Elvis Presley: Elvis Is Back!

ELVIS PRESLEY: ELVIS IS BACK! (1960)

1) Make Me Know It; 2) Fever; 3) The Girl Of My Best Friend; 4) I Will Be Home Again; 5) Dirty, Dirty Feeling; 6) Thrill Of Your Love; 7) Soldier Boy; 8) Such A Night; 9) It Feels So Right; 10) Girl Next Door Went A-Walking; 11) Like A Baby; 12) Reconsider Baby; 13*) Stuck On You; 14*) Fame And Fortune; 15*) Are You Lonesome Tonight?; 16*) I Gotta Know; 17*) A Mess Of Blues; 18*) Itʼs Now Or Never.

General verdict: Problematic — not because Elvis «goes pop», but because he doesnʼt always go the very best pop out of all possible alternatives.

This has always been the trickiest question in Elvis history — did the King «go bad» right upon his return from the army, immediately becoming irrelevant and even retrograde just as the world stepped into the new decade? Or did he simply «mature», making a switch to a slightly more adult audience — perfectly expectable, given that his original millions of young fans werenʼt growing any younger, either — and it wasnʼt until somewhere around the middle of the decade, with Beatlemania and the psychedelic revolution all around, that he really became an outdated conservative relic?

Half a century ago, the typical answer from most rockʼnʼrollers was that they pretty much stopped paying attention to Elvis after his discharge — indeed, no textbook history of rockʼnʼroll will quote ʽStuck On Youʼ or ʽFeverʼ, and no post-ʼ50s song will be surrounded with the same level of admiration as a ʽHeartbreak Hotelʼ or a ʽHound Dogʼ or a ʽJailhouse Rockʼ, let alone the legendary Sun tracks. But as the public taste gets more and more fed up with rambunctious fun and rebellious aggression, mellowing out and drifting towards sentimental melodic pop, the Kingʼs legacy is getting its own re-evaluation, and these days, while most people certainly recognize a big difference in style between the 1950s and Elvis Is Back!, the album is commonly looked upon as a step forward in the artistʼs development, rather than a regression.

I have nothing against Elvisʼ brand of soft-rock — when he is at his best in this genre, as he was on songs like ʽDonʼt Be Cruelʼ or even ʽTeddy Bearʼ, it would be insane to deny the hooks, the fun, and the sexy cuteness of the atmosphere. But at the same time, I do not like to engage in too much revisionism: there was a dang good reason why Elvis Is Back! was originally a major disappointment even to some of those Elvis fans who were growing up with him, and that reason was simple enough — the album shifted Elvisʼ musical paradigm not just in an «unwanted» direction, but towards a dead end. Elvis Is Back! does not merely disappoint in the titillating department, being the first Elvis album to contain almost nothing that could cause the ire of The Greatest Generation; it is also the first Elvis album where it seems like nothing fresh is being invented, no breakthroughs planned or carried out by accident.

It is somewhat telling that the only song on the album that is vaguely reminiscent of the old school is ʽDirty, Dirty Feelingʼ, an ultra-short rocker from the Leiber-Stoller archives that was originally considered for King Creole and discarded. It is fast, it sounds a bit like the Coasters with its funny bass backing vocals and faint echoes of yakety-sax, it features an ecstatic guitar solo (the only ecstatic guitar solo on an album where Scotty Moore is essentially relegated to the status of a submissive team worker), and it is nowhere as exciting as even most of the manʼs second-rate rockʼnʼroll tracks from the old days; even so, it sticks out like crazy among the generally toothless content of the album, almost feeling like a consolation prize thrown out to hardcore purists so they could find at least one decent reason to buy the LP.

That said, as far as «pure pop» albums go, Elvis Is Back! is certainly not all bad. Nobody could seriously knock ʽFeverʼ, which Elvisʼ voice and the bass-heavy «mystical» arrangement make every bit as HOT as Peggy Leeʼs version on which it was based — really, those two deserve each other — and nobody could resist the head-spinning seduction of ʽSuch A Nightʼ, which you will always prefer over the Driftersʼ version if you are looking for a more testosterone-heavy delivery than Clyde McPhatterʼs (no objective reason why you should, but if you are, you will; not to mention, of course, the outdated production values and sound quality of the original, whereas Elvisʼ version still sounds perfectly modern). The fast tempo and quirky vocal harmonies of ʽGirl Next Door Went A-Walkingʼ are fun, too, though the song, unlike the musically similar ʽAll Shook Upʼ and ʽI Need Your Love Tonightʼ, is more openly soaked with sentimental sap.

Somewhat less understandable is Elvisʼ sudden passion for slow soulful blues — ʽIt Feels So Rightʼ and Lowell Fulsonʼs ʽReconsider Babyʼ (on which the King even plays lead guitar, though, predictably, he never takes a proper solo); throw in the contemporary B-side ʽA Mess Of Bluesʼ and you really begin to suspect something. The renditions are not bad, per se, but these songs are, by nature, more suitable for Chicago blues players than the Nashville crowds, and, honestly, Boots Randolph does a much better job with ʽYakety Saxʼ than with his extended blues solo on ʽReconsider Babyʼ. Honestly, the blues is one genre that Elvis never subjugated properly — he was neither a convincing blues singer, nor could he surround himself with great blues players.

The preoccupation with doo-wop and crooner ballads is much more understandable, but it is also the kind of material that requires a very high tolerance level for cheap sentimentalism, and, personally, I do not much care if I never ever hear ʽI Will Be Home Againʼ or ʽThe Thrill Of Your Loveʼ or ʽSoldier Boyʼ ever again, regardless of how professionally they are crafted or how much extra refinement Elvis places in his crooning deliveries. Perhaps most importantly, they are just boring as songs — mainly recycling the old chords and transitions; ʽSoldier Boyʼ, for instance, is reminiscent of the earlier and superior ʽI Want You, I Need You, I Love Youʼ. The fact that so much of this stuff was validated by Elvis himself clearly shows that his passion for breaking the mold was pretty much gone by 1960.

Just like before, of course, Sixtiesʼ Elvis has to be judged first and foremost by the singles rather than LPs — in this case, modern CD editions of the album usually come packed with the appropriate bonus tracks, and of these, ʽStuck On Youʼ, the manʼs first post-army single, is the clear highlight, with a vocal hook that will most definitely get stuck on you. It even has this shade of defiant attitude — "you can shake an apple off an apple tree, but youʼll never shake me" — just to remind the world who is really back and has no plans of disappearing. Even so, I still remember my big hit singles compilation from childhood where ʽStuck On Youʼ came directly after ʽI Got Stungʼ and I had this weird subconscious feeling of something broke down in between the schizophrenic ballsiness of the former and the restrained coolness of the latter, not even aware yet of the substantial shift in between the two.

If it is any consolation, I must also add that ʽI Gotta Knowʼ, a rare case of pre-Invasion British influence (the song was first recorded by Cliff Richard, though it was written by an American songwriter), is the one Elvis song that, for some reason, sank the strongest hooks into my brain when I first heard it — the verse and chorus melody are infectious to an almost terrifying degree here. It should have been a Buddy Holly song, I think (the bridge is just 100% Buddy), but some­how fate has decreed otherwise. It is also totally cuddly and inoffensive and sappy and stupid, and my brain loves it to death, so what can I do?

As for the case of Elvis outsinging Caruso and Pavarotti, it is impossible to protest against the immaculate musical structure of ʽO Sole Mioʼ, but... well, maybe a symbolic difference between Elvis and the Beatles was that the latter, in the end, did not officially record ʽBesame Muchoʼ, whereas the former did officially put out ʽItʼs Now Or Neverʼ. It is always possible to argue that Elvis did have the vocal chops for the song, whereas the Beatles did not, but from a social perspective it was still kind of an early proto-Vegasy gesture, fairly telling of things to come. The recording itself is as perfect as they come — amazing backing vocals, great metronomic rhythm, perfectly adjusted vocal overtones and flourishes, wonderful dynamics between quiet and loud — but I listen to it about as often as I listen to The Three Tenors (and I do like listening to each of the three individually, but preferably in the context of a wholesome Verdi opera).

In the end, I am not joining the crowd that says this was the beginning of a new musical life for Elvis, deserving equal respect with his previous one; sticking to the old guns, I prefer to view this as «the beginning of the end» — but fully understanding that the end took quite a bit of time, and that Elvisʼ artistic decline was gradual rather than sudden. From this perspective, Elvis Is Back!, especially taken together with all the singles, is still a must-have, and at least the next few pre-Beatles years would still bring us plenty of good material. But no revisionist willing to claim that Elvis Is Back! is just as artistically strong as Elvis Presley shall ever find understanding with me. Sonically superior, perhaps — it was Elvisʼ first stereo mix, after all — but thatʼs about it.