So who saw the “Elvis” movie today?

[fretbuzzard]

I picked up Guralnick’s first book a month or so ago. Why? I saw that this movie was coming out and knew that I would want to see it. I also know that Baz L tends to be a bit, uh… free with his source materials, and thought this would be a great way to get a more true-to-life perspective. So I guess I should be counted as one of the people who are learning more about Elvis because of this movie.

 

[Horse Nation]

Great assessment of the Goldman book. I also read the one John Lennon. I don't know why I tried a second time, as the Elvis book was complete crap, and the Lennon tome was even worse...

I never went for the Lennon bio by Goldman. Elvis's life really fit the way Goldman operates. John's life wasn't that sensational or bizarre or weird as Elvis.

And, yes, the Goldman book was crap. But it actually worked for Elvis's life. In fact, it added to Elvis's larger than life persona. So what the guy ate peanut butter and banana sandwiches. He was The King, he could do stupid stuff like that.

 

[General_Lee]

Could and did, pal. Could and did. Right up to the end. Dying on the crapper. What a way for The King to go out. Could and did...

 

[gentlemanbass]

No, I don't have to lighten up, you have to take Elvis more seriously.

You probably think of Elvis as obese junkie cape-wearing peanut butter and banana eating Elvis. He was that, I admit; but you probably never view Elvis as one of the 10 greatest artists in any field over the past 3,000 years. Shakespeare, Kurosawa, Mozart, Ovid, Nijinsky, Dostoyevski, Sophocles, Rowling, Michelangelo,...and Elvis.

In 1955 and 1956 the greatest living creature on planet Earth, hell, in the entire universe, was Elvis Presley. This new silly Elvis movie dishonors his artistic stature and should be removed from the theaters. Hell, I'd rather watch CLAMBAKE than this new Elvis movie.

View attachment 183315

No not close to Mozart, Shakespeare, Michelangelo -

He was a good singer performer - but even in music - not top 10 - not even close

 

[BuddyHollywood]

No not close to Mozart, Shakespeare, Michelangelo -

He was a good singer performer - but even in music - not top 10 - not even close

Elvis Presley is the reason I ever got interested in playing music, singing music, writing songs and performing. If there was no Elvis I'm not sure what would have happened to the music and overall lifestyle of our western culture.

'"Nothing affected me until I heard Elvis. Without Elvis, there would be no Beatles." - John Lennon

Without Elvis and without The Beatles what would there be? The music of today is what we get when there is no Elvis or Beatles equivalent to inspire us. Nothing is affecting me today like Elvis and The Beatles did when I was younger. You subjectively state that Elvis is not even close to creating the top 10 best music. I disagree. Not even taking into account all of the great music he made in the 1960s and 1970s, his recordings from the last half of the 1950s are masterpieces of the 20th Century. I'm going to bet that people will be listening to those recordings well past our generation.

 

[knavel]

]She was the one that stole my heart, and I loved her just as much in Grumpy Old Men, decades later.

My introduction to her was as Ann Margrock in the Flintstones.



Re the Elvis movie I would reiterate that the visual and audio medium are very distinct. I would venture that the overwhelming majority of those on sites like this one and who play instruments do so because of the audio aspect of the music medium--it's what's on the vinyl that matters: We are who we are because of what we heard records and in the case of Elvis, it was Scotty and James that spoke to us.

But to a far more vast group, Elvis in particular was more about the visual. Next to none of those screaming girls bought guitars. They were there because of the charisma and the performer.

In my view, today the import of the visual controls the music medium which is why people of negligible musical worth, from Madonna on down, are the most successful. To me this really started with Milli Vanilli, where powers that be saw that music could be entirely packaged--that day ended the chance of some geek like Brian Wilson ever doing well in this business. (Of course I'm overstating things a bit but I firmly believe that the overwhelming emphasis on the visual is one reason why things are what they are today.)

In such an environment it stands to reason that a movie about Elvis would focus on the visual: If you expect the innocent magic and sounds of the Sun Sessions, you will be disappointed. (The Sun part was over aftera few minutes in the film.) This movie was made to appeal to the visual and as a result it can lack a lot of depth of the real Elvis. But as I said in my initial post in this thread, I think the film did a decent job at getting that performance magic.

 

[blueruins]

My introduction to her was as Ann Margrock in the Flintstones.



Re the Elvis movie I would reiterate that the visual and audio medium are very distinct. I would venture that the overwhelming majority of those on sites like this one and who play instruments do so because of the audio aspect of the music medium--it's what's on the vinyl that matters: We are who we are because of what we heard records and in the case of Elvis, it was Scotty and James that spoke to us.

But to a far more vast group, Elvis in particular was more about the visual. Next to none of those screaming girls bought guitars. They were there because of the charisma and the performer.

In my view, today the import of the visual controls the music medium which is why people of negligible musical worth, from Madonna on down, are the most successful. To me this really started with Milli Vanilli, where powers that be saw that music could be entirely packaged--that day ended the chance of some geek like Brian Wilson ever doing well in this business. (Of course I'm overstating things a bit but I firmly believe that the overwhelming emphasis on the visual is one reason why things are what they are today.)

In such an environment it stands to reason that a movie about Elvis would focus on the visual: If you expect the innocent magic and sounds of the Sun Sessions, you will be disappointed. (The Sun part was over aftera few minutes in the film.) This movie was made to appeal to the visual and as a result it can lack a lot of depth of the real Elvis. But as I said in my initial post in this thread, I think the film did a decent job at getting that performance magic.

I enjoyed this perspective. It is a simple and elegant summation of the current state of music.

 

[Synchro]

No not close to Mozart, Shakespeare, Michelangelo -

He was a good singer performer - but even in music - not top 10 - not even close

I would agree. Without Mozart’s contribution, music probably would not have developed as it did. Elvis was great, a wonderful singer and performer, but I wouldn’t put him in the same category as Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, etc. That’s not to take anything away from Elvis, but he operated at a different layer (for lack of a better word) than Mozart.

If you saw Ford vs. Ferrari, this illustration will make sense. I would see Elvis as Ken Miles; talented and highly intuitive of how to deliver. Like Elvis, Miles marched to the beat of his own drummer. Both Ken Miles and Elvis ruffled some feathers, but both delivered.

Mozart, I would see being like Carrol Shelby. Shelby knew how to drive, just as Mozart was able to play gigs, but Shelby’s real strength was as a designer. He knew how to deliver a working product, and Ken Miles knew how to get the best out of that product. Each benefitted from the other’s talents.

Elvis Presley is the reason I ever got interested in playing music, singing music, writing songs and performing. If there was no Elvis I'm not sure what would have happened to the music and overall lifestyle of our western culture.

'"Nothing affected me until I heard Elvis. Without Elvis, there would be no Beatles." - John Lennon

Without Elvis and without The Beatles what would there be? The music of today is what we get when there is no Elvis or Beatles equivalent to inspire us. Nothing is affecting me today like Elvis and The Beatles did when I was younger. You subjectively state that Elvis is not even close to creating the top 10 best music. I disagree. Not even taking into account all of the great music he made in the 1960s and 1970s, his recordings from the last half of the 1950s are masterpieces of the 20th Century. I'm going to bet that people will be listening to those recordings well past our generation.

That’s an interesting comment. I know that music doesn’t seem to have the compass that it did in years past. if you follow the progression backward, it wasn’t all that long ago that musical celebrity was all but impossible. Before recorded music, the best musician on earth could live 500 miles away, and you’d be unlikely to even know that person existed. The great classical composers live on through what they wrote on manuscript paper.

After that, wax cylinder recording and piano rolls preserved performances, and recording technolog made it possible to hear the best artists. Mass media came to be, and soon there were musical stars that could be heard without attending a live performance. That made possible Rudy Vallee, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Elvis. About that time, television added another type of media, so Elvis appeared on TV, and later on the Beatles.

There were only so many choices, at the time, so these artists reached a high percentage of homes, but now we have a mass of mass medias, and achieving the market penetration of the Beatles is unlikely to ever recur. It’s both good and bad, but the music getting airplay doesn’t really do much for me. Occasionally, I’ll catch a Grand Old Opry stream on YouTube, and even much of that strikes me as having no soul, no direction. Much of it is just formulaic, cookie cutter material that sounds a bit forced to me. Likewise, the artists didn't particularly impress me. One guy looked like a cross between a Country musician and a rapper, while another was a shapely woman in painted on stretch pants. It was all image, and it all seemed contrived.

True innovators need not apply in today’s music world. Elvis was a great singer, and an explosive performer. I contrast that to acts I see today which are obviously choreographed to the last twitch of the last muscle. Here we are, talking about Elvis, nearly 70 years after the fact, but contemporary music is just an endless parade of Flavor of the Month artists, who will be quickly forgotten.

My introduction to her was as Ann Margrock in the Flintstones.

I think that the same is true for me. I may have heard the name before that, but that was the first time it would have meant anything to me.

Re the Elvis movie I would reiterate that the visual and audio medium are very distinct. I would venture that the overwhelming majority of those on sites like this one and who play instruments do so because of the audio aspect of the music medium--it's what's on the vinyl that matters: We are who we are because of what we heard records and in the case of Elvis, it was Scotty and James that spoke to us.

But to a far more vast group, Elvis in particular was more about the visual. Next to none of those screaming girls bought guitars. They were there because of the charisma and the performer.

In my view, today the import of the visual controls the music medium which is why people of negligible musical worth, from Madonna on down, are the most successful. To me this really started with Milli Vanilli, where powers that be saw that music could be entirely packaged--that day ended the chance of some geek like Brian Wilson ever doing well in this business. (Of course I'm overstating things a bit but I firmly believe that the overwhelming emphasis on the visual is one reason why things are what they are today.)

In such an environment it stands to reason that a movie about Elvis would focus on the visual: If you expect the innocent magic and sounds of the Sun Sessions, you will be disappointed. (The Sun part was over aftera few minutes in the film.) This movie was made to appeal to the visual and as a result it can lack a lot of depth of the real Elvis. But as I said in my initial post in this thread, I think the film did a decent job at getting that performance magic.

Some great points. Audio and video mediums are not interchangeable. Years ago, I noticed that Live albums didn’t seem to hold up as well as studio albums in my listening routine. It wasn’t the music thst was the problem, but instead was the fact that a live recording from a concert was telling only part of the story. The visual shtick on stage was part of the show, but hearing only the sound didn’t convey it.

That’s one example, but perhaps a more important metric is the comparative weight of the visual to aural components of music, as it is marketed in our day. When silent movies were replaced by “talkies”, some actors lost their jobs, because they were no good, vocally. Fifty years later, video killed the radio star, to coin a phrase. Some acts learned to exploit visual impact to their advantage, but some did not. If someone had a great voice, but didn’t work in the world of videos, there was a good chance that they wouldn’t be getting much backing from their label, from the dawn of the video era, onward.

The video era gave us some pretty unique visual imagery. Remember Flock of Seagulls? Some artists were, IMO, of mediocre talent, but they made great videos, and that was the new criteria. Ten years earlier, I had consumed most of my music from an AM radio in the dash of a car, but not anymore. Radio changed, music changed, and the whole business of entertainment changed, but the situation has only fragmented since.

This leaves me with mixed emotions. I don’t really like the sort of hero worship that greeted Elvis or the Beatles. People invest a great deal in such heroes, and I think that is a mistake. Even the best performers on earth are still human. OTOH, there is something to be said for having a common point of reference, and I remember taking music with friends when we had all heard the same songs, played on the same radio stations, at the same time. I miss that.

 

[Bertotti]

No, I don't have to lighten up, you have to take Elvis more seriously.

You probably think of Elvis as obese junkie cape-wearing peanut butter and banana eating Elvis. He was that, I admit; but you probably never view Elvis as one of the 10 greatest artists in any field over the past 3,000 years. Shakespeare, Kurosawa, Mozart, Ovid, Nijinsky, Dostoyevski, Sophocles, Rowling, Michelangelo,...and Elvis.

In 1955 and 1956 the greatest living creature on planet Earth, hell, in the entire universe, was Elvis Presley. This new silly Elvis movie dishonors his artistic stature and should be removed from the theaters. Hell, I'd rather watch CLAMBAKE than this new Elvis movie.

View attachment 183315

I started faking sideburns after the first time I saw Elvis. I was too young to grow them so I just had the Barber, yes a real barber leave some hair hang down so I could pretend I had sideburns. hahaha This wasn't even the '50s this was '69 and later!

 

[Synchro]

I started faking sideburns after the first time I saw Elvis. I was too young to grow them so I just had the Barber, yes a real barber leave some hair hang down so I could pretend I had sideburns. hahaha This wasn't even the '50s this was '69 and later!

I did the same thing.

 

[nickurso]

I‘m honestly still processing. What say you?

Ok I finally saw it. I loved it. I think the did a great job of stressing certain points like even at the end of his life he never lost his voice. Also loved that they showed his connection to black music in Memphis. So yeah great movie

 

[blueruins]

Finally going to see “Elvis” tonight. Been bugging the wife for 5 weeks now