Word: presley
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...There was something feminine about Elvis. His mouth formed the pout of a sullen schoolgirl; his hair was swathed in more chemicals than a starlet's; his hips churned like a hooker's in heat. Presley was manly too, in a street-punk way. For him, the electric guitar was less an instrument than a symbolic weapon - an ax or a machine gun aimed at the complacent pop culture of the 50s. Performing his pansexual rite to a heavy bass line, Elvis set the primal image for rock: a man and his guitar, the tortured satyr and his magic lute...
...This song isn't a classic, but Presley's rendition is - an Elvis apotheosis and an Elvis parody. (Everyone else was imitating him; why shouldn't he?) Grateful for a jaunty tune about his favorite stuffed animal, and perhaps for the marketing tie-in to the official Elvis Presley Teddy Bears on sale at better chain stores, he turns it into a children's song; he could be a father crooning silky nonsense to a first-born. He lends a seductive petulance in "I don't wanna be your tiger/ 'Cause tigers play too rough." He plays with the title...
...certainly knew his job - all of them. He was also a fine instinctive musician, a fast study with a gift for synthesizing what he'd heard into his own style. "He sucked up influences like litmus paper," writes Peter Guralnick in "Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley," the first book in a meticulous two-volume biography. "He was SERIOUS about his work. Whenever [Elvis' first manager Bob] Neal went by the house, he found him with a stack of records - Ray Charles and Big Joe Turner and Big Mama Thornton and Arthur ?Big Boy' Crudup - that...
...Phillips insisted to Guralnick: "He was NOT a producer. Steve was just at every session, and he kept his fucking mouth shut." Sholes would propose songs, and Elvis would dispose. In 1957 Leiber and Stoller, the L.A.-based singer-songwriters whose "Hound Dog" and "Jailhouse Rock" would be prime Presley calling cards, took over as producers. Stoller: "We thought we were the only white kids who knew anything about the blues," Stoller told Guralnick, "but he knew all kinds of stuff." Leiber added: "We thought he was like an idiot savant, but he listened a lot. He knew...
...fact, though, Elvis was the Marlon Brando of pop. Everyone saw this; I did, and I was 11. Brando and Elvis both had sullen good looks: hooded eyes and full, sensuous mouths that easily formed a sneer-smile. They semaphored their menace in their movement: Brando the prowling predator, Presley the sex machine. Most important: both men, virtually by themselves, caused a redefinition of what was acceptable in their fields. And soon, because of their seismic influence, their strange styles became the standard...