Good. He was a shit human being. He married a child, and would make his friends kneel and kiss his ring. He was one of the first pop culture idols, and wasted no time becoming a fat glutton. He even tried to get the Beatles deported. The only good thing to come out of Elvis' existence is the cinematic classic Bubba Ho-Tep.
LOL, almost all of this is so wrong.
1. His ex-wife was of legal age when they got married (19 or 20, I believe). On the other hand, he did meet her when he was in the Army, in Germany. He was 23/24 and she was 14. Yeaaah, pretty sketchy, but there does need to be a touch of context here. Elvis grew up in the southern US at a time when the attitudes were damn near "old enough to pee, old enough for me". Doesn't make it right, but his upbringing (which included the fact that his dad was 17 when he married his mom, who was 19 or 20 herself) dictated that it was no big deal. Jerry Lee Lewis got most of his shit in the 50s because the 14-year-old he married was his cousin... the age thing wasn't as much of a factor.
2. Kneel and kiss his ring?!? You've seen too many Elvis parodies. I'm a big Elvis fan, read a lot of the books, and he never did this as a common practice, if at all (and if he did, he was just fucking with someone).
3. Certainly his diet (Southern cooking mostly) was pretty appalling. Consider this, though: he grew up, literally, dirt poor. His dad went to prison when Elvis was a toddler for forging a check, so they could make their meager ends meet. Until Elvis hit it big in the music business, they had to live in subsidised housing. Can't blame a guy for hitting the trough when he had the money to. Having said that, he managed his weight fairly well until the mid-70s when his frequent crash dieting lost its effectiveness.
3. He never tried to get the Beatles deported, never. Context- In 1970, on a whim, Elvis went, by himself (something he hadn't done in years, lol), to Washington, DC, to get a DEA badge (he collected badges, strange, but harmless). He somehow found out that he might be able to wangle one from Nixon (the then US president). So on the plane, he wrote a letter to Nixon, to butter him up to get that badge. He filled the letter with buzzwords of the time ("hippies," "Black Panthers," etc.). In the course of this, he said that he felt that the Beatles were a bad influence on young Americans, which many conservative types in the US genuinely believed at the time, especially as they made no secret about their drug use. I don't know if Elvis genuinely felt this way himself; probably did. But he never tried to have them deported, lol. Christ, none of them were even living in the US at the time, lol.
4. Bubba Ho-Tep rocks.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THESE MATTERS!
Elvis was a good performer, but he wasn't a song-writer and his shit wasn't "ground-breaking". You can go back to shit like The White Album, Sgt Pepper etc and it still sounds very modern, same for Pet Sounds and Beach Boys. Elvis feels like you're listening to 50's and 60's music, Beatles' stuff after Revolver sounds pretty modern still (imo).
True, but Elvis came up in an era where most singers didn't write their own music. It could be said that his ability to reinterpret songs was effectively "re-writing" them, though. That was his genuine talent. Listen to songs that he did, especially in the 50s, that had been done by someone else previously. Night and Day difference. In the studio, with a couple of notable exceptions, he was his own producer.
You might be surprised to know that his most popular music these days is his 70's work. Mostly because it sounds modern...or more modern.
Also, since I'm still on page one of this thread, I suspect I'll come across the old canard that he wasn't a "real musician" and he didn't play "his own instruments" or some such bullshit. He wasn't what you'd call a virtuoso on any particular instrument, but he did play acoustic guitar often thru the early 60s (sometimes lead acoustic guitar, lol). And he was pretty handy on the piano.
If I'm feeling less lazy I can find it since I'm the biggest Beatles autist on the farms--basically John or Paul talked about merging Elvis and being disappointed in him being a total lolcow. They could tell Elvis was seething in jealousy since by the time they met his popularity was on the downturn while the Beatles were entering into international stardom.
The Beatles took over his place as pop culture icons pretty quickly. The reason why is probably because the Fab Four never disparaged black musicians, were always open about being inspired by them, and would help promote or build the careers of black musicians. Black people do not consider them culture vultures for this reason unlike Elvis who was teetering into Pat Boone levels of acting like a wigger.
And I'll take the mantle of being the site's ":Elvis Autist". I'm also a massive Beatles fan. Not sure where you're getting your info, but the accounts I've read, their meeting was just kind of meh. Elvis may have been a bit put off by one of them (probably John) asking why he didn't make records like his 50s ones anymore. Pretty rich coming from those guys if you consider the dogshit music John went on to make with that screeching harridan Yoko, and George with his Hare-Krishna horseshit, lol.
They jammed a little, and that was mostly it. I can imagine Elvis did feel like he was being supplanted in the pop music mainstream, but there was a host of reasons I really don't care to go into an even longer sperg about here, for why there wasn't much he could do about it at the time. Even if he wanted to.
