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