Poor Elvis. The guy`s been dead more than 12 years, and still we keep beating up on him for turning into a fat, pill-popping lounge act with a weakness for peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches and ill-fitting gold lame jumpsuits.
Had Elvis lived, he would`ve been 55 Monday. But even on his birthday, the trash keeps flying. The latest indignity is an album titled ”The King and Eye” (Enigma) by a San Francisco band called the Residents.
To describe the Residents as a cult band would be akin to calling the pope a Catholic. They`ve never allowed themselves to be photographed, and during their rare live performances they usually appear onstage in costumes that resemble bulging eyeballs-with tophats and tights. They`ve recorded prolifically, however, and have built up a well-deserved reputation for their avant-pop music (somewhat akin to the mad musings of Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart) and cutting humor.
”The King and Eye” is essentially a retelling of how Elvis Presley, son of a Mississippi truck driver, became ”The King.” It features cover versions of 16 of his most famous songs, interspersed with bits of narrative that attempt to answer the musical question, ”The King of what?”
The record is notable primarily for the dark, ominous spin it puts on relatively playful Elvis classics such as ”Don`t Be Cruel,” ”Heartbreak Hotel,” even ”Blue Suede Shoes.” ”Return to Sender” sounds positively doleful and the fella who`s ”All Shook Up” is having a nervous breakdown. Supposedly, this interminable morbidity supports the Residents` conclusion that Elvis wasn`t the King of Rock, or the King of Sex, or even the King of Graceland, but the King of Need.
”He needed more than anyone else,” we`re informed.
Which isn`t exactly a revelation, but merely another take on the sad, tragicomic caricature that Elvis has become over the years.
If all this sounds like a downer of a birthday celebration, I suggest a quick jaunt down to the record store to pick up Presley`s ”The Complete Sun Sessions” (RCA), a chronicle of his wild youth under the wing of producer Sam Phillips in 1954-55. Then put on ”Mystery Train” and listen how this kid, whom Phillips described as the ”most introverted person that (ever) came into that studio,” comes out of his shell.
There`s a swagger in his voice, an audible self-confidence that belies the stoic fatalism of the song`s lyrics. ”Well it took my baby, but it never will again,” he vows at song`s end, and then lets out a whoop of triumph. For that one moment, Elvis was king of all he surveyed.
