Elvis vs. Elvis
These two songs came up on iTunes today, two of my favorite music stars ever, illustrating two approaches to writing songs about women.
Elvis C’s description of his subject is bitter, multi-layered, multi-dimensional and hyper-literate:
“So you began to recognize the well-dressed man that everybody loves
It started when you chopped off all the fingers on your pony skin gloves
Then you cut a hole out where your love-light used to shine
Your tears of pleasure equal measure crocodile and brine
You tried to laugh it all off saying “I knew all the time…
But it’s starting to come to me”
— Elvis Costello, “Starting to Come to Me”
While Elvis P’s view is more practical, topical and down-to-earth.
“And when I pick up a sandwich to munch
A crunch-a-crunchity-a-crunchity-crunch
I never ever get to finish my lunch
Because there’s always bound to be a bunch of girls”
Elvis Presley, “Girls! Girls! Girls!”
That Elvis Presley quotation looks like something Morrisey would have copied (in terms of phrasing only of course.)
Costello is King at the moment he least tries to be – in the skill of knowing what he has to use, and how – phrasing, voicing, silences, flourishes and less-is-more chording, atitudes etc..As soon as he starts to think about how to “write literately” he is like the author who has no more challenges and starts to second-guess themselves, starts to think if maybe one MORE adjective or word-play is required, just to see if he can. The stuff many a good critic has parodied him on.
Something Elvis P wouldn’t guilty of. But you are guilty of comparing apples to oranges as Presley is more of an interpreter, not songwriter. Better to compare both Elvii by that category, certainly because there, both are left to the words of others and still manages to make it their own. I could imagine Elvis P. doing “Allison”.
Both of them are superb singers but there is no question that Elvis P is the more accessible of the two, a master stylist who can bring anything (even “Girls! Girls! Girls!”) to life and make it his own.
It’s true that Costello’s curse is his “just one more layer” compulsion that tips many of his songs from compelling psychodrama to opaque wordplay. There was a thing announced a while back about how Costello and T-Bone Burnett were going to do a TV show about some girl spies who pose as a Spice-Girls-style girlband, and Costello was slated to do the pop-songs for the band. I heard that and thought well, that can’t possibly work because Costello is terrible at pastiche. I knew he could never write a parody of a Spice Girls song, he would, through force of habit, make it dense and clever and multi-layered and inaccessible.
While it’s true that Presley did not “write” his material, it was all (until 1969 at least) written expressly for him and he is, more often than not, listed as co-author (which designation does not, of course, indicate that he was co-author, but instead merely guaranteed him the majority of the publishing royalties) and in a very real sense is very much the author of his work. On the other hand, he didn’t consider his film work to be “serious” and reportedly would sing whatever they would put in front of him, which explains a formulation like “a-cruch-a-crunchity-a-crunchity-crunch.”
I think if Elvis P had lived long enough to be aware of Elvis C (My Aim is True was released, coincidentally, the week Presley died) he may have eventually gotten around to recording “Alison,” although something tells me he would have ignored punk rock as long as he possibly could — he ignored every other musical trend of the 70s (except Olivia Newton-John). Hell, Elvis C got to be friends with another member of the Million Dollar Quartet, Johnny Cash, and he even recorded a few tracks on King of America with Presley’s TCB backing band, so anything is possible.
That IS some timing going on with “the aim” of Elvis C. and Elvis P. I can’t begin to imagine the Spice Girls thing because Costello isn’t the type. He would analyze it brilliantly in interviews – this is the man who STIFF owes some credit to in the early days – but not actually participate in it. Another blatantly odd example, he couldn’t work with Paul McCartney except to write that overly-wordy Veronica and some other things. Paul McCartney – that should have been really interesting! But obviously no producer knows how to suggest editing. Lennon contributions are anything but overly-wordy to McCartney’s own language. He respected Roy Orbinson, but again, no way to match the economy of Orbinson’s dramas. He is pretty much iconoclastic.
Be that as it may, I see now in the future, a musical based on 1977 – “ELVIIS” based on a chance meeting between Elvis Costello and Elvis P in some Graceland tour perhaps. Or in Las Vegas at 4.am. Lots of material there in terms of songs!
To McCartney’s credit, he recognized at the time (late ’80s) that he needed a writing partner to save him from the terminal sappiness he was stricken with and made an attempt to reach out to a qualified individual. In terms of blunt, raw Lennonesque power, I would have suggested Bob Mould, but McCartney saw that Costello was a musical encyclopedia who could push him in any number of directions. Costello and McCartney wrote nine songs together, and Costello insists that anything in their work that sounds like Costello is McCartney and anything that sounds like McCartney is Costello. Which makes total sense to me, that the younger songwriter would try to supply his idol with “McCartneyesque” material and the older songwriter would try to impress the younger with his hipness. But I think both of them were too old at the time and set in their ways to pursue their collaboration for more than a handful of songs.
Bob Mould! Nice. Just enough of the world-weary yet romantic sound, social commentary, and with pop hooks,a sonic template that is different to McCartneys… lyrics that are at some tangent to Macca’s. American to Liverpool. Outsider to whatever Macca feels he is. Stoners. Hm. That could have been the one. I mean, it is the kind of stuff mash-ups would do justice to.
Paul and John’s era is really bookended by Elvis P and C, both didn’t really match. Somehow the Beatles mix a philosophy of proto hippie “love” out of the African-American sources and culture, oddly enough, early Motown,Chuck Berry or Little Richard. And from that, one gets some amazing songs and insights about relationships. Makes you wonder.
Whenever he’s asked about the Beatles Paul always says it was all about “love” – and he means it man. Elvis C. certainly wouldn’t have at the kernel of his work, a primary relationship between society and love in the way Paul – and ultimately John – did. Elvis P. well, he did go for gospel big time.
Costello and T-Bone Burnett were going to do a TV show about some girl spies who pose as a Spice-Girls-style girlband, and Costello was slated to do the pop-songs for the band. I heard that and thought well, that can’t possibly work because Costello is terrible at pastiche. I knew he could never write a parody of a Spice Girls song, he would, through force of habit, make it dense and clever and multi-layered and inaccessible.
I hope, for their own sake, they went with They Might Be Giants. Those guys are MASTERS of pastiche. If I were writing any kind of period piece and wanted authentic-sounding new songs to fit, they’d be my first choices.
I think they ended up with nobody at all — the show never went into production.
And, germane to the comments above, nobody was ever better at pastiche than Lennon and McCartney.
Well in all fairness the sandwhich trumps almost everything else out there and to work it into a song is pretty great too.
In Elvis P’s life, the sandwich pretty much trumped everything else too.
just couldn’t resist connecting your last post on screenwriting with Elvises:
Edward Anhalt was one of the great screenwriters of all-time. A multi-Oscar winner he amassed a tremendous body of impressive work.
In the early 60’s he learned that producer Hal B. Wallis was planning to make a movie of the play BECKET. That subject matter was Anhalt’s absolute passion. He considered himself an expert on the era. No one knew the period as well. He went to Wallis with an impassioned plea that he and he alone was right for this assignment. Wallis made him a deal. Anhalt could write BECKET but he had another project that also needed a writer. If Anhalt would do that first he could have his coveted assignment. Anhalt happily agreed.
(article goes on, but cut to the answer:
“Girls, Girls, Girls”)
taken from Ken Levine’s blog http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/
Yeah, strangely enough, that happens all the time. Luckily for Anhalt, both his movies got made and were hits. Usually what happens is that the producer wants you to write the turkey and so promises you funds to write the passion project, and the turkey becomes a big hit and the passion project never gets made.