The King is on the comeback trail again, this time with an album of revamped classics. Will our panel be saying 'thank you very much', or is it time for Elvis to leave the building? DARAGH DOWNESreferees
ACCORDING to Bono, King David is the Elvis of the Bible, Noam Chomsky is the Elvis of academia and James Wolfensohn is the Elvis of economics. But where does all this elvisification leave poor Elvis himself?
Is he the Rasputin of Rock? The Pele of Pop? The Bono of Bop? It's a problem that weighs on the mind as our guests sit down to discuss Viva Elvis. Has Presley's monumental status grown so much over the 12,230 days since his death that the Elvis of Rock'n'Roll is all but lost to us? And could a bold Cirque du Soleil remix album stun the world's ears with the shock of the new?
It kind of happened back in 2002 with A Little Less Conversation, so why not now, on a grander scale, with this? Viva Elvis has invited obvious comparisons with 2006's Beatles Love. But, unlike with that album, the makers of Viva Elvis have been given licence to infuse original Presley audio with freshly recorded tracks. Thus canonical songs such as King Creole and Suspicious Minds have been opened up for radical "contemporary" surgery. For some Elvis fans, this is pure sacrilege. For others, it's the most thrilling development since Lisa Marie divorced Michael.
THE WONDER OF YOUTH
Evanna Lynch's mother is firmly in the former camp. "She hated it," says Lynch. "She was like, you can't hear his voice enough, it's all about his voice. I was like, that's not what music is nowadays. I think that if these new versions were played on the radio, more people my age would find it appealing. I think it needed to be updated. I didn't realise how radical Elvis was. I really loved it. It was so exciting."
Lynch hails this remix for the way it defamiliarises a set of songs that have been heard so often that listeners young and old don't really hear them any more.
"You're just used to them - they're there - and you don't even think about them because it's just so automatic. But these versions, at least the upbeat ones, really made me want to get dancing. My mum thought this was blasphemous. And I was just there dancing around the kitchen!"
RETURN TO SENDER
If Viva Elvishas won a young convert to the Elvis cause in Lynch, Mark O'Halloran needed no such converting. He fell in love with Elvis years ago, via a prior attachment to The Smiths. He finds the Sun-era Presley particularly compelling, and still can't get over the man's boundary-breaking androgyny or the "stupendous" voice that just got bigger and bigger in proportion with the poor suffering body.
But O'Halloran is resistant to the charms of Viva Elvis. The comparison with Love he finds telling. "The Beatles were all about production. They were all about fiddling around in the studio, layering sounds. So you can peel it all back and put it back together again and think, well, this is a continuation of their legacy. Whereas with Elvis you can't. He would go into the studio and just bang it out."
O'Halloran kept longing to turn off Viva Elvisand go back to the originals. He is sharply critical of the song selection. "If you're going to make a musical about Elvis in this mode, I reckon you should have picked songs like Rock-A-Hula Baby and all those middle-career cheap movie songs that are actually great fun. There's no need to touch Heartbreak Hotelor That's All Right. I just think they're very pure."
SUSPICIOUS MIND
Babybeef, also a big Elvis fan, has no problem with old classics being reworked. But Viva Elvisjust sounds to her like a souvenir of the Cirque stage show rather than a stand-alone work of art. "It's like getting a slice of cake from the wedding without having been at the wedding. It's a nice cake, but it's out of context, so it means nothing to me."
She argues that these versions lack the kind of unified musical vision that would justify their release in album form. "It's formulaic, pasteurised, ITV Elvis. It's Elvis-by-numbers. I think they decided that they wanted to make it suit a lot of people by making it a bit mainstream, a bit generic. So they systematically went and tried to put a bit of everything into it - dancey scratch sounds, power chords, Jive Bunny beats and so on. They're trying to appease the masses, and I don't think that ever works. This is a selection box."
She wishes the sublime Presley originals had been put into the hands of a producer brave enough to stamp their own distinctive aesthetic on them. With the possible exception of Bossa Nova Babyand Burning Love, all she hears here is a glorified Stars on 45-style hodgepodge.
"There's such a smell of stock music off it. And I think it would make most musicians shudder. I actually played it to some musicians and there was nearly retching in the room."
CAN'T HELP FALLING IN LOVE
At which point Ryan Tubridy clears his throat and gives Babybeef a look that can only be described as late-night Vincent Browne. "That," he tells her, "is the voice of a musical snob". The man hasn't looked this ferocious since Cowen was on The Late Late.
Turns out he's been a closet Elvis nut all his adult life. Having discovered the King in fifth year at school, he soon became a fully paid-up member of the Presleyterian church. This involved everything from Frank Chisum tribute-show pilgrimages to anniversary trips to London that would culminate in a ritual group rendition of An American Trilogy. Scary stuff.
Tubridy may be cracked about Elvis, but he's no purist. He mounts a spirited defence of Viva Elvis. "I loved this album. I was blown away by it. It's like having drunk every beer in the pub and there's nothing left and you really want another drink. Equally with Elvis, I've heard pretty much everything worth hearing and there's nothing else you can do with it. But I wanted more. I needed another shot of Elvis. Now if this is the way to get it, I'll take it. Because I thought they did very well."
Only this morning he played the new Lust For Life-style That's All Righton his radio show. "We got a huge response from listeners." Even the studio assistants "went bonkers" in response to the energy coming off the track.
Tubridy takes Babybeef's argument about the album not working without the stage show and turns it topsy-turvy. "I wish this hadn't been a show. I didn't actually know until today that it was. I just was going for the music. Now that I know it's Cirque du Soleil, it's tarnished the experience a little bit. Guys running around to Elvis, girls all dressed up, that slightly breaks my heart. But I will stand by the fact that I really enjoyed this album. I loved it."
Viva Elvis: the Harry Potter or the Draco Malfoy of Elvis albums? Our Million Dollar Quartet is split.
What do you think? Join us online at irishtimes.com/ blogs/ontherecord, where you can read more from our album clubbers - and join in. Welcome to the club
BABYBEEF is a multi-instrumentalist electro-pop artist from Dublin.
EVANNA LYNCH plays Luna Lovegood in the Harry Potter films.
MARK O’HALLORAN is an award-winning scriptwriter and actor. As a teenager he was ostracised by the goths in Ennis because he kept making them laugh.
RYAN TUBRIDY is the host of The Late Late Show. He presents a radio show on RTÉ 2fm 9-11am weekdays.
