Speaker 1: Pushkin to introduce this episode. I just want to relate
Speaker 1: how random my journey to it was. I was reading
Speaker 1: a book I can't even remember what it was, and
Speaker 1: then a footnote I always read the footnotes. The author
Speaker 1: said the psychologist whose work she was referring to had
Speaker 1: done a very strange paper once about Elvis, at which
Speaker 1: point I stopped reading the book and looked up the
Speaker 1: very strange paper about Elvis. It was by Alan Elms.
Speaker 1: It was amazing, So immediately I go to the next question.
Speaker 1: Was Alan Elms still alive? Yes, living in Davis, California.
Speaker 1: Next step, I gotta go see him. So I immediately
Speaker 1: fly to San Francisco rent a car, but the rental
Speaker 1: agency is out of all cars except for a bright
Speaker 1: canary yellow Chevy Corvette, which I take happily. But then
Speaker 1: halfway to Davis, driving at speeds that are very, very
Speaker 1: far from legal, I start thinking, what's this guy going
Speaker 1: to think of me if I show up in a
Speaker 1: bright canary yellow Corvette. He's a brilliant psychologist. I don't
Speaker 1: want him pre judging me, So I park it around
Speaker 1: the corner, walk to his house and spend a lovely
Speaker 1: afternoon with him. Sadly he was feeling poorly at the
Speaker 1: time and didn't speak well enough for me to use
Speaker 1: the tape of his interview. But my spontaneous journey set
Speaker 1: the correct tone, I think for this whole episode, which
Speaker 1: is that it was intended to be a caper, a
Speaker 1: grand caper in which many crazy, unexpected things happen, and
Speaker 1: as it will discover. So it was, by the way,
Speaker 1: the thing that Alan Elms and I talked the most
Speaker 1: about was not actually his Alva's paper. It was another
Speaker 1: even more genius thing he once wrote about the Wizard
Speaker 1: of Oz, which I promise you that I will get
Speaker 1: to one day. Here a visionist history, Join me for
Speaker 1: a walk down revisionist history memory Lane. The New York
Speaker 1: Psychoanalytics Society and Institute is in a very formal European
Speaker 1: style building on a quiet side street on the upper
Speaker 1: east side of Manhattan. Oak tables, high ceilings. In the library,
Speaker 1: long ribbons of leather bound volumes, and five different busts
Speaker 1: of Sigmund Freud all in a row. I went there
Speaker 1: to meet with the Society's president, Michelle Press, a psychoanalyst
Speaker 1: herself with that lovely quality of patience and openness. The
Speaker 1: best therapists always have. I wanted to talk with her
Speaker 1: about a subject that I've always found deeply interesting. What
Speaker 1: Freud called parapraxis, but not just anyone's parapraxis, the King's parapraxis.
Speaker 1: My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History,
Speaker 1: my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. After the first
Speaker 1: two episodes on Memory earlier this season, I decided to
Speaker 1: do a third. It involves an odyssey. This odyssey took
Speaker 1: me from the pages of the Handbook of Psychobiography to
Speaker 1: a shrine in Tennessee, to the legendary Battery Studios in
Speaker 1: Times Square, and to the hushed offices of the New
Speaker 1: York Psychoanalytics Society, where I sat with Michelle Press in
Speaker 1: search of an answer to a simple question. What if
Speaker 1: a singer couldn't remember the words to a song, a
Speaker 1: song he had sung a thousand times, particular parts of the song,
Speaker 1: the same part of the song, over and over. What
Speaker 1: would that tell us about the singer?
Speaker 2: It was a term in German faulty acts or faulty functions.
Speaker 2: It would be slips of the tongue. It could be misreadings, mishearings,
Speaker 2: but it's Freud's invention.
Speaker 1: Michelle Press is talking about parapraxis from the Greek para
Speaker 1: meaning abnormal, beyond praxis meaning act, abnormal speech acts, or
Speaker 1: as they are more colloquially known, Freudian slips. Does Freud
Speaker 1: mean that there are no accidental slips or that if
Speaker 1: you look at the range of accidental slips you can
Speaker 1: find meaning in some.
Speaker 2: So when you read him, he doesn't want to sound
Speaker 2: that kind of definitive. He'll say, yes, maybe one might
Speaker 2: prove that there are some that are truly accidental, or
Speaker 2: truly a result of fatigue or of maybe some medical illness.
Speaker 2: But he said, if you do the work, one will
Speaker 2: find the reasons for the slip, that they're not accidental,
Speaker 2: that they have. He called it a sense, and that
Speaker 2: that's sense has to do with unconscious forces or unconscious
Speaker 2: ideas that are trying to find expression but are because
Speaker 2: they're unacceptable. They emerge in these ways when one might
Speaker 2: be unguarded.
Speaker 1: Now, is that concept of unacceptability central to the notion
Speaker 1: of parapraxis?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: What was a less.
Speaker 4: Over here sun metal strain.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty six early in his career, Elvis Presley
Speaker 1: recorded a song called Old Shep. It's a sentimental song
Speaker 1: about a boy and his dog, Shep, written in the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties by Red Foley. The dog gets old and sick.
Speaker 1: The vet says there's no hope. The boy aims his
Speaker 1: rifle at Shep to put him out of his misery,
Speaker 1: but he can't pull the trigger. He lies down next
Speaker 1: to Shep cradles him in his arms as the dog
Speaker 1: dies and the song ends.
Speaker 5: Old Shelbie has gone weather, good dog, It's gold.
Speaker 6: And whoever. But if dolls have a heaven.
Speaker 4: That's one way I know.
Speaker 1: Old shepherds.
Speaker 7: Wonderful.
Speaker 1: Old Shep is not one of Elvis's more famous songs,
Speaker 1: but in an essay published in two thousand and five
Speaker 1: on Elvis, the psychologists Alan Elms and Bruce Heller having
Speaker 1: aside about a small but significant discrepancy between the original
Speaker 1: version of Old Shep and Elvis's cover. I'm going to
Speaker 1: come back to Heller and Elms in a while because
Speaker 1: they really do the most thorough analysis of Elvis's lyrical parapraxis.
Speaker 1: But let's start with Old Shep. Listen to Hank Snow
Speaker 1: performing the lyrics as they were originally written. The boy
Speaker 1: has just put away his gun, realizing he can't shoot Shep.
Speaker 8: So I threw down a let old gun and ran
Speaker 8: right up to his signe ladies, faithful, old head, right online,
Speaker 8: knee and friends. I stroked the best pound little man
Speaker 8: ever found. I even cried so I scarcely could see.
Speaker 1: Now listen to Elvis sing his.
Speaker 4: Version, I had strong the best friend, not a man.
Speaker 6: I cry.
Speaker 7: Sauscuriously good see Hanks no sings I stroked the best
Speaker 7: pal a man ever found, meaning that the boy considers
Speaker 7: an act of violence against his best pal, then decides
Speaker 7: against it and takes instead the path of nurture and sympathy.
Speaker 1: He recovers his humanity. But Elvis sings, I had struck
Speaker 1: the best friend a man ever had, which turns the
Speaker 1: meaning of the song completely upside down. The boy does
Speaker 1: not recover his humanity. He now holds himself responsible for
Speaker 1: an act of violence against Shep, an act of violence
Speaker 1: that in fact he did not commit. Stroke becomes struck,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, the song about moral redemption
Speaker 1: turns into a song about morbid remorse. Now I suppose
Speaker 1: you can say stroke struck whatever those two words sound
Speaker 1: the same. It's just a cover, but it's not just
Speaker 1: a cover. Alvis was obsessed with Old Shep. It's the
Speaker 1: first song he ever learned on the guitar. He played
Speaker 1: it incessantly as a child. At age ten, he played
Speaker 1: it at the Mississippi Alabama Fair, his first public performance.
Speaker 1: He played it at his high school talent show and won.
Speaker 1: He played it on dates with girls. He played it
Speaker 1: well into his career. And why does the song resonate
Speaker 1: so much with him? It's a song about love, betrayal,
Speaker 1: and loss, themes that are at the center of Elvis's life.
Speaker 1: He's a twinless twin. Someone who's twin died in utero,
Speaker 1: and he's obsessed by that fact. He brings it up
Speaker 1: again and again. The loss of someone who should have
Speaker 1: been his closest friend. Alvis's mother, Gladys, is to say
Speaker 1: the least unusual. She's controlling, intense, he calls her baby.
Speaker 1: Gladys died when Alvis was just twenty three. When he
Speaker 1: first saw her casket, he threw himself on top of
Speaker 1: her body, then stepped back and talked about how beautiful
Speaker 1: she was while pointing to her dead feet. He called
Speaker 1: them her little suities. He did this again and again.
Speaker 1: At the end of the funeral service, he lay on
Speaker 1: top of her casket, saying, I want to go with you.
Speaker 1: I don't want to stay here. I can't be without you.
Speaker 1: And we haven't even gotten to Priscilla, Alvis's wife. He
Speaker 1: spotted her when she was fourteen and eventually convinced her
Speaker 1: to move in with him in Memphis.
Speaker 9: Once Alvis took you to a move Yes he did.
Speaker 1: This is Priscilla being interviewed by Barbara Walters in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty five.
Speaker 9: Why why that fascination?
Speaker 10: I don't know.
Speaker 9: I don't know what the fascination was. This is not
Speaker 9: the first time that he had done this. I don't
Speaker 9: know if it was for the shock value, you know,
Speaker 9: to see how people would react, or just for his
Speaker 9: own thrill of it. You wrote, there were times when
Speaker 9: you and Elvis spent days in the bedroom, freezing bedroom.
Speaker 9: He liked it be cold, the windows with blackout drapes
Speaker 9: or no sun light enter it. Day after day. It
Speaker 9: went in two weeks.
Speaker 11: Yes, we stayed like that.
Speaker 9: We had our food.
Speaker 12: Delivered by the door and.
Speaker 5: It was cold.
Speaker 9: I mean, he did like a cold, and it was dark,
Speaker 9: and it could get real lonely. And that's how he
Speaker 9: liked it at times, like a cocoon, almost like a womb.
Speaker 1: I guess you think. Priscilla and Barbara Walters are on
Speaker 1: a white couch surrounded by pink flowers. Scilla is in
Speaker 1: a strapless sun dress. She looks amazing. Barbara Walters turns
Speaker 1: to her and says, Alvis controlled your looks, your clothes,
Speaker 1: your hair, your makeup. He controlled you totally. Priscilla says, yes,
Speaker 1: he did.
Speaker 9: Then six years you lived there before he decided to
Speaker 9: marry you. In those six years of sleeping with him
Speaker 9: every night, he never had intercourse with you. You wrote
Speaker 9: in your book that there were times when you begged
Speaker 9: him six years so why well again, you know, I
Speaker 9: can only go back to what his concept was as
Speaker 9: what he wanted in a woman, and somewhere he along
Speaker 9: in his past he said that he wanted a virgin.
Speaker 1: Alvis is complicated, and what does Freud's theory of parapraxis say?
Speaker 1: The complicated feelings inappropriate, maybe unacceptable feelings are normally suppressed,
Speaker 1: but every now and again, some little bit of that
Speaker 1: buried emotion slips out and if you're paying attention and
Speaker 1: listening closely, that little slip can tell you something. Struck
Speaker 1: for stroke. But old chap is just the beginning. For Elvis,
Speaker 1: the real pairapraxis occurs in are You Lonesome Tonight? A
Speaker 1: song originally written in the nineteen twenties and which Elvis
Speaker 1: took to the top of the charts just after he
Speaker 1: came out of the Army.
Speaker 13: Are You Longed.
Speaker 1: Wish A Day? Zero six?
Speaker 6: Take two.
Speaker 1: Elvis at the RCA Studios on Music Row in Nashville,
Speaker 1: April fourth, nineteen sixty The recordings from the original session
Speaker 1: now held in the Sony Music Archive.
Speaker 14: Yeah, this is there's numerous takes here, so they fall apart,
Speaker 14: they make a mistake, and what have you?
Speaker 1: John Jackson and Vic Annissini from Sony Me all listening
Speaker 1: together at the legendary Battery Studios in Manhattan, where everyone
Speaker 1: from John Lennon to Bruce Springsteen recorded Holy Ground. I
Speaker 1: started my quest at the very beginning.
Speaker 7: It is your hot till.
Speaker 5: Share, I harm.
Speaker 4: Toll me d.
Speaker 5: Are You Lonesome?
Speaker 1: To Amaziah? Is he uh? When he records that? Are
Speaker 1: the Jordanaires singing along with him? Or they're laying that
Speaker 1: tracked down spar no livething a. Yeah.
Speaker 15: He always preferred to have everyone in one room and
Speaker 15: record live.
Speaker 6: Oh, even in one room, not in booths or no no,
Speaker 6: no, no no.
Speaker 1: He hated booths. Recording the song was not Elvis's idea.
Speaker 1: It was a favorite of the wife of his manager,
Speaker 1: Tom Parker. In the studio, Elvis asked the lights be
Speaker 1: turned off so the room was in darkness. He did
Speaker 1: five takes. He didn't like any of them.
Speaker 14: It was four in the morning when he recorded it,
Speaker 14: so he made everyone get out of the studio go.
Speaker 1: Away, and then he just you know, did it.
Speaker 14: And then they this is the second take, which they
Speaker 14: told him how the background singers, you know, pea popped
Speaker 14: because he said, just stop the tape, you know, I'm done.
Speaker 14: They said, just do it once more because you know,
Speaker 14: we hit a pea pop on there. So the third
Speaker 14: take ends up being the master.
Speaker 1: Oh, I see.
Speaker 14: Then held the label held it back for seven eight
Speaker 14: months because he didn't.
Speaker 1: Realize what they had on their hands.
Speaker 14: Yeah, it was seven months.
Speaker 16: I think after he recreated they finally released it as
Speaker 16: a single and didn't go out that he had done
Speaker 16: eight songs for Elvis's back, and this was just like, yeah,
Speaker 16: just try this.
Speaker 1: One, recorded in the wee hours of the morning in
Speaker 1: darkness as a favor to someone else, a song neither
Speaker 1: Elvis nor his label particularly liked. It's almost like the
Speaker 1: song had a curse on it right from the beginning,
Speaker 1: and from then on Elvis could never quite get it right.
Speaker 1: I talked about this with Michelle Press at the New
Speaker 1: York Psychoanalytics Society. Elvis wasn't typically someone who forgot the
Speaker 1: words to the songs he sang. There's all these examples
Speaker 1: out of his life of him being able to recite,
Speaker 1: to sing from memory massive amounts of stuff. I'm worried.
Speaker 1: I'm interested about that. There's a little slip worried about
Speaker 1: I said, I'm worried about that. I'm interested in that,
Speaker 1: and I'm wondering what the what would you make of that?
Speaker 1: As a psychoanalyst. I try to go on, but of
Speaker 1: course I'm talking to a hardcore Freudian. I meant to
Speaker 1: say I was interested, but what came out was worried.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm still caught on your slip, obviously thinking
Speaker 2: what do you make of it? So one thought was
Speaker 2: whether the slip might be a key to something that
Speaker 2: you're figuring out and puzzling with him, because you're right now,
Speaker 2: you're immersed in him.
Speaker 1: Oh I am. I've been singing this song under my
Speaker 1: breath for months. I can't understand why I've never been
Speaker 1: an Elvis fan. I don't own a single song of his,
Speaker 1: or am I am? I drawn to this story because
Speaker 1: isn't this story that I'm talking to you the great
Speaker 1: anxiety of anyone in a creative field, that moment when
Speaker 1: you lose control, right where the the presentation to the
Speaker 1: audience is unmasked. I want to I want to show you.
Speaker 1: I take up my laptop, pull up YouTube. There's a
Speaker 1: mountain of Elvis on YouTube, one of the last performances
Speaker 1: of his life. It's bananas. I mean, he just it's
Speaker 1: he's singing a song he's singing thousands of times, and.
Speaker 10: He just.
Speaker 1: Completely loses control of it. I can skip it. I
Speaker 1: wonder if.
Speaker 13: Two longs of my life.
Speaker 4: You know, someone said the worlds of stags in each
Speaker 4: of us play apart they had playing in plus tags,
Speaker 4: iriginal select every I never missed you, and it came
Speaker 4: back to it.
Speaker 1: For got the word seem to change. When I first
Speaker 1: saw it it as someone in a I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: not Elvis, but I'm someone in a creative field. It
Speaker 1: terrified me. It's like up on stage doing what he's
Speaker 1: paid to do, and he he just.
Speaker 3: Really won during your life, You're gonna go on living
Speaker 3: without you.
Speaker 6: Now the stage is bare and I'm sending there without
Speaker 6: a new hair.
Speaker 15: I don't know.
Speaker 16: If you'll come.
Speaker 9: Back to me.
Speaker 1: Every live performance he's ever given of this that we
Speaker 1: have on tape, he mangles the bridge. He can't do
Speaker 1: it right. It's which he's returning to the song again
Speaker 1: and again and again and again and again and doing
Speaker 1: the same in this particular always a bride so singing party.
Speaker 2: Over how many years did this go on?
Speaker 1: Yours Okay?
Speaker 14: In nineteen eighty to this life and version was rare
Speaker 14: in the UK, and each one the twenty five and
Speaker 14: the British Singles chart.
Speaker 1: At Battery Studios. I made the Sony guys play every
Speaker 1: version they had. They even have names, Laughing Elvis, Crazy Elvis,
Speaker 1: each one stranger than the one before.
Speaker 6: The World's a stagies in East must play a part.
Speaker 1: There's sweat and tears streaming down his face, and I
Speaker 1: had no call for Dodger.
Speaker 3: It goes on like this, on and on.
Speaker 4: Baby shut.
Speaker 7: Again.
Speaker 10: Tell me? Are you.
Speaker 17: That's it?
Speaker 5: Man?
Speaker 13: Don't do you?
Speaker 1: Don't never hurry and we'll I'll do you O s.
Speaker 1: Have you ever played a song before?
Speaker 10: No?
Speaker 12: I never put it before.
Speaker 1: And it's funny. I played a bunch of.
Speaker 6: Check I put a bunch of his stuff.
Speaker 12: You might flip in the standby switched.
Speaker 7: On the back.
Speaker 1: I'm with Jack White at his studio in Nashville Third
Speaker 1: Man Records. Jack White, formerly of the White Stripes, one
Speaker 1: of the great rock and rollers of his generation and
Speaker 1: a huge Elvis fan. He's a shrine to Elvis in
Speaker 1: his hallway, actual shrine. All that's missing is flowers. We
Speaker 1: met in his private office, lots of black and yellow
Speaker 1: and leather and taxidermy. He sat on the couch with
Speaker 1: a guitar. Do you play? Do you play Elvis songs?
Speaker 1: A concert?
Speaker 13: Sometimes?
Speaker 10: I do love like that.
Speaker 1: I want you to love me, love me and just.
Speaker 6: Dream and just save.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, don't stop, I'm enjoying it. Anything
Speaker 1: any other ones you do?
Speaker 12: Wait?
Speaker 1: Anyway? Why do you why that one? What's it about that? Song.
Speaker 15: I had heard that early from a band called the
Speaker 15: Flat to a Jets that I really liked, and I
Speaker 15: didn't know it was Elvis. And then when i'd heard
Speaker 15: the Elvis version, I had connected the two, like, oh no, really,
Speaker 15: and I started doing it when I put in coffee houses.
Speaker 15: I started playing that when I was like sixteen, Yeah,
Speaker 15: it goes back, which is funny.
Speaker 6: I eventually heard a story of Robert Plant.
Speaker 15: Telling Elvis he loved that song when led Zeppyn met Elvis,
Speaker 15: and then when they walked out out of the hallway
Speaker 15: that Elvis poked his head out in the hallway and
Speaker 15: sang that song to Robert Plan. They sang it back
Speaker 15: to each other, and you were crying and must have
Speaker 15: been an amazing moment.
Speaker 1: Jack White owns the original acetate pressing of Elvis's first
Speaker 1: recording from nineteen fifty three My Happiness. After we talked,
Speaker 1: White took me into his vault to show it to me.
Speaker 1: It's priceless. He asked me if I weren't to hold it.
Speaker 1: I was too terrified to say yes. Jack White seemed
Speaker 1: like the right person to see to try and understand
Speaker 1: Elvis's problem. You are you lonesome? Tonight.
Speaker 6: All right, let me see, we're gonna take a crack.
Speaker 6: It might might have to give a kap worls.
Speaker 1: What are your lone song? Tonight?
Speaker 9: Do you miss me.
Speaker 6: Tonight?
Speaker 1: Are you sorry? We drifted.
Speaker 7: A paw?
Speaker 1: Does your memoir strain through a bride song?
Speaker 12: Day?
Speaker 1: When I kissed you and called you sweet?
Speaker 6: Do the chair in your partner seamanity?
Speaker 9: And then.
Speaker 18: Do you gaze as the door snell and pitcher me?
Speaker 18: Then is your heart fill with fain? Shall I come back?
Speaker 6: Love you till the deed? Are your own song? Son?
Speaker 1: That's the first half of the song. The song version
Speaker 1: all questions A man is wondering whether his lover misses him.
Speaker 1: Then comes the spoken bridge, in which the emotional tables
Speaker 1: are turned and the man leaves himself bare. Are you
Speaker 1: lonesome Tonight? Has been recorded countless times over the years.
Speaker 1: A lot of performers leave out the bridge because it's
Speaker 1: corny and way too long and hard. Elvis kept it in,
Speaker 1: so does Jack White.
Speaker 19: I wonder if you're lonesome tonight? You know someone said
Speaker 19: that the world's a stage and each must play a part.
Speaker 19: I fate had me playing in.
Speaker 1: Love with you as my sweetheart.
Speaker 15: That one was where we met.
Speaker 1: I loved you at first glance. You read your line so.
Speaker 15: Cleverly and never missed a cue. Thing came that too.
Speaker 1: You seem to change.
Speaker 6: You acted strange, and why I've never known.
Speaker 1: Honey.
Speaker 4: You lied when you said.
Speaker 6: You loved me, and I had no cause to doubt you.
Speaker 6: But I'd rather go on hearing your lies.
Speaker 19: To go on living without you. Now the stage is bare,
Speaker 19: and I was standing there with emptiness all around. And
Speaker 19: if you won't come back to me, and then.
Speaker 17: You bring the curtain down, is your heart feel? Shall
Speaker 17: not come back again to me?
Speaker 2: Song to nice?
Speaker 7: Whoa wait?
Speaker 10: You you?
Speaker 1: You enjoyed that.
Speaker 17: I did?
Speaker 15: It gets I gets uh, there's some nice parts where
Speaker 15: it gets the you can see uh playing that live now?
Speaker 1: I just did that like well, we just did that.
Speaker 15: I played it once yesterday reading this, but now playing
Speaker 15: like that, I could see wild live You could really
Speaker 15: that really could get to be a really emotional song.
Speaker 6: So I didn't really think about it until just then.
Speaker 1: What led you to think that just now?
Speaker 6: Because it feels like, well, it's in a mine.
Speaker 15: It's a lot of minor chords, so that that that's
Speaker 15: already gets you in that melancholy vibe, but it has
Speaker 15: it has that. What just occurred to me now is
Speaker 15: he doesn't he doesn't He doesn't really care that if
Speaker 15: she's lonesome, he's lonesome, that the singer is lonesome. And
Speaker 15: it's a it's a maguffin to pretend like I'm worried
Speaker 15: about you? Are you lonesome tonight?
Speaker 12: You know?
Speaker 15: But it's really he's the singer is worried about himself.
Speaker 15: So that could be you know, you take that kind
Speaker 15: of emotional song and you put years and years on stage,
Speaker 15: and then you put drugs in the mix, and then
Speaker 15: in your own state of mind at the time, it
Speaker 15: could be a really you could be onto something there.
Speaker 15: It could be a real diversion that it's too powerful
Speaker 15: to sing.
Speaker 1: What's fascinating is that to the some parts, the singer
Speaker 1: is in control and he's worried about her right the
Speaker 1: spoken parts, the singer is vulnerable and he's confessing his
Speaker 1: own and it's so screwed up. It's like, I know
Speaker 1: you lied to me, and I wish you hadn't, right,
Speaker 1: which I didn't know that you lied to me because
Speaker 1: I'd rather be in the state of being deceived than
Speaker 1: know the truth, which is like seventeen convolutions of neuroticism.
Speaker 6: Right, he's still blaming her most of the lines, still
Speaker 6: pointing the finger.
Speaker 1: White says, you can't run from that kind of emotion,
Speaker 1: not if you're singing the song properly. And so when
Speaker 1: he writes songs, he tries to establish some distance between
Speaker 1: himself and the feelings he's singing about.
Speaker 11: I try to push it into a character's standpoint rather
Speaker 11: than it being a self confession confessional for me, because
Speaker 11: I think that would be really hard to consistently keep
Speaker 11: living that moment over and over and over again. I've
Speaker 11: definitely seen older artists ignoring certain parts of their certain
Speaker 11: songs in their career because it's probably too close to
Speaker 11: home about something or other.
Speaker 1: But you can't avoid a song's emotional effects all the time,
Speaker 1: and especially not when you have to read a soliloquy
Speaker 1: in the middle of it, which is what the are
Speaker 1: you Lonesome bridge is a speech parachuted into the heart
Speaker 1: of the song.
Speaker 15: I had a little flub moment at one point trying
Speaker 15: to figure out, well, wait a minute, it's a waltz.
Speaker 6: You know you have that so if I'm like, I
Speaker 6: wonder if two three so one two the one.
Speaker 15: Two there, so your brain kind of wants to go.
Speaker 15: I wonder if you're lonesome tonight, that's what your brain
Speaker 15: wants to do. You know, someone said that the world's
Speaker 15: a stage and we must.
Speaker 1: Each play a part. Then it starts to get it
Speaker 1: breaks down.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean it would, I mean I would.
Speaker 15: I can definitely say that this would be a lot
Speaker 15: easier if someone else was playing guitar and I could
Speaker 15: just recite, uh that part?
Speaker 1: Which should I recite it while you played the guitar? Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's see do that. Yeah, I'm not going to torture
Speaker 1: you with my rendition of the spoken bridge. Well maybe later.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying until I die, I can say I
Speaker 1: played with Jack White and then, because how many opportunities
Speaker 1: am I going to get like this? I asked Jack
Speaker 1: White to help me edit the soliloquy. If one were
Speaker 1: to rewrite it, I'm thinking you that you, uh, you
Speaker 1: lose the first three lines. Fate had me playing in
Speaker 1: love you as my sweetheart, or even Act one was
Speaker 1: when we met? Why don't why don't they just start
Speaker 1: with act one?
Speaker 10: Do I?
Speaker 6: Act one was where I'm met. I loved you at
Speaker 6: the first glance. He read your lines so carefully, never
Speaker 6: missed a Q.
Speaker 15: What did I do there?
Speaker 1: You say carefully instead of cleverly, clever beautiful?
Speaker 6: Then came back too, You seem to change, You acted strange.
Speaker 1: What did Jack White do there? The actual lyric is
Speaker 1: you read your lines so cleverly. He said, you read
Speaker 1: your line so carefully, carefully for cleverly, a man singing
Speaker 1: one of the songs of his musical idol comes to
Speaker 1: the emotionally complex center and what do we hear a
Speaker 1: moment of vulnerability? Can he be as clever as Elvis?
Speaker 1: He's not sure, he must be careful.
Speaker 3: Parapraxis Sometimes you know I love I love him so much,
Speaker 3: and that you know I'm afraid to learn more about
Speaker 3: certain things, like you know it's you're so close to it,
Speaker 3: and you've experienced certain things about.
Speaker 15: You know nothing in comparison to what he went through.
Speaker 15: But you're in the same where we do the same
Speaker 15: kind of thing. We perform, and we go on stages
Speaker 15: and we make records and all this stuff from a
Speaker 15: different time period. But you notice these tiny little moments
Speaker 15: that are when you see certain you're like, Oh, I know.
Speaker 1: Exactly what that's about.
Speaker 15: I know exactly what that feels like.
Speaker 1: There are ten known live recordings of Elvis performing Are
Speaker 1: You Lonesome Tonight, starting in nineteen sixty one in a
Speaker 1: concert at Block Arena in Honolulu, up to the end
Speaker 1: of Elvis's life in nineteen seventy seven. Alan Elms and
Speaker 1: Bruce Heller analyze them all in their essay Twelve Ways
Speaker 1: to Say Lonesome, Assessing error and control in the music
Speaker 1: of Elvis Presley. Elms and Heller find that Elvis performs
Speaker 1: the sung portion of Are You Lonesome Tonight more or
Speaker 1: less flawlessly because the song portion is the part of
Speaker 1: the song where the singer is in control, but in
Speaker 1: the spoken bridge, the narrator is suddenly the one who's
Speaker 1: been deceived and rejected, and that's the part Elvis can't
Speaker 1: get right. Elms and Heller count a total of one
Speaker 1: hundred and nine errors in those ten live performances of
Speaker 1: the spoken Bridge, twenty nine of which involved just four
Speaker 1: lines I loved you at first glance, where he confesses
Speaker 1: the depths of his feelings. You seem to change, You
Speaker 1: acted strange, where he testifies to his betrayal and rejection
Speaker 1: and why I've never known where he expresses his feelings
Speaker 1: of anger and victimization, and with emptiness all around where
Speaker 1: he admits to his loneliness. The most problematic renditions of
Speaker 1: the Bridge are the later ones, which come after the
Speaker 1: summer of nineteen seventy two. What happens in the summer
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy two?
Speaker 9: And one day you went in and said, I'm leaving.
Speaker 9: There was another man in your life. He was your
Speaker 9: karate teacher, right, Mike Stone. And you went off then
Speaker 9: and lived with him.
Speaker 1: Priscilla Presley back on the couch with Barbara Walters, America's
Speaker 1: prime time Freudian.
Speaker 9: It was said that Elvis tried to kill him. I
Speaker 9: wanted him killed, right? Do you believe that?
Speaker 10: I think at that time, yes, he did. He wanted
Speaker 10: that to happen.
Speaker 5: Do the cheers in your father.
Speaker 4: Seeing empty?
Speaker 8: And do you gay?
Speaker 10: Is that your ball head?
Speaker 7: And wish you had hair filled with pain? She'll I
Speaker 7: come back? Tell me, are you lossome?
Speaker 10: Lord?
Speaker 9: Lord?
Speaker 3: I want.
Speaker 1: A man who fears betrayal and abandonment is portrayed and abandoned.
Speaker 6: And I had no cause to doctor.
Speaker 1: It's too much. He's a wreck.
Speaker 7: Shot again, tell me.
Speaker 5: Why are you Lossome?
Speaker 1: After I left Jack White, I went to see Bobby
Speaker 1: Braddock just down the street at the Sony Studios on
Speaker 1: Nashville's Music Row. This you may remember Bobby Braddock from
Speaker 1: season two of Revisionist History. He's the legendary songwriter I
Speaker 1: called the King of Tears. Braddock wanted to introduce me
Speaker 1: to a good friend of his, a singer songwriter named
Speaker 1: Casey Bowles.
Speaker 12: That's the church across the alto.
Speaker 1: Thirty something long red hair, the kind of person who
Speaker 1: if you touch you expect a little jolt of static.
Speaker 13: Don't work, Oh you won't sing that song that.
Speaker 1: We were in the biggest of the Sony recording studios,
Speaker 1: on the main floor, in a corner where the piano was.
Speaker 1: Casey sang are you Lonesome Tonight? With Bobby on the piano.
Speaker 6: Do you miss me.
Speaker 7: Sobby?
Speaker 1: We drifted, Then we sat and they talked about Nashville.
Speaker 1: They talked about how they both grew up in the
Speaker 1: Church of Christ, the most strict of Southern fundamentalist denominations.
Speaker 1: And they talked about Elvis.
Speaker 12: My dad thought he was Elvis.
Speaker 10: I think, yeah, he really he was a Church of
Speaker 10: Christ song leader and really wanted to be a Jordanaire badly,
Speaker 10: and so Ray Walker was one of the Jordanaires, and
Speaker 10: he tried to emulate him by way of dress and hairstyle.
Speaker 12: And so I grew up either hearing him.
Speaker 10: Say hello, Darlan, nice to see you, or doing this
Speaker 10: sort of you know, is it vaudeville style or just
Speaker 10: just sort of a over the top modeling style.
Speaker 12: I guess is modeling the way you'd say it modeling.
Speaker 1: Then Bobby Braddock started talking about recitations the spoken part
Speaker 1: in many older country songs, and he made the same
Speaker 1: play that Jack White did that they're much easier if
Speaker 1: they're set to music, if you could just as easily
Speaker 1: sing them, like on one of Braddock's most famous songs,
Speaker 1: he Stopped Loving Her Today.
Speaker 13: The vestation she came to see him. We all wonder, Yeah,
Speaker 13: you could sing that she came to see him one
Speaker 13: last time.
Speaker 1: Oh, we all wonder if she would.
Speaker 13: And that works either way. But this is just like, uh,
Speaker 13: we got this song, let's get a recitation, throw it
Speaker 13: in there, and and they Elvis made it work. And
Speaker 13: I'm thinking, just instinctively, just because he was, Uh, he
Speaker 13: was just so good.
Speaker 1: Recitations are unusual these days. Braddock hasn't written one since
Speaker 1: something he did for Toby Keith in the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 13: Last successful recitation song. I was actually it was, well,
Speaker 13: actually it was it was. It was a hip hop thing.
Speaker 13: I want to talk about me. But that was talking, talking, talking,
Speaker 13: That's what.
Speaker 12: I'm thinking about.
Speaker 1: You know, wait, can you can?
Speaker 7: You?
Speaker 1: Can you pay a little slice of that? You remember?
Speaker 13: I never do that? Why do that always? I always
Speaker 13: do it with with with a karaoke thing where I
Speaker 13: get up there and play the thing I want to
Speaker 13: talk about me? We want to talk about I want
Speaker 13: to talk about number one. You talk about your work,
Speaker 13: how your boss is a jerk. You talk about your
Speaker 13: church in your head and your church, talk about the
Speaker 13: trouble you've been having with your mother and your daddy,
Speaker 13: with your brother and your daddy and your mother and
Speaker 13: your crazy ex lover, you know, and then and then
Speaker 13: the minstrel minstrel period of line, which everybody said, you
Speaker 13: can't put that in a song, nobody will ever cut it,
Speaker 13: you know, And it was one of the biggest songs
Speaker 13: ever had about your medical charts and when you start
Speaker 13: take that out nobody recording. Toby Keith did, here's probably
Speaker 13: one one who would have though.
Speaker 1: Then I showed them the prize. I brought it my bag,
Speaker 1: my copy of the Handbook of Psycho Biography containing the
Speaker 1: Heller and Elms essay. Hold on, I have my book here.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you that's fashion. To a pair of Elvis fanatics,
Speaker 1: it was like I'd unearthed the Dead Sea scrolls.
Speaker 13: What's the book?
Speaker 1: A book called Handbook of psycho Biography, and it has
Speaker 1: an essay on this song Wow cycle biography and so yeah,
Speaker 1: so here's so this guy has gone through. It made
Speaker 1: a chart all of the lyrical mistakes that Elvis made
Speaker 1: in every known live recording of These were two songwriters,
Speaker 1: and I felt they immediately saw themselves in that chart.
Speaker 1: Do you find yourself making the kind of error, sometimes
Speaker 1: even subtle ones, that you been talking about?
Speaker 12: That's so interesting.
Speaker 10: I wrote a song about my mother called Somebody Something,
Speaker 10: and my mother is adorable, And whenever you heard about
Speaker 10: things going wrong or like some tumultu a story, it
Speaker 10: was my dad. And so I finally was like, you
Speaker 10: know what, wantn't we the only person in the family
Speaker 10: that there's nothing I have it written about. So it's
Speaker 10: trying to dig dirt on her and there was nothing,
Speaker 10: And so I ended up writing this song about her
Speaker 10: called Somebody Something, and I cry every time I do it.
Speaker 10: And there is a line that says, you know, she's
Speaker 10: always been somebody something. She's lived every life but her own,
Speaker 10: and it's gone. I can't remember it right now.
Speaker 1: I don't know that feeling.
Speaker 12: I can't remember it. She's always been somebody something. It's
Speaker 12: been everything but alone.
Speaker 10: A daughter, a mother, a lot, a daughter, a lover,
Speaker 10: a wife, and a mother. She's lived every life but
Speaker 10: her own. Yeah, she's always been somebody's something. And there's
Speaker 10: a line that says, you know, she she wonders what
Speaker 10: it might be like to be somebody else, and she wonders.
Speaker 12: What it feels like to be free.
Speaker 10: But she's always imagined being nobody's nothing, and that's something
Speaker 10: she never want to be.
Speaker 12: But that line usually is just gone.
Speaker 10: And a lot of times I'll go hold on and
Speaker 10: divert and tell a funny story really quickly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's the specific line that's gone? Is which one?
Speaker 10: Uh?
Speaker 12: What's go on again? She's always been somebody's Cynthia's been
Speaker 12: everything but alone, daughter, a lover, a daughter, a lover,
Speaker 12: a wife, and a mother. She's been everything but alone. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 12: why is it that line?
Speaker 10: I don't know. I think that I don't know. I
Speaker 10: think when you even she's so when you see somebody
Speaker 10: give so much of themselves and that's truly the only
Speaker 10: thing that she will never experience.
Speaker 12: And I think it's what I've experienced the most stuff.
Speaker 1: A minute before, we were joking about Toby Keith. Now
Speaker 1: Casey is pensive as she compares her mother's life to
Speaker 1: her own.
Speaker 10: Not being able to make a relationship work the first
Speaker 10: eighteen thousand times out of the gate or you know,
Speaker 10: officially the first two and.
Speaker 6: Not being a mother and she real close.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I love her.
Speaker 11: Go to church where they're right?
Speaker 12: Do I sit still?
Speaker 10: Because she makes me?
Speaker 1: You know, I stay awake.
Speaker 6: It's good.
Speaker 13: When I was a kid, if I'd get bored in
Speaker 13: church and my mother'd reach them and pinch me.
Speaker 1: Oh, I got smacked, Casey, Can you play that song
Speaker 1: for us? Is it going to be two?
Speaker 12: Let's see? Okay, Okay, well I will see if this happens.
Speaker 10: She grew up playing cowgirl.
Speaker 12: In bil Road Town.
Speaker 10: Dream and she'd see, Oh, shoot, hold on, there's a
Speaker 10: lit line bet Elvis in this that's just random.
Speaker 12: Hold on dream and see chee Holly. But I'm gonna
Speaker 12: do again. What did I just say? Sorry, I'm thinking
Speaker 12: about mom. She grew up playing cowgirl.
Speaker 10: She grew up playing cowgirl.
Speaker 12: In a railroad town.
Speaker 10: Dream and she'd see Hollywood someday, she knew, some distant Friday.
Speaker 1: Night with a cigarette, just.
Speaker 12: They would come in and carry you away as far
Speaker 12: shake Coulsie from there. Those were just that's all right.
Speaker 12: Hold on second.
Speaker 1: My first reaction to Casey's failure of memory was to
Speaker 1: be embarrassed for her, worried that she had lost control.
Speaker 1: That's the way we're trained to think. Just listen to
Speaker 1: the words I've just used, failure, embarrassed, worried in one
Speaker 1: way or another. That's what this season of Revisionist History
Speaker 1: has been about, about the ways we judge each other
Speaker 1: for our mistakes and choices. The easiest thing in the
Speaker 1: world is to look at those mistakes and condemn. The
Speaker 1: much harder thing is to look at those mistakes and understand.
Speaker 12: In December anywhere and address her Mama maid. She looked dark,
Speaker 12: grown up, standing, there like that had a honeymoon in
Speaker 12: Memphis Town. Yeah, she looked for as all around may
Speaker 12: loving the greyhound coming back. As far as she could
Speaker 12: say from there, those were just the facts. Slide. You
Speaker 12: went from somebody's daughter, somebody's.
Speaker 1: Wife, Jesus, Parapraxis is not failure. When the performer slips,
Speaker 1: the audience is not cheated. It's the opposite. Parapraxis is
Speaker 1: a gift. I presented myself as interested in this story,
Speaker 1: but now you know that the subject doesn't just interest me,
Speaker 1: It worries me. Losing control is my great anxiety. When
Speaker 1: Jack White said carefully instead of cleverly, it was a
Speaker 1: hint that playing Elvis wasn't a trivial matter for him.
Speaker 1: It was a sacred act, carefully full of care. And Elvis,
Speaker 1: after the loss of Priscilla, sang a song hit sung
Speaker 1: a thousand times only now in a way that gave
Speaker 1: the audience a window on his pane. Mistakes reveal our vulnerabilities.
Speaker 1: They are the way the world understands us, the way
Speaker 1: performers make their performances real. So Bobby Braddock and I
Speaker 1: sat there listening to Casey's sing, tears in her eyes
Speaker 1: fumbling to remember the lyrics of a song about her mother.
Speaker 1: Fumbling not because your mother didn't matter to her, but
Speaker 1: because she did.
Speaker 12: She's always there, somebody something then everything.
Speaker 1: Daughter, Wow, Dona?
Speaker 12: Who why a fan?
Speaker 2: Mother?
Speaker 8: She's live every life.
Speaker 12: But she'd say, that's just call Alma. She's always there,
Speaker 12: somebody's some.
Speaker 1: God, it's beautiful. Why are you covering your mouth?
Speaker 12: I'm just it's just weird.
Speaker 10: Because I've never it's just weird when you're thinking about
Speaker 10: what it is like, I just thought, oh, bad memory,
Speaker 10: too many songs, old, too many songs in there. But
Speaker 10: at any point in time, I could pull out a
Speaker 10: rap from new edition from nineteen eighty two, like why
Speaker 10: is that in there? And something that you wrote is
Speaker 10: not in there?
Speaker 12: That is so weird?
Speaker 1: It's not weird. A lesser person would have sung it perfectly.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Season three of Revisionist History,
Speaker 1: And if you like this episode, you'll enjoy my new
Speaker 1: series launching later this year. It's called Broken Record, and
Speaker 1: you can subscribe right now on Apple Podcasts. Revisionist History
Speaker 1: is a Panoply production and your producer is Mia LaBelle,
Speaker 1: with Jacob Smith and Camille Baptista. Our editor is Julia Barton.
Speaker 1: Lawn Williams is our engineer. Fact checking by Beth Johnson.
Speaker 1: Original music by Luis Skira. Special thanks to Kim Green
Speaker 1: and Hal Humphries of Storyboard e MP in Nashville and
Speaker 1: here in New York. Thanks to Jason Gambrell, Evan Viola,
Speaker 1: Rachel Strom, Nicole Bunsis, Kate Mescal, Kristen Meinzer, Carle Migliore,
Speaker 1: Andy Bauers, and of course El Hafe Jacob Weisberg. I'm
Speaker 1: Malcolm Glamo, Okay, so it will be. I wonder if
Speaker 1: you're lonesome tonight. You know, someone said that the world's
Speaker 1: a stage and each must play a part. Fate had
Speaker 1: me playing in love you as my sweetheart. Act one
Speaker 1: was when we met. I loved you at first glance.
Speaker 1: You read your lines so cleverly and never missed a que.
Speaker 1: Then came act too. You seem to change, and you
Speaker 1: acted strange and why I'll never know. Honey. You lie
Speaker 1: when you said you loved me, and I had no
Speaker 1: cause to doubt you. But I'd rather go on hearing
Speaker 1: your lies than go on living without you. Now the
Speaker 1: stage is bare, and I'm standing there with emptyiness all around.
Speaker 1: And if you won't come back to me, then make
Speaker 1: them bring the curtain down. How about doing nice, very good.
Speaker 1: I must say I'm not very musical.
Speaker 5: No, it's very good.
Speaker 4: That's good, yeah,