0:15

Pushkin. The

0:22

New York Psychoanalytics Society and

0:24

Institute is in a very formal

0:26

European style building on a quiet

0:29

side street on the upper east side of Manhattan.

0:32

Oak tables, high ceilings.

0:34

In the library, long ribbons of leather

0:37

bound volumes, and five

0:39

different busts of Sigmund Freud, all

0:42

in a row. I

0:44

went there to meet with the Society's president,

0:47

Michelle Press, a psychoanalyst

0:49

herself with that lovely quality

0:51

of patience and openness the best

0:53

therapists always have. I wanted

0:56

to talk with her about a subject that I've always

0:58

found deeply interesting, what Freud

1:01

called parapraxis, but

1:05

not just anyone's parapraxis, the

1:08

King para praxis. My

1:14

name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to

1:16

Revisionist History, my podcast

1:19

about things overlooked and misunderstood.

1:23

After the first two episodes on Memory

1:25

earlier this season, I decided

1:27

to do a third. It involves

1:30

an odyssey. This

1:36

odyssey took me from the pages of the Handbook

1:38

of Psychobiography to a shrine

1:40

in Tennessee, to the legendary

1:43

Battery Studios in Times Square, and

1:45

to the hushed offices of the New

1:47

York Psychoanalytic Society, where

1:49

I sat with Michelle Press in

1:51

search of an answer to a simple question.

1:55

What if a singer couldn't remember the words

1:57

to a song, a song hit sung a thousand

1:59

times, particular parts of the

2:01

song, the same part of the song,

2:04

over and over. What would

2:06

that tell us about the singer? It

2:13

was a term in German faulty acts

2:15

or faulty functions. It would

2:17

be slips of the tongue. It could be misreadings,

2:20

mishearings, but it's Freud's

2:22

invention. Michelle Press

2:25

is talking about parappraxis,

2:27

from the Greek parameaning abnormal,

2:30

beyond praxis meaning

2:32

act abnormal speech

2:34

acts, or as they

2:36

are more colloquially known, Freudian

2:39

slips. Does Freud mean

2:41

that there are no accidental

2:43

slips, or that if you look at the range

2:45

of accidental slips you can find meaning in some.

2:48

So when you read him, he doesn't

2:50

want to sound that kind

2:53

of definitive. He'll say, yes,

2:55

maybe one might prove that there are

2:57

some that are truly accidental, or truly

3:00

a result of fatigue or

3:02

of maybe some medical illness.

3:05

But he said, if you do the work, one will find

3:08

the reasons for this slip, that they're not accidental

3:11

that they have. He called it a sense, and

3:13

that that sense has to do with unconscious

3:17

forces or unconscious ideas

3:19

that are trying to find expression but

3:21

are because they're unacceptable. They

3:24

emerge in these ways when one might

3:26

be unguarded. Now, is that concept

3:29

of unacceptability central

3:32

to the notion of parapraxis? Yes,

3:36

one over

3:49

medal sod strange.

3:55

In nineteen fifty six, early in his career,

3:58

Elvis Presley recorded a song called

4:00

Old Sheep. It's a sentimental

4:02

song about a boy and his dog, Shep,

4:05

written in the nineteen thirties by Red Foley.

4:08

The dog gets old and sick. The vet

4:10

says there's no hope. The

4:12

boy aims his rifle at Shep to put him out

4:14

of his misery, but he can't pull the trigger.

4:17

He lies down next to Shep cradles

4:20

him in his arms as the dog dies,

4:23

and the song ends. Who

4:26

Sheppy has

4:29

gone? Whether

4:31

good dog is gone?

4:35

And no war? But

4:45

if dogs have a

4:47

heaven, that's

4:50

one, Oh

4:54

sheppers wonderful.

5:04

Old Shep is not one of Elvis's more

5:06

famous songs, but in an

5:08

essay public in two thousand and five

5:10

on Elvis, the psychologists

5:12

Alan Elms and Bruce Heller have an

5:14

a side about a small but significant

5:17

discrepancy between the original

5:19

version of Old Shep and Elvis's

5:21

cover. I'm going to come back to

5:23

Heller and Elms in a while because they

5:26

really do the most thorough analysis of

5:28

Elvis's lyrical para praxis.

5:31

But let's start with Old Shep. Listen

5:34

to Hank Snow performing the lyrics

5:37

as they were originally written. The

5:39

boy has just put away his gun, realizing

5:42

he can't shoot Shep, so

5:45

I threw down that old gun,

5:49

ran right up to his side,

5:52

the lady's faithful old

5:54

head right online and

5:57

friends, I

6:00

stroked the best power but

6:03

a man ever found. I

6:06

even cried, so I see

6:13

now listen to Elvis sing his

6:16

version, I

6:18

had strung the best

6:20

friend a

6:23

man, I

6:28

cry.

6:35

Hanks Now sings, I stroked

6:37

the best pal a man ever found, meaning

6:40

that the boy considers an act of violence against

6:42

his best pal, then decides

6:45

against it and takes instead

6:47

the path of nurture and sympathy.

6:49

He recovers his humanity.

6:52

But Elvis sings, I had struck

6:55

the best friend a man ever had which

6:58

turns the meaning of the song completely upside

7:00

down. The boy does not recover

7:02

his humanity. He now holds himself

7:04

responsible for an act of violence against shape,

7:07

an act of violence that in fact, he did not

7:09

commit. Stroke becomes

7:11

struck, and all of a sudden, a song about

7:14

moral redemption turns into

7:16

a song about morbid remorse. Now,

7:20

I suppose you can say stroke

7:23

struck whatever, those two words

7:25

sound the same. It's just a cover. But

7:27

it's not just a cover. Alvis

7:30

was obsessed with Old Shepp. It's

7:32

the first song he ever learned on the guitar. He

7:34

played it incessantly as a child.

7:36

At age ten, he played it at the Mississippi

7:39

Alabama Fair, his first public performance.

7:42

He played it at his high school talent show

7:44

and won. He played it on dates

7:46

with girls. He played it well into

7:49

his career. And why does the

7:51

song resonate so much with him?

7:54

It's a song about love, betrayal,

7:56

and loss, themes that

7:58

are at the center of Elvis's life. He's

8:01

a twinless twin, someone who's twin

8:04

died in utero, and he's obsessed

8:06

by that fact. He brings it up again

8:08

and again, the loss of someone who

8:10

should have been his closest friend. Alvis's

8:15

mother, Gladys is, to say the least unusual.

8:17

She's controlling, intense. He

8:20

calls her baby. Gladys died

8:22

when Alvis was just twenty three. When

8:26

he first saw her casket, he threw himself

8:28

on top of her body, then

8:30

stepped back and talked about how

8:32

beautiful she was. While pointing

8:35

to her dead feet. He called them

8:37

her little suities. He did

8:39

this again and again. At

8:42

the end of the funeral service, he lay

8:44

on top of her casket, saying, I

8:46

want to go with you. I don't want

8:48

to stay here. I can't be without

8:51

you. And

8:53

we haven't even gotten to Priscilla, Alvis's

8:55

wife. He spotted her when she was

8:57

fourteen and eventually convinced her to

9:00

move in with him in Memphis. Once

9:03

Alvis took her to a move Yes

9:06

he did. This

9:08

is Priscilla being interviewed by Barbara

9:10

Walters in nineteen eighty five. Why

9:13

why that fascination? I don't know.

9:15

I don't know what the fascination was. This is not the first

9:18

time that he had done this. I don't know if it was for

9:20

the shock value, you know, to see how

9:22

people would react or just

9:25

for his own thrill of it.

9:28

You wrote there were times when you and Elvis

9:30

spent days in the bedroom,

9:33

freezing bedroom. He liked it find cold, the

9:35

windows with blackout drapes, so no sunlight

9:38

entered. Day after day. It

9:42

went into weeks. Yes, we've stayed

9:44

like that. We had our food delivered by

9:46

the door, and

9:52

it was cold. I mean he did like a cold

9:54

and it was dark, and it

9:56

could get real lonely. And

9:58

that's that's how he liked

10:02

it at times, like a cocoon,

10:05

almost like a wound. I guess you

10:08

think. Priscilla and

10:10

Barbara Walters are on a white couch surrounded

10:12

by pink flowers. Priscilla is

10:14

in a strapless sun dress. She looks

10:17

amazing. Barbara Walters

10:19

turns to her and says, Alvis

10:21

controlled your looks, your clothes, your

10:23

hair, your make up. He controlled you totally.

10:26

Priscilla says, yes he did.

10:29

Then six years you lived

10:31

there before he decided to marry

10:33

you. In those six

10:35

years of sleeping with him every

10:37

night, he never had intercourse with you.

10:41

You wrote in your book that there were times when you

10:43

begged him six years

10:49

I saw why. Well

10:52

again, you know, I can only go back

10:54

to what his concept was as what he

10:56

wanted in a woman, and somewhere

11:00

he along in

11:03

his past he said that he wanted

11:05

a virgin. Alvis

11:07

is complicated, and what

11:10

does Freud's theory of parapraxis say?

11:12

That complicated feelings inappropriate

11:15

may be unacceptable. Feelings are

11:17

normally suppressed, but every

11:20

now and again, some little bit of that

11:22

buried emotion slips out, and

11:24

if you're paying attention and listening

11:27

closely, that little slip can

11:29

tell you something. Struck

11:32

for stroke, But

11:35

old shep is just the beginning. For

11:37

Elvis. The real parapraxis

11:39

occurs in are You Lonesome

11:42

to Night? A song originally

11:44

written in the nineteen twenties and which

11:46

Elvis took to the top of the charts just after

11:48

he came out of the Army.

11:59

Are You Blongs Who

12:09

Days Are? While? Six? Take two? Elvis

12:19

at the RCA Studios on Music Row

12:21

in Nashville, April fourth, nineteen

12:23

sixty The recordings from the

12:25

original session now held in the Sony

12:28

Music Archive. Yeah, this

12:30

is um. There's numerous takes here, so they fall

12:32

apart, they make a mistake, or what have you?

12:35

John Jackson and Vic Nissini from

12:37

Sony Me all

12:39

listening together at the legendary Battery

12:42

Studios in Manhattan, where everyone

12:44

from John Lennon to Bruce Springsteen recorded

12:47

Holy Ground. I started

12:50

my quest at the very beginning.

12:54

It's you sherline,

13:04

tell me Dan, are

13:07

you lonesome too?

13:17

Because boys so many?

13:19

Yeah? Is he uh? When

13:21

he records that, are the jordan are singing

13:24

along with him or they're laying that. He

13:29

always preferred to have everyone in one room,

13:32

yeah, and record live or even in one

13:34

room, not in booths or no no, no, no no. He hated

13:36

booths. Recording the song

13:38

was not Elvis's idea. It was

13:40

a favorite of the wife of his manager, Tom

13:43

Parker. In the studio, Elvis

13:45

asked the lights be turned off so

13:47

the room was in darkness. He did

13:50

five takes. He didn't like

13:52

any of them. It was four in the morning when

13:54

he recorded it, so he made

13:56

everyone get out of the studio go away, and then

13:58

he just you know, did it. Yeah, And then

14:00

they this is the second take, which they told

14:03

him of the background singers, you know, pee

14:05

pop, because he said, just stop

14:07

the tape, you know, I'm on They said

14:10

just do it once more because you know, we get a peepop

14:12

on there. So the third take ends up being the master.

14:14

Oh, I see when he held the label

14:16

held it back for seven eight months, it was he didn't

14:18

realize what they hit on their hands. Yeah, it was

14:22

seven months. I think after he they

14:24

finally released it as a single and didn't

14:26

ground that he had done eight songs for

14:29

Elvis's back and this

14:31

was just like, yeah, just try this one

14:34

recorded in the wee hours of the morning in

14:36

darkness as a favor to someone

14:39

else, a song neither Elvis

14:41

nor his label particularly liked. It's

14:43

almost like the song had a curse on

14:46

it right from the beginning, and

14:48

from then on Elvis could never quite

14:50

get it right. I

14:54

talked about this with Michelle Press at the New York

14:56

Psychoanalytics Society. Elvis

14:58

wasn't typically someone who forgot the words

15:01

to the songs he sang. This, all

15:03

these examples stut of his life of him being able to

15:05

recite to sing from memory massive

15:08

amounts of stuff. I'm

15:11

worried about. I'm interested about that. There's a little

15:13

slip I'm worried about, I said. I said,

15:15

I'm worried about that. I'm

15:18

interested in that, and

15:20

I'm wondering what the what would

15:22

you make of that? As a

15:25

psychoanalyst. I try

15:27

to go on, but of course I'm talking

15:29

to a hardcore Freudian. I

15:32

meant to say I was interested, but

15:35

what came out was worried. I

15:38

mean, I'm still caught on your slip, obviously

15:40

thinking what do you what do you make of it? So

15:43

one thought was whether the slip might

15:45

be a key to something that you're figuring

15:48

out and puzzling with him,

15:51

because you're right now, you're immersed

15:53

in him. Oh I am.

15:56

I've been singing this song under my

15:58

breath for months. I

16:00

can't understand why I've never been

16:02

an Elvis fan. I don't own a single song

16:04

of his, or am I am?

16:07

I drawn to this story because isn't

16:09

this story that I'm talking to you the

16:13

great anxiety of anyone in a creative field,

16:16

that moment when you lose control, right

16:19

where the the

16:22

presentation to the audience is

16:26

unmasked. I want to I

16:28

want to show you what. I

16:30

take up my laptop, pull up YouTube.

16:33

There's a mountain of Elbos on YouTube,

16:35

one of the last performances of his life. It's

16:38

bananas, I mean, just it's He's

16:41

singing a song he's singing thousands of times,

16:43

and he just completely

16:46

loses control of it. I

16:48

can skip that here

16:51

coming from I

16:58

wonder if two

17:00

loss of a light. You

17:03

know someone said the roles

17:05

will state it's in e mus play a party.

17:09

I've been here playing him early in A

17:12

plus tax. You

17:14

read your lian select clearly now

17:17

I'm missing it. Came

17:19

back to if I got the word save

17:22

to change. When

17:25

I first saw it it as

17:27

someone in a I mean, I'm not Elvis, but

17:30

I'm someone in a creative field. It terrified

17:33

me. It's like up on stage

17:35

doing what he's paid to do,

17:38

and he he just I'm

17:40

like, well, I remember, really Goon during your life.

17:45

I'm gonna go on living without you. Now

17:48

the stage is bear and

17:50

I'm standing there without

17:53

any hair. I don't know if

17:57

you will come back to me. With

18:02

every live performance he's ever given

18:04

of this that we have on tape, he

18:07

mangles the bridge, can't

18:09

do it right. It's he's returning

18:11

to the song again and again and again and again and again and doing

18:14

the same. In this particular,

18:16

it's always a bridge of singing part.

18:19

He's almost over. How many years

18:21

did this go on years. Okay.

18:25

In nineteen eighty two, this life

18:28

and Version was really in the UK and reached on the

18:30

twenty five singles chart at

18:32

Battery Studios. I made the Sony

18:35

guys play every version they had.

18:37

They even have names, Laughing Elvis,

18:40

Crazy Elvis, each one stranger

18:43

than the one before. The

18:46

World's stay apart. God.

19:05

There's sweat and tears streaming

19:08

down his face and

19:16

I had no calls to don It

19:22

goes on like this, on and

19:25

on your baby shoe

19:32

again, Dolly,

19:48

that's it man? Fourty years.

19:51

I another Verian. Well, I'm doing sere.

20:01

Have you ever played a song before? No? I never played

20:03

it before, And it's funny. I played a bunch of check

20:07

I played a bunch of his stuff. Do you want to

20:09

put us a standby switch

20:12

on the back? I'm with Jack White

20:14

at his studio in Nashville Third Man

20:16

Records. Jack White, formerly of the White

20:19

Stripes, one of the great rock and rollers

20:21

of his generation and a huge

20:23

Elvis fan. Here's a shrine to Elvis

20:26

in his hallway, actual shrine. All

20:28

that's missing his flowers. We

20:31

met in his private office. Lots of black

20:33

and yellow and leather and taxidermy. He

20:35

sat on the couch with a guitar. Do

20:37

you play? Do

20:39

you play? Elvis? Song's a concert?

20:43

Sometimes? I do? Love what's

20:49

up treating

20:53

me? Oh?

20:59

Love me, love me? Dream

21:04

and just sing. I

21:11

was gonna say, don't stop, I'm enjoying it.

21:16

Anything any other ones you do? Wait,

21:19

by the way, why do you why that one? What's

21:21

it about that song? I had heard that early

21:24

from a band called the Flat Too. A jet said I really liked and

21:27

I didn't know it was Elvis. And

21:29

then when I'd heard the Elvis version, I had connected

21:31

the two, like, oh no, I really and I started doing

21:33

it. When I put in coffee houses, I started playing

21:35

that. I was like sixteen yea

21:38

that goes back, which is funny. I eventually

21:41

heard a story of Robert Plant telling

21:45

Elvis he loved that song, and led Zeppelin

21:47

met Elvis, and then when they walked out out of

21:50

the hallway that Elvis poked his head out in

21:52

the hallway and sang that song to

21:55

Robert Plant. They sang it back to each other and you're

21:58

crying and must have been an

22:00

amazing moment. Jack

22:03

White owns the original ascetate pressing

22:05

of Elvis's first recording from nineteen

22:07

fifty three, My Happiness. After

22:10

we talked, White took me into his vault to show

22:12

it to me. It's priceless. He

22:14

asked me if I weren't to hold it. I was

22:16

too terrified to say yes. Jack

22:19

White seemed like the right person to see to

22:21

try and understand Elvis's problem. And

22:23

are you lonesome tonight? All right? Let

22:26

me see if we can take a crack. I might have to give her

22:28

coup worlds. What are

22:40

your lonesome tonight?

22:45

Do you miss me tonight?

22:50

Are you sorry? We

22:53

drifted apart?

22:59

Does your memor re

23:01

strength? You

23:04

are brightsong moday?

23:08

We're not show and

23:11

called you a sweetheart?

23:17

Do the chair in

23:19

your power, seam

23:22

and dey and

23:24

bear? Do you

23:27

gaze as your

23:29

door step and

23:31

picture me? Then?

23:35

Is your heart feel with

23:38

pain? Shall

23:40

I come back? Yeah?

23:44

Tell? Are

23:47

you lonesome? Tone?

23:53

That's the first half of the song. The

23:55

song version all questions a

23:57

man is wondering whether his lover misses him. Then

24:01

comes the spoken bridge, in which the emotional

24:03

tables are turned and the man leaves

24:06

himself bare. Are

24:08

you learnesome Tonight? Has been recorded countless

24:10

times over the years. A lot of performers

24:13

leave out the bridge because it's corny and

24:15

way too long and hard. Elvis

24:19

kept it in, so does Jack

24:21

White. I

24:23

wonder if you're

24:26

lonesome tonight. You

24:28

know someone said that the wilds of stage

24:31

and each must play a part. If

24:33

you'd had me playing in love with

24:35

you as my sweetom, that one

24:38

was where we had I

24:40

loved you at first glance. You

24:42

read your line so cleverly, You've never missed

24:44

a Q thing came back too.

24:48

You seem to change, You're acted strange

24:51

and why I've never known? Honey.

24:57

You lied when you said you loved me, and

25:01

I had no cause to doubt you. But

25:05

I'd rather go on hearing your lies. I'm

25:09

gonna go on living without Now

25:14

the stage is there and

25:17

I'm standing there with emptiness

25:19

all around. If

25:22

you won't come back to me and

25:25

then you bring the curtain back, is

25:30

your heart fill play?

25:35

Shall I come back again?

25:39

Tell me so

25:44

too? WHOA

25:51

wait? You would you enjoyed

25:53

that I did?

25:56

It gets I gets there's some nice parts

25:59

where it gets the you can

26:01

see up playing that live now.

26:04

I just did that, like well, we just did that. I

26:06

played it once yesterday like reading this, but

26:10

now playing like that, I could see while live you could

26:12

really that really could get to be in a really emotional

26:15

song. So I didn't

26:17

really think about it till just then. What

26:20

led you to think that just now? Because it

26:22

feels like, well, it's in a mine, it's a

26:24

lot of minor chords, so that that that's already

26:26

gets you in that melancholy vibe, but it has

26:29

it has that. Um. What

26:33

just occurred to me now is he doesn't he doesn't. He

26:35

doesn't really care that if she's lonesome,

26:38

he's lonesome. That's the singer is

26:40

lonesome. And it's a it's a mcguffin

26:42

to pretend like I'm I'm worried about

26:44

you? Are you lonesome tonight?

26:47

You know? But it's really he's the singer

26:49

is worried about himself. So that

26:52

could be. Um, you know, you take that

26:54

kind of emotional song and you put

26:58

years and years on stage, and then you put

27:00

drugs in the mix, and then in your

27:02

own state of mind at the time, it could

27:04

be a real you could be onto

27:06

something there. It could be a real diversion that it's

27:09

too powerful. What's

27:11

fascinating is the the

27:13

song parts, the singer

27:16

is in control and he's worried about her.

27:18

Right the spoken parts, the singer

27:20

is vulnerable, he's confessing his own

27:22

and it's still screwed up.

27:24

It's like, I know you lied to me, and

27:26

I wish you hadn't right. I wish I didn't

27:29

know that you lied to me because I'd rather be in the

27:31

state of being deceived than know the

27:33

truth, which is like seventeen convolutions

27:36

of neuroticism.

27:39

Because he's still he's still blaming her, most

27:41

of the lines, still still pointing

27:43

the finger. White says,

27:46

you can't run from that kind of emotion, not

27:48

if you're singing the song properly, and

27:51

so when he writes songs, he tries

27:53

to establish some distance between himself

27:55

and the feelings he's singing about. I

27:58

tried to push it into a

28:00

character's standpoint rather than it being

28:03

a self confession

28:06

confessional for me, because I think that would

28:08

be really hard to consistently keep living

28:10

that moment over and over and over again. I've

28:12

definitely seen older artists ignoring

28:15

certain parts of their certain songs in their career

28:17

because it's probably too close to home about

28:20

something or other. But you

28:22

can't avoid a song's emotional effects

28:25

all the time, and especially not

28:27

when you have to read a soliloquy in the middle of it,

28:30

which is what the are you lonesome? Bridge? Is

28:32

a speech parachuted into the heart

28:35

of the song. I had a little

28:37

flub moment at one point

28:39

trying to figure out We'll wait a minute, it's

28:41

a waltz. You know you have that.

28:45

So if I'm like, I

28:50

wonder if two

28:53

three so one two three

28:55

one two three, your

28:59

brain kind of wants to go, I wonder

29:01

if you're lonesome tonight?

29:06

That's what your brain wants to do. You

29:08

know, someone said that the world's a stage

29:11

and we must each play a part. Then it starts to

29:13

get that's it breaks down. Yeah,

29:15

I mean would, I mean I would. I can definitely say that

29:18

this would be a lot easier someone else was playing

29:20

guitar and I could just recite,

29:23

uh that part which I recited

29:25

while you played a guitar. Yeah, I'm

29:30

not going to torch you with my rendition of the spoken

29:32

bridge. Well maybe later. I'm

29:35

just saying until I die, I

29:37

can say I play with Jack White and

29:40

then because how many opportunities?

29:42

Am I going to get like this? I

29:45

asked Jack White to help me edit the

29:47

soliloquy. If one were to rewrite

29:49

it, I'm thinking you that

29:52

you uh, you lose the first

29:54

three lines fate

29:57

had me playing in love you as

29:59

my sweetheart? Or even

30:02

act one was when we met? Why why

30:04

don't they just start with act one? That act

30:10

one was where you met I

30:12

loved you at first class. You

30:16

read your lines so carefully, never

30:18

missed a Q. When

30:21

I do there, you say carefully instead of cleautiful,

30:26

then came back to you

30:29

seem to change. You acted strange. What

30:32

did Jack White do there? The

30:34

actual lyric is you read

30:37

your lines so cleverly, He

30:39

said, you read your line

30:41

so carefully carefully

30:44

for cleverly, A man singing

30:46

one of the songs of his musical idol

30:49

comes to the emotionally complex center,

30:52

and what do we hear? A moment

30:54

of vulnerability? Can he

30:56

be as clever as Elvis? He's

30:59

not sure. He must be careful

31:02

para praxis Sometimes

31:04

you know I love I love him so much, and that

31:07

you know I'm afraid to learn more about certain

31:09

things, like you know when it's you're

31:11

so close to it, and you've experienced

31:13

certain things about you

31:16

know nothing in comparison to what

31:19

he went through, but you're in the same where we do

31:21

the same kind of thing. We perform,

31:23

and we go on stages and we make records

31:25

and all this stuff. I'm from a different time

31:27

period, but you notice these tiny

31:29

little moments that are when you

31:31

see certainly went, oh, I know exactly what that's

31:33

about. I don't know exactly what that feels like. There

31:41

are ten known live recordings of Elvis

31:44

performing Are You Lonesome Tonight, starting

31:46

in nineteen sixty one in a concert at Bloc

31:49

Arena in Honolulu, up to the

31:51

end of Elvis's life in nineteen

31:53

seventy seven. Alan Elms

31:55

and Bruce Heller analyze them all

31:57

in their essay Twelve Ways to Say

32:00

Lonesome, Assessing error

32:02

and control in the music of Elvis Presley.

32:07

Elms and Heller find that Elvis

32:09

performs the sung portion of all You Lonesome

32:12

Tonight more or less flawlessly

32:14

because the sung portion is the part of the song

32:17

where the singer is in control, but

32:19

in the spoken bridge, the narrator

32:22

is suddenly the one who's been deceived and rejected

32:25

and that's the part Elvis can't get right. Elms

32:29

and Heller count total of a

32:31

hundred and nine errors in those

32:34

ten live performances of The Spoken Bridge,

32:36

twenty nine of which involved just

32:39

four lines. I loved

32:42

you at first glance, where he confesses

32:44

the depths of his feelings. You

32:46

seem to change, You acted strange,

32:50

where he testifies to his betrayal and

32:52

rejection, and why I've

32:55

never known, where he expresses

32:57

his feelings of anger and victimization,

33:00

and with emptiness

33:03

all around, where he admits

33:05

to his loneliness. The

33:07

most problematic conditions of the Bridge

33:10

are the later ones, which come after

33:12

the summer of nineteen seventy two. What

33:16

happens in the summer of nineteen seventy

33:18

two? And one day you went

33:20

in and said I'm leaving. There

33:24

was another man in your life. He

33:26

was your karate teacher, right, Mike Stone.

33:29

And you went off then and lived with him. Priscilla

33:32

Presley back on the couch with Barbara

33:35

Walters, America's primetime

33:37

Freudian. It was said

33:39

that Elvis tried to kill him or wanted him killed,

33:42

right? Do you believe that? I think

33:44

at that time, yes, he did. He wanted

33:46

that to happen. I

33:50

du the chasing your

33:52

father seeing

33:55

empteed? Do

33:59

you game that your

34:01

bullhead? I wish

34:04

you had her? Fool

34:09

with pain? Shall I come

34:12

back to

34:15

me? Dude? Are you lost?

34:20

Lord? Lord? I

34:25

want to A

34:28

man who fears betrayal an abandonment,

34:32

is betrayed and abandoned. I

34:37

had no call to Dog. It's

34:45

too much. He's a wreck. Your

34:48

baby shot.

34:52

Come again,

34:56

Tobby, Dude, are

34:58

you lonesome? After

35:08

I left Jack White, I went to see

35:10

Bobby Braddock just down the street at

35:12

the Sony Studios on Nashville's Music

35:15

Row. You

35:19

may remember Bobby Braddock from season

35:21

two of Revisionist History. He's

35:23

the legendary songwriter I called

35:25

the King of Tears. Braddock

35:28

wanted to introduce me to a good friend of his,

35:30

a singer songwriter named Casey Bowles.

35:34

That's the church across alto thirty

35:36

something, long red hair, the

35:38

kind of person who if you touch you

35:41

expect a little jolt of static work.

35:45

Young. We

35:48

were in the biggest of the Sony recording studios,

35:50

on the main floor, in a corner where

35:53

the piano was Casey

35:56

sang are you lonesome? Tonight? With

35:58

Bobby on the piano toss

36:08

me are

36:12

you Sobby? Then

36:18

we sat and they talked about Nashville.

36:21

They talked about how they both grew up in the

36:23

Church of Christ, the most strict of Southern

36:26

fundamentalist denominations, And

36:28

they talked about Elvis. My

36:30

dad thought he was Elvis. I think, yeah,

36:33

he really. He was a Church of Christ long

36:36

leader and really wanted to be a Jordinaire badly,

36:39

And so ray Walker

36:41

was one of the Jordanaires, and he tried to emulate him

36:43

by way of dress and hairstyle. And

36:46

so I grew up either hearing

36:48

him say hello, darling nastasy or

36:51

doing this sort of you

36:54

know, is it vaudeville style

36:56

or just just sort of a over

36:58

the top modeling style.

37:01

I guess is modeling the way you'd say it modeling. Then

37:03

Bobby Braddock started talking about recitations,

37:06

the spoken part in many older country

37:08

songs, and he made the same point that

37:10

Jack White did, that they're much easier

37:13

if they're set to music, if you could

37:15

just as easily sing them. Like on

37:17

one of Braddock's most famous songs, he

37:19

stopped loving her to stay recitation,

37:35

Yeah you could sing that. She came

37:37

to see him one last time. We

37:42

all wonder if she and

37:45

that works either way. But this is

37:47

just like, uh, we got this song, let's

37:49

get a recitation. Threw it in there and

37:52

they office made it work. And I'm

37:54

thinking, just instinctively, just because he was

37:57

h he was just so good. Recitations

38:01

are unusual these days. Braddock

38:03

hasn't written one since something he did for Toby

38:05

Keith in the nineteen nineties. Last

38:07

successful recitation. Your song I ham was actually

38:11

it was a well, actually it was it was it was a hip

38:13

hop thing. I want to talk about me. That was

38:16

talking talking, talking what I'm thinking

38:18

about, But it was you know what can

38:20

you you can? You can you pay a little

38:22

slice of that? You remember I never

38:26

do that? Why do that always? I always

38:29

do it with with with a karaoke thing where I

38:31

get up there and play the thing. I

38:35

want to talk about me, I want to talk about I want

38:37

to talk about number one or now. You

38:40

talk about your work, how your boss is a jerk, You talk

38:42

about your church in your head and when your urse, talk

38:44

about the trouble you've been having with your mother and your daddy,

38:46

with your brother and your daddy and your mother and your crazy

38:49

Acts lover, you know, and

38:54

then and then the minstrel menstrual

38:56

period of line, which everybody said, you can't put

38:59

that in a song, nobody'll ever cut it, you

39:01

know, And it was one of the biggest songs.

39:03

They were about

39:05

your medical charts and when you start

39:09

check that out, nobody recording to

39:14

He's probably the only one who would have though. Then

39:17

I showed them the prize. I

39:19

brought it my bag, my copy

39:22

of the Handbook of Psychobiography containing

39:25

the Heller and Elms essay. Hold

39:28

on, I'll have my book here. I'll tell

39:30

you the specimen is fascinating.

39:33

To a pair of Elvis fanatics. It was like

39:35

I'd unearthed the Dead Sea scrolls. What's

39:38

the book. It's the book called Handbook

39:40

of Psychobiography, and it has

39:42

an essay on this song. Wow,

39:45

psycho biography and so yeah, So

39:47

here's so this guy has gone through. He've

39:49

made a chart of all

39:52

of the lyrical mistakes that

39:54

Elvis made an every known live

39:56

recording of. Yeah.

40:00

These were two songwriters and I felt

40:02

they immediately saw themselves in that chart.

40:05

Do you find yourself making the

40:07

kind of errors, sometimes even subtle ones that

40:10

you know, we've been talking about that's so interesting. I

40:12

wrote a song about my mother called Somebody

40:15

Something, and my mother is adorable,

40:17

and whenever you heard about

40:20

things going wrong or like some multivate

40:22

story, it was my dad. And so I finally was like,

40:24

you know what, why aren't we the only person in the family that

40:26

there's nothing I haven't written about? So I was

40:28

trying to dig dirt on her and there was nothing, And

40:31

so I ended up writing this song about

40:33

her, called Somebody Something, and I

40:35

cry every time I do it. And there

40:39

is a line it says, you know, she's always

40:41

been somebody something. She's lived every life

40:43

but her own, and

40:46

it's gone. I can't remember it right now. I

40:49

don't know that feeling. I can't remember it. She's

40:52

always been somebody something's been everything

40:55

but alone, a daughter,

40:57

a mother, a lot, a daughter, a

40:59

lover, hawife, and a mother.

41:02

She's lived to every life but her own. Yes,

41:05

she's always been somebody something.

41:08

And there's a line that says, you know, she she wonders

41:11

what it might be like to be somebody

41:13

else, and she wonders what

41:17

it feels like to be free, But

41:20

she's always imagined being nobody's nothing,

41:22

And that's something she never want to be. But

41:25

that line usually is just gone.

41:28

And um, a lot of times I'll go hold on

41:30

and divert and tell a funny story really

41:32

quickly. Um yeah,

41:35

wait, what's the specific line

41:38

that's gone? Is which one? Uh?

41:40

Let's gone again? Um, she's

41:43

always been somebody something that's been everything but a

41:45

daughter, a daughter, a lover,

41:47

a wife, and a mother. She's been everything

41:51

but alone. Yeah yeah,

41:56

why is it that longe? I don't know. I think that,

41:58

Um, I

42:03

don't know. I think when you've even she's

42:05

so when you see somebody give so

42:08

much of themselves and that's truly the only thing

42:10

that she will ever experience. And I think it's what I've

42:12

experienced the most stuff. A

42:15

minute before, we were joking about

42:17

Toby Keith. Now Casey

42:19

is pensive as she compares

42:22

her mother's life to her own. Not

42:25

being able to make a relationship work the first

42:28

eighteen thousand times out of the gate or you know, officially

42:30

the first two and um, not

42:33

being a mother and we're still real

42:35

closer, right, Yeah, I love her. Go

42:38

to church where they're right? Do I sit still?

42:41

Because she makes me and I stay awake.

42:43

It's good when I when

42:46

I was a kid, if I get bored in

42:48

church and my mother reached him and pinch me, Oh,

42:51

I got smacked. We Casey,

42:53

can you play that song for us? Is it's going to be two

42:56

let's say, okay,

43:00

okay, Well we'll see if this happens. She

43:16

grew up playing cowgirl in

43:20

Bill Road Town, dreaming.

43:23

She'd see, Oh, shoot, hold on, there's

43:25

a little linebout Elvis in this. That's just random. Hold

43:28

on dreaming. See she Hollywood, I'm gonna go

43:30

again. What

43:45

did I just say? Sorry, I'm

43:47

thinking about mom. She grew

43:49

up playing cow girl. She grew up playing

43:52

cowgirl in

43:55

Bellroad Town, dreamings.

43:58

She'd see HollyHood Sunday.

44:03

She knew Sunday distant Friday

44:06

night with a

44:08

singer. It just right.

44:12

They would come and carry away

44:19

as as far shakes

44:21

safe from that's

44:25

all right. Hold

44:29

one second. My

44:33

first reaction to Casey's failure of memory

44:36

was to be embarrassed for her, worried

44:38

that she had lost control. That's

44:40

the way we're trained to think. Just listen

44:43

to the words I've just used. Failure,

44:46

embarrassed, worried in

44:50

one way or another. That's what this season

44:52

of revisionist history has been about about

44:55

the ways we judge each other for our mistakes

44:58

and choices. The easiest

45:00

thing in the world is to look at those mistakes

45:02

and condemn. The much

45:05

harder thing is to look at those mistakes and

45:07

understand. She married

45:10

in December. Any work and

45:14

address her Mamma made, she

45:17

looked down, grown up standing there

45:19

like that, had

45:22

a honeymoon in Memphis Town.

45:26

Yeah, she looked for out us all

45:28

around, made

45:31

loving the gray. How coming

45:34

back as

45:37

far as she could see from there,

45:39

those were just the backslide. You

45:43

went from somebody's daughter

45:47

somebody's wife. A

45:52

parapraxis is not failure. When

45:55

the performer slips, the audience

45:58

is not cheated. It's the opposite.

46:01

Parapraxis is a gift. I

46:05

presented myself as interested

46:07

in this story, but now

46:09

you know that this subject doesn't

46:11

just interest me. It worries

46:14

me. Losing control

46:16

is my great anxiety. When

46:19

Jack White said carefully instead

46:22

of cleverly, it was a hint

46:24

that playing Alvis wasn't a trivial matter

46:27

for him. It was a sacred act.

46:30

Carefully full of care, and

46:34

Elvis, after the loss of Priscilla

46:37

sang a song hit sang a thousand

46:39

times only now in a way that gave

46:41

the audience a window on his pane. Mistakes

46:48

reveal our vulnerabilities. They

46:50

are the way the world understands us, the

46:53

way performers make their performances

46:55

real. So

47:01

Bobby Braddick and I sat there listening

47:04

to Casey sing tears

47:06

in her eyes, fumbling to remember the lyrics

47:08

of a song about her mother, fumbling

47:12

not because her mother didn't matter to her, but

47:15

because she did. She's always

47:18

there, somebody something.

47:22

She's been everything, daughter,

47:33

daughter, mother, wife,

47:37

fan, mother, She's

47:40

lit every life. But she'd

47:44

say, that's just called and

47:47

a woman. She's

47:51

always there somebody,

47:57

So God's

48:02

beautiful. Why are you

48:04

covering your mouth? I'm just that's just weird

48:09

because I've never It's just weird when

48:11

you're thinking about what it is like, I

48:13

just thought, oh, bad memory, too many songs, old,

48:16

too many songs in there. But at

48:18

any point in time, I could pull out a

48:22

rap from new edition from nineteen eighty

48:24

two, like why is that in there? And

48:27

something that you wrote is not in there? That

48:29

is so weird. It's

48:32

not weird. A lesser

48:34

person would have sung it perfectly.

48:54

Thank you for listening to Season three of Revisionist

48:57

History, And if you like this episode,

48:59

you'll enjoy my new series launching later this year.

49:02

It's called Broken Record, and you can subscribe

49:05

right now on Apple Podcasts. Revisionist

49:08

History is a Upleat production. The

49:10

senior producer is Mia LaBelle, with Jacob

49:12

Smith and Camille Baptista. Our

49:15

editor is Julia Barton. Flawn

49:17

Williams is our engineer. Fact checking

49:19

by Beth Johnson. Original music

49:21

by Luis Gara. Special thanks

49:24

to Kim Green and Hal Humphreys

49:26

of Storyboard EMP in Nashville

49:29

and here in New York. Thanks to Jason Gambrel,

49:32

Evan Viola, Rachel Strom,

49:35

Nicole Bunsis, Kate Mescal,

49:38

Kristin Mindzer, Carly Migliori,

49:41

Andy Bowers, and of course el

49:44

Hefe Jacob Weisberg. I'm

49:47

Malcolm Gladmow Okay,

50:11

so it will be. I wonder if you're

50:14

lonesome tonight. You

50:17

know, someone said that

50:20

the world's a stage and each

50:23

must play a part. Fate

50:26

had been playing in love you

50:29

as my sweetheart. Act

50:32

one was when we met. I

50:35

loved you at first glance. You

50:37

read your line so cleverly. Never

50:40

missed a Q then

50:43

came back two. You

50:46

seem to change, and you acted strange,

50:50

and why I'll never know. Honey.

50:54

You lied when you said you loved me, and

50:56

I had no cause to doubt you. But

50:59

I'd rather go on hearing your lives

51:03

than go on living without you. Now

51:07

the stage is bare and

51:10

I'm standing there with

51:12

emptiness all around. And

51:15

if you won't come back to me, then

51:18

make them bring the curtain down. How

51:21

about doing nice, very good? I

51:24

must say I'm not very musical. Now it's

51:26

very good, it's good.