Mick Hartley

I realise this, by Tim Luckhurst at CiF, is meant to be iconoclastic and controversial, but to me it just comes across as plain nasty:

Elvis was no genius. He was a lad with a tremendous voice who found himself packaged and sold in the way thousands of slow-witted pop poppets have been ever since. It is risible to even mention him in the same sentence as John Lennon and Paul McCartney. He wrote hardly any original music and performed some appalling, lachrymose tripe. Better comparisons include Jason Donovan, Bros and Britney Spears…

Elvis was what Americans call trailer trash, in our terms a “chav”, before the term was invented. Instead of aspiring through education he made a career out of sullen, posturing ignorance. His fans have often made the same mistake. Small wonder they appreciate the lyrics, which are the literary equivalent of tumbler-dryer instructions.

Affection for Elvis is a workable predictor of anti-intellectual attitude. As one academic paper demonstrated in the 1970s, Beatles fans are much more likely to have experienced university education. They are also less likely to be psychologically insecure.

Elvis is a popular entertainer for the lowest of low-brow tastes. Once per year a quick blast of his early rock’n’roll can be fun, but listening for more than 10 minutes is agonising. He lacks the imagination to stimulate a mature mind. This is music for the emotionally adolescent, product of a world view too narrow to admit higher emotions or even recognise they exist.

Substitute classical music (or possibly Sinatra) for Lennon and McCartney, and that could have been written 40 or 50 years ago by any number of old fogeys – the difference being that they wouldn’t have quite dared to be so openly class-conscious and snobbish about it, with all this trailer-trash and dim-witted stuff. I don’t remember when I last read such a shamelessly elitist piece filled with so much openly-expressed contempt for the lower orders – and it’s published in the Guardian. Not a surprise, somehow.

The only credible claim that can be made on Elvis Presley’s behalf is that he helped introduce blues influences to a mass audience. But in a less bigoted era that would have been accomplished by authentic blues musicians. They expressed real emotions, despite origins at least as disadvantaged as his. But the world was not ready for their genius. It preferred to celebrate a dimwit instead.

That’s such nonsense it’s hard to know where to start. Elvis, for anyone who’s got ears, was a country boy. That’s Country boy. His early sessions were full of classic Country songs – “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin”, “Blue Moon of Kentucky”, “I Forgot to Remember to Forget”. But he was part of that moment when the barriers were coming down (not that they were ever as fixed as people like to think) and he listened to and loved black music, especially Gospel and, yes, Blues. So that’s what he did: he brought a certain black sensibility to his singing. But he was working within a tradition. That’s what he grew up with. There’s no question of Elvis somehow stealing or expropriating black music. Some of his early hits were originally by black performers (Hound Dog), some by white performers (Blue Suede Shoes). So what? As for introducing “blues influences to a mass audience”, which in a less bigoted era “would have been accomplished by authentic blues musicians”, what we’re talking about here is British groups like the Stones, whose first recordings were all straight blues covers. That’s not Elvis.

Then there’s this whole tiresome snobbery about not writing songs. Interestingly – ironically given his song-writing record – Bob Dylan has had a few remarks to make about this in his Theme Time radio shows – that we’ve lost that tradition of great song interpreters, like Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and, yes, Elvis. Now everyone’s supposed to be a songwriter, to be original (and, preferably, to “have experienced university education”). Which is fine if you’re as talented as Lennon and McCartney – but not many are.

Most of all, though, I just wouldn’t trust anyone’s judgement if they can dismiss Elvis so condescendingly, and offer as a serious argument that line about a “workable predictor of anti-intellectual attitude”. Music and intellect don’t always go together. If you don’t like his music – especially his early pre-army stuff – then you’re missing out on some masterpieces. Simple as that.