142 Psychobiographies of Artists Chapter 10 Alan C. Elms & Bruce Heller Twelve Ways to Say “Lonesome” Assessing Error and Control in the Music of Elvis Presley n the current edition of the Oxford English lyrics of “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” . IDictionary (2002), twenty-two usage citations [H]e sweats so much that his face seems to be include the name of Elvis Presley. The two earli- melting away. [T]he dissolving face . est citations, from 1956, show the terms “rock recalls De Palma’s pop-culture horror movie and roll” and “rockin’” in context. A more re- Phantom of the Paradise. (p. 201) cent citation, from a 1981 issue of the British magazine The Listener, demonstrates the usage As an example of biography, Albert Goldman of the word “docudrama”: “In the excellent (1981) concluded his scurrilous best-seller Elvis docudrama film, This Is Elvis, there is a painful with a description of the same scene: sequence . where Elvis . attempts to sing ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’” (The ellipses are He is smiling but sweating so profusely that the OED’s.) his face appears to be bathed in tears. Going This Is Elvis warrants the term “docudrama” up on a line in one of those talking bridges because it uses professional actors to re-enact he always had trouble negotiating, he comes scenes from Elvis’s childhood and prefame youth. down in a kooky, free-associative monologue But most of the film is straight documentary. The that summons up the image of the dope- “painful sequence” cited by The Listener and the crazed Lenny Bruce. For thirty or forty OED is an actual concert performance, occurring seconds of mental free-fall, you are up in that late in the film and in Elvis’s life. It remains pain- padded cell atop Graceland watching Elvis ful to watch: Elvis, his face puffy and wet with blither with tightly shut eyes as he voices all sweat or tears or both, his elaborate jumpsuit the crazy ideas that come thronging into his bulging at the seams, struggles with one of his dope-sprung mind. (p. 591) most popular songs. He repeatedly forgets words and whole lines of the lyrics, replacing them with Other critics and biographers have similarly crudely self-abnegating jokes. asserted or implied that Elvis’s difficulties with That particular performance occasioned wide- the song during this performance came from his spread comment, not only during the film’s heavy drug use, and perhaps more generally from theatrical release in 1981 but also in later bio- his deteriorating brain as he neared death, less graphical works on Elvis. As one example of than two months away. film commentary, the noted critic Pauline Kael Closer study of this performance, however, (1984) wrote (after expressing admiration for suggests that Elvis’s forgetting and replacing of the young Elvis’s performances): the song’s lyrics were not merely a matter of random drug-induced memory loss, but were in By the end of the picture, in 1977, the heavyset, large part psychologically motivated. Set within Copyright © 2005. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved. All rights Press, Incorporated. © 2005. Oxford University Copyright forty-two-year-old celebrity-god Elvis Presley the context of his previous performances of the is a gulping, slurring crooner, faltering on the same song and related songs, his final recorded 142 Handbook of Psychobiography, edited by William Todd Schultz, Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sdsu/detail.action?docID=281371. Created from sdsu on 2020-01-03 12:57:07. The Music of Elvis Presley 143 performance of “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” choices to songs for which they and he owned provides evidence that issues central to his ear- publishing rights. But Elvis often insisted on re- lier psychological development remained signifi- cording songs that he recalled from earlier listen- cant until the end of his life. ing, sometimes all the way back into childhood, and his choices were final. Further, even though Elvis did not write the Elvis’s Early Songs: songs he recorded, he sometimes adapted exist- A Synchronic Approach ing songs to his own purposes. He deliberately changed words, phrases, and entire lines of some Psychobiographical studies of musicians present lyrics, as well as omitting lines or verses that special problems. Psychobiography typically in- didn’t suit him. His choices of songs and his volves close study of words written or spoken by modifications of their lyrics can yield the sorts the subject. Musical lyricists provide plenty of of personal data that make psychobiographies well-chosen words for analysis, so studies of fig- of creative artists possible. For instance, he spon- ures such as Bob Dylan or Stephen Sondheim taneously chose Arthur Crudup’s jump blues may resemble studies of nonmusical literary cre- “That’s All Right, Mama” for an intense re- ators. But without simultaneous consideration of corded performance at a time when his musi- the music that goes with Dylan’s or Sondheim’s cal career was just getting started. The song’s lyrics, the psychobiographer omits aspects of their lyrics assert that the singer is willing and ready creativity that are central to their public success and to evade his parents’ (especially his mother’s) perhaps to their private psychology. Composers of attempts to control his sexuality, yet the lyrics wordless or primarily wordless music present even also confuse mother and lover by calling both greater problems. A few psychobiographers have “Mama.” This complex of Oedipal and personal written impressive studies of such composers: for control issues in one brief song, not widely popu- example, Maynard Solomon (1995) on Mozart, lar before he recorded it but described by Elvis Solomon (2001, 2003) on Beethoven, and Peter as one of his personal favorites, encapsulates a Ostwald (1985) on Schumann. But their analyses pattern of motives and conflicts that remained of the personal origins of nonverbal and nonpro- with him until his death. grammatic music must remain largely speculative. Examination of other songs Elvis recorded Difficulties of a different sort face the psycho- during the same period in his life—in what might biographer of a subject who performs music be called a synchronic approach to psychobiog- mostly composed by others. In one of the few raphy (following Saussure, 1916)—can broaden such studies, Ostwald (1997) developed an in- and deepen our understanding of his principal sightful analysis of Glenn Gould’s piano artistry. concerns at that time. Over a two-year period, But Ostwald necessarily relied on knowledge he recorded a total of ten songs that Memphis gained from a long and close personal friendship record producer Sam Phillips judged to be wor- with Gould, as well as on Gould’s own published thy of commercial release on his Sun Records writing and interviews, to interpret the psychologi- label. Several unreleased recordings from the same cal foundations of his idiosyncratic performances. period, when Elvis was nineteen years old to not Elvis Presley falls into an intermediate category. quite twenty-one, went with him when Phillips He was principally a performer of others’ musi- sold his contract to RCA Victor. Most of those cal compositions, though an unusually expressive recordings were issued under the RCA label soon and distinctive performer. He never wrote an en- afterward. That entire set of early recordings made tire song by himself, though he sometimes sug- by Elvis in the small Sun Records studio (avail- gested song ideas to others, or encouraged them able as a CD collection titled Sunrise) is now re- to write songs that expressed his current emo- garded by music critics and knowledgeable fans tional concerns. He personally selected the songs as among Elvis’s best: musically powerful, emo- he recorded and performed onstage (though not tionally expressive, pioneering rock and roll. Copyright © 2005. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved. All rights Press, Incorporated. © 2005. Oxford University Copyright those he performed in films). His manager and his Among the ten Sun Records releases, two are record producers tried when possible to limit his light-hearted but rather explicit assertions of Handbook of Psychobiography, edited by William Todd Schultz, Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sdsu/detail.action?docID=281371. Created from sdsu on 2020-01-03 12:57:07. 144 Psychobiographies of Artists sexual prowess—songs of the older male adoles- From one verse to the next, the singer sounds cent, as Elvis was at the time. Five are songs of at times like an abandoned child, an adolescent abandonment, in three of which the singer tri- resenting parental control, and a mistreated adult umphs, either by getting his woman back, by lover. It’s a song that Elvis says “don’t move me” getting another woman, or by getting revenge. when sung as a slow blues number. But when The remaining three songs, including “That’s All he transforms it into a fast “boogie,” a song of Right, Mama,” are love songs in which mother happy revenge, it appears to tap into his deepest and sexual lover are symbolically or linguistically emotions. intermingled. In “Baby, Let’s Play House,” for Some critics have asserted that Elvis’s music instance, the singer repeatedly asks his “baby” changed sharply, becoming commercial and to come on back and play house, that is, to play emotionally vitiated, when he began to record for mama and papa with him—a remarkably Oedi- RCA Victor. In fact, he largely continued, over pal song for a singer whose favorite nickname the next three years, to sing and to record with for his mother was “Baby.” It would have been much the same intensity as at Sun Records, easy for Elvis as a three-year-old to see himself choosing songs that displayed similar emotional as having won a sudden victory in the Oedipal concerns.