum, Julia. It felt that way in a way it never did before. It’s his best song. Nothing else comes close. Most of the Beatles stuff I find to be bluster. Elvis, in ‘69, was walking around before the show with a British journalist from NME, and he saw a telegram on his door: it was from “The Beatles and Mal.” He was a guy with them, and he was with them when they “met” in ‘65 in that wrenching, horrible publicity stunt. The writer said {in 2009!! after all that Nixon silliness where he plays the Legion of Decency about the Beatles, which nobody takes seriously anymore: nobody with any brains, anyhow} that Elvis seemed deeply touched, especially about Mal. He said “I remember him, and he’s the guy swimming in ‘Help,’ right? Yeah. I like Mal.” And he talked about the Beatles, and that he thought it was great that they were so “experimental,” but that he still liked that song that goes “she was just 17, you know what I mean.” {“I Saw Her Standing There”} For some reason, as they discussed the Beatles, he kept repeating that line, seemed to be digging more an more as he said/sang it. I got the impression that it he kept it up, it was gonna get on their nerves {the writer had a pal with him, apparently}. Dunno how they got past the Col., but somehow they wrangled it. He just kept getting hotter over “she was just seventeen, you KNOW what mean!” They couldn’t quite grasp it at the time. In retrospect, it makes a lot of sense, I think. Besides, it was ‘69, and he was feelin’ groovy, you might say: after the show, he exclaimed “I’m human again!”
Which brings me to the other CD I picked up. I’ve had the Basement Tapes on Vinyl {and maybe some bootlegs: I have a LOT of records from those times, but I got them later, of course, because I was too young at the time} since it came out, but I guess I didn’t pay it much mind. And the damn LPs are so heavy, I haven’t bothered lately. I thought the “bootleg series” had taken care of the important stuff. It has not. “Goin’ To Acupulco” . . . ohmigod! Dylan knew. I mean, he really KNEW. It’s not like that stupid Rolling Stone interview he gave recently. Doesn’t give him a break, but he does seem to FEEL the pain of it. He has said he “hustled” in NYC when he first got there, and so this is clearly symbolism, BUT it is also true. You can feel the pain. If they didn’t meet in person during the movie years, you KNOW they talked on the phone. And when he says “get my meat,” it through me back. See, when I said Elvis had — before he said the “my mouth feels so dry, it feels like Bob Dylan slept in it all night” which was kinda creepy and has creepy sexual overtones, because virtually ALL of his lines had sexual overtones in ‘69, and early ‘70. But before he even came up with that one, he said something else which the hotel found “dirty.” I left it out, ’cause it sounded kinda dirty to me too, but now I cannot. “I got a frog in my throat,” he cautions the audience about “Vegas Throat,” and then says “only meat I had all day.” Now, “Goin’ To Acupulco,” according to Marcus’s liner notes from ‘75, was a song that was “not even a rumor” before the official release. Now that may seem strange, but what it means is that Bob DID have control over the tapes and which songs made it out to the public, bootleg, or not. And this song is about prostitution and uses Elvis’s movie-years {which he was still in, in 1967!} as symbolism for male prostitution. And the guy sings about going to “Rose Marie” {Marie was the name of Col. Parker’s wife at the time}. This woman likes “big places” {the travelogue films} and “waits for me to come.” That’s at the end, and is overtly sexual. Especially in light of the bootlegged “All-American Boy” which is ad-libbed smut, and which Dylan jumps into with relish, imagining Elvis being forced into, well, certain acts with Parker and “Marie.” Or, well, not that name, but . . . in “Acupulco” it IS that name. I don’t know if “The All-American Boy” was out early. But Elvis knew a several of the songs were about him when he sang the verses of “I Shall Be Released” and said “Dylan” with such respect and, as I said before I read Marcus write it, “finality.” A kind of strength that you have to hear for yourself. He wasn’t angry about “The All-American Boy” stuff, if he had heard it. Because the whole lot of it was true. But describing “putting bread on the table” as, instead, “have to get my meat” after hearing Elvis say “only meat I had all day” is powerful. I believe he this comes from a conversation. It sounds like the stuff EP would say in the mid-sixties, making excuses for what he knew he hated doing. In ‘72, he blew up in a painful rage: “I would get physically ill.” The interviewers tried to move away from the topice, but he wouldn’t, “I would get violently ill!” Finally, he said, “you couldn’t have paid me NO amount of money that would have give me any kind of self-satisfaction.” Re: the movies.
Well, hell, “Goin’ To Acupulco {sp?}” pretty much says almost the same thing, but it’s filled with the excuses EP was making during the movie years: “you don’t get many chances in this business, jack.” He says you might be successful if you “changed,” “but you might not. YOU MIGHT NOT.” In the song, he has him drinking “rum.” Elvis drank rum and cokes when he was “social drinking” and straight Vodka before going on stage in Vegas: it’s in the 2000 cut of “That’s The Way It Is.” “Good for ya!” Yeah, right. Drank bloody Marys, too, but I think in the sixties, he stuck with rum and cokes. Later he’d drink Tequila ’till he passed out, for about a week a year. Weird thing. Never, ever beer. His mom, ya know. And, oh, he smoked actual cigarettes, not just the cigarillos, and tiparillos {less often}. And he DID inhale. Liked to blow the smoke out of his nostrils: on film, you can see it.
But “meat” as the “staple” he needed to survive, and drinking “rum” and “Marie” . . . dammit, they talked. The persona of the male hustler who goes to “big places” to “have some fun” which Marcus, to his credit, correctly hears as “crawl in a hole and die” is dead-on. Admits it is a “wicked life” but he’s just like anyone else: has to “get his meat.” Sometimes, he has to “pump the well” a bit to keep things going. “Well, well, well.” Dylan was very excited when the journalist found him during a phone call with Grossman in ‘69, “did he do “Mystery Train”? Did he do “That’s All Right Mama?” And so on. He did not attend the opening, although I’m sure he was, like just about everyone in the biz, invited. But this was just opening night. He seemed to know EXACTLY what it felt like, IN PERSON, “in Las Vegas” in “Gypsy.” Elvis told a LOT of people NOT to come opening night. And Dylan, nor Lennon, etc. were not seen. But with Bob, well, he’s a sneaky one. He even said “he can bring you from the rear.” Said where he WAS when he DID catch the show. You can bet he was hiding. Phil Ochs was practically on the stage opening night! Dylan would not have wanted to run into him: too uncomfortable. But Elvis, at some point in the first show, went over to Phil’s table, by ALL accounts, and sang to Phil. Not Michael, with his “archives” and such, but Phil.
And as I said, nobody turned him on to Bob but him, himself. I saw him in the snap cap, WAY early, jutting his jawbone out to sorta look like him. He always bought out whatever was new and intriguing. And “Highway 51 Blues” had to be an attention grabber. Where the hell would he find a song about the OTHER highway? In the Folklore Center, of course, but he would have had to look for it. “runs right by my baby’s door.” Hmmm. Indeed. It was early, and maybe Bob expected a better fate during the earlier sixties. That first real album is a GREAT album. But the stupid movie album outsold it. And the next one outsold everything on the market, just about. And so anybody who cared, and Bob damn well cared, were “Goin’ To Acupulco” whether they liked it or not. Especaially including the “star.” “I tried to tell it like it is,” Bob sings, and he did try, but had to say “no thanks.” The past tense in “tried” is VERY easy to hear. It’s not just about “selling out,” it’s about KNOWING you’re selling out and getting “violently ill” on account of it. He even literally copied Bob in ‘67, by creating the conditions for what could have been a fatal accident to get out of “Clambake.” He ended up with a huge “strawberry” on his forehead, a concussion, but no release on the horizon at the time. He had taken an iron and cord and stretched it across the floor just enough that he would surely trip over at some point during the night: too stoned to remember that he’d put it there. He knew what to do. But Bob had freed himself with his accident; this one didn’t work out quite so well. Not yet. And when it did, it didn’t last long at all. After Bob’s accident, he only did what he wanted to do {well, maybe except for what Johnston was trying to put together: Johnston calls it “my biggest regret” of his life in music}. And Bob sings about THAT many years later in “Born In Time.” Beautifully on “Tell Tale Signs.” He can go on about Chuck Berry all he wants, but it’s just a smoke screen. IF he had said Little Richard, I might have believed him.
Interestingly, he no longer mentions Guthrie that I know of. I mean, there’s the odd documentary, etc., but you know what I mean. He KNOWS who it is when they say “will the REAL folk singer please stand up.” And he KNOWS that Chuck probably NEVER heard of “Froggy Went-A-Courtin.’” Or a number of others. And Chuck was strictly rhythm ‘n’ blues, not blues. EP was ALL of it. Sometimes all at once. Which is why turned over the tables. And Dylan knows this. He’s not much for the glitz and glamour of James Brown style R&B {actually, Jackie Wilson has him beat by a mile: James’ stuff is mostly athletic: not that much grace at all. He gets a 10 all around ['cept for the East German judge], but that’s about it. If it weren’t for Jackie, and others, Michael Jackson might still be alive now, because if James was the only influence, forget it. And he was not.
I know “rock death” seems kinda boring nowadays to those used to it from the old days, but to younger people today, well, they’re used to this “Betty Ford Clinic” stuff. And, though it ain’t cool to die, MJ rejected it, except once. And nobody believed him!
See, that’s what EP never understood: all you gotta do is tell a bunch of lies, and then no one will believe you if you tell the truth. He tried that, but totally wrong, and screwed it up worse. You know: “Desert Storm” and that s–t. Sounded like a raving fool. Which he was at that point.
What’s really sad is that you cannot say what story in music history is the saddest. There are just too many, and they all go off the meter.
So, I guess, to me: my own tragedy is saddest. I mean, I’d like to forget about the world like that, but I can never do it. When I see a lost soul, I get all wrapped up. I know I shouldn’t. You CAN’T. But Bob got himself wrapped up about a lotta folks. I can see that.
You, too. We may disagree about things, but I can tell you have this “care” thing inside you. Don’t ask me how I can tell: I can tell. You may not want that, but it shows. Which is what draws me back.
More later,
rm
October 26, 2009 at 4:30 pm
I’m proud of your putting the older mourners in their place. Who but a son or daughter is most qualified to offer the eulogy for their mother. I’m sure your mother would cherish whatever words you used to ssy coming from your own heart rather than some pompous common places of ‘a man of god.’ Such hypocrisy no matter what religion, they’re all the same. Anyone claiming to faith of that nature in this day and age is a poseur and fake. So you did the right thing.
That said, now you should let go. Take the gifts your mother gave you and live the life she would have wanted you to live.
Moving on: by some horrible twist of fate I seem to be writing reviews of groupie autobiographies. I have no explanation. I’ve written reviews of Catherine James and Chris O’ Dell. My next along those lines will be Marianne Faithfull’s first auto. Interestingly they all have Dylan stories. Faithfull was of couse not only there but involved so her Dylan story has solid details and is more credible. Besides she was so in awe of Dylan in his presence that she missed her cue and was shooed away for not being responsive to the Little Man’s presence. Rather than fixing the seductive eye on her and complementing her big boobs he ambled on about himself. Well, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Anyway we know she was there, we’ve got pictures.
She also provides some good background on nutcake Allen Ginsberg. He actually believed that most of Dylan’s songs were about him. Amazing. What a minor character.
Faithfull is well worth reading if you haven’t as yet.
I did read Al Kooper. Good, but like his music a little too labored. Those guys were all such flakes and disorganized I’m surprised they ever got anything done.
Red is a piece of envious doggy doo doo. He could never get over that the ring wasn’t grabbed by a real cool guy like himself but the school joke, Elvis, got it instead. I wouldn’t even comment on the bastard except where necessary.
I’m coming the the opinion that Dylan is a dink too. He’s getting panned for his Christmas album but I think it’s straight. I think he reveres his past, roots in garbage talk, and wants to recapture the feeling much as he did with Self-Portrait. Oddly enough his croak works pretty well in a bizarre kind of way. Sounds like some street junkie trying to give his best and on that level works pretty well for me. Not that I’m getting a copy or will ever listen to it.
Don’t know anyting about this fire.
Faithfull’s book pretty accurately captures the period, the feel, the attitude. Worth it.
Revere you mom, Robin, but move on. Time and the tides wait for no one. Tough, but true.
October 30, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Robin: I was watching AJ Weberman get mauled on the Phoenix News site and some things became a little more clear. Some guy suggested that ‘Chrome horse’ was slang for a motorcycle and that clarified things. My email to Weberman follows:
A.J. Sorry to see you get roughed up like that by the Phoenix News. Gotta be a little more careful. That ‘chrome’ bit was a real stretcher.
Far be it from me to offer tips to a Dylanologist but Dylan is an ego-maniac, you know, it’s all about him. Look there first.
In Chronicles, I believe, Dylan suggested that the place to look for a subject of Like A Rolling Stone was his mother. The ‘chrome horse’ places the locale in Hibbing. Possibly her diplomat is Father Abram who she discovered wasn’t where it was at after she married him. My correspondent, Robin Mark, pointed out that his mother’s maiden name was Stone which would fit it. I didn’t know what to do with the suggestion at the time.
Remember Abe bought this woman some very expensive jewelry for a Hibbing girl. How much did she have to badger him for that? And how much of his soul did he have to mortgage to do it? The store did go out of business immediately after Abe died in 1968, perhaps after he had bled the store dry. So, Abe wasn’t where it was at but in an incestuous way maybe Little Bobby was. After all, by the time he wrote the song he could probably have afforded to buy a few items from Liz Tayor’s collection for her. Did her collection grow after Abe’s death?
Think about it. There may be secondary or tertiary meanings to his ‘poetry’ but I don’t think the little bastard thinks like that; on the other hand he’s a devious one, both the Joker and the Thief.
Maybe I’ll write something up on Rolling Stone.
End.
Might be time to look at Rolling Stone again.
November 1, 2009 at 10:29 pm
Before you tagged him with being in on the Twin Tower conspiracy. Now he’s a devious bastard, incestuous, and an ego-maniac. You even go after his poor late ma. Like your alter-ego A.J., I think you are masochistically spoiling for your own beat down. If only you could be said to be so worthy! And you, R.E., who decries the ad hominem attack, using such pejorative language without foundation…It’s a gosh darn shame. Any performer needs a healthy ego to go on stage time and again, but maniac? Why so harsh? What did this particular Jew ever do to you? Or was it the marriage to a black that got your nose out of round? You need to examine your own motives here. These anti-zimmerman ravings have little to do with the subject and everything to do with you. Dig a little deeper.
November 10, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Hmm. Too much for now, so I’ll be back. But, Ray: all biography contains autobiography, or it’s quite worthless. I do not mean literally, but in some way. I do not think he’s “anti-Bob” but you cannot understand an artist without looking at their early years and its impact.
I’ve always hated bios that have a few pages on the early years. Useless.
Now, to our discussion.
“Move on.” Easier said than done. I guess I am, in my own way, working on it. But it’s not easy. I used to look into her eyes, near the end, and say “I’m not gonna let them hurt you none: you can be sure of that!”
I guess I feel I let her down in so many ways. Maybe when I was 21 or 22, I should have called a driving school for her. I dunno. There are so many things you look back at. Can’t be helped. Just cannot.
But thank you for complimenting me on one of toughest things I ever did in my life: the ceremony that I more or less commandered.
I thought my dad was cool in telling them “the secret.” By God, of whomever, I swear I actually heard “her father was Romulan.” Still tickles me.
I just always calls ‘em as I sees ‘em. More to say on that, of course.
In any case, I cannot think of anyone else who could, musically, stretch across the barrier{s} from glitzy R&B, which he really did dig, to mountain music like singing “Barbara Allen” as young child. {I cannot even PICTURE a child singing that song!} MJ’s musical horizons were profoundly curtailed by that bag of sleaze he had for a “father.” He LIKED the country music his mom sang to the children when they were very little. Always did. But it was forbidden to him. I really think he had to have seen that movie in ‘69: Elvis’s 30th picture. Dumb title: it was supposed to be called “Chatauqua” and has some interesting history, and he was smoking SOMETHING of intert, more than just those cigarillos during the picture, but he took it as a lark, and had fun, and sang gospel, and cut a rug a bit {nice swirls! Very fast: gotta use the slow, or even pause button to catch the actual moves, but WHAT a dancer’s line he had!! Better than MJ’s ’cause Michael had chronic chest problems, probably caused by his father. But Elvis, before the drugs utterly ravaged him, just had it ALL. The new book “Elvis ‘69″ about the opening that they taped NONE of is really cool. But he should have had the chance to play Carnegie Hall, and have roses thrown at his feet, instead of people dirty napkins, with which he was expected to wipe his face and throw back.
How degrading to such a great artist.
And about Red, well, when EP bought those TWO tape recorders, he clearly wanted to get into writing himself. Red just took possession of BOTH recorders, making it clear what the deal was. Elvis was so insecure and doubtful that he just wouldn’t fight. Gosh, someone might LAUGH at him!
It’s just so sad.
November 11, 2009 at 1:27 pm
About the alleged “anti-Zimmerman” ravings, how can you understand Dylan without trying to understand how he got to BE Dylan, or why? I mean, it’s absolutely central.
In our culture, I think their is still some kind of longing for people to try to think of family life as “Ward, June, Wally, and the Beav.” {Ok, so Elvis sometimes did a GREAT “Eddie Haskell,” but that’s about it for real life and this utopian fantasy that people feel a need to impose especially on the artists they admire most.} It was just NEVER like that: in fact, their utopia was the exception that proved the rule.
I grew up in so many different settings that it’s just so clear to me. High school and college kids who didn’t want to go home for Christmas, which kinda freaked me out, but it WAS the norm. I guess that puzzlement kind of set me on a jouney of sorts.
Heck, I LIKED those sit-coms. But I think I always knew they were silly lies about real life. Lies that millions must have really needed: the shows remained so popular, even long after their initial runs.
Now, real life is also not quite like an Appalachian murder ballad, but the truth is quite in between, and different for different people. And you must look at it, or understanding cannot begin.
Best to all,
Robin
November 11, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Robin: The only reason I left Ray’s post up was because he threatened me with bodily harm. I wanted anyone who checked in to know what kind of guy he really is. If you want to see his picture he’s on facebook.
I’m probably pretty callous because I wasn’t fond of my parents. Still, we all go sometime. It has to be accepted. At 72 I wouldn’t be surprised if I got the call any day now. Not to worry, live, live, live until you die. See, I get all my comfort from C&W.
I agree with you that most bios and autos skimp over the formative and most important years. I don’t have to worry about it but I’m sure I would be very unhappy with somebody’s bio of my early years. I’ve written my life out up to about age 20- 2000 pages- and I’m sure there are those who would say ‘that didn’t happen’ or ‘it didn’t happen that way.’
The only recourse for Dylan is to write his youth without flinching and let it go from there. No fantasy, just straight forward narrative, then, let the chips fall where they may.
The more I read, Dylan was kind of a James Dean/Marlon Brando wild child. The Eldot Duluth newspaper article has been changed since I first read it but Eldot, a fellow Jew, is censorious of Dylan’s beatnik persona. I think there’s a letter appended from a girl who asked her mother if she knew Dylan. The reply was that the was one of here cousin Jim’s dirt bag friends. Not to be taken without a grain of salt but in character. So, all the bios except Scaduto’s gloss over his real character and Scaduto doesn’t make it clear. I’ve just ordered Spitz’s bio.
As you say the child is father to the man; the early life is key. Just because someone is your hero doesn’t mean critical bio notes shouldn’t be written. Heck, this is America where debunking rules. After everyone from the past has been debunked Greil Marcus has taken to ‘debunking’ weird old America as he puts it. Where does this guy live anyway except in his head? Then when his vision of what was is ‘debunked’ the guy goes off the deep end. There are no sacred cows except the sacred cows I guess.
By the way, I know you don’t care but I am getting more frequent hits on Lipstick Traces IX and Conversations pp. 1 and 2. There must be something of interest there. Of course you’ve got a couple hundred thousand words on Dylan and Presley so there’s plenty of interest to read.
I find it difficult to discuss Presley with you because I have a fairly modest foundation on him. Besides in addition to reading a ream of books and articles I’d have to study the movies closely which means probing deeply into the Colonel. I would also be interested to know if there was any backroom communication between Washington and Hollywood. Somthing tells me Elvis was closely watched. Has anyone gone through his FBI file?
November 30, 2009 at 12:04 pm
Yeah, the threat jumped out at me, too. Right or wrong, I thought in America, weird or not {giggle}, you were supposed to fight for the right of the other guy or gal to SAY IT, whether you agree or not. I mean, FIGHT FOR THAT RIGHT. It is the most important right: the right to think and share, without being threatened with a “beat-down.” Good Gawd!
If anyone can’t understand that fundamental principle, which Greil Marcus would agree with as well, by the way, and Dylan, and anyone else I can think of who knows they can’t see Russia from the U.S. {giggle: my RIGHT!}!!!!! NO THREATS OF VIOLENCE in the savage time. With teddy bears bearing a bible verse and the president’s name, with the clear message that some ordinary person, IN THE NAME OF GOD, should kill someone else, no one should sit still for threats of violence. Period. You have as much right not to be threatened as Obama or Ray. Period. Or me. I am writing a tough little book about Presley and this weird Western concept of “song writing” which is basically unknown in most of the world throughout history. I am finding out the most AMAZING things. I thought I knew all about Elvis, but after all of it, I realized I wasn’t thinking hard enough. He was no “saint in the city” either, but you gotta deal with the good and the bad, always. Guralnick and the music guy {forget his name: Ernst something} BOTH know about the fatal auto accident of September, ‘67, but they breeze over it, and believe the official story as if the death of a man were NOTHING. It interrupted a recording session! Like THAT was the tragedy! Some of those biographers are, excuse my French, a–holes!!!!!!! A man was run over and killed, in the morning. Richard Davis, an Elvis “guy” was blamed: he was sober, and Parker made sure he was alone there and didn’t “leave the scene.” While he sent EVERYBODY to Vegas IMMEDIATELY, and then on to Memphis, and then Nashville. Sounded too goddamn “O.J.” to ME! Now, I’m not accusing Elvis, ok? No evidence, BUT: read, if you can find it, Jerry Hopkin’s first bio of Elvis. The incident was completely unknown at the time. Davis was fired in early ‘68, and was back on the job before the book went to press in ‘70/’71. Richard cried during the interview: “he’d give you the shirt off his back,” he moaned of his friend Elvis. But, he got in a dig that meant nothing at the time: “I was with him 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.” Excusing the hyperbole {Elvis made a baby in that time!}, he meant that when HE was in a car, cruising about, SO WAS ELVIS. This is from Richard, the guy who is said to have committed the excused killing via motor vehicle. It was ruled an accident caused by poor visibility and the gardener was blamedd for jumping in front of the car.
Except that Richard, like all the guys, had his OWN car, most of Elvis’s cars were cared for in Memphis by Alan Fortas at that time, and this was Elvis’s car, not Richard’s. I still have no right to accuse Elvis of murder {you know HE was stoned that night, and he fled the scene, IF he was in the car, let alone driving it, which he usually did, but not always}. And I am not. But I am saying that it was more serious than the “biographers” want to make it: much, much more. And they should have re-interviewed Davis or family. Just researched the incident. What? It didn’t MATTER????????? Like hell it didn’t. It matters to me, and I’ll bet good money it accounts for Elvis’s insane behavior at the January recording session where he got off only 2 film songs that he has to do, and somehow finished two real sons IN TWO DAYS. For him, that is ridiculous. And he was profane in a way that shocked everyone. Asked for a trial separation from Priscilla in like her 8th month or closer!! And, in December, Johnny Bragg reports a bizarre motorcycle visit from his old friend. Things seemed to be VERY HORRIBLE at the time for Elvis, all taken together. The TV special saved his LIFE. I think he was absolutely suicidally depressed, and yet the dope was making him A MANIAC {whoops: might get a “beat-down”}. Like I said, I cannot accuse, but I can chastise the biographers for not giving a damn at all about the incident. That man had as much right to live as Elvis or anyone else. And, of all people, EP knew THAT. Lord knows, money might have been involved, and it might have been astronomical. Which gave Parker tremendous power. But the career was dead in the water. Without the TV special, he was DONE. If the incident had come to light AT ALL, the special would not have even been offered at all. It is CONNECTED. I am suggesting something far more horrendous than Bob could EVER come near, but he wants to beat YOU up? I don’t mean “suggesting,” but I am saying it should be reinvestigated, particularly because it gave Parker extraordinary blackmail power over Elvis.
Yes, I have see the file. The early complaints about him shaking his ass, the whacked-out hustle for THE BADGE, and this: Elvis had a VERY, VERY expensive dope habit, directly from the mob: 1973. That fact stands out above all. We’re not talking prescriptions or doctors or anything. We’re talking real mob drugs, period.
He got in deeper and deeper and deeper into sheer horror: Apocalypse Now territory. Where Bobby had never gone before, believe me. Bob was supposed to be the “runaway.” He wasn’t. He was supposed to have been a REAL delinquent: maybe some adults thought he was, but Elvis apparently got into REAL hot water as a teen, and both the governer and his SON, TODAY {will tell anyone who asks}, Parker knew everything, and the records were swept under, but Parker had everything. That was nothing, though, compared to the auto wreck in ‘67. Richard hinted SOMETHING in that book, and he was crying. Not for himself, but for his friend!! For EP. God only knows Vernon’s reaction: we know for a fact that in February, just as Elvis became a father, Vernon got him to give his father FULL durable power of attorney over him. Legal actions often are involved in this, and Vernon was in California in April. Could have been the unrest in Memphis. OR it could have been the “unrest” in his son’s life. Bob never had to deal with anything so monumentally horrific. But I think he knew, somehow. All those “Basement” songs. Listen again. Not just to the obvious “Goin’ To Acupulco” or the mention in the train song {I think it’s that one}, but “Tears of Rage” itself. Greil thinks it’s about the founding OF OUR GREAT NATION and it’s TORN FABRIC in the latter ’60’s. Bullshit. That seems silly to me, especially with what seemed to be bothering Dylan in “Acupulco” his dirty version of “The All-American Boy” {Bobby Bare/Parsons}, the mention of “save my money, then rip it up” and “gonna go down to Tennessee and get me a truck or somethin.’” YOU may not previously have been ultra Presley-informedd, by Bob seemed utterly obsessed to the point that his songs in the basement kept returning to his adolescent inspiration in music. Bob was no fan of “the age of aquarious,” I’ll put it that way. He couldn’t give s–t, frankly. But he cared deeply about that guy who was NOT having “fun in Acupulco.” It seemed to be ripping and tearing at him that a human being could leave those he inpired “so alone” and make an ass of himself. Dylan still seems pissed, and then sad, and then pissed, etc. Remember, Elvis did “Tommorow Is A Long Time” and in ‘69, post-comeback, Dylan said, famously, that it was “the recording I treasure the most.” There are many other mentions along those lines . . . See, I don’t think Dylan would have been at all surprised if on an early September morning, due to drugs and irresponsibility, and loss of caring ABOUT ANYTHING, that a catastrophe struck. I don’t know what actually happened in the wreck, but “Tears of Rage” would be its soundtrack if it had gotten out. Any of it. Including Parker making him LOOK GUILTY by spiriting him out of state PDQ. It was quited for around 30 years: NOTHING. Then, when they found out, they treated it like a big nothing. God.
THAT, whatever happened: even if it was Richard, as stated, seemed to be the turning point: the hitting bottom. He now realized what he had become: what Bob said he was in the basement: a whore for Parker and the other old businessmen who were tone-deaf. “Come to me, now, we’re so alone. And life is brief.” Marcus didn’t somehow “get it.” He thought Bob was thinking in national-world-historical terms, when Bob’s life was so immersed in the rock ‘n’ roll that saved his mortal soul as a teen. And with the Leader of the Pack and how he had become a zombie: LOST. A lost soul who would whore himself to anyone because he didn’t seem to care: “come to me now, WE’RE SO ALONE,” Bob pleads, “AND LIFE IS BRIEF.” Anyone who hears “Goin’ To Acupulco” with even a shred of brain realizes that Bob KNEW that Elvis was on the verge of suicide, and this seemed to scare the piss out of Bob. He’d had his own moment of truth in the motorpsycho nightmare, but you get the impression that he KNEW his teen inspiration was in much deeper trouble. And he was ANGRY, and helpless, and disgusted with the way the world treats people how something like that could possibly happen to ANY human being! Bob was not insensitive. He has many strange character traits: he’s a liar and a thief, and he knows it, and he hates it but he knows there’s not much he can do about it, but he saw someone else {later, he heard a song go: “the Jester stole his thorny crown.” Wow! SOMEBODY heard “Tears of Rage” the way I heard it. STOLE the thorny crown.
He saw no “comeback,” only horror on the horizon. And really, that’s what happened. The comeback bought a decade of “life” most of it NOT alive, actually. It bought really, about two years of life, and then everything went all completely to hell. Even in ‘69, things were very bad. If, as in “Gypsy” my own direct sources were truthful {and I have no reason to doubt them; they were NOT Dylan fans}, then he saw the dichotomy between the freaky, Gypsy who lived in a bat-like environment, in darkness, surrounded by flunkies and groupies, was terrified, insecure, impossibly immature and ya know “what if they LAUGH AT ME?!”, well, Bob would have felt even worse because on stage he was wild again, but off-stage, he would have done what is described “The All American Boy {Dylan’s DIRTY VERSION}.” And it killed Bob.
By now,
Robin
November 30, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Robin: He keeps deleting me so this is my last try(really). I don’t advocate violence for me or anyone else. He wasn’t talking about my mother.(If he was it would be up to me to be the bigger man and not take the bait) I was referencing Bob and Weberman. Bob punched Weberman for going thru his trash and Weberman was happy about it: a badge of honor.
Read “Race War: Dateline Denver” by R.E. if you wanna see who is promoting violence around here. Feel free to contact me. Prindle published my e-mail without permission a few months ago to punish me. He called it “Ray Comes Out of the Closet”. Good bye and Good Luck.
November 30, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Correction: It is called “Ray Steps out of the Closet” from 6 months ago and it is still up as of now. I asked him several times(nicely) to remove it. Now that it has a useful purpose, maybe he will just to spite me.
November 30, 2009 at 10:24 pm
http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/uponsun/2009/10/bob_dylan_secret_wingnut_book.php
If you want to check it out I was involved in a discussion about Dylan including Weberman at the Phoenix News (link above.) Very nice discussion, civilized, no threats, no name calling. Actually very little namecalling,ad hominems seems to be a way of life on the internet.
Your book sounds interesting. If you’re going to wait around for a publisher I’ll buy a copy two or three years from now if I’m still around. If you want to self publish try Blurb or Lulu where all the set up is free. Lulu might be best. In the latter way you at least get it out where it can be seen and purchased now. I used iUniverse for my Sonderman Constellation at 1000.00 but that was before I learned you could do it for free. Now I have to find time to prepare another.
Personally I don’t care what Presley did, the guy saved my life. Everything I have of value was because of him. I was going down for the third time at 16 when he materialized on the Sullivan show; I saw the chimes of freedom flashing and pulled myself out of the hole I was in. I’m sure there were thousands and tens of thousands just like me. If Elvis ran over somebody, and there is no proof that he was driving, accidents do happen and what’s one life lost compared to multitudes saved. Besides in Hollywood they actually sacrifice people. It happens.
I am impressed with the Presley/Dylan connection you’re building up. But, you know, I don’t think you fully realize how badly Presley was beaten down. The hatred of the so-called Greatest Generation was genetic. They were the most repressive older generation in some time. They started hammering Presley early and hard and they never let up. I thought they would murder him for sure in the army; I didn’t think he would be coming back.
His personality was fragile too. He grew up in Darktown Tupelo which meant that he was shunned at his school while being isolated at home. He was cut off from normal development and reactions much as you were by your constant changing of schools and I, in the orphanage. Hell, I don’t even know what people are talking about half the time. All their reactions are absurd to me while mine are absurd to them. What ‘normal’ people believe is complete nonsense to me. So, imagine how Presley felt, how much he was hurt by being labeled ‘the Squirrel’ by a bunch of dudheads, Red for instance. I mean the guy, Elvis, dressed like a freak in high school and thought it was cool.
So, he was lucky to get out of the army alive. And then, not particularly wise in the ways of the entertainment world he was victimized by Parker and the Hollywood creeps. Being victimized by your manager is par for the course. Frampton sells ten million records and comes out with 1.95. Bowie was cheated bigtime. Klein cleaned out the Beatles and shook down the Stones. Even Dylan believes Grossman cheated him which may be true, haven’t made up my mind yet, but he did Dylan more good than harm.
Look at Kirk Douglas and Doris Day. I wouldn’t say Elvis ‘whored’ for anybody, I would say he was looted, plundered and robbed by thieves posing as ‘honest’ businessmen who betrayed his trust. Even then he was able to buy and maintain a 707.
If Elvis was buying big dope from the Mob, the guy was prepared for the impending drug shortage of 2314. I saw a picture of what purported to be his drug closet and there amongst the shelves of various concoctions in multiple jars were six quart bottles of pharmaceutical liquid cocaine. I’m amazed those drugs weren’t lifted by his associates at his death. Makes one suspicous.
So, I owe my life to Elvis, the feather will always tip in his favor if I’m the judge.
That being said, an accurate history is always desirable. But that means the emphasis is placed on what was done to him and how he reacted. The first goal of your enemies is to unman you. That means you are constantly demeaned and treated as an inferior and ineffectual. Elvis was.
In high school I envied a football player who appeared to be idolized. I mentioned it to him once and with sincere chagrin he told me that things weren’t as they seemed.
A few decades later when I was a celebrity in this town in a small way compared to Elvis in the wide world but bigger than the football player I learned the bitter truth of his words. So, as far as I’m concerned Elvis was a saint. Not strong enough but then the forces arrayed against him were much stronger than those against Dylan. What you can say about Dylan is that he had the courage to throw it all down and start over again on his own terms.
Life ain’t easy down here and it’s a lot harder up there.
December 1, 2009 at 10:55 am
Great reply! Look, I haven’t read the “race war” thing, but my gut tells me that you are “seeing” violence, rather than wanting it. My God, it’s all out there: that “teddy bear with a death threat” IN THE NAME OF GOD is terrifying, and the so-called “security detail” called the “Secret Service” lets two fraudes waltz right into the White House on a bet! There is danger all over. That was just a test. Obama should be peeing his pants in such a terrifying world, but he remains cool as a mountain lake, wasting time and lives and money on a search for a killer who is probably already dead, anyway. He’s becoming LBJ!! Is THAT “change”? He seems confused and scared and insecure, much as Clinton was in ‘94 in the secretly taped phone call when he doubts everything he ever believed in and at that point, decided he believed in nothing at all, but wanted to, and seemed to be going mad. {Duh. Monica was symptom, only. He was losing his mind. I wouldn’t want that damn job, and I think anyone who does is out of their mind. Or is a megalomaniac. Or stupid. Or, {clearing throat} WAS RAISED IN DISNEYLAND {uh, I mean Hawaii}. There is a CONSTANT “race war” in this country, and there always has been. Elvis put himself and his physical person in the middle of it. He WAS just a kid then, but he also felt he was “making a contribution” because he said “if I give just ONE kid some hope . . .” You were one. Bob was another. Janis Joplin, another. Even Michael Jackson, who couldn’t quite admit it, of course, but he was profoundly moved by what he saw on a TV in Spain {on tour as a teen} when women, and maybe some men, too, THREW THEMSELVES ON ELVIS’S HEARSE IN SHEER LOVE! If you were a loveless teen, living in terror and wanting love, you’d damn sure remember that charming kid of his. And he did. He simply wanted to join what seemed to be a loving family. And he was mostly right. But Lisa was neglected a lot, and he wrote a LOT about child NEGLECT at this time, and I think he meant her. I really do. The kid was perceptive. Well, duh. He DID join the family, whether mother-in-law liked it or not, and now Mom is in England keeping watch over her disintegrating daughter, going absolutely insane, it is very clear. For the photo shoot {it is claimed that current hubby TOOK THE PHOTOS: what a stupid crock}, SHE REMOVED HER WEDDING BAND FROM HER CURRENT HUSBAND. Duh-uh-uh. In Elvis’s mind, he saw a better world, with NO “race war” and imparted this dream to his child. But the world is mean, and not made of Elvis Presley’s dreams, sad to say. Or even all of ours, the “rock generation” or whatever that means. I was kinda late, but we all listened to ’60s, then ’50s rock, almost exclusively. It’s a fact. The ’70s were mostly shit. John Denver, Manilow, and worse: AIR SUPPLY {what an apt name!}, and god help us all, KANSAS, the group. Dylan felt that from the basement era on, because he was, well, Dylan. He WAS a freakin’ genius on a level that very few can even comprehend: that is of no question, and I’ll fight for that one, you bet. I JUST listened, AGAIN, 3 times in a row, ONLY, to the basemen “Tears of Rage” and he’s f’king CRYING in his singing. I think it is his greatest performance, period. But, golly Greil, it is NOT about “OUR GREAT COUNTRY AND ITS TEARING FABRIC” and the founding fathers, and mountain ballads, and all whatnot.
Look, what made Bob saddest? He had a nervous breakdown and shunned all contact with people for a week when EP died. What recording did he “treasure most”? His unrecorded song on a yucky movie album. He said it was “Kismet.” Intriguing “mistake.” Kismet was a play and film that Dylan knew. Elvis’s costumes came from the film, but the DUMB ELVIS MOVIE was called “Harum Scarum.” {I recently forced myself to get through the whole thing for the first time like last week or something: sheer torture.} So Dylan either saw the film, or listened to the album. Period. He had to know damn well what album “the recording I treasure the most” was actually on, but got in a little dig {this was post-comeback, so it was an in-joke, too, probably} that all the films are THE SAME.
Anyway, he had dealt with his feelings about Mom and Dad already, and sure wasn’t seeing himself through their eyes in “Tears of Rage” as many think. Bullshit. “Independence Day” was what Dylan has said: “hearing Elvis for the first time was like busting out of jail.” Independence Day. Plus, everyone knows that according to most accounts, “That’s All Right Mama” was cut on July 5, 1954. The day immediately following Independence Day. Elvis was also 21, just, when he hit TV in January, ‘56. That is also, symbolically, “Independence Day.” That Marcus misses this in “Tears of Rage” but hears all the many other Elvis refs in the many Basement songs is WEIRD. Proper choice of word, I think. WEIRD. It’s OBVIOUS. Even Don Mclean {sp?} heard it!!!!!!!!! “The Jester ’stole’ his ‘thorny crown.” “Why must I always be the one to be the theif?” Dylan mourning cries out. What if the telephone calls Jerry speaks of continued AFTER the motorphycho nightmare? What if Elvis actually told what he did with smashing his skull on the bathtub, to “change things.” What would he have said. Easy, that one: “I copied you, godammit, and things only WENT FROM BAD TO WORSE!” Dylan would definitely have talked of “love” and all of that. And in the mid-60s, pre-comeback, Elvis was always making excuses, but just dying inside, as he later said in ‘72: “I would get physically ill . . . VIOLENTLY ill!” Making the films. Dylan knew. I have NO doubt. The song is a sketch of Dylan’s feelings throughout the whole ordeal as he watched unfold with “Tears of Rage” and tears of grief. But a deeply, profoundly FELT “sketch.” He got sick of the excuses Elvis made in the mid-sixties about success being a crapshoot, so you really shouldn’t mess with it . . . “the heart was filled with gold, as if it were a purse.” Elvis said that if you changed in mid-stream, you might be successful, but YOU MIGHT NOT. But in Dylan’s song, the “man” who is the child of the “father”: Dylan and Elvis’s millions of rocking fans. THEY carried Elvis in THEIR arms, trying to protect him from the forces of evil, who this time came at him with scissors, like in school, but they GOT HIM. And Elvis listened, in the Army, in the propaganda classes, standing up against the classroom wall, one foot against it. He would not take his chair. And he told his Lt. {who pronounces his name like “Lootenet Dan” in Forrest Gump: I am not kidding!!} that “most folks I know don’t want any more of those Korean-type things: people going all over the world, gettin’ killed so some politician can ’sound tough.’” He was adamant. When the first ate together, the Sarge made a toast: “Victory of Death.” Elvis lifted his glass, and then blanched: “Or WHAT!!???!!!!!” It was their slogan in the company. “False Instruction which WE never did believe.” Elvis was among that we, for absolute sure. I know what he went through. God almighty, you gotta get the new video “Return To Tupelo.” Heck, I always knew, but now the black people of “in town” have NAMES. Sam Bell’s grandpa own a lotta land in town, and noticed and opened some of it up to whites. Today, he says “mixed,” but that’s a 21st century idea: in reality, the Presleys were pretty much alone. The paintings are lovely, though. I mean it. There is no reason this research was never done except for the most rank racism. YOU are hardly the big racist in all this: hell, if nobody talks about what people are really thinking in this country, then we are all “too blind to see” and that freakin’ dangerous. Guralnick is a “love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal.” Period. Only reason he talked to that Buzzy buffoon for the umpteenth time, but not to Sam Bell!!!!!! And Dixie is always “The Oracle.” This is bullshit piled on top of bullshit, but if a “bad man” like Goldman says these lies, Greil condemns and shows otherwise, but Guralnick: he treats him like he was writing The Gospels. And most everyone else. And what Alana Nash dug up about the Col. is from Govt. documents, dammit. Fred Goldman calls the murder situation in Holland “coincidence” and points out that it was at least “50 years in the past.” More actually, but I didn’t think that was supposed to matter in MURDER!! I mean, if Elvis screwed up big time that night, it was “just a childish thing to do,” but Parker quite probably, in his total inhumanity that he so often demonstrated, actually DID it. Sure, she cannot “prove” it. The case was botched worse that Jon Benet Ramsey!!!!! But he left MONEY behind, not just assorted stuff, clothing and birthday presents. Immediately after the murder. Right around the corner. Now, how MANY “constitutional psychopaths” {U.S. Govt. records} you reckon lived so near, huh? And just coincincidentally fled that night? Huh? Goodman, like a lot of people, for some unfathomable reason want protect a man with the morality of Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot, combined. I mean, Parker was THAT bad. Geller saw the guys dunking Elvis’s head in a bucket of ice water near the end, and the Col. came in to check. He pounded his elephant head cane, and demanded that Elvis be “on that stage” that night, and that was “the only thing that matters.” Even today, Geller seems to shudder as he says “where’s the humanity?!?” Well, he had NONE.
Elvis DID. If he WAS the real responsible party in that wreck, he would have gone as crazy as you hear on the January recording sessions, and in Johnny Braggs account of the strange visit. He didn’t seem to know what Elvis wanted: “what’s eatin’ you?” Between the lines, you can tell that Bragg felt he was being hit up for a loan. And in ‘71, he told – I think it was Escott – that he wanted to get in touch with Elvis regarding “a loan.” The writer just thinks wants money for nothin.’ But I can see what happened in ‘67 so clearly. The baby was coming due, the undoudted settlement was on the way {why Vernon took durable power of attorney in Cali., without any doubt: it may have been Richard Davis, but it was Elvis car, his car fender, and his keys which killed the man, and you know the family was not just gonna walk away from somebody who DIED, accident or whatever: Jesus, look at Mr. Squeaky Clean, Tiger Woods!! Thanksgiving Night. Hits a pump AND and tree. Seems he was fooling around, and his wife had cut his face with a golf club or something . . . I mean, the road’ll make a bum out of the best of ‘em, as is the old saying.} Anyway, if it happened, Elvis would have done so much drugs to just numb himself. He sand “It Is No Secret” on Granny Parthenia’s old player piano when he saw Johnny. You know the lyrics: “He’ll pardon you/It is no secret, what god can do.” He wasn’t talking about Johnny, in my view. But as for the actual incident, even if it WAS Richard, Elvis bore much of the blame for being out all night clubbing on the Strip, as he did at that very time, often, and almost always loaded to the gills. Dodi Fayed was not driving, but it was HIS FAULT. The whole world knows that! Elvis knew, too, and he may have saved many of our lives {hey, when my mom, well, when she went to be with Elvis, ok, I can say that: I can’t say the word, well, it was Elvis’s singing that I think saved my life. “I Will Be True” and the other just voice and piano songs from those ‘71 sessions. All night I’d play those songs and cry, but it was cathartic, and nothing else could help me. Nothing. I know that Elvis knew the pain I had. And he expressed it. And he was a “lonely only,” terrified of the lonliness that he knew lay ahead. He didn’t want to bury his Daddy or even Dodger. I KNOW how he felt, and the music hits in the chest and smashes on your heart.
In “Tears of Rage,” you can hear Bob’s broken heart. Betrayal, grief, helplessness, but in the end, a welcome: “come to me now, you know we’re so alone, and LIFE IS BRIEF.” With all the anger over it all, he still opens his arms wide in welcome.
He didn’t know that Elvis was against Vietnam {or whatever the hell he knew they were planning} four years before JFK really saw the light clearly. The GOT HIM, after all: they destroyed his cousin Junior, who he knew would soon die, and in 1960, Junior OD’d. Korea-shell shock. Both Elvis and his mom and dad knew of Junior, but vernon felt his son wouldn’t get killed or crazed or anything. He was wrong: one night, while pulling guard on the frozen Czech border, the jeep had “an electrical fault” and filled with carbon monoxide. He didn’t wake up on his own. They had to get him oxygen and suchlike. He almost died. His mother was right. And so was he. The Lt. once saw a guy in “peacetime,” get rolled over and flattened by a tank. He shared this happy morsel with Elvis, but why, I can’t imagine. The kid didn’t need any more horror. God, his whole life was a horror story. Of course I know what he went through. The other kids in school didn’t want to even accidentally brush against lest they be contaminated. They KNEW where he lived. They saw his “overhauls.” It was all DISGUSTING to them. The tormented him: cut his guitar strings {which would truly be mended until Steve Binder did so in ‘68, kinda forcing him to display his prowess on the instrument to the world, not just in his secret jam sessions. God, you gotta hear the rehearsal tape: blows your mind. “500 songs,” Elvis complains of “popular music” of the ’50s era, with “the SAME CHORD PROGRESSION.” He demonstrates it! It’s brilliant. He then blisters “When It Rains, It Really Pours.” Its writer, Billy Emerson, said he and Elvis made demos after the station went down at night. Elvis was about 18, or even 19 at the time, but also, 18. I have suspicions about “Blue Suede Shoes.” Too many ridiculous stories about how it was written and they conflict. And some make NO sense. Plus, it is a known fact that Cash bought songs. For a price. Wanna bet he shared this morsel of gold to his “hillbilly” friend, Carl? On the Cash show in the early ’70s, Carl came on to do “Blue Suede.” When Cash said “the man REALLY responsible for Blue Suede Shoes,” Elvis, according to at least three different people who were there, exploded in rage: “why that jealous son-of-a-bitch!” Besides, Elvis’s version of “Hands Off” that he did in ‘71 is a unique version. There’s a great book of “original version of Elvis covers” and for this song, there is NONE. He says “Birthday Cake” comes closest, but is NOT the same. Elvis’s is new.
There is copious evidence of his songwriting ability, but yeah, he was scared of the reaction. But truly, he was screwed, blued, and tatooed from Sun on. Even the magnificent blues he made from that crappy “I’m Left . . .” {A Campbell’s Soup jingle for a melody! With a stomach-turning happy ending. Elvis trashed it, and made a new song. Adding verses, words, and cutting out the crap. And it’s a blues, so he completely tossed the “melody” such as it was: stolen from a jingle. And many more. Lots of defense-mechanism profanity. I’m not claiming he could have been “another Dylan”: but he needed to be his OWN SELF. The just kept squashing him, and over and over and over. It’s amazing he held out, both artistically and in terms of just staying alive for the short time he did. Amazing. A lot of kids would have been dead by 21 or 22. On the Jailhouse Rock set, and during that time, he was getting mondo depressed. He somehow survived it. I wonder if he really was “sleepwalking” when Junior tackled him just as he was about to walk out a 12-story window in Hollywood. He was so miserable at the time that you never know. His mother’s problems, the crushing “prison” theme bringing back horrible early memories, and Junior’s frightening presence as he awaited his own “Greeting” notice.
He left to face Nixon exactly 13 years after getting the notice.
He told “Bud” Krogh: “I am just a poor boy from Tennessee, and I want to pay back for everything my country has DONE FOR ME.”
With hairspray dripping over uncombed hair, a supposed allergy making jump around in the seat, a story that “Bud” said sounded “like a script” and red, bloodshot eyes that even freaked out Nixon himself. He ordered the president around! “They got wives, ya know!” Elvis was insulted and corrected him when Nixon said of Jerry and Sonny, “you’ve got a couple of big ones there.” Elvis told him they were his friends, not “bodyguards.” Nixon sort of sheepishly said “oh.” I don’t think he even believed that. Lamar said at the very end it almost started to get ugly. I don’t believe Lamar, but he said that Elvis said “I guess that’s why they call you Tricky Dick,” whereupon Nixon allegedly replied, “I guess that’s why they call you Elvis the Pelvis.” Lamar said it, so I doubt it, but you never know.
Elvis was far more complex that most people have any idea. But his life was almost all misery. Only swimming in the music truly relieved his pain.
“Tears of Rage” is powerful ONLY because Dylan is singing about what he really gave a damn about. And he frankly gave up on Abe, etc. a while back with no regrets. He changed his name, voice, and life story. That person was gone.
He didn’t want the person who “freed him” to throw “us all aside.” But then it gets so personal: “come to ME now . . .”
I think he heard the rumbling on the railroad tracks. That Long Black Train with its 16 coaches was coming, and it was gonna take his “baby” and no joyous triumph this time around, as in the song. You had to paying NO attention not to feel the vibrations on the track, and Bob, one of the few at the time, DID pay attention. “The recording I treasure the most.” “Like busting out of jail.” “I had a breakdown!” God, is Greil THAT stupid? There are so many OTHER references in the basement stuff! I guess he IS that stupid. One person DOES matter, see. And that’s why Bob cared. What he saw was the person who freed him, who kinda seemed to make promises, but who was know this lost soul with heart full “gold, as if it were a purse.”
Dylan had money, sure. But Grossman took more than money from Bob: he used the incident at Newport, which tore young Bobby’s heart out, really, and USED IT, Parker-style AS A GIMMICK to sell tickets. He took more than money. He was trying to get his soul. Bob told him that HIS own dreams were out of his manager’s control.
What he wished for the one-time teenager on the Hayride who was “all geared-up” to fly into “That’s All Right Mama.”
1967: “with a blanket underneath his arm, and a coat of solid gold.” Guthrie? Your choice.
Like I said, “will the real folk singer please stand up.”
Oh, and yes, you WILL live for my book. Honest.
I write my stuff long-hand, though. Need a typist and a few interviews, and I’m done. My uncle was jazzed and SAID he’d get me a proper agent or something. This means more to me now than exploiting Lisa’s late husband. I know money is important, but dammit, I have some tough stuff here, and Elvis always sells. Because people care so damn much.
That youngish rapper 50-cent recently said “Elvis had BLING!” Indeed. He’ll always be cool. Michael’s story is almost too ugly for people to tolerate, actually. Most folks don’t understand that. It’s so beyond horrible that people don’t want to take it. Elvis had a horrible time, but God, how he tried, and when he did, boy, you stood aside, and Bob knew that. Knows that.
Bye now,
Robin
P.S. Oh, Ray: look, I know what you mean, but if he broke the rules, just say so: don’t do him one better. Stop the flame war, please. I dig the ‘net because it IS or was civil. I think they used to call this a “boyfight.” And some of us should get out of the way when that happens. I’m serious: a fellow female friend once warned me about “boyfights.” Just get out of their way and let them get it out of their systems.
December 2, 2009 at 11:27 am
Guys, what I have to say is important, historically to “Tears of Rage” and what I said before. It is now UNDENIABLE. Dylan says his songs change their meanings over the years. Yeah, sure, but wait. The Steve Allen horror took place on Sunday night, July 1, without ANY WARNING. The picketing started the following day, and then the reviews were read. The kids who Elvis would later serenade with what he called “The Hound Dog National Anthem” because he made them stand up and prepare for The National Anthem, and then he sang “Hound Dog” and nearly demolished several stadiums were out IN FORCE, in his defense. “We WANT THE REAL ELVIS,” many signs said. These pictures made papers all over the country, and news of them would have reached Bob on about July 3rd, along with news of Elvis’s July 4th concert at Russwood Park in Memphis. Elvis was raging and defiant: “You’re gonna see the REAL ELVIS TONIGHT!” They were now a “Nation.” And Elvis and every “kid” knew WHO they were: they were not part of “the greatest generation,” much less older folks than that. Or the college kids who condemned him as low-class, etc. They were his people. Period. And a picture Wertheimer took just after the Allen show is startling: several white kids, female and male are joined by three absolutely DESPERATE-looking black girls reaching for Elvis as if he were a life-preserver. This had to enrage a whole lotta protectors of society-as-they-knew-it. They were after him, out to GET him. He was under assault, by Allen, by the press, by individual parents in their homes, and etc. Bob was part of that Nation, and he knew he was almost already “in” the business as far as HE was concerned. There was a real war on, and it fell right on, guess what? INDEPENDENCE DAY! And Elvis took a stand, and it was reported, too, in newspapers all over. The whole episode truly divided the country, and unbeknownst to many, parts of the world outside the country. But especially in the U.S.A. “Independence Day” was the day someone Dylan with whom Bobby could truly relate, TOOK A STAND against those “frustrated old types,” as he once sneeringly put it.
Do you think Bob forgot, as he paged through the record racks, searching for “Tommorrow Is A Long Time” in ‘66, or even ‘67, because he was racked up for a while. Maybe THAT SONG, that performance of that song, sort of gave him courage to get moving again: to REALLY recover. Because to see such sublime beauty called a “bonus song” on a trashy album whose title {“Spinout,” and it was a spinout} he could not even spit out of his mouth in ‘69, it so disgusted him, so he said he thought it was “Kismet.” Which had a little class: not Harum Scarum, but the actual Kismet. It was easier to even say. And seeing it all come together in this way: his song, sung more beautifully than he could have ever imagined, by the guy who created a new “Nation” of new kinds of people, KNOWINGLY, back on Independence Day, 1956, and hearing this beauty submerged in amongst whore-songs had to be absolutely crushing: almost killing. Dylan had ears: Sgt. Pepper was crap unless you were flying on acid or some kind of whopper of mind-bending substance. And other “acid-rock,” Dylan knew, was ephemeral crap. He had to feel “so alone.” Was he the only one who realized what had become of the young people who rejected their elders at a time when you weren’t supposed to even THINK of doing so? No, he knew there were some others. But not many. Most younger people than himself: the “boomers” had only transient memories of Hound Dog Nation. For Bob, a new world had been born. And then, now . . . THIS. A song sung with such chillingly sublime beauty, thrown onto a piece of garbage, as if IT, too, were garbage, as if the song were garbage, as if the leader of the Hound Dog Nation was CERTAINLY human garbage, because what else could they think of him to do this to this performance? And to Bob’s song, sung as no one could or would ever sing it. He was now immersed in the whoring process!! There it was: his song, sung so gorgeously, with rotten meat thrown all over it, and his one-time “leader” LET THEM DO THIS TO HIM AND TO THEM!! “Independence Day.” What did it mean now, anyway? THEY seemed to have really won. A war Elvis himself {Dylan could never have know this: I only found out by actually reading one of the stacks of books I have that I haven’t yet plumbed, assuming it was all bullshit, but it wasn’t: Elvis knew the Lt. wanted to hear “Victory Or Death” – not “no more Korean-type things, gettin’ people killed just so some politician can ’sound tough’”} raging, people gettin’ killed for said politicians, those three black girls feeling betrayed by a lie written in a white-owned “colored” magazine that printed a “man-in-the-street” Memphis “interview” with a man with no name about a “rumored crack made after a Boston appearance” that said bad things about black people and “shoe shining.” Elvis couldn’t shine his shoes at the time, first of all: he wore only bucks, white, and by that time with cool buckles. He never appeared in Boston until 1972, nor on the galloping rumor’s other “venue”: the Edward R. Murrow Show, on which Elvis NEVER appeared. He was on some guy called “Hy Gardner,” and said nothing like that, or even close. He DID duck a question about smoking marihuana {sp?}, and laughed and said “that one really takes the cake” when Gardener asked, absurdly, “is it true you once shot your mother?” Elvis never shot any living creature, ever. Never went hunting, not even as a boy with his dad on an invitation. He refused. And he never hunted, never shot anyone. He simply liked the popping sounds, he said, and this was the plain truth. He lived for sound.
But not the sounds Bob heard surrounding the beautiful rendition of a song he wrote, and never DREAMED at the time that the Leader of the Pack would record it, and so beautifully, to boot.
“Tears of rage, tears of grief . . .” What ELSE could he feel? And that memory of the pimply youngster with a backbone of apparent steel who, on Independence Day said THEY would not change him, and that they would get their wish: “you’re gonna see the REAL Elvis tonight!!” They “carried him in their arms, on Indepence Day,” and now he had sent them all on their way. Dylan was now some kind of “King of Rock,” “Why must I always be the one to be the thief?” This is ONE “theft” he did NOT want. He did not want to be the “rock king” as Joanie called him, not even KNOWING, apparently about Hound Dog Nation, and how there would be NO BOB DYLAN without that particular “Independence Day” and the ordeal that his hero survived and over which his pimply hero triumphed. “Back then,” a mere kid of just 21 years had told the older generation that they old news and had better get out of the way, ’cause, well, the times were a’changin and Bob felt this to his toes. But in ‘67, himself recoiling from his own fans, from a rock culture that seemed lost and unfocused, filled with middle-class college-loving kids {so unlike Bob, who resented “college” almost as much as Elvis himself} who were against a war THEY would never have to worry about. A draft they could dodge at will, at the time. While Elvis was dragged off and “shorn” as the headline announced later in ‘56, as they promised Elvis they would {after he stupidly endorsed a candidate who had already lost once, and then said “there should be no draft”: what do you think “Tricky Dick” said to THAT? Simple: “draft the punk.” It’s not complex at all. 13 years later, Elvis looked him in the eye. Maybe he just HAD to. “I am just a poor boy from Tennessee, and I want to PAY BACK for everything MY COUNTRY HAS DONE FOR ME.” Grinding poverty, living in dangerous boarding houses in Memphis, where anything could have happened to a little boy from the countryside, and then on to a fame that was also a kind of repeat of Jr. High and High School: ridicule, scorn, and then, finally, physical attack: the draft. His mother’s death, which could be traced directly to the draft: she was out of her mind with worry, not just over missing him, but with thoughts of Junior Smith, a war that could pop up any moment, anywhere . . . she was not a dumb woman. Nor even ignorant. Neither was her son. He’d go over to Disc Jockey Eddie Fadal’s house when he didn’t know his parents could be “dependents” who could help him live off-base with him, for months . . . Fadal remembers the phone calls: “Mama. Elvis., then just crying and moaning for like a solid hour. Stone cold fact. Not deniable: this is what actually took place. Then she succumed to liver disease in her attempts to drown her miseries and terrors for her only child, who had been brutally assaulted by the powers-that-were{are?}, his almost psychotic grief reaction at her death, and then the frozen Czech border, a brush with death {the ELECTRICAL system involving the heater had been the culprit: don’t believe Esposito: he’s lying — and Elvis always remember the basics of how to wire stuff: he do it on stage, waving off the roadies. Honest: he did this! So, if the heater was “faulty,” you have to wonder exactly how it got that way, just a little. Either way, it was a close call} in the Army and utter misery as well, and then when he returned “home” his mother was not there. He was a motherless child: he HAD “no home” as he saw it. Just, I guess, “a place for {him} to stand.” “G.I.Blues”: he knew it was crap, but he just did it. He no longer cared about his “contribution” to the youth of “Hound Dog Nation.” He just no longer cared at all. He said he cared so much he got sick, but by then it was too late. “I’m not there; I’m Gone.” With a parenthetical addition to the title written on it: “{1956}” The bootlegs give you titles as written. And that’s what they wrote on “I’m Not There {1956}.” You can check the bootlegs for yourself, if you have them: this is just a fact. But not an unimportant one. Elvis’s living ghost seemed to haunt that “basement.” Because it haunted Bob, period. HIS SONG. So lovely, and thrown in with garbage as if Elvis, the song, and Bob, too, were ALL garbage together. How would YOU feel if YOU’RE song, recorded so lovingly by Elvis were treated as a “bonus song” on “Spinout”? Me, I think I’d throw up or something. Go crazy. Or if I could, which I can’t, write “Tears of Rage.”
“Come to me now, you know we’re SO alone. And life is brief.” The Band’s version is NOTHING compared to the one on the legal Basement tapes release. Dylan really does sound like he’s crying.
On the MTV Video Music Awards this year, Madonna chastised herself and the audience for “abondon”ing another vital force in the rivulets and streams and rivers of American music, but perhaps she got it backwards. Sure seemed that way to me. But maybe it always works both ways, this “abandonment” thingy.
Did Dylan and his felow compatriots in “Hound Dog Nation” “abandon” Elvis, or was it the other way around.
In “Tears of Rage,” at the end, it doesn’t matter: Dylan says “come to me now, you know we’re so alone, and life is brief.” Dylan, no matter what bullshit he tells some cub intern reporter for Rolling Stone, a sort of dead magazine now, clearly did not abandon that Hound Dog Leader. But he cried tears of rage, of grief, before opening his arms wide with almost desperate welcome. His song SOUNDS like those three black girls LOOKED just before the Independence Day “stand”: desperate. They didn’t want sexual contact, I don’t think: it was somehow much deeper. They wanted to “touch the hem of his garment.” So what did Dylan do after Elvis died? Yes, he made an album, which was uneven, but all during this, he was going through serious changes. He became a Christian and wrote new “spirituals.” I wonder why {sarcasm}? It would have been too obvious if he had simply recorded the usual songs. He knew he could not top the dead guy’s performances on them, anyway. So he did the next best thing. I think he went as crazy as Elvis when HIS mother died. “The child is the father of the man.” If the Hound Dog Man was the symbolic “child” in what he did and in WHO PROTECTED HIM – or tried to, it was the “father” {his real fans, who cared} – whose lives he changed, and sometimes saved, and they “carried him in {their} arms, symbolically. Scratched his name in various glass objects {sand is glass, I believe}, etc. And when under assault, stood up to protect this “child” they “fathered” by BEING his fans, and protectors. But they were teens, mostly, and if “the child is the father” of “the man,” Dylan had to wonder what kind of young man the pimply young leader had become. Garbage? A whore for the old men who hated him? HOW could something like that happen? If you were Dylan, a musician in his soul even as a very young child, but especially by ‘56-’58, when he started in earnest, and you couldn’t give a shit about “Woodstock Nation” and its total self-involvement {how can I avoid the draft? Whereas Elvis seemed to genuinely care about the OTHER kids when he spoke to his “Lootenet” as the guy spells out the pronounciation, ad nauseum. He figured he’d live {by that time, with his mother in her grave, who knows if he even cared if HE lived or not}, but what about what they PLANNED to do in the near future? “Most folks I know don’t want any of those Korean-type things, gettin’ people killed just because some politician wants to ’sound tough.’” He called Ali “The People’s Champion.” By “the people,” he meant those who WOULD be drafted, as he was: those who couldn’t go to college, who didn’t know the dodges, etc. Those who maybe thought they were doing something for their country {in 1970, as a prank, Elvis told a Vegas crowd: “The Vietnamese Army is IN THE BALCONY!” The people dove for cover! I swear! He then said “hey, you hear rumors; I just work here.” And giggled. And that grin, of course, with a shoulder shrug. He was no “dummy” no matter what people called him. He copped the joke from Bobby Kennedy: “when they cross the Rockies, I’ll get worried.” Elvis was for him: he cared about the poor and hopeless. He was NOT for “Clean Gene,” for SURE. And his mockiing of LBJ on the set of the ‘68 comeback special is really funny. You gotta hear it for yourself: it’s a little complex, dealing with “an all lady topless band” called “The Lady Birds” he jokingly says are staying in “the Presidential Suite” in Vegas, where such a band actually performed. “Yeah, in Vegas: they got ‘em.” Then he mimicks {sp?} The President at the time: “Mah Fellah Uhmercans.” You gotta hear it for yourself. He saw it all coming, but he knew that not all “war protesters” as he was asked by a reporter once, were the same. Some were spoiled middle-class brats, and some were poor folk like himself, who WOULD BE DRAFTED, AND MANY WOULD BE KILLED. He knew this when he still had “terminal acne” {gosh, he even has a big zit on the ‘68 special; you can see it grow day by day, as he was obviously squeezing at it, making it worse}. He had been so young, so wise, so scorned as an idiot . . . but he was not, and Dylan KNEW he knew better about the films, first hand, or not: he knew that Elvis knew he had sold his whole soul, and now his heart was “filled with gold, as if it were a purse.” “You might not!” Elvis warned of tempting “success” in those days. Made excuses. But he was clearly goin’ nuts by the time he cut “Tommorrow Is a Long Time.” And then they trashed it by sticking it on “Spinout” where almost no one could find it! Bob was the one who told the world about it in ‘69! “The recording I treasure the most.” But he would not say the correct album. Maybe he wasnted the fans to pour through the ocean of sewage in looking for it! So they’d somehow know that Bob had to be some kinda fan to even have found the thing. And they’d know, in ‘69, what Elvis had gone through, put himself through, too, in those hideous years of self-abnegation. Why did it mean so much to Bob? Well, now he had a leader other than his cold, stony home. Now he had someone, so close in age, too, to who he could look up for inspiration and the courage to DO IT! And with all of that, with the cry of defiance on “Independence Day” when Hound Dog Nation carried EP in their arms on July 4, 1956, picket signs and all, he seemed to have said “screw you, too.” I mean, it had to HURT. Bob was now in this business, and he had suffered many slings and arrows himself on this account. He felt betrayed, yet he opened his arms wide in welcome, almost begging. He could see this was a lost person, a soul ripped up, a body in danger of actual death. “Tears of Rage,” tears of grief. I think he expected NO comeback AT ALL; he expected a headline in the newspapers: “Elvis Presley Kills Self in Mysterious Circumstances.” Or something on that order.
In 1977, it did happen. No, not an actual, well-planned suicide, but he did himself in. He knew that he’d HAD his comeback, that he somehow couldn’t get away from the Col., and that he’d never see the inside of a British instrument shop. He’d never act again in any film. That dream was totally trashed. His mother, who should have been a grandma in her 60s, and still active and involved, was long dead, and he so longed for her. His Daddy had one heart attack already. And now, the first “guy”: Red West, along with his cousin, had destroyed his reputation, and made him look like a lying fool. He felt his daughter would hate him for the “evil” things he’d done. Be ASHAMED of him. She is not, but how could he know, then? 42 isn’t all that mature, really: WE know that now. It’s a confusing time. And Elvis was a junkie, and so confusion was utterly normal, and most confusing. He hurt in his gut from real pain, and from phychological pain that went back to childhood. He just couldn’t hurt any further, I think. Enough. But people would be hurt, and he had no idea how much. Bob was just one of the millions who hurt, and of the many thousands who STILL hurt because of all the good things of life that he missed. Both before and after his death. His daughter needs him now: that is clear. But, uh, he’d really like to help her, but “I’m not there; I’m gone.” 2009. Bob is still angry: that much is clear. But he still remembers how good it had been on that Independence Day, 1956.
The interviews should never be taken literally, and anyone who does, doesn’t know beans about Dylan. Maybe he felt like EP seemed still “lost” even after the comeback: if they had met in ‘69, he would have known for sure. And I think it’s clear that he knew for sure.
For Dylan, it is not necessarily a world-historical tragedy, though he knows it is that too, but a personal one. I just know, from the songs alone, that he felt he could have helped. He would have been wrong, I think, but it’s survivor’s guilt. Kinda universal. It’s easier to cling to the older Chuck Berry, older than Elvis by quite a bit {quite more than Elvis and Dylan!}. It’s easier. There’s undoubtedly still a lot of pain in it all. He bet his life on what the guy pointed toward. Really. Threw everything in his past away to be something totally new, himself. And the feelings of betrayal and loss and all whatnot, well, there you have “Tears of Rage.”
Sorry, Bob, but some songs have a particular meaning. You an apply it elsewhere, of course, but in ‘67, it meant nothing else. And, in a way, everything else. It meant so much to him. Which is why the performance is so moving. Duh, Greil. Amazing how blind some people can allow themselves to be to the obvious. Or it was embarrssing to him to say it, or I dunno.
But I DO KNOW what was eating at Bob in that basement. “Why must I always be the one who is the thief?”
“Watchtower”: a lotta people think the War: I guess so, but whatever. You can talk about a bunch of songs, but “Tears of Rage” is very clear to me now. Too clear because the guy still is troubled, somehow, by what happened to “the deliverer” on “Independence Day.”
Now you two fellas can keep fighting if you like, or you can listen to “Tears of Rage,” but only after listening to it on the original “Spinout” album, and throw in Harum Scarum: hell, try to get through the movie! And then look at Alfred Wertheimer’s photos and essay of the actual “Independence Day” of ‘56.
I mean, it’s almost too easy at this point.
Bye now,
Robin
December 2, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Robin: I just read all this and it has been very educational. I think your theory makes sense and I’d love to read your book. I listened to Basement Tapes over and over when it came out on vinyl but that’s been 20 years or more since I heard it. Luckily I have a phonographic memory.
“What poor daughter ‘neath the sun would treat a father so? To wait upon him hand and foot and always tell him, No.” What do you make of that line? Who is the daughter, the father and if one was waiting hand and foot, would not the answer always be Yes? I have no theory of my own, just curious. I kinda hear both Bob and Richard Manuel singing the song in my head. I think it was Richard who sang it at the concerts as recorded in Before the Flood(1974).
I do know that I’m Not There was left off of the official Basement Tapes for some strange reason. I did not hear it until the movie came out. I have the movie soundtrack. I’ll go check to see if (1956) in in the title…No it’s not. Thanks to you I now know the historical significance of that year. About the R.S. interview: I was surprised that Bob discounted the later Cash recordings. I remember some jewels there. Hurt and The Man Comes Around are a couple off the top of my head. I do sense a hint of a slight rift there. Or maybe they just lost touch. Bob tends to do that with his relentless schedule and Gemini ways. I talked to Ramblin’ Jack Elliot recently. I don’t think he’s spoken to his old friend in 20 years or more. And it does not make alot of sense that Bob would turn down a meeting with Elvis. He made time for the Pope, why not the King? You may be onto something. Maybe it was just too private, like you said. As for R.E.P: I’m done with trying to change his mind. It is like getting stuck in the mud: the more you gun it, the stucker you get. I tried logic, humour, friendliness, insults, friendly insults. He doesn’t seem to get my humour or my logic, so I will just Let It Be (as the Beatles say). E-mail me. I need to get out of this forum for my own mental health.
December 2, 2009 at 10:59 pm
Reconstructing Presley’s year 1956. Sounds interesting. As I understand it in July of ‘56 Presley had the audience stand up and sing Hound Dotg as the national anthem. How long after that was it before his draft notice arrived?
Also, when did Parker sign the movie contract with Hall Wallis? Here the plot thickens. If you want to destroy someone short of a very suspicious death how do you do it? One way would be to destroy his career. I think it odd that they would put someone they detested in the movies which would further his success had unless they had an ulterior motive. In 1932 MGM signed the rights to Tarzan away from Edgar Rice Burroughs with the intent of making Tarzan ridiculous. Backfired, of course.
So, let us assume that Hound Dog Nation was taken as a defiant declaration of war. Essentially the opening shots on Fort Sumter. For a war between youth and the ‘Greatest Generation.’ I certainly felt there was a war against young people at the time. What then? The most obvious counter move was the draft. Powerful tool in the hands of the Generation. Get him out of the way for a couple years and let the fickle kids forget about him. Parker was able to successfully counter that move. That was the Goys vs. Elvis. This was a multi-cultural society even back then.
Now, it’s important that you read Gus Russo’s The Outfit and his Super Mob because the entertainment industry was locked up by the Jews and Sicilians. Forget NYC, Chicago is the metropolis of the country, certainly West of Appalachia. Chicago is where the fate of the country is determined as witness Jack Kennedy and Barack Obama.
You should also study the 1958 film The Girl Can’t Help It. The industry in a nutshell. The Mob, both NYC and Chicago, had a tight lock on the music business except for the Hillbilly music of the South which Js and Ss despised but that is where the challenge to their lock came from. Not only came from but in dollar numbers that exceeded their wildest imaginations.
In November of ‘56 I went into the Navy. At that time the lid was blown off S&J music control. In Philly, Top 40 radio was playing Ferlin Husky’s Gone, Carl Perkin’s Matchbox. Pure Hillbilly. This was pre-Fabian and Frankie Avalon which were Mob counter moves to regain control. In ‘56 they moved Tommy Sands up to the front line. Sands was no Fabian. Fabian was no Fabian either but the all out promotion succeeded.
Elvis already in the clutches of the draft, Wallis hurried a movie through. Elvis was no actor but it didn’t matter although I mourned his passing. The movie ‘Love Me Tender’ was appropriately a civil war film. Wallis got two other Jews, Leiber and Stoller, to write the lyrics. That duo had written Hound Dog thus making a bundle off Presley’s million seller. The song wasn’t that good, a loser for Thornton and Bell, but Presley knew the inner meaning of the song and made it fly. Up to this time Elvis was known as a raucus rocker, a dangerous man. ‘That’s all right, Mama, that’s all right for you.’ It was now time to pull his teeth.
Leiber and Stoller now penned the draggiest ballad imaginable with the most insipid lyrics. Love Me Tender was also lifted from a civil war song. They killed Elvis symbolically in the movie and Love Me Tender should have killed him musically. I thought it had but I wasn’t paying enough attention to those little girls.
So Elvis pulled off the impossible, made a successful entry into movies even though he couldn’t act and showed he could make hits out of Hound Dog or Love Me Tender which one hopes was the worst L&S could do.
These are the guys who found writing insipid songs for Elvis too demeaning but who would later pen such challenging lines as ‘Take out the trash and bring in the cat. Yakkety yak, yakkety yak, don’t talk back.’ Well, maybe they didn’t do their worst by Elvis. Beyond ‘56 they had the once defiant and aggressive Presley sobbing lines like: ‘Treat me mean and cruel, treat me like a fool…’ And they did too. Elvis went from dying in Love Me Tender to become a petty thief in King Creole to becoming a jail bird in Jailhouse Rock on to a job as a carnival Roustabout.
Nothing could destroy his hold on the generation.
But in recreating ‘56 I’d really be interested to see what you come up with. How Elvis escaped that planned demolition. I mean, there was not a lot of enthusiasm in that theatre in which I watched the movie. But then, maybe everyone realized they were watching an attempted hatchet job and were all forgiveness.
One other movie you should really be familiar with to understand the period is Dr. Strangelove. Left wing but it fairly accurately reflects the majority mind set.
December 3, 2009 at 10:44 am
Ok, fellas {if you’re not here for me, Ray, then, well, I dunno. I like to make peace; boyfights are silly and these are serious times: we can find common ground because I tend to have a sense about people. I have taught THOUSANDS of students from age 5 to 88, but mostly between 14 and the twenties and thirties, so give me a little credit. I have had students treated badly and terribly misunderstood. Before I do my Elvis/Dylan thing, I must tell you a scary story. A young fellow of about 19 years was in my class. “Social Change.” Most of the kids wanted to “stope child abuse” or “stop war” or “stop animal cruelty” or “stop ALL BAD THINGS IN THE WORLD,” etc. This one boy, not long after the Ohklahom {sp?} City bombing, blurted, and I mean BLURTED out “the government.” And then he REALLY started in with gestures: he kept opening and closing his jacket, a jacket worn on a hot summer’s day. The girls in the back were dropping any class he was in. He DID seem frightening on a number of levels. So they marched up to the chairperson’s office and demanded SOMETHING BE DONE ABOUT HIM. At the same time, another prof., who said she had been a cop in an earlier incarnation {clearly not deeply read in psychology or psychopathology, or even autism-disorders} ran to the chair and said “he’s gonna BLOW.” I was called, and told they were going to have campus police “pick him up.” I suggested some caution, but the call had already been made, and the chair trusted the supposed former cop over someone {me} who had studied for my orals {unlike her, I WAS a Ph.D. for a few years by then, and had MUCH experience with young people since I worked with learning disabled youth at FIFTEEN: I had been professional taught and certified. My double minors in college were phychology and “speech communication and theater.” But a cop, well . . . So they picked him up and said he was potentially violent, especially since he “expressed views” to a woman interrogator that were “hostile to women.” Well, he turned in his first paper, and I found out he was a BRILLIANT young man, who did not harbor hatred for “the government” or “women” or any of that, but spoke with some anguish about people who are misunderstood. I returned to class with his A+ paper, which it WAS, and observed him closely. It was so obvious: he had Tourrett’s Syndrome. He couldn’t help either the “contrary” things that his mouth blurted out, depending on the setting, or his movements that were compulsive and tick-like. By now, he had a campus “record” with the campus police as “dangerous” and the poor kid had a problem with this tick disorder which also incorporates obssessive-compulsive disorder. One of the ticks so common is to say the wrong words in a given context: often curses and racial slurs. I felt from the start that he was misunderstood, but they had the torches burning for him. And yet, he was a masterful writer, sensitive to people of all kinds in his writing, and just damn brilliant. His disorder needed addressing, sure, but he felt my trust in him, and even completed his oral report, fighting the vocal and physical ticks as best as he could. It was about people who are misunderstood. But he had broad social and political knowledge, and was NOT Tim McVeigh, AT ALL. And he would NOT “blow.” Ever. And he did not. He graduated with all “A”s in the classes where the profs realized his brilliance. He became an honor student. But he still struggled, and was never properly diagnosed. He struggled alone, exept maybe for profs who had the brains to see HIM. What right did they have to haul him off because of ANYTHING he just said that was NOT threatening? It was despicable and stupid.
I do not think you have any “disorder,” please understand, R.E., of course not, but the point is that people judge too harshly and don’t look at people and what they might really feel and why. You hate religions and groupishness: people who reject “outsiders.” Or what they THINK are “outsiders.” Your early life in an orphanage makes this understandable. I prefer to use the term “early 20th century urban immigrants.” Hollywood came from Pittsburgh, and there were greeks along with Jews. It was something they could do away from a then-hostile culture. Jewish film writers wrote some of the worst anti-semitic film stuff EVER!!!!!!! Life is full of “gray”: no human being is actually black or white, not even poor, late MJ. That’s impossible. And so on. There WAS a tendency of WWII Gen {especiallly the older vets!} to want to be “goyishah.” To blend in so much that they wanted to literally put up those “lace curtains” to cover the mammoth insecurity. Which was very real for them, but NOT for their children!! Bob and Elvis had fathers who felt they did not belong to “America.” Elvis felt his “Daddy’s” suffering so forcefully that if you look at the Nixon letter, it is that word that you really cannot even READ. They have typed it up, so you know, but on a first reading of the handwriting, it is a tiny, tiny unreadable smudge. He writes the then-V.P.’s name as “agnew.” Yes, with a samll “a.” And there’s a lot of interesting things in that letter, including a bold threat to Nixon: “I will be here as long as it takes to get the federal credentials.” A one-man sit-in!! Ok, laugh, but Elvis was in tears that day, before the call came that he could be squeed in on the “open hour” btw. the Girl Scouts. Joy, joy!!!!!!!! He would get his “Federal Agent At-Large” badge at last! But he didn’t: it only said “Special Consultant” which meant nothing. They now admit it was “honorary.” He was told it was “real.” He wanted to believe this, but was disappointed that it didn’t say “Agent-At-Large.” He was thinking of international travel and blowing right by customs {ok, no cocaine jokes necessary; I have heard ‘em all from people I’ve spoken to}. He came not to praise “America” but to flee it!!!!!!!! It’s just a stone, cold fact and even “Bud” sorta saw it, but had gotten in way too deep to get out. And he was stupid: his book shows that much. And for Jerry Hopkins, the Jim Morrison-loving “liberal” to think that Elvis was truly “sincere” and call him a “conservative” based on this crazy caped crusade is moronic, in my view. Hopkins, and I hope he don’t sue me {don’t worry, I’ll take the rap: for real}: but maybe he belonged with Nixon’s ship of fools who got themselves kicked out of the West Wing for a “third-rate burglary.” Because only a fool could take that letter seriously: Nixon didn’t, even Hoover didn’t take HIS over-the-top letter seriously, and Finlator bought NONE of it: he was a real cop, a detective, and he knew Elvis was trying pull a hustle, and would NOT bite. Elvis called him a son of a bitch. Through tears, at first. Elvis tried even to bribe him! 50,000 bucks! “For your drug drive.” Finlator told him to just put those words back where they came from, and he did. I know it was lunacy to really believe some “badge” was gonna save your ass from arrest on an international basis, but Elvis wanted to tour the world so badly, he was going freakin’ nuts. What had HE done wrong? He tried to placate the “proper people” by condemning “the freaks”: and he knew he was one of the latter. Even a girlfriend felt he was acting when he got all worked up over a televised flag-burning. She told him he could drop it now, that she “trusted” him, BUT . . . there were other matters of “trust” that she wished more to discuss, like having about 4 or 5 chicks going at once . . . See, he found this chick who worked in the House Defense Sub-Committee {or whatever: it was “defense”}. “agnew” lived a few doors away, so Elvis availed himself of this anthropological foray into Republicanland. He even asked a Sen. Murphy to “check” his letter to Nixon to see if he had said the “right” things {literally and figuratively} on the final flight to D.C.
Hopkins, wishy-washy liberal that he is/was, didn’t even KNOW that Elvis was obsessed with “Dr. Stranglove” and that he “liberally” you might say, borrowed lines and tactics in his Caped Crusade from the film. Read the letters, etc., and then, WATCH THE FILM. And lord only knows what “agnew” said in “anew”’s living room!
Anyway, you got the order of the films wrong, and Lieber-Stoller had nothing to do with the soundtrack to Love Me Tender. They handled the next three. And “Love Me” {treat me mean and cruel, treal me like a fool} was written previously, and Elvis picked it up, first “doo-woping” it, then bluesifying it in ‘68. “The Ken Darby Trio” recording backing tracks and sent over sheet music for the other three songs in Elvis’s first film. Elvis did “Love Me Tender” virtually alone: just voice and guitar. Look, the lyrics suggest themselves from the title chosen by RCA/HillandRange: it’s a DEMAND. A demand to be “true” and “tender” and to “fulfill dreams” and so on. It ain’t that much, but it’s pretty, and Elvis told both Sammy and Sinatra {who told Tony Bennett} that he came up with the lyrics on the studio back lot, with a piano and guitar for his only assistance. He’d been given the old melody, and kinda told: “do something with it.” And the TITLE, which gave little elbow room, because it’s a demand. He wasn’t sure it was any good, so he sang it on the phone to his girlfriend, who said it was not just a “pretty good song” as Elvis had said, not telling her he put down the words, but clearly insinuating it, especially in his reactions, but that it was “a beautiful song”! Elvis replied “you really think so?” He wasn’t satisfied, and I can come up with many more examples of his OWN lyric composition that way, way tops this simple little ditty. But his acting in the first film, Love Me Tender, was boyish and not refined, but by Jailhouse Rock, he had created a campy classic. King Creole was the last of the ’50s four films, and I think he was brilliant. It had been intended for James Dean, but shelved when he got killed. The moved it to New Orleans for the music. I’m sorry, but DO NOT judge Elvis by those mid-sixties films!! Good Gawd! In King Creole, he got raves, and deserved them. Dean would have, as he usually did, with face contorted and all, over-acted. Elvis watched Brando carefully, and is careful about his gesturs, which he allows to flow normally, but his eyes dance with the fury of the adolescent charcter. Notice, I said his eyes. Dean would get all rolled up in a ball, practically. Brando was so much better, it’s ridiculous, and Elvis knew it. Both director Curtiz {Casablanca!} and fellow actor Walter Mathau {sp?} thought Elvis was a genius: Mathau {sp?} was very careful about what he said: “when I say he was a “natural actor,” I DO NOT MEAN like a “dumb animal” because Mathau {damn that spelling} thought that Elvis was very bright and was a wonderful very young actor who he thought would have a fantastic future in film. After Elvis’s death, he spoke with bitterness and deep sadness as to what they did to him immediately on his return from his “lockup” in Germany. In “Flaming Star,” he mostly broods, and doesn’t speak too much, but when he does, he rather explodes. He was thinking of the people of East Tupelo who refused to visit Gladys on Sam Bell’s land “in town,” I’m sure, when he shouted “I guess these are what we call our *white friends*!!” He exploded in a fury at being that “Sranger in {his} Own Hometown,” and at his mother’s literal loss of faith. She mostly stopped going to church at that time, she was so hurt. And at school, he was tortured. ‘Till the end. In “Flaming Star” we get to see some of it. It was NOT a box office failure, but compared to the crappy “light comdedies” of ‘60 and ‘61, it could not financially compete, box-office-wise. His acting career was essentially over. Remember that people like Newman and Redford STARTED their careers, doing “youth roles” when they were 33-34 years old, the exact time when Elvis was given his final pictures. The last two aren’t horrible, but they are not much to work with. The one with the white suit {I won’t repeat that stupid title} is, for the first time EVER in an Elvis comedy, actually FUNNY! In a good way. Elvis was spiking those cigarillos he chain-smoked throughout the film, though. Almost fell backwards once while crooning the tune to “Love Me Tender” as it is the NYU “school song” {Violet, Flower of NYU}. He starts to beautifully lift his lovely eyes and sing, then the camera pulls back, and he suddenly, and even shocking himself, suddendly loses all balance and grabs tight to the piano to which he is parrallel. They left it in. Maybe for his family back home to see. I dunno. But he takes the picture as a lark, has fun with football and fireworks and cigarillos, and REAL bellylaughs, and it’s ok.
The final film, “Change of Habit” has a weird premise about nuns working with a ghetto doctor {Elvis as “John Carpenter”}, and Elvis seemingly tortures a child actress whose character is said to be “autistic” and in need of “rage reduction” therapy, supervised by a quack who later lost his licence. But what it became was a feature-length music video for “In the Ghetto.” Whatever. He seems detached. He knew that, just that year, Parker had turned down terrific roles. Dylan brags that it was himself who they wanted for “the Cowboy.” Another slight fib: they wanted him to do the song, but he turned it in too late. Elvis was first thought for the Cowboy, and he was, I swear it: this is fact: to sing “Lay, Lady, Lay,” or later that other song: Harry Nillson, or somebody wrote it. It was HIS life, after all, and even for the time, it wasn’t “X-rated” or should not have been. Col. turned it down immediately. Everything, including the singing. I think Elvis could have picked up an Oscar for it: I think it was such a good piece of material that he would have outclassed Dustin Hoffman, and walked away with the Oscar. Col. DID NOT WANT SUCH A THING TO HAPPEN TO ELVIS. He’d start feeling confident about himself. He was also offered first dibs on “West Side Story” earlier. Turned straight down.
Elvis was shockingly good actor, especially considering that he’d never even been in a school play! But no qualifiers: he had the gift. Another gift for them to crush, especially Parker.
I wanted to get that straight.
As to who the “daughter ‘neath the Sun,” well, “she” was HIM! The KIDS were “the father. First, he did wait upon them literally hand and foot {his great R&B dancing, which was called “wiggling” ridiculously}, but later, the Leader of the Pack “always answer no.” No to every opportunity. No to life itself after a while in the sixties, it seemed. It was just a device, the “gender flip” because how could you say “what son ‘neath the Sun?” Sun is, of course, Sun Records. {giggle} Gender flips are sometimes necessary in songwriting, and especially in this complex song. Many singers screwed it up, but Dylan, it being his creation, did it correctly. It was reversed, see. The “Hound Dog Nation” of youth “fathered” and protected their ‘child.’ He was always called “the boy” as in “you cannot blame the boy, but . . .” So, he was an offspring. Of his own fans, who rose to his defense. And the “Hound Dog National Anthem” I think, the prank itself, was more of a ‘57 action, though I’m sure Elvis thought it up in ‘56. In September, Elvis made that “foolish move” that he would always regret. Parker handed out “Presley for President” signs outside the Sullivan theater, and after a show, a reporter for the NY Daily News asked him about it: she mentioned that it was his very first year he could vote, so who was he for? Like the silly kid he was, he answered directly. A Democrat for Stevenson. Explained a lot about his ideas behind his decision. And then, unbelievably, said this: “there should be NO DRAFT!” In October, Billboard ran a bold headline: “Presley to Be Shorn.” Of his sideburns and hair. They came at him with scissors again. And this time, no one could protect him. They made have carried him in their arms on “Independence Day” in ‘56, and DID engage in protests of the Billboard threat/warning, but no one could stop it. Col. said he “knew” Sen. Johnson, and could make it go away. Well, jeez, you know that LBJ didn’t WANT to stop it! I think all the old farts were in agreement in Washington: “draft the punk.” Teach him some manners! {Kill him mother! Well, they didn’t know that would happen, but weren’t they just jolly that they had really, really stabbed him through the heart.} Parker could not possibly have wanted “his boy” so close to the Netherlands. But he had no real “power”: he was always a fraud. He could only harm the weak and frightened. Anyone else: he shooed them away from “his boy.” Vernon, Elvis’s “Daddy,” was especially frightened of the Col. “Don’t cross the Col.” he always warned. He saw him as a plantation owner with a grudge. Like when he was sent to prison for a grand total of 8 bucks, tops. Excuse me, not “prison,” but worse: a CHAIN GANG. Elvis was a “knee baby” of two when his Daddy was dragged off, and had turned 4 by the time he returned. After six months, Elvis saw him twice a month in the course of “family/conjugal visits” and Bukka White, who was there at the time, sometimes entertained the visisting families.
Have you ever heard Elvis’s “lining out” version of “Father Along.” And ancient form of black spiritual dating back to slavery times. The Sweet Inspirations were thrown off beat, totally, at first, and then caught up. Then, after a roaring “Oh Happy Day” the Crouch hit gospel tune, Elvis says “scared ‘em.” It was in a “rehearsal” but you would never believe it! Wow! Chilling, absolutely chilling. To know this, and bluegrass fast-picking {which he did himself!}, and Jackson-style R&B glitter {I’ve actually seen him shudder into a real “moonwalk” without even know what he had just done: it’s real fast, but when you slow it down, you feel a kind of electric shock: it’s the perfect heal to toe motion! It’s REAL.} And Ranchero music, and every kind of gospel and spiritual music. And operetta/Italian folk songs. His mom had two records, only: “Corrina, Corrina” by The Singing Breakman, Jimmie Rodgers, and “O Sole Mio” by Enrico Caruso. He did “Now or Never” for her, after her death, in tribute, I guess. But he also picked out, by ear, Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” bothered by only one chord, which Billy Goldenberg from the ‘68 special showed him. He was delighted. But he didn’t want some of the guys to know. I mean that: he’d lift his hands off the piano, PDQ, and one time they caught him, and somebody said: “what are doing that shit for?”
So, you see.
You stomp on a planted as it is budding, and it can’t grow to its full flower. It can even die.
The soundtrack to this tragedy: “Tears of Rage.”
Bye now,
Robin
December 3, 2009 at 10:47 am
Boy, did I screw up Oklahoma {sp?}!!
December 4, 2009 at 8:42 am
Oh, uh, just checked out the actual film “Fun In Acupulco.” One of the songs? “You Can’t Say No In Aculpulco.” At one point, he sings, “you always answer yes.”
But “yes” to whom? To those who sent him to the fake sets of “Aculpulco” {to which he never went; Col. said it would cause “unrest.” Elvis had just gone over all his Berlitz stuff, freshening up his Spanish!! He was looking forward to SOME kinda change . . . anyway, his Jackie Wilson style moves aren’t bad at all, but that’s about it: the rest was for Dylan to sink his teeth into}. Look, what does a “father” or parent WANT for their “daughter” or son? Their child? The one they “raised,” protected, fought battles for . . .? They hope the child grows into a fine young person, of which they could be proud. Dylan was not just a “fan” but serious about music BECAUSE of that pimply young guy who stood up to the oldsters. That “child” “raised” – even “fathered” in a sense by his fans. And the young man Elvis had grown into from the wild, pimply leader of “Hound Dog Nation” was more than a dispointment. He was lost. He let the evil old men to which he had bravely stood up at just barely 21 years take away his dignity as a human being. And for Bob to find his song, sung so sublimely on the “Spinout” soundtrack meant that he had not only been let down, but was IMPLICATED: HE, himself, was ON THAT ALBUM. UGH!!!!!!!! It was wonderful and horrible all at once. Why do you think, really, that Bob Johnston wanted to bring them together? He knew, clearly, that Dylan wanted it: not just to “meet” like that stupid publicity stunt in ‘65 with the Beatles, but to WORK, now as peers. Don’t “parents” wish to be friends with their kids when they are both “grown”? Yeah, it’s “reversed” in a way, but those kids were Elvis’s “protectors.” They felt a parental feeling about what people like Steve Allen were doing to him. And the draft was something even Elvis’s own REAL parents could not protect him from! Let alone his other fans. {Who were his biggest fans of all? Gladys and Vernon, of course. “What’s your favorite song of his?” they asked his mother at the Tupelo concert of ‘56. “Baby Play House,” she answered, without missing a beat. Damn good taste! Dylan could hardly do better.} So, it’s so clear to me. Especially when you hear a lot of the other “basement” stuff. And then “Tears of Rage.” It’s the summit, really of all that work and emotion discharged in that basement. If people want to believe it’s about his “real” parents, then I think they don’t understand Bob at all: he still says “it was like I was born to the wrong parents or something.” “‘neath The Sun.” “I saw that Sun come shining . . . ” {“Went to See the Gypsy”} “You knew. And I knew, The Sun would always shine . . .” {“Baby, Stop Cryin’” a 1978 song where he starts out by imagining himself consoling another, and ends realizing he, himself is the one who can’t stop crying, but needs to “’cause it’s tearin’ UP MY MIND!” Elvis band member {bass player} Jerry Scheff {sp?} plays the bass on it. What do you think HE was thinking of, or rather, “who”?}
That’s all for today.
Bye now,
Robin
P.S. — Hey, Bobert: if you’re peeking, you know what I’m talkin’ about, friend.
December 4, 2009 at 10:16 am
Oh, fellas, or just R.E., or Bob, or whomever: whoops.
Obviously, “Tears of Rage” is NOT “on the origianl Spinout album.” That is “Tomorrow Is A Long Time.” That’s what I had meant. Listen to “Tears” on the legal basement release, then to the Spinout album, and for good measure, force yourself through “Harum Scarum,” if humanly possible. Just to FEEL it. Then get Wortheimer’s original book and essays, and it’s all clearer than a bell.
Bye again and sorry for any confusion.
Robin
December 5, 2009 at 11:11 am
Hmmm. I suppose you’re actually taking my advice and DOING the listening/watching session to see if you feel what is so blantaly clear to me. Whatever: I’ve done a google search, and few people have listened to enough of the Dylan-basement bootlegs {or even checked the NOTES to Invisible Repulblic which is handy as a reference even though Greil is looking for something in his OWN head that Bob and friends really weren’t into doing: a critique of THE TEARING AND TORN FABRIC OF OUR GREAT NATION. Ridiculous. Dylan was getting back on his feet, both physically and psychologically, knowing he could only “fire” the man who, in essence, shoved him on “that bad motorcycle” {I can’t remember the title, but it was an 80s album with a really frightening version of country-spiritual “Rank Srangers.” Unfortunately, I have been neglectful and haven’t heard an original or several alternative older versions, which is deserves a slap on the wrist for any critic, of course, but I was moved by Bob’s lonely song, and coming after his being “saved,” listening to him end the song by boldly declaring that he WAS going to hell, where everyone, JUST LIKE IN LIFE will STILL be “rank strangers to me.” Now, perhaps how it goes, but country spirituals usually tout the benefits of HEAVEN, and how you won’t be alone, and everyone will be your friend, and so on. If not, if “heaven” is not that way, if your worldly miseries follow you into the beyond, and now you are ETERNALLY ALONE, well, then, you are in Hell. Which I think maybe Bob believes in — perhaps. In any case, whether it be the way the song is, or what Dylan made of it with just a change of a couple words. I must find out. Perhaps you know, or I could just look up the lyrics. I found it absolutely wonderful work: I hate to mention HIM again, but you ever hear the censored version of EP’s “Bosom of Abraham,”? Well, previously censored; it has come out legally. The song is meant for poor people to sing, and Elvis truly believes that he is and will die a “rich” man, which of course, he did not. He died pretty deep in the hole. To the IRS, which allegedly “did his taxes” every year. I always thought this was Parker’s bluster, because I thought it absurd, but perhaps it was true, ’cause they sure set it up so he owed them anywhere from a million to several millions of bucks or more {Priscilla says that whatever you have read, no matter HOW MUCH, she says, simply: “triple it.” She claims regretting the child support claimed that caused Vernon to take a lien out on Graceland to pay it {Elvis simply did not involve himself in any money matters unless it involved a betrayal of some sort, or in one case where he was ripped off on perhaps his Daddy’s only foray into “investment” when FBI agents came to the house to interview them both about the transaction. Elvis, naturally, was bored with all this boring business-talk, but when they left, he shouted: “wow! REAL G-MEN: IN MY HOUSE!!!” Hopping about like a little kid who’d just watched a re-run of the Elliot Ness TV thing, and then these “real G-Men” from like the 20s or 30s came in the door, right out of the TV set. If you get my point, he figured money was ephemeral, and you could always make more by doing a show or something. His father was at the very least “distressed” at his childish behavior and attitude, because they had been victims of wide-ranging celebrity-grabbing fraud. Duh.}
Anyway, from his gospel music, he learned the folowing: “well, the rich man lives/he lives so well/children, when he dies/he’ll have a home in hell.” In the version the Felton k’o'd, he says “I’ve a home in hell.” Much as Dylan apparently did with “Rank Strangers.” The 80s were a confusing time for Dylan, coming off so much sadness, loss, and confusion througout the seventies. I think the songs he intended for first Lanois album, and many of those songs, especially in the versions we now can hear on “Tell Tale Signs” are magnificent. And his “offer” to send “explanations” of the songs on “Under the Blood Red Sky” was a cool prank. Anyone who didn’t know what he was singing about had to be an idiot: that was his point. And so why would he bother trying to explain it to them?
Check out this quote I found: you’ve heard it from me, partially before:
———-
Oh sure. You’d be surprised. I was in Elvis’s hometown – Tupelo. And I was trying to feel what Elvis would have felt back when he was growing up.
Did you feel all the music Elvis must have heard?
No, but I’ll tell you what I did feel. I felt the ghosts from the bloody battle that Sherman fought against Forrest and drove him out. There’s an eeriness to the town. A sadness that lingers. Elvis must have felt it too.
——–
As I have said, maybe he should have dropped the notion of jumping over “the wall to the place where teardrops fall,” and taken one of the earlier tours, when ALL the horses were named and explained thoroughly. A fine-looking black stallion was named “Yankee Revenge” by Elvis in a spirit of great, good fun. No “lingering sadness” over something even his great-great unlce, or grandpa, or something like that, was not only “not sad” about, but in a show of defiance, named his sons after several major Yankee Generals, including GRANT! No confederates AT ALL. This was on his mother’s side, where there was quite a bit, say, not going too far outside the family for mates {I do NOT mean they were all first cousins, lord no! That did happen with his mom’s parents, but the young lady was moving into, heaven forbib, her post-25s, and the family panicked and got her to marry her first cousin. Handsome, very handsome young man in the photo! Black hair, truly “swarthy” complexion,” and a gorgeous face. Well, anyhoo . . . ). My point is that Dylan went to Tupelo with ideas in his head that seemed already made up. Nick Cave’s “Tupelo” which focuses on the ‘36 twister/flood which killed way over 220 people, and wrecked and ravaged the town, and East Tupelo both {the church just across from the Presley home, where they were not taking shelter, anyway, but this church was tore up. Their little shotgun house was virtually untouched. Not that it mattered. In a little over a year, Orville Bean would throw Vernon in jail, then the prison farm, and they lost it to him. They built it, but never owned it: it was a rental, at as far as Bean was concerned.
If Bob, you wish to “feel” what Elvis felt, go to some holiness and sanctified churches in the general area. Listen to the gospel music of the time, and earlier times, and to Bukka White, who Baby Elvis heard live-in-person with his Mama and Daddy {dressed in prison stripes}! Then maybe you’ll start to get what he “must have felt.” Go to the prison farm {I’m not sure if Parchman is what it was anymore, but you can get a book: pictures and all. And I know Bob reads BOOKS!} Read Elaine Dundy’s account {and then read mine: I may try to interview the little stinker, really. I think he would like to be interviewed by a Ph.D. instead of a cub reporter, possibly an intern, at what is still call “Rolling Stone.” I would not let him get away with a lot of bullshit, even if I had to bring Jerry Schilling down there, and see if he can call him a liar. And I think Schilling might want to face a man who called him a liar in print: Jerry says Bob “called every few months or so” during that time: the exact time of which Bob spoke: the bottom of the film years. And what about Elvis’s personal “gift” to Bob: “Lamar,” a human being who was given to Dyaln and his two buddies as, well, a gift. At around the same time, a Triumph motorcycle appeared at Rocca Place, and Elvis loved it so much that he bought Truimphs for a bunch of the guys: Marty doesn’t do bikes, so he got him a Triumph car. Little bitty car. See you couldn’t GIVE Elvis a gift, really: he wanted to buy friendship, so Dylan got Lamar for a while in Nashville. Everyone knew that Nashville wasn’t yet ready for their hair and clothing . . . Elvis didn’t want him to get hurt, clearly.
But, in the book {the interview tries to separate things, and also clean them up: “platonic” friend, this girl . . . um hmmm, but as he did NOT say in the book, he says “but they never met.” BUT Jerry left Elvis in ‘68 after a big fight over a stopped-up toilet {?), returning only sporadically until late ‘70-’72 when he was slowly returning to full-time duty. There is no way on Earth HE can swear that Elvis didn’t meet Dylan ’cause he just wasn’t there enough. Doesn’t matter if Elvis denied it {but it would have to have been in private: he made no comment on “Gypsy” when anyone else, I think, would felt quite used by that song. It would have been easy for him to say that it was a “funny” song, but no, it didn’t happen. Elvis never mentioned the song, and by that time he listened rather obsessively to Dylan’s albums. Hodge remembers that he nearly wore out “Nashville Skyline.” It’s no leap to “New Morning” from there! You better beleive he heard it.}
I think Dylan, even today, had kept a vow of secrecy made back in the day. I mean, Col. is dead, but I guess a promise is a promise. Because I had two apparently independent sources who saw the first meeting, and it was “outside” where the “lights were shining on the river of tears.” Dylan describes seeing him, apparently outside {if the room was so dark, he couldn’t have seen in!}. “I watched him from the distance, with the music in my ears.” Elvis could only really talk with either a guitar or bass in his hands. Honestly. Otherwise, he’d start stuttering, or just look down at his hands. You bet he’d have heard “music.” A clarion call, you might say: ‘over here!’ That would be all it meant. All of a sudden we go from dark, dark night to “nearly early dawn” with the hours between simply not in the song. Just “the {pretty dancing} girl, of whom Jerry SPOKE!! Again, Elvis DID make the first “move,” if you will. There was a girl they both, uh, knew {excuse me, “platonically” — whatever}, and she was the intermediary, giving Dylan the hotline. And Elvis did have a hotline. The Beatles even called the set of the ‘68 special, but Binder didn’t say which Beatle, but did say Elvis didn’t take the calls. He was nervous enough. Now he knew The Beatles knew what he was doing. Talk about pressure.
Back to Bob. “I Went Back to See the Gypsy.” Sounds more like a second meeting than going upstairs. Clearly. I mean, why? If he’d seen him out there, and etc., then why go back up to that room, where it was only to let the Gypsy know the Bobster was there. And then, disappointment. The song was recorded three times that year. I’d love to hear the first and second versions! Anyway, In August, I SAW with my own eyes, Elvis signal a “harmonica player” in the darkness of the wings, grin knowingly even letting his tongue jut out a bit on the side – playfully, and read a note, hand it to Charlie, and say “thank you Charlie,” as if to say: “be careful with this one!” I think THAT is where it all completely ended, even if Dylan completed the song already {I’ll have to re-check those recording dates}. I am sure Gypsy blamed Col. This was always so handy. When careerist songwriting team Lieber-Stoller heard Elvis ask them “how do you guys write all those great songs?” they must have felt a chill. The chill of their careers ending when rockers didn’t need them anymore. The “Jailhouse Rock” songs were done by them real quick: a few hours, and they were only words and melody. I don’t even know, judging by the many outakes available, if they had all the chord progressions finished – don’t think so. I do know, from D.J. Fontana himself the following: Elvis himself wrote the bass part to “Baby, I Don’t Care” which L/ST. have always said was just an “intro” that he played, and that THEY wrote the bass chart. D.J. told Max Weinberg {“turn off your tape recorder,” D.J. said, for some reason, afraid: Bill was dead, but his wife is NOT, and she fights for him a lot – and his son} and Bill had his little tantrum over the Fender bass guitar {hand-held, so you really had to be able to PLAY}. Well, there they were: stuck. No bass player. Elvis, D.J. said, on numerous times since, simply put his foot on the chair, and he told Max, “played that bass part through.” He had to overdub his vocal the next day, and there is a picture, and there is SOUND. “Too late in the day for this kind of sh. . . aw.” He wouldn’t say “shit.” Still his mama’s good little boy: well, not really, but he tried.
But when they told him “you don’t need to write: you’re Elvis!” Elvis got an “aw shucks” attitude, which they claim they found charming in such a big star, and said “I guess I’m just not much of a writer.” So charmingly humble: BUT. Before they could look around, the room was cleared. Game of pool, over. A guy came in to say that Col. Parker didn’t want them to get too friendly with Elvis. Well, hell, they co-produced the tracks! D.J. came up with the sound, beat, and with Elvis, the tempo of “Jailhouse Rock” by remembering something called “The Anvil Chorus.” Worked it in, and Elvis said “hurry up, man, my tongue be hangin’ out soon.” It was quite the shouter, and his voice did not yet have the depth it would have in ‘68: it was still very high and boyish. But he pulled out all the stops: his aim was to compete with Little Richard, and he wanted to win this one. Friendly-like, but he wanted to win. By ‘68, he was WAY beyond Richard, let’s face it. Just listen to “Lawdy, Miss Clawdy” the Lloyd Price thing that Elvis refashioned {get the sheet music! In ‘58, Price re-recorded it, and used Elvis’s lyrics: originally, there was no “Tornelle, darlin’” but simply “little darlin’.”} Elvis named a girl! A girl we know nothing about. In Greil’s book, before Saint Peter {Guralnick} made his thick tomes, he said that if you went to Memphis and just casually asked all around, and he did do this, the old men {this was very close to Elvis’s time on Earth, and he died a young man, while many of the bluesmen were quite old: the early-1980s}, anyway, he said that if you just asked a bit, you’d find out that “Elvis had sex with black girls” on and around Beale. He had NO girlfriend in high school: only rejection of his crushes. I don’t think a kid like that would go to prostitutes. I think he would get friendly. He did so with an American ex-patriot woman singer {black} in Paris, which is why he went BACK on his second extended leave, instead of exploring somewhere else. He was wanting to meet up with this lady again.
But Saint Peter said NO! So, that was that. Marcus had gone to the trouble, in the wake of Goldman’s attack-job, fired up with anger, and actually left that house in the Bay Area, and went to Memphis to check for HIMSELF! And now he doesn’t believe the people he spoke to because of Saint Peter! And they call YOU racist!! The both of them should be ashamed of themselves. And several others “Elvis and Dewey,” where Elvis actually played the Chicsa basement, BEFORE “That’s All Right Mama” and Dewey came downstairs, and went back up. The writer says the guy who ran the shows thinks Dewey didn’t pay the “act” {Elvis} any mind at all. Well, then, why did he introduce him at the Eagle’s Nest in ‘53 as “the Poor Man’s Liberace” in of all places, Vince Staten’s “Good Old Boy” book which claims Sam Phillips taught Elvis everything he knew about the blues and that there is “no evidence” that he had heard them or liked them before meeting Sam. Now, from the research of even St. Peter, and especially the new documentary, narrated by Kris Kristorferson, we know the “evidence,” clearly. Why wouldn’t a very rebellious {against his mother’s forcing him to finish his senior year of high school to get a “Testimonial to Good Character”: he skipped school so much, it’s hard to imagine it was actually a “Diploma.”} But they thought so, and so what. Bob had his own hideous senioritis of a more serious nature. Also fell OFF the honor roll before that. Elvis loved English class and the library, since Tupelo. Loved to make up stories and investigate words. No stutter in Tupelo. What happened to that kid? St. Peter denies “The Christine School” as being part of his life, even though his aunt Lillian insisted to Dundy that he was sent there. Either that school did something bad to him, maybe the stigma of “Special Ed.” for arguing with the music teacher, or the brand-new stutter . . . who knows? St. Peter didn’t want to know. Or worse, the Boarding Houses which didn’t want “children.” St. Peter would never even THINK about such a thing! Vernon finally found one. An absolutely hellish place. The truth, as Nash says of something else, is buried in the cold, dark, folds of death. And the others who do know, ain’t gonna talk.
I had thought Michael Jackson’s story held unknowns. I was wrong. Me and my friends got it right from the beginning, and you will hear even more horror stories, even worse than what Rabbi Schmuck, uh Schmooley [who Jackson called "Smooley"] taped and just RELEASED in September. The dude who wrote the unctions “Kosher Sex.” And released these tapes only after MJ’s death, claiming that it was “ok”: “we were writing a book.” But you left, and there was no book: you creep! No, not you, R.E.: I mean the Man of God, who would violate the privacy of a recently dead son of a grieving mother so soon. “He should have gone back to The Church,” Smooley asserts. Meaning, saints preserve us, the Jehovah’s Witnesses!!!!!!!!
Got off track, but discharged my fury there. This world is full of “vampires” as Lisa put it. She tried to warn him: she KNEW. Didn’t listen to her. And now she’s married to a guy who’s wedding ring she won’t wear in “family pictures” taken to show the world. Some “lucky litle girl.” Why do I take on the pain of so many people, known and unknown? I know I always only get hurt. Lennon said not to believe in any icons: “I don’t believe in Elvis, Don’t believe in Dylan/Don’t believe in BEATLES . . . just believe in me, Yoko and me, and that’s reality.” But it’s more than icons. I used to feed a homeless guy who slept on a heating grate outside Penn. Sta. by the bus stop. Get my Chinese food lunch, and buy him some rice and chicken and veggies, with hot tea and soup. Drop off the bag as discretely as I could, and then wait for the bus. I know he didn’t want conversation with me: he was humiliated enough by his condition, but I knew he needed that lunch. It was so cold. He had his cup or whatever for change. I knew he could have been a drunk, but so what? He needed the food, even more, then. And boy, he ate it! I didn’t do this to make myself feel better, ’cause I didn’t feel better. I wanted him to get up and get cleaned up, find some clothes and get a job. But I was no case worker: he didn’t have one, apparently. I just felt compelled not to walk on by. I mean, I saw this guy all the time! With his change thingy. Maybe I could have invited him to eat in the resturant, but he might have lost his spot. The shelters were extremely dangerous. So, I did this thing. I almost feel guilty about the whole thing, but it seems so, I dunno, so nothing. But I have always felt that one person mattered: Lisa Presley’s empty ring finger matters the same to me as that man on the grate. Why? I can’t tell you. I guess I was raised up that way. And I’m not ashamed of that!
I care about young Bobby Zimmerman, even though Bob Dylan killed him off.
I care much too much. It can kill you to do that. Leaving fresh pizza on top of the garbage cans in winter {the flat tops of them} and walk away, knowing that in the cold, they’d be snapped up by any of the many homeless in Penn. Station. Just an extra piece of pizza, but that’s just it: that’s not systemic. And I didn’t feel “good” about it, but I just couldn’t see them grabbing the crust, or whatever was left over of what I didn’t eat. It didn’t kill me financially, so why not? But, no, I did not and do not want to be a “love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal.” I don’t know WHAT I wanted, except that I knew I had to do it, even if it meant not much. And I didn’t get satisfaction from it: if anything, I felt worse because it was spittin’ in the ocean, and I didn’t like people thinking I was a “love me, love me.” God, NO!
But it’s just that people are people to me. I ain’t better than ‘em, and they ain’t better than me. But I didn’t become “a community organizer.” I just did my own thing, and when I stumbled on something, I guess it was like a knee-jerk reaction. I did NOT feel better. I don’t feel good now talking about it. Almost like I want to apologize to . . . I dunno. Everybody got on MLK,Jr.’s ass when he sent his Lt.’s out to get peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and milk enough for all the kids THAT ONE DAY. He had no apologies to make.
I feel weird about all this, ya know? And what about Karma? Was this SO wrong that the Karma got me by taking my mom? Dave Letterman’s still got his mom, as far as I know. And God knows, that lizard-creature Joseph Jackson is still alive, kicking, and forcing his remaining sons into “a reality show.” {Weren’t they ALREADY the FIRST “reality show”? Jeez!} The females would not participate, as I can see. Good on ‘em.
Anyway, why did he bury his son, with apparent glee! And I had to bury my . . . well, you know, and go crazy inside for so long? And hurt so bad. Hurt so very bad. What did I do so wrong? I guess there maybe is no Karma. Or maybe I WAS wrong. I was NOT trying to show off! It was only the smallest things. I don’t feel good about it. I feel stupid, or something. Maybe that’s why this happened to me. It was a conceit, and I deserved pain for doing it, and certainly now, for telling of it.
But I can’t help giving a damn: about Bobby, that gardener, YOU, Elvis and his son-in-law, and whomever. There are people I detest, but mostly I try to look through their eyes. I just dunno.
Ah, forget it for now!
Think more later,
Robin
P.S. — Gonna take one more listen to “Tears of Rage” now, and hit the hay.
December 6, 2009 at 11:04 am
R.E.: Dr. Strangelove was not only Elvis’s favorite movie, but from the documentation of just ONE week of film-watching of the period, and from what EVERYONE, including St. Peter has said, he was OBSESSED with it. You gotta look at all the details, both verbal and visual. The showing of the gun. The attempt to contact The President. “General Funny”’s “communist brainwashing techniques” {you know: flouride in the water, etc.: the whole bit; I remember they gave him an hilarious real name, but it escapes me now}. And in the “Hoover Letter,” Elvis lifts a line directly, but reverses it, intriguingly: FOR HOOVER TO THINK ABOUT! He says that Fonda, the Smothers, “and their ilk” {You ever catch Elvis saying something like “and their ILK?” I think he picked it up listening to “agnew” who lived a few doors down in Palm Springs, or the Private Eye who was right of Attila the Hun {actually, I don’t know anything about Attila the Hun, but it’s an expression}: makes you look red as a beet, ok? When he called Elvis’s friend Jerry a “communist,” Elvis finally had it: he got really mad, and basically said that Jerry or whomever had a right to their beliefs, just as P.I. O’Grady did, without being labelled like it was still the early ’50s. He lost it when he was trying to be “secret agent cool.” That was too much for him.} Ok, so if, as Elvis said in a ’50s telegram regarding a flood of false rumors about him that were now driving him crazy, ’cause he didn’t know where they were coming from {we know more now: check out the documentary “Return To Tupelo.” It’s new}, “God created everybody equal.” Whatever you may think about that {it’s not scientifically “true” in that we are all exactly the same, which is silly, but you know what he meant}, if he said that, and demonstrated on numerous occasions that he MEANT IT {“Lootenet, why do people put other people down?” he asked one borning afternoon in the service), then HOOVER was going to have to “answer for what I’ve done” in “the hereafter” {in the film, I believe he said “an afterlife}, but the first part of the quote is lifted straight from the film. If THEY had to “answer, in the hereafter,” for what THEY had done, then SO WOULD HOOVER. They also forget Elvis’s wry, continuous sense of humor: “The Greatest Living American.” LIVING. Now he was a super-conspiracy theorist regarding all three murders: Kennedys and King. And Sam Cooke, too. {“I got it from the horse’s mouth.” This refers to Col. Parker’s invation of someone from the “Mississippi Sovereignty {sp?} Committee” to a film set {probably “Harum Scarum”} with Mary Ann Mobley, Mississippi’s won Miss America. The three of them were sitting at a table {this is in two different books!}, whe Col. summoned someone to summone “the boy.” Well, possibly as he did in “Stay Away Joe,” when he came RUNNING when the Col. had him summoned {it’s disgusting to watch: to watch him run like that — makes my skin crawl}, he may have jogged over. He sat down, and they said how proud they were over Miss Mobley, and how proud they were of him, a Mississippi boy made good and all, and serving his nation proudly, and doing these delightful comedies and all. Why, what a fine credit to the state. BUT. They had a “little something” they wanted to clear up. “Your ‘associations.’” He spent as much time as possible with Jackie Wilson, and James came to Graceland after seeing him at a Wilson show backstage, and they sang “Old Blind Barnabus,” an old spiritual, and probably better known ones. He wasn’t a fan of Brown’s voice, because singing was not his main thing, but he knew he gospel as any southerner would . . . Anyway, this man was disturbed by such associations {there were others: football players in his films, players he liked like Rafer Johnson, and Graceland is actually in a predominantly black area! You go a few blocks west, and before Elvis died, you just had to pass the barbecue joints {which he frequented often}, and there were the familiar shotgun shacks of his childhood. Recently some young rappers who grew up practically opposite Graceland said their Moms and Grannys “loved” and quite clearly knew him. All of this, plus the wild “law-breaking” he did in 56-57 {the segration laws: at least four different times pushing himself into all-black events where it was illegal for him to go: he invited an entire black “ice capades-type troupe” who were performing in town for some coffee and cake at Graceland: the orchestra included. Recently, Billy Smith described his mother’s reaction {no blood relation to Elvis}: “why don’t you just go over to Beale Street and LIVE WITH ‘EM!” She had gotten him alone and was furious. Billy doesn’t report his cousin’s reaction to his {possibly late} mother.
All of this, piled up, distrissed this man from this “committee” {I believe they once called it The Klan}. They strongly mentioned the unfortunate end of Sam Cooke. “Shame what happened with that boy.” ’nuff said.
When he told Larry Geller about this, he said “Lawrence, this is a f–king dangerous world.” He felt surely that Cooke was murdered for reasons other than the official story, which not only killed the man, but trashed his reputation. Elvis was said, in several accounts of finding out about Cooke “from the horse’s mouth” {Geller thought it was the Col., alone, but it was not: though he brought the guy there, and maybe it was a staged thing, but Elvis believed the guy was the real thing: a Klansmen involved in Cooke’s murder — I mean he REALLY believed this, totally, without reservation). If he made excuses to the Beatles, in some interviews at the time, perhaps to Bob on the phone, etc., well, wouldn’t YOU make excuses? If you had been threatened with death and ruination? He was now imprisoned, but he still saw Jackie every chance he got, and they spent hours backstage. There is, though a shortage of photos. On one of them from a film lot {and Parker was watching, you better believe it!}, Elvis wrote the following: “Jackie, you got you a friend for life.” Jackie Wilson kept this inscribed photo in his wallet until his on-stage collapse put him into a comatose state in late ‘75 {some accounts say 76, but lately I’ve heard it was definitely late ‘75. In 1974, not only were they pictured again, but the stage outfit that Elvis’s female cousin had made for him, for her cousin Elvis, can then be seen being worn by Jackie Wilson. Elvis talks about the outfit onstage, and his girlfriend wore an almost identical one at the time {a Sheila Ryan}, but he simply GAVE Jackie his own stage suit!!!!! This WAS years later, of course. In the sixties, I don’t think he would have done so. He was more careful with photographs after that. In the mid-sixties. He was, frankly, scared to death. Well, almost to death. He did NOT want to go out like Cooke. See, Cooke had a large teen white audience, and then he popped out with “A Change Is Gonna Come” and some folks from Mississippi, etc. freaked out. And then he was shot dead, a woman claiming she was protecting a young lady from “rape.” The whole thing has ALWAYS smelled like a set-up, and St. Peter seems to know, but he’s careful, as is Geller, to an extent. Those other books: about Parker, pull no punches. They agree with Elvis that it was a set-up, and a hit. Elvis did NOT want to go out LIKE THAT. Accused of rape, and then shot to death. What a way for a man of Cooke’s dignity and clear decency to go. I know what you’re thinking: “well, look at squeaky clean Tiger Woods, etc.” But Cooke was different, somehow. Very, very strong and independent: the opposite of Tiger {Daddy’s little boy, now on his own, and trying to prove he really is A GROWNUP, and then freaking out when he pushed it way too far: the young man has issues, and everyone has always known he’d either burnout, or something: well, this was the something}. Cooke wasn’t about that. He bucked RCA, started a small label of his own, and then, most alarmingly, useed that song to speak out about civil rights. Now, in 1968, after King had been killed in Memphis {not far from where Elvis grew up as a teen and made his first music}, and then Bobby, right there with Steve Binder, Bones Howe, and hey, guess what? Two writers for the “Smothers’ Brothers Comedy Hour”! I have the rehearsal tapes with them in it. Elvis gets along just fine with these fellows who “will have to answer” for what they’ve done in the hereafter! I guess he felt they could answer just fine, but Hoover would have to ask himself that question. Elvis was good with words: buttering Hoover’s bread, sure, but, greatest LIVING American. Which means the others are dead. And with Elvis’s wry, dry wit, I can just hear him interjecting: “yeah, sure you are: after you done kee-illed all the rest of ‘em!” {silly grin and bellylaugh, like with the LBJ impersonation!} I mean, he did believe it, anyway. So why not lift the line from the film, and then add some relish. Hoover read it, and I think it made him shudder a little. Way too over the top, or he actually saw the film. Elvis came to the tour believing he would get a meeting with Hoover as he had with the Prez. The director was said to be “out.” {Well, he wasn’t “out” YET, but he would be soon enough: I mean “outed.” He was a closet case, as everyone knows. His bidness, but he had so many RULES for his agents: no affairs, etc. . . Holy Hypocrisy, Batman.} Elvis never knew what Hoover said about him: “the Director would not want to meet such a person: he has taken to wearing all sorts of exotic dress and has shoulder length hair.” Holy “Walk A Mile In My Shoes,” Batman!! After the lines about “because I don’t think, I don’t think I wear my hair the same way you do-oo,” the song says this: “well, I may be COMMON PEOPLE, but I’m your brother, and when you strike out and try to hurt me, it’s a-hurtin’ you-oo.” On that day, Elvis, expecting to have a face-to-face with Hoover, entered the FBI building, armed. A gun fell out in the bathroom. Odd, too, ’cause Elvis didn’t wear laces, normally, but he did for this. He entered a stall {please forget Goldman’s nonsese about THAT}, and came out, “noticing” his shoe was untied. He bent over to tie it. A gun fell out of his belt. The agents acted like they had seen a “little green man” and were like “did you see that? Naw, didn’t see that . . .” He won that baby, for sure. But he had fully intended to see Hoover, and when he and his guys were asked to removed all weapons, they all did, except that Elvis kept one: right in his belt, and not even strapped to a waist holster, which he had and used. Why he wanted it to fall out in front of them? I guess a test of his “power.” Or something. But, anyway, he wanted to face Hoover, armed. I do not believe he had any intention of pulling any triggers. He just wanted to bend over to tie his shoe, and the gun would fall out right in front of Hoover. Just to see the fear in his eyes. The fear he put in the eyes of Bobby and Dr. King. And they were, “sore afraid” of him. Elvis, with the help of some dope, was not by this time.
But in ‘65, he was also “sore afraid.” The Cooke thing, and the subsequent “meeting” made him shake. He told Larry Geller: “Lawrence, you know you can only go so far. This is a f—ing dangerous world.”
Did he say this on the phone to Bob Dylan? If they talked, you BET he did! Maybe this wasn’t the fearless adolescent he idolized on “Independence Day,” and Bob must have thought him hopelessly paranoid and scared of his own shadow, which would have been the ultimate betrayal, after all. “We pointed you the way to go, and scratched your name in sand.” This is NOT on a “beach” as Greil absurdly thinks. When teenagers see wet cement, what do they do? In ‘81, at the so-called “new diner” in Huntington, Long Island, Jim Morrison had this big resurgance, and still today, it says “Morrison Rules.” And “Morrison Lives!” “Jim Morrison Will Never Die,” etc. I may be wrong, but if I remember correctly, there is some sand in concrete? Well, even if there isn’t, a young person might think so, so that’s all that matters. What do I know? What did Bob know? He only knew, he “scratched your name in sand” and “did you think it was just another place for you to stand?” The words spit out with bitter tears.
‘Nuff said. For now.
Robin
December 6, 2009 at 12:31 pm
From Wikipedia: “Concrete: Sand is often a principal component of this critical construction material.”
What is usually called, colloquially, “cement” is actually just a component of concrete. Cement is a component, only. Oddly, iron ore is sometimes involved in the process!!!!!!! IRON ORE!!!!! Iron Ore gives it the gray color. But it is mostly sand, with the actual cement as something that binds it all. But sand is the crucial component because it contains much of what is needed.
Bob would know this better than most people for obvious reasons.
Yup, Greil imagines “a beach. “Beach”???? “Naming ceremony on a BEACH??????” And if they scratched the “baby”’s name on a “beach” then how would it be a “place for you {the baby} to STAND”? By the time the baby could “stand” on the name, it would be washed to sea. Does Greil do a lot of drugs or something? Acid flashbacks? Or was he like that Travolta movie: the boy in the bubble?????? I mean, didn’t he ever write something in wet concrete or “cement”? Cement is not identical to sand, but is mixed with it to make the final mixture. Sand is mixed with the other ingredients like 10 parts sand to the other ingredients – that’s what it says. Importantly, concrete, which is often called “cement” though it is not identical, is “often used around pool areas, for sidewalks, roads . . .” The “cement” stuff is like 1/10th of the mixture that you’ll see in your average sidewalk that they want to last. There is, they say, “no such thing” as a “cement sidewalk”: it is concrete, which uses mostly sand. Also, since sand is a good source for the ingredients of cement itselt, it is often used in the making of what is called “Portland Cement.” Your average sidewalk. That’s why “Jim Morrison” is still living in the sidewalk of the “new” diner there on The Island.
But a BEACH?????????? You’d think Greil could go to A LITTLE trouble just to look this up!!!!!!!
Robin
December 7, 2009 at 10:46 am
One little thought to add.
You know, all these years, most “thoughtful” people have assumed that “Went To See the Gypsy” was just a flight of Bob’s imagination at the time.
After going over it all: “Spinout,” the album with “Tomorrow Is A Long Time” on it, and Bob seeing it, and then bursting with apparent “pride and joy” in ‘69: “the recording I treasure most . . .” and hearing Bob in ‘67, his voice full with true “tears of rage,” “come to me, you know we’re SO alone. AND LIFE IS BRIEF.” Bob had almost died, and if they indeed spoke on the phone after, or even if only Jerry told him about “the accident” with Elvis and the bathtub and the concussion, well, life sure felt so fragile to Bob at the time. His father had a heart attack, about which he had mixed feelings: after all, before the first heart attack, in ‘66, his parents, both father AND mother, had plenty of time before that unexpected event: the heart attack, to fly out IMMEDIATELY to see their son: 1966, 25 years old, and they did not do so. Not even “Mom.” Bob was “SO alone.” Life and connections that MEANT SOMETHING seemed to be turning to dust. Or worse. And now, he happens upon a rare song he did not record, recorded by the real “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” and it’s on what? “Spinout”? Or was it the “mistake, “Kismet,” which was a song on “Harum Scarum,” and for which the film “Kismet” provided the sets and costumes for what is almost surely the WORST “Elvis Presley Film,” and perhaps had dibs on the worst film EVER MADE by ANYONE. And, yet, the mere word that smacked of some class “Kismet,” was the title he chose to call the album on which he song appeared. A flight of fancy on Bob’s part, because the reality was so horrible.
Bob does that in his interviews all the time. One can ONLY listen to the music to find any reliable “truth.” It is not in anything he babbles about when interviewed. Not that he deliberately lies anymore, or even then: it’s just that he cannot deal with certain realities. So re-reading his long “Elvis Paragraph” in Rolling Stone, you realize that he doesn’t MEAN to call anyone a liar about him calling every few months, “wanting to set up a meeting.” We know that Schilling is telling the truth as he knows it, and he KNOWS for sure that the calls came in, and whether he evesdropped or not, he also knew that Bob wanted to set up a meeting. Then, in early ‘68, as he left to try a career in film editing, starting as a “cutter,” his contact with Elvis was extremely sporadic. There is no way he could ever know, during that time, if they met or not {he even said, perhaps in the book and/or interview “I’ve learned never to say never.” Hmmm. Anyway, see if Elvis didn’t want someone with ANY possible contact with Parker {and Schilling DID spar with Esposito for “rank” which meant also getting close to Parker: that was necessary to “rank” ’cause Col. was IN CHARGE of Elvis, and more chillingly, of his father, Vernon, and his wife, too . . . even before she WAS his wife. Col. made sure they were married. That meant a lot.}, to KNOW about any contacts with the sorts of people that Parker would definitely NOT want around, well, he damn sure would tell Jerry “we never met.” Or perhaps, he’d never get to meet anyone of interest ever again. The chilling tale of Steve Binder, director and producer of the ‘68 special is instructive. Parker hated him, and mangled his name for sport: “Bindle.” {It’s actually a long “a,” not as in “bin” but as in “in a bind.”} But that was nothing compared to what happened on opening night in Vegas in ‘69. Steve was invited, by Elvis, and saw the show. He seemed to have credentials for backstage, but was turned away, strongly. He got real frustrated and left the inside of the hotel, and found the back door leading to the construction area of the showroom, which had a security man. He showed him his ID, his credentials, pass, etc., and said PLEASE get to ELVIS and tell him that STEVE BINDER wants to come backstage to congratulate him. Guy goes in, apparently is under orders NOT to see Elvis about anything, but to always check with Esposito. Of that there can be no doubt, because in 2003, Alana Nash found out from some “non-Col.” people: everyone, if fact, who was “non-Col.” agree on this: Elvis kept saying “where’s Steve? Where’s Steve? Where’s Steve?” Over and over, looking and looking. I guess they both sort of knew Parker was behind it, but they also might have thought that each didn’t want to see the other. A little doubt. The Col.’s “man on the TV Special, the middle-aged Bob Finkel,” was given a private elevator ride much later that night, with his wife to Elvis’s suite. The elevator doors opened directly to the suite, apparently, or close to it. Finkel and wife entered the room. This info did not appear until oh, over fourty years after “Went To See the Gypsy”: “his room was dark and crowded; lights were low and dim.” Well, in this case, the only “crowding” came from the people inside the TV set {which Bob, in his jabbing little way, might have called “crowded” as a tiny little “dig” at the isolation he saw, perhaps}. Outside of the television glow, the room was PITCH BLACK. You can pretty well bet that in ‘71, 51-52 year-old Finkel didn’t pay much attention to Bob Dylan albums!!!!!! I mean, I doubt it seriously. Not his cup of tea: he couldn’t work with Elvis at all and told someone “I MUST get someone around Elvis’s age because we’re NOT going to get the show made! Elvis Presley {he used his full name, which says a lot} keeps calling me “Mr. Finkel” and it’s driving me crazy and we cannot relate to each other at all.” So he recalled “Binder-Howe Productions and the T.A.M.I. Show, among Binder’s other credits {a recent brouhaha over Harry Belafonte TOUCHING Petula Clark’s ARM on a recent special had the sponsors all in a lather about “the South” and “the South” got themselves all in a lather when it aired, as is. So, he had credits {dating back to what today would be called “an internship,” but was then described as an apprenticeship with “Steve Allen’s Variety Show.” He met with Elvis before anyone else, and lied about his age {and continued lying until finally this year, revealed that he was the same age as . . . get this: Bob Dylan! Maybe a few months older, but basically the same age.} He went through 4 years of college, “apprenticed” with “The Steve Allen Variety Show” as he recalls the show {this would precede the Tonight Show, so do some timing math! Uh oh. Elvis told Steve about the Allen Show and how it still stuck in his craw, and he didn’t like to hate ANYBODY, but if he did, it would be Steve Allen. After “Mr. Berle” had been so nice, and continued to be nice in the 60s! Why, “Mr. Berle” would come over to whatever set Elvis was on, and when told Elvis was depressed, and all the guys agree on this, Uncle Miltie {sorry, Elvis, but “you’re not HERE [2009] to talk about Milton Berle,” who died at, I believe it was 99 years old, so I’ll call him what everyone else did} would go alone into Elvis’s trailer: no “Miltie Friends” with him, and as a one man personal comedy act, do skits, alone, to make Elvis laugh. That’s what I call a man-and-a-half.
But Allen, well, Elvis, in 1968, spoke of him still in anger and hurt. He didn’t like to “hate” anyone, but Allen, if he hated anyone, it would surely be Allen: the self-appointed “taste-maker” and says he wrote, what is it, 100s or thousands of songs? That nobody ever heard, or wanted to! Anyway, Allen claimed he did this songwriting, but there’s precious little evidence. Whatever. It had to be crapola, anyway. So when Steve hears Elvis’s still roiling rage and hurt, he gets WAY paranoid, and tells Elvis, and then later, the world, that he was, even after doing the T.A.M.I. show in 1964, 21 years old in ‘68! He lied, of course, and it was a whopper, considering the “age-inflation” of the times and the virtual impossibility of it, considering what he had already accomplished: the Allen Show, Jazz Scene USA, the show and post-production in ‘64 of the “T.A.M.I. Show,” the formation of “Binder-Howe Productions” {Howe had engineered several of Elvis’s earliest Hollywood recording sessions – he was just a bit older {since Elvis will always be 42, it’s hard to say “was” or “is” when one party is still very much alive: my apologies for any confusion: I have not even heard that Finkel croaked, despite having the 90th anniversary of his birth last year: no news of his death, so I cannot say that he did die: he may be still very much alive: was so in 2003, and VERY talkative. I’m not even sure about what Binder says in 2009: “I was 28 at the time.” On another set of liner notes last year, he didn’t give an “age number,” but said Elvis didn’t act “the star” even one day on the set {but he did act like a brat on the last day, because I don’t think he wanted to “decamp” Dean Martin’s dressing room, in which the guys all slept together like it was summer camp. He actually grabbed D.J. Fontana’s arm, as D.J. announced: “Ok, time to go home.” Elvis grabbed his arm, and said, with force: “why go home?!” He and Scotty stayed, I guess about 3-5 days: perhaps a little more, but I don’t think so.
To be absolutely clear, after saying “Elvis didn’t act the star one day on the set,” in 2008, Steve said he was “just another guy MY age.” {My emphasis on that last word.} Now, in hindsight, in th 21st century, maybe he considered the puported “age difference” rather meaningless in the long run, but I think he slipped on that interview for the ‘08 audio set, and told the stone cold truth. He did NOT have to be exactly 33 to have worked the Allen show in ‘56, with his resume.
I beleive, according to his resume, especially since he did 4 years of college first, and then did Allen’s VARIETY SHOW, not the Tonight Show, that before a stint on “Jazz Scene USA,” he may actually have been a writer or “gopher” for Allen when Elvis, just 21, and who would have been between his Junior and Senior years in college, if he could have gone when he shot the Allen show on July 1, 1956. I am not saying he was, but it does explain his motivations: even the fans despise Allen: every damn one or ‘em, I think. Binder had a secret, and he damn well kept it, but it never made sense to me, and then finally, something like the truth comes out. Binder was a bright and talented young fellow – always mature beyond his years {you should see the box of outtakes! He’s described as a “whip and chair director” but that at least describes it: on a TV “set,” he did not permit the use of profanity: on the last day, he’d had enough of Elvis’s frequent use of it and when Elvis went “hard to move on that Goddamn song, Steve pushed his control booth button and said, with acidity in his voice: “pardon me, Elvis?” — another time, he said the noises were annoying him again on the last day: the tinkling, the “applause,” and “the goddammits!”: Elvis responded by not only continuing to bat about the microphone, which was pestering Steve’s ears in his headphones, but rapped a couple times HARD on the microphone and said “that don’t bother you too much, Steve?” — he wasn’t “playing the star,” but he WAS being a bit bratty that whole day — Steve turned off the sound and cameras at one point, and all we have are stills: in one he’s got his mouth wide open and in Elvis’s face with his own hands on his hips, while Elvis looks away, his hands fingering the guitar, and in another shot, he shoots his index finger towards Off-stage, and with almost 100 dancers behind Elvis, I assume he was addressing Charlie and Co.: the guys}, and it’s hard to believe that he would only be a “gopher,” even at 21.
Either way, if he was there at that time, he had good reason to lie about his age, especially to Elvis. Even THE FANS detest Steve Allen, as I said. {Doors fans don’t exactly love Ed Sullivan, but they defeated him. Allen defeated Elvis. And his fans came around with picket signs “we want the real Elvis” and that is exactly what Elvis told them, ON INDEPENDENCE DAY, what they were gonna get. They did, indeed, carry him in their arms. And MANY teens “scratched his name ‘in sand’” right around that time, exactly.
Well, Steve Binder’s age at the time has been increasing, lately. Soon, he was saying he was “23,” then finally in ‘08, he said “just another guy my age” of Elvis, which could mean between 28 and 33, or if he was 31 or 32, or 33, well, then he could have worked ON THE SHOW! At 28, that would just barely let him off the hook, with a bit of a cushion. Just a wee bit of a cushion. He, unlike Elvis would have been – had he been able to spend the standard time {which people actually did until the ’90s}, was DONE with college by the time he worked on Allen’s “Variety Show.” Then Jazz Scene USA, then the “T.A.M.I.” show, and oh, I forgot, “Hullabaloo”: gotta check the dates for that one!! And only then, as “Binder-Howe Productions,” began doing TV specials. He calls them a “trilogy,” but the truth is that after “Elvis,” despite its greatness, he never did another as far as I know, other than the Elvis uncut special on HBO, which he directed. Col. was close with the William Morris agency {even though almost everyone there hated his guts! But they, like almost everyone, feared him}, and he could have strangled Steve’s career. I don’t know, but he’s not known for anything much AFTER “Elvis.”
Anyway, Bob Finkel, who kept the Col. “busy” with his idiotic and nasty pranks all the time, was taken personally by Esposito to see Elvis, and took his wife up that elevator to the dark, dark room, with the TV glowing. Elvis, undoudtedly smarting from not seeing Steve Binder, even with the “great triumphant return,” said “Hi, Bob,” and took a pistol out of his whatever, and blew up the TV tube. Finkel’s wife almost fainted, and Bob immediately took his wife back down the elevator.
Elvis did not call him “Mr. Finkel” this time. He did not fear him, or even respect him. It wasn’t Finkel’s fault, but Elvis was mondo pissed off.
So, “he smiled when he saw me coming, and said well, well, well.” He said “how are you” {Dylan singing the words as though they were taffy, trying to give an impression of this greatest of singers {if they MUST “rank” them!}, and Bob “said it back to him.” I assume he got some kind of answer, and then said he had to go “down to the lobby” to “make a small call out.” A “call” does not have to mean a “telephone” call, and it would be an odd time to bolt. Elvis smiled and was welcoming. “Out” can mean he “called out” with his voice TO someone {doubtful interpretation, but I’m going for all of them}, or a telephone call out of the hotel {which he could have done from the “room” upstairs, unless it was a “secret call” to say they had made ‘first contact.’ I also doubt that because it is absurd and virtually impossible considering what came next. “Outside, the lights were shining on the River of Tears; I watched him from the distance, with the music in my ears.” He said that he was down in the lobby, first, and then “watched him from the distance.” Now this makes the lobby phone call impossible because he could never have seen Elvis or anyone upstairs from “the lobby.” “Outside the lights were shining on the River of Tears/I watched him from the distance with the music in my ears.” He HAD to leave the hotel lobby to “watch him from the distance.” And if the room was as described “dark . . . lights were low and dim,” then he couldn’t possibly have “watched him” at all!!!!!! Not physically possible. The only place he could have “watched him {the Gypsy} from the distance” was if the Gypsy was no longer upstairs, or even in the lobby anymore. “Outside, the lights were shining on the River of Tears.” He’d gotten pretty close to the River. It’s not too far, but he could not have been in the lobby if he “watched him from the distance with the music in my ears.” Now, it could be “remembered music,” but at this point in the song, it sounds like REAL music, which makes sense. Elvis ALWAYS needed a guitar or bass to make conversation, or it could not happen. Just plinking the blues on it, and he could talk. A reporter on the set in ‘69 remembers the awkward “begining of the interview.” Elvis stared at his folded hands on a table, as Mary Tyler Moore carried around a tray offering fruit, and there were the two other actresses in the trailer. Elvis was simply silent. It was looking like a disaster for the writer. But, suddently, “he {Elvis} SEIZES a guitar” and all of a sudden he’s chatting about “Charro” and how it had no songs in it: “I just couldn’t see a singing gunfighter!” and laughed a bit. Talked about the comeback, the shows he would soon be doing, the comeback special, the “contact with a live audience” and so on, and so one. They stepped out of the trailer, and Elvis was still able to talk after the music loosened him up. But, the reporter made a deadly error. “How can I meet this Colnel Parker?” Elvis looked shocked and shaken. He began to stutter, and then said, as he began to flee, “I think he’s in Palm Springs or something,” then, Elvis, now a grownup father of a child, ran away: at a rapid clip! He was wearing “Chuck Taylor” sneakers that day, so it was no big effort or anything, but the very idea of lying {Parker is photographed on set in Change of Habit on that very day, with Elvis dressed exactly as the interviewer described: talking to his client!}, and then, worst of all, literally running at full tilt away from the reporter!
A flunky for either Elvis or the Col. {sometimes it didn’t matter which} said, “well, you did pretty good.” But the reporter knew exactly what he did “wrong.” The image of Elvis in Chuck Taylors, jeans, and his “U.T. Memphis” sweatshirt, looking 1969 radiant and absolutely beautiful, RUNNING as though running for cover in a firefight in Vietnam . . . well, it was bad, and I don’t mean in the old slang sense. Really, really bad.
THIS is what Dylan would have been up against, and judging by his smutty version of Bobby Bare {Bill Parsons on the label}’s “All American Boy,” HE WAS WELL AWARE. “Flight” could happen at any time. Had to be super-careful! I would think that such an experience, even today, would be imprinted as a near- or not even near traumatic experience! The terror had to be palpable, as the reporter discovered, and Dylan knew much about. Too, too much.
If he heard music as he watched him from the distance, it was, as I said a clarion call: “over here!”
On New Year’s Eve, ‘69 {and I’ll have to recheck the year, but I’m pretty certain}, Elvis, fresh from his performing-return triumph, drove to the New Year’s Eve party alone {odd for him, actually}, and told peole later that he “couldn’t find a parking place.”
That could very well have been the night. I was given a time frame, not a DATE in Memphis, in 1984 by two separate former teens who made Elvis ‘zines and perhaps some other stuff and were selling ‘em and chatting. They both hung about the area regularly, waiting for their glimpse. But they were not friends at the time, although they certainly knew each other by ‘84, just by virtue of having a little spot at the Howard Johnson’s “fan fair”: really small room for such a thing. Joan Deary spoke that year. You can look that up.
They knew what they saw AND HEARD. The fellows apparently were not, or not yet on Mud Island. Or they heard Dylan yell out something. That was never clear, even in the writing that has gone to seed in the interim, because frankly there was nothing else of interest in the ‘zines {bootlegs were banned at the time, and the records were not good yet at all}, and I was not an intense Dylan fan as I am now. SHIT! I could have really protected what I had. And got names. But I got nothing, really, that I can hold on to, except that I was a dues-paying member of the Society of Professional Journalists at the time, and I took it seriously. To me, then, it was ephemeral trivia, but I recalled it, as I was still writing about music in different arenas. But it was a mere factoid to me. That’s all. Now, it’s super-important.
Elvis’ whereabouts that night cannot be accounted for. On the Dylan date site, his fall and Holiday time seem also “free.” Again, I should check, but I think this is solid. Doesn’t matter exactly when, anyhow.
What matters is that the song’s only “flight of fancy”: imagination, comes AFTER he discovers the Gypsy gone, along with the intermediary, who is also a symbolic device for describing what the Gypsy was like in ‘69. For his “reverie” about “he can bring you through the mirror,” etc. “He did it in Las Vegas, and he can do it here.” We are clear as to “here.” We KNOW “lights on the River” is bluespeak for Memphis and that Bob knows this well. And that Elvis couldn’t get a parking place to his OWN party? Not a not for looking for chicks: they generally have dates or husbands. He had a wife. He even went in ‘70 and even ‘71 when the marriage was essentially over.
So.
I don’t expect Bobert to clear any of this up. He WANTS, I believe, that he actually told some of “his Memphis Mafia” to go away ’cause “we didn’t want to see him.” Now, of course, if those guys he speaks of knew where Dylan was staying, HOW DID THEY? And he claims “I didn’t want to meet him” at that particular time {“he didn’t really come back until, what it was? 1968?”}. But we know Bob most certain DID want to meet him, and “called every few months” trying to set up a meeting. Jerry has no reason in the world to lie.
Bob does. He wants to believe that he’d have the courage to say to Elvis, what he felt Elvis was symbolically saying TO HIM at the time: “go screw yourself.” Dylan felt betrayed. “Did you think it was just another place for you to stand?” This place where the teens “scratched your name in sand.” Wet “cement” which is always concrete: sand, minerals including iron ore that gives it the gray color, and a binding substance which also often has sand in it, actual “cement.” It’s mostly sand, a sidewalk. And that is where a name was “scratched.”
But when did the phone calls end? What did Bob know? Why, in the end, did he feel such deep warmth and compassion: “come to me now, we’re SO alone. And life is brief.” This was pre-comeback, and ‘67 was perhaps Elvis’s WORST year yet: it followed the bathtup concussion in ‘66, the gardener accident, the films died on release, and his records simply did not sell. His career was, as he told Steve Binder, when asked where he thought it was in early to mid-’68, “in the toilet.” Steve heartily agreed. And it was true. ‘67 included a bizarro marriage that caused anger among the guys {what the Col. wanted to do}, a baby that appeared IMMEDIATELY: born a year to the day of the marriage. You know the rest: the shocking request for “a trial separaton” as his wife neared her due date, the visit Johnny Bragg speaks of where Elvis acted so out-of-character: to Johnny, who last saw him in ‘61. That was in Dec. ‘67, just before a January “recording session” that was more like a train wreck. I have heard enough tape that I don’t want to hear any more!!!!!!!!!!
And in 1967, Bob Dylan, virtually choked up as he sang, wrote and sang “Tears of Rage” in the Basement. The legal version is superb.
Did this concern of Dylan’s hurt his own creativity? I have no idea, but I don’t think so. What matters is that you do something remarkable, which “Tears of Rage” IS, and that you record it, finally release it to all {now beautifully remastered digitally}, and sing it with MORE that what you’ve got! Which he did. I don’t know if I have ever heard such bitterness, hurt, desperation, and then an embracing compassion so deep as to be almost hard to take, all in one relatively small recording.
Ok, so I’m not great at “one little thought” thingys.
Bye now,
Robin
December 7, 2009 at 11:54 am
Oh, Ernst at RCA-BMG/Sony, I did NOT mean I didn’t want to any more tape IN GENERAL! I WANT TO. I just don’t really want any more of that January, 1968 session. It’s so horrifying.
Thanx,
A Fan who wants MORE unreleased stuff and even cool btw. song patter, but that session is painful in a way nothing else quite is!
December 7, 2009 at 12:03 pm
No. Steve Binder said he was a year OLDER than Bob Dylan. Less “time cushion.” Hmm.
I’ll never really get math!
Robin
December 7, 2009 at 7:18 pm
Robin: Here’s a nice story for you. As Dylan might say: I tell this truth to you, not out of spite or in anger but simply ’cause it’s true.
Gosh, for a minute there I thought I was hearing from my fourth grade teacher Grace Mark instead of Robin Mark. All this nastiness about race and religion it’s enough to move one to tears of rage, innit? Let me tell you the story of Miss Mark. I don’t know why I always get there in time for stuff like this. It’s like Charlie Browns’s lament: Why is fate always picking on me?
I don’t think you inderstand me, Robin. Here’s a couple clues. ETA Hoffman and Damon Runyon. I don’t mention these guys to anyone as one keeps one’s real influences to oneself but these are two with focus. Try ‘The Old Doll’s House’, ‘The Lily Of St. Pierre’, or ‘Butch Minds The Baby’ by Runyon. Runyon is one of the great literateurs of all time. We speak the same the language and it ain’t English.
So, anyway, Miss Mark. Fourth grade, 1947, news of the extermination camps is leaking out but nobody believes it, too incredible for words. I’m too young for it to have any meaning or significance. Now Miss Mark had to leave town after these two gaffes. First off she had us reading Joseph Jacobs English Fairy Tales. Mr. Jacobs was also Jewish and in retelling the tales he substituted Old Testament names for English names. Zadok and the Bean Stalk alters the story somewhat. (A slight exaggeration but not too much.)
Well, there were people in town who took exception to these alterations quickly recognizing them for the intent. Miss Mark, of course, denied the intent. I mean, none of the characters said ‘oy vey’ but it was close. I bought a copy a few years back to renew my acquaintance insofar as possible. I’ve assembled a library of all the childhood books I read- Seven Science Fiction Novels Of H.G. Wells, Damon Runyon’s stories, etc.
Well, Miss Mark stoutly defended her choice but you know she was dissembling. The fairy tales got her into shallow tepid waters but then she went straight for the boiling deep waters.
Now, I was in the orphanage and we were sent to public school. Our fourth grade class consisted of all the nine year old orphans and the other half were two parented kids who considered us contagious; a bacillus if you know what I mean. I think bigotry is the issue here. Watch this.
In Poland the Jewish kids in their schools were made to sit along one wall in class between the wars so they didn’t contaminate the Polish kids. I don’t know Miss Mark’s reasoning but she had the orphans sitting against one wall so as not to contaminate the ‘regular’ kids. I refused of course thereby becoming- The Outsider.
She probably could have gotten away with that but then she did an even stranger thing- the strangest thing, mad even. She said that in recess the orphans would not be allowed to play period. We were to sit on a bench and watch the ‘regular’ kids play. If for any reason the ‘regulars’ came short a player an orphan would be called to take the field. He or she couldn’t participate in the play, they could only stand on the field.
Finding no other ‘rebels’ or ‘Outsiders’ I went off to another part of the grounds to play by myself.
Well, you know, if you think Joseph Jacobs and his fairy tales caused a reaction you should have been there for this. What goes into the fan come out faster than the speed of light and plasters everything. I don’t know what was said but I know the rules changed quickly. In June Miss Mark packed her bags and moved on, I don’t know where, maybe back to Brooklyn.
Do I believe racism exists? No, such a thing doesn’t exist. Do I believe in religious bigotry and hatred? Heck no, I’ve never seen it. One thing I do believe however is that hypocrisy exists. And the height of hypocrisy is accusing someone else of ‘hatred.’
The ohly think I ever learned from the Bible is ‘before you complain of the mote in your neighbor’s eye take the beam out of your own.’
Just another story from the land of the free and the home of the brave. Things haven’t changed much have they? Just become codified.
December 8, 2009 at 12:45 pm
See, racism and religious bigotry is BORN OF HYPOCRISY, and that is why I defend you and your rights to speak, and why I do it so defiantly. I know you’re been hurt bad. It doesn’t matter if it “racism” “religious bigotry” or “anti-orphanism” or whatever. All the same. You were not “normal” to her. Not a “regular” kid or even person. Beleive me, I have BEEN THERE!!!!!! Some kids pulled a prank on me, and I fell for it. Then, to top off their fun, they ran to the “teacher,” such as she was, and “told on me” except that I was their victim, and they had quite the laugh on me already. So, what does the teacher give them for icing on their cake? In the middle of a PUBLIC PARK, she shouts over considerable space, so EVERYONE CAN HEAR, to me: “YOU ARE A BAD PERSON.”
This was in godforsaken Florida, which I hated with my whole heart, and that night I was walking on the beach “with” my parents who had no idea what had happened that day. And I guess, never would that I recall. I mean, I could tell my dad, buy why? Anyway, they’re walking, and I’m moving further and further away. By the time we’re back at the swimming pool part, I am at about the same distance as that “teacher” was from me. I felt like I was sort of “contaminating my own parents with my ‘badness.’” I am telling you my deepest, maybe even darkest truth. I felt so far, far away from my own folks, who did love me, and me them. But I now felt different. Oh, I “got over it” — the acute part, but I’m guessing I never really did. Maybe why I blame myself for what happened to my mom. I was bad; she was pure. Thusly, I must have done something to kill her. I don’t mean this is conscious, and frankly, not until you told me your story did I consider its long-lasting implications. {Definitely cheaper than a quack shrink! [What other kind is there? I think you can just talk to people, and that's often better.]}
I do not think we are on a different page at all. An “Other” or outsider, or whatever the hell you want to call it, made so by “society’s pliers,” is what they have been made by cruel and/or idiotic people. I got lots of stories, but that experience was so . . . strange. I mean, I felt the strangest thing that night. I did not fear my folks knowing anything, ’cause I knew I was innocent of any “wrongdoing.” It’s that I felt “not the same” as “normal people” anymore. Suddenly a distance went up between me, the BAD PERSON, and like, “good people” like my folks. No, I knew the kids were not “good,” or the teacher, but it didn’t matter at all. All the people in the park heard it! I wasn’t just disliked anymore. I was, well, “a BAD PERSON.” As you say, “contaminated.” By some sort of “badness.” This nothing-woman, who was a moron, and cruel had murdered something inside of me.
You see, the artists I dig are people who I KNOW had something “murdered” inside THEM. I, like, know it almost immediately. And, really, only they can “speak” to me. Do you see? So, I think I know you pretty well. Politics and religion and stuff are surfacy. Not very deep-down at all. I say Tomato, and you say Tomahto. To me, that stuff, especially electoral politics and organized “religion” {as opposed to one’s personal spiritual feelings and beliefs} is mostly all bullshit. One time, in the ’60s, in the Senate Chamber, Bobby Kennedy saw younger, but more experienced brother Teddy glad-handing with absolutely everyone to wiggle some bit of legislation through. Bobby felt sickened by this display of phoniness that seemed to his brother so “necessary” to the job. So when Teddy sat down, and was making some notes or sumpin’ {Elvis-speak, giggle}, he quietly crept up behind him, and breathed hot breath down his neck. Teddy knew it was his brother. Bobby said, with acidity dripping from his mouth “So. This is how we play THE GAME, is it, SENATOR {deep sarcastic tone}?” No other words were spoken on the matter, but yeah, that is the game of the world. Some people believe you either play it or you get killed, either literally or spiritually, or both. THAT is what “Tears of Rage” IS ABOUT, Godammit!!!!!!! “So. This is how we play the game, is it, KING OF ROCK ‘N’ Roll?” It’s infinitely applicable, I guess. Dylan had his milleiu {sp? aw, to heck with that one! I CAN’T spell the damn freakin’ word}, we each have our own. Political party’s don’t matter, religions don’t matter, nor “races” which are an invention by the British when they were after the Irish over 700 years ago {ok, I guess you’ve got another view, but guess what? It don’t MATTER! That’s all surface. What WE experience as children {I was 10} is the heart of the whole matter. You can call it whatever you like. This lady wasn’t just a creep who hated “different” kids who came from an orphanage, and tried to impose her own religious beliefs upon others: she was a CREEP, a disgusting blister on society’s ass. As was my teacher. But I don’t think I ever recovered. I don’t blame it on “religious or racial prejudice”: I just think she enjoyed it because I was the chosen victim and she joined in. I really don’t care WHAT her motive was. Shoot, one time in college, a roomate betrayed me, and I lost a private room {got it back, thank whomever}, and my parents strongly implied that this 19-year-old, barely if that, was “anti-semitic.” I, like an idiot and a kid, did what lots of stupid kids do: I repeated it, but with a twist that caused this girl to never even LOOK at me for the rest of college. I said: “I think I knew why you did this, but it’s not right to say it if it isn’t true.” I was so dumb and unwordly, that I had NO IDEA the implications of what I had said and how I had said it! Finally, about two years later, I asked another girl why wouldn’t that girl let me apologize? She told me:”well, you called her a LESBIAN, so what do you expect?” Hell, I barely knew what a “lesbian” was at the time! Honest. I mean, I knew, but not much. I was in shock, and then remembered the words, exactly for some reason, because, I guess of her wildly angered reaction. What I mean is, one can be REALLY misunderstood, but after that experience, I am willing to listen to people. I don’t see that kind of hate in you. I learned young that hypocrisy was wrong: I was a Jets fan, and I followed, at like 10 years old, the battle between Broadway Joe and Pete Rozelle. I mean, I read EVERYTHING for like two years following. And despite that he caved, which has always gnawed at me, Joe spoke of “sqeaky clean” married, crew-cutted football players {and NAMED some!} who fooled around on their wives and all whatnot. While he admitted that he played every game DRUNK, and would not play sober because the one time he did, his game was totally TOAST. He gladly admitted that he had sex with any female he wanted, any time he wanted, anywhere he wanted. And they were all willing!! Held nothing back. But he said that when the time came, when he would “settle down,” he’d really DO IT, unlike the others. He’d wait a long time if he had to, but that was okay by him. So he marries this girl {a year YOUNGER than me! Damn!}, stops drinking cold turkey: no rehab or AA when she gets pregnant the first time, stays sober throughout the girls growing up, and then guess what happens? The kooky chick finds him “boring.” Changes her name twice, and bolts for California, leaving him with the girls. When the girls were ready for the end of high school, etc., she demanded them returned, which he did. His knees replaced and still crippled, now he was alone. He’s not “Broadway Joe” anymore, not really desirable, and so that’s kinda over. He started drinking again, big time, after the girls went off to school and to “grownup” life.
As a recently dead idol once said: “That’s What You Get For Being Polite.” Song title. {Don’t matter that he ain’t you’re thing: “It’s Your Thing: Do What You Wanna Do.”}
What an education. For both of us. But I still hate hypocrisy, and I know he really doesn’t regret playing it the decent, honest way. But boy, to get punched out like that, wow.
See, I know the people who either had something murdered in them {or in Joe’s case, was cruisin’ for a bruisin’ for tellin’ like it was/is, and was GOING to get something murdered in him}. Hypocrisy is something I understood between 10 and 12. But even though I knew THEY were the “BAD” people, and I was not, it did not leave me!!!!!!! I cannot tell you the strangeness of what I felt that early evening. It was like they were a 100 miles away from me, and me from them. They represented proper, decent, polite, “good” society, and I was “A BAD PERSON” now. Even though I knew it was not true. I still felt it. As Elvis sang so painfully and true: “It’s something I can’t explain.” And I cannot. Yes, of course, she was a hypocrite among other things, but I was still damage: a part of me was gone, and I ain’t gonna get it back. {Dylan lyrics seem to float about now and again. The guys say that sometimes Elvis used to “speak Dylan” rather than “English.” I’m deadly serious.} Cruelty doesn’t talk: it swears. And it lies. But those lies damage you, especially when you’re young. It always hurts. Always. I don’t know how to get back what that moron destroyed inside me. Honestly, I don’t. But don’t let surfacy thngs cause a misunderstanding on the order of me and that roomate!!! I had no idea what I was saying, and it didn’t even come to my mind first, and I NEVER considered what she was thinking: it was absolutely an alien concept to me at the time. I knew several gay women in grad school, and they just didn’t like me. The guys were cool, but the gay women just seemed to have it in for me. Maybe ’cause they knew I wasn’t one of ‘em. And THAT, Charlie Brown, IS PURE HYPOCRISY. Tolerance, my ass. See, my point was people are calling YOU “racist” when “St. Peter” {Guralnick} is this “nice liberal who loves the blues”} and so if he says it, it must be so. No one considers that HE could be the most insidious type of racist of all. Oh, he just LOVES those Black folk {these types feel the need to capitalize the word: what the hell does that mean, anyhow, stupid middle-American assimilationist bullshit}, but when they speak, he doesn’t believe them. And when they’re available for interviews, but not pushy, he doesn’t even bother. He believes Bernard Lansky, but not all those other men. And The Oracle, Dixie, of course. God, it’s such bullshit. It isn’t that his head is up his butt, but that he deliberately places it there when the spirit moves him.
With Greil, I sense some genuine psychopathology at times. Like “Tears of Rage” ON A BEACH?!? An Acid flashback or what? When “baby” can “stand,” where is “baby supposed to do so, since the name was instantly washed away. In the “sand” of a sidewalk, still wet, the name can STILL be there!!!!! He’s an idiot, too, sometimes, but to throw out YOUR OWN RESEARCH because of St. Peter is just astonishing. I mean, I have talked to a MAJOR rock critic a back in ‘84, and he told me that, back then anyway, Greil hardly ever left that house. But Goldman got him angry enough to actually GO to Memphis. For Greil, that was a BIG THING. And now he discounts his original research because of St. Peter.
Ahhhhhhh! Holy Hypocrisy, Batman! Or, Charlie Brown, who I was, by the way. In a way. I mean, he’s a “boy” but yeah, it fits, but I had it worse than him, and so did you.
Bye for now,
Robin
Gotta go cry some Tears of Rage of my own.