Speaker 1: Pushkin. The New York Psychoanalytics Society and Institute is in
Speaker 1: a very formal European style building on a quiet side
Speaker 1: street on the upper east side of Manhattan. Oak tables,
Speaker 1: high ceilings. In the library, long ribbons of leather bound volumes,
Speaker 1: and five different busts of Sigmund Freud, all in a row.
Speaker 1: I went there to meet with the Society's president, Michelle Press,
Speaker 1: a psychoanalyst herself with that lovely quality of patience and
Speaker 1: openness the best therapists always have. I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: with her about a subject that I've always found deeply interesting,
Speaker 1: what Freud called parapraxis, but not just anyone's parapraxis, the
Speaker 1: King para praxis. My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening
Speaker 1: to Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood.
Speaker 1: After the first two episodes on Memory earlier this season,
Speaker 1: I decided to do a third. It involves an odyssey.
Speaker 1: This odyssey took me from the pages of the Handbook
Speaker 1: of Psychobiography to a shrine in Tennessee, to the legendary
Speaker 1: Battery Studios in Times Square, and to the hushed offices
Speaker 1: of the New York Psychoanalytic Society, where I sat with
Speaker 1: Michelle Press in search of an answer to a simple question.
Speaker 1: What if a singer couldn't remember the words to a song,
Speaker 1: a song hit sung a thousand times, particular parts of
Speaker 1: the song, the same part of the song, over and over.
Speaker 1: What would that tell us about the singer? It was
Speaker 1: a term in German faulty acts or faulty functions. It
Speaker 1: would be slips of the tongue. It could be misreadings, mishearings,
Speaker 1: but it's Freud's invention. Michelle Press is talking about parappraxis,
Speaker 1: from the Greek parameaning abnormal, beyond praxis meaning act abnormal
Speaker 1: speech acts, or as they are more colloquially known, Freudian slips.
Speaker 1: Does Freud mean that there are no accidental slips, or
Speaker 1: that if you look at the range of accidental slips
Speaker 1: you can find meaning in some. So when you read him,
Speaker 1: he doesn't want to sound that kind of definitive. He'll say, yes,
Speaker 1: maybe one might prove that there are some that are
Speaker 1: truly accidental, or truly a result of fatigue or of
Speaker 1: maybe some medical illness. But he said, if you do
Speaker 1: the work, one will find the reasons for this slip,
Speaker 1: that they're not accidental that they have. He called it
Speaker 1: a sense, and that that sense has to do with
Speaker 1: unconscious forces or unconscious ideas that are trying to find
Speaker 1: expression but are because they're unacceptable. They emerge in these
Speaker 1: ways when one might be unguarded. Now, is that concept
Speaker 1: of unacceptability central to the notion of parapraxis? Yes, one
Speaker 1: over medal sod strange. In nineteen fifty six, early in
Speaker 1: his career, Elvis Presley recorded a song called Old Sheep.
Speaker 1: It's a sentimental song about a boy and his dog, Shep,
Speaker 1: written in the nineteen thirties by Red Foley. The dog
Speaker 1: gets old and sick. The vet says there's no hope.
Speaker 1: The boy aims his rifle at Shep to put him
Speaker 1: out of his misery, but he can't pull the trigger.
Speaker 1: He lies down next to Shep cradles him in his
Speaker 1: arms as the dog dies, and the song ends. Who
Speaker 1: Sheppy has gone? Whether good dog is gone? And no war?
Speaker 1: But if dogs have a heaven, that's one, Oh sheppers wonderful.
Speaker 1: Old Shep is not one of Elvis's more famous songs,
Speaker 1: but in an essay public in two thousand and five
Speaker 1: on Elvis, the psychologists Alan Elms and Bruce Heller have
Speaker 1: an a side about a small but significant discrepancy between
Speaker 1: the original version of Old Shep and Elvis's cover. I'm
Speaker 1: going to come back to Heller and Elms in a
Speaker 1: while because they really do the most thorough analysis of
Speaker 1: Elvis's lyrical para praxis. But let's start with Old Shep.
Speaker 1: Listen to Hank Snow performing the lyrics as they were
Speaker 1: originally written. The boy has just put away his gun,
Speaker 1: realizing he can't shoot Shep, so I threw down that
Speaker 1: old gun, ran right up to his side, the lady's
Speaker 1: faithful old head right online and friends, I stroked the
Speaker 1: best power but a man ever found. I even cried,
Speaker 1: so I see now listen to Elvis sing his version,
Speaker 1: I had strung the best friend a man, I cry.
Speaker 1: Hanks Now sings, I stroked the best pal a man
Speaker 1: ever found, meaning that the boy considers an act of
Speaker 1: violence against his best pal, then decides against it and
Speaker 1: takes instead the path of nurture and sympathy. He recovers
Speaker 1: his humanity. But Elvis sings, I had struck the best
Speaker 1: friend a man ever had which turns the meaning of
Speaker 1: the song completely upside down. The boy does not recover
Speaker 1: his humanity. He now holds himself responsible for an act
Speaker 1: of violence against shape, an act of violence that in fact,
Speaker 1: he did not commit. Stroke becomes struck, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, a song about moral redemption turns into a
Speaker 1: song about morbid remorse. Now, I suppose you can say
Speaker 1: stroke struck whatever, those two words sound the same. It's
Speaker 1: just a cover. But it's not just a cover. Alvis
Speaker 1: was obsessed with Old Shepp. It's the first song he
Speaker 1: ever learned on the guitar. He played it incessantly as
Speaker 1: a child. At age ten, he played it at the
Speaker 1: Mississippi Alabama Fair, his first public performance. He played it
Speaker 1: at his high school talent show and won. He played
Speaker 1: it on dates with girls. He played it well into
Speaker 1: his career. And why does the song resonate so much
Speaker 1: with him? It's a song about love, betrayal, and loss,
Speaker 1: themes that are at the center of Elvis's life. He's
Speaker 1: a twinless twin, someone who's twin died in utero, and
Speaker 1: he's obsessed by that fact. He brings it up again
Speaker 1: and again, the loss of someone who should have been
Speaker 1: his closest friend. Alvis's mother, Gladys is, to say the
Speaker 1: least unusual. She's controlling, intense. He calls her baby. Gladys
Speaker 1: died when Alvis was just twenty three. When he first
Speaker 1: saw her casket, he threw himself on top of her body,
Speaker 1: then stepped back and talked about how beautiful she was.
Speaker 1: While pointing to her dead feet. He called them her
Speaker 1: little suities. He did this again and again. At the
Speaker 1: end of the funeral service, he lay on top of
Speaker 1: her casket, saying, I want to go with you. I
Speaker 1: 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. Once Alvis took
Speaker 1: her to a move Yes he did. This is Priscilla
Speaker 1: being interviewed by Barbara Walters in nineteen eighty five. Why
Speaker 1: why that fascination? I don't know. I don't know what
Speaker 1: the fascination was. This is not the first time that
Speaker 1: he had done this. I don't know if it was
Speaker 1: for the shock value, you know, to see how people
Speaker 1: would react or just for his own thrill of it.
Speaker 1: You wrote there were times when you and Elvis spent
Speaker 1: days in the bedroom, freezing bedroom. He liked it find cold,
Speaker 1: the windows with blackout drapes, so no sunlight entered. Day
Speaker 1: after day. It went into weeks. Yes, we've stayed like that.
Speaker 1: We had our food delivered by the door, and it
Speaker 1: was cold. I mean he did like a cold and
Speaker 1: it was dark, and it could get real lonely. And
Speaker 1: that's that's how he liked it at times, like a cocoon,
Speaker 1: almost like a wound. I guess you think. Priscilla and
Speaker 1: Barbara Walters are on a white couch surrounded by pink flowers.
Speaker 1: Priscilla is in a strapless sun dress. She looks amazing.
Speaker 1: Barbara Walters turns to her and says, Alvis controlled your looks,
Speaker 1: your clothes, your hair, your make up. He controlled you totally.
Speaker 1: Priscilla says, yes he did. Then six years you lived
Speaker 1: there before he decided to marry you. In those six
Speaker 1: years of sleeping with him every night, he never had
Speaker 1: intercourse with you. You wrote in your book that there
Speaker 1: were times when you begged him six years I saw why.
Speaker 1: Well again, you know, I can only go back to
Speaker 1: what his concept was as what he wanted in a woman,
Speaker 1: and somewhere he along in his past he said that
Speaker 1: he wanted a virgin. Alvis is complicated, and what does
Speaker 1: Freud's theory of parapraxis say? That complicated feelings inappropriate may
Speaker 1: be unacceptable. Feelings are normally suppressed, but every now and again,
Speaker 1: some little bit of that buried emotion slips out, and
Speaker 1: if you're paying attention and listening closely, that little slip
Speaker 1: can tell you something. Struck for stroke, But old shep
Speaker 1: is just the beginning. For Elvis. The real parapraxis occurs
Speaker 1: in are You Lonesome to Night? A song originally written
Speaker 1: in the nineteen twenties and which Elvis took to the
Speaker 1: top of the charts just after he came out of
Speaker 1: the Army. Are You Blongs Who Days Are? While? Six?
Speaker 1: Take two? Elvis at the RCA Studios on Music Row
Speaker 1: in Nashville, April fourth, nineteen sixty The recordings from the
Speaker 1: original session now held in the Sony Music Archive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is um. There's numerous takes here, so they fall apart,
Speaker 1: they make a mistake, or what have you? John Jackson
Speaker 1: and Vic Nissini from Sony Me all listening together at
Speaker 1: the legendary Battery Studios in Manhattan, where everyone from John
Speaker 1: Lennon to Bruce Springsteen recorded Holy Ground. I started my
Speaker 1: quest at the very beginning. It's you sherline, tell me Dan,
Speaker 1: are you lonesome too? Because boys so many? Yeah? Is
Speaker 1: he uh? When he records that, are the jordan are
Speaker 1: singing along with him or they're laying that. He always
Speaker 1: preferred to have everyone in one room, yeah, and record
Speaker 1: live or even in one room, not in booths or
Speaker 1: no no, no, no no. He hated booths. Recording the
Speaker 1: song was not Elvis's idea. It was a favorite of
Speaker 1: the wife of his manager, Tom Parker. In the studio,
Speaker 1: Elvis asked the lights be turned off so the room
Speaker 1: was in darkness. He did five takes. He didn't like
Speaker 1: any of them. It was four in the morning when
Speaker 1: he recorded it, so he made everyone get out of
Speaker 1: the studio go away, and then he just you know,
Speaker 1: did it. Yeah, And then they this is the second take,
Speaker 1: which they told him of the background singers, you know,
Speaker 1: pee pop, because he said, just stop the tape, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm on They said just do it once more because
Speaker 1: you know, we get a peepop on there. So the
Speaker 1: third take ends up being the master. Oh, I see
Speaker 1: when he held the label held it back for seven
Speaker 1: eight months, it was he didn't realize what they hit
Speaker 1: on their hands. Yeah, it was seven months. I think
Speaker 1: after he they finally released it as a single and
Speaker 1: didn't ground that he had done eight songs for Elvis's
Speaker 1: back and this was just like, yeah, 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. This, all these examples
Speaker 1: stut of his life of him being able to recite
Speaker 1: to sing from memory massive amounts of stuff. I'm worried about.
Speaker 1: I'm interested about that. There's a little slip I'm worried about,
Speaker 1: I said. I said, I'm worried about that. I'm interested
Speaker 1: in that, and I'm wondering what the what would you
Speaker 1: make of that? As a psychoanalyst. I try to go on,
Speaker 1: but of course I'm talking to a hardcore Freudian. I
Speaker 1: meant to say I was interested, but what came out
Speaker 1: was worried. I mean, I'm still caught on your slip,
Speaker 1: obviously thinking what do you what do you make of it?
Speaker 1: So one thought was whether the slip might be a
Speaker 1: key to something that you're figuring out and puzzling with him,
Speaker 1: because you're right now, you're immersed in him. Oh I am.
Speaker 1: I've been singing this song under my breath for months.
Speaker 1: I can't understand why I've never been an Elvis fan.
Speaker 1: I don't own a single song of his, or am
Speaker 1: I am? I drawn to this story because isn't this
Speaker 1: story that I'm talking to you the great anxiety of
Speaker 1: anyone in a creative field, that moment when you lose control,
Speaker 1: right where the the presentation to the audience is unmasked.
Speaker 1: I want to I want to show you what. I
Speaker 1: take up my laptop, pull up YouTube. There's a mountain
Speaker 1: of Elbos on YouTube, one of the last performances of
Speaker 1: his life. It's bananas, I mean, just it's He's singing
Speaker 1: a song he's singing thousands of times, and he just
Speaker 1: completely loses control of it. I can skip that here
Speaker 1: coming from I wonder if two loss of a light.
Speaker 1: You know someone said the roles will state it's in
Speaker 1: e mus play a party. I've been here playing him
Speaker 1: early in A plus tax. You read your lian select
Speaker 1: clearly now I'm missing it. Came back to if I
Speaker 1: got the word save to change. When I first saw
Speaker 1: it it as someone in a I mean, I'm not Elvis,
Speaker 1: but I'm someone in a creative field. It terrified me.
Speaker 1: It's like up on stage doing what he's paid to do,
Speaker 1: and he he just I'm like, well, I remember, really
Speaker 1: Goon during your life. I'm gonna go on living without you.
Speaker 1: Now the stage is bear and I'm standing there without
Speaker 1: any hair. I don't know if you will come back
Speaker 1: to me. With every live performance he's ever given of
Speaker 1: this that we have on tape, he mangles the bridge,
Speaker 1: can't do it right. It's he's returning to the song
Speaker 1: again and again and again and again and again and
Speaker 1: doing the same. In this particular, it's always a bridge
Speaker 1: of singing part. He's almost over. How many years did
Speaker 1: this go on years. Okay. In nineteen eighty two, this
Speaker 1: life and Version was really in the UK and reached
Speaker 1: on the twenty five singles chart at Battery Studios. I
Speaker 1: made the Sony guys play every version they had. They
Speaker 1: even have names, Laughing Elvis, Crazy Elvis, each one stranger
Speaker 1: than the one before. The World's stay apart. God. There's
Speaker 1: sweat and tears streaming down his face and I had
Speaker 1: no calls to don It goes on like this, on
Speaker 1: and on your baby shoe again, Dolly, that's it man?
Speaker 1: Fourty years. I another Verian. Well, I'm doing sere. Have
Speaker 1: you ever played a song before? No? I never played
Speaker 1: it before, And it's funny. I played a bunch of
Speaker 1: check I played a bunch of his stuff. Do you
Speaker 1: want to put us a standby switch 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. Here's a shrine to Elvis in
Speaker 1: his hallway, actual shrine. All that's missing his 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? Song's
Speaker 1: a concert? Sometimes? I do? Love what's up treating me? Oh?
Speaker 1: Love me, love me? Dream and just sing. I was
Speaker 1: gonna say, don't stop, I'm enjoying it. Anything any other
Speaker 1: ones you do? Wait, by the way, why do you
Speaker 1: why that one? What's it about that song? I had
Speaker 1: heard that early from a band called the Flat Too.
Speaker 1: A jet said I really liked and I didn't know
Speaker 1: it was Elvis. And then when I'd heard the Elvis version,
Speaker 1: I had connected the two, like, oh no, I really
Speaker 1: and I started doing it. When I put in coffee houses,
Speaker 1: I started playing that. I was like sixteen yea that
Speaker 1: goes back, which is funny. I eventually heard a story
Speaker 1: of Robert Plant telling Elvis he loved that song, and
Speaker 1: led Zeppelin met Elvis, and then when they walked out
Speaker 1: out of the hallway that Elvis poked his head out
Speaker 1: in the hallway and sang that song to Robert Plant.
Speaker 1: They sang it back to each other and you're crying
Speaker 1: and must have been an amazing moment. Jack White owns
Speaker 1: the original ascetate pressing of Elvis's first recording from nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty three, My Happiness. After we talked, White took me
Speaker 1: into his vault to show it to me. It's priceless.
Speaker 1: He asked me if I weren't to hold it. I
Speaker 1: was too terrified to say yes. Jack White seemed like
Speaker 1: the right person to see to try and understand Elvis's problem.
Speaker 1: And are you lonesome tonight? All right? Let me see
Speaker 1: if we can take a crack. I might have to
Speaker 1: give her coup worlds. What are your lonesome tonight? Do
Speaker 1: you miss me tonight? Are you sorry? We drifted apart?
Speaker 1: Does your memor re strength? You are brightsong moday? We're
Speaker 1: not show and called you a sweetheart? Do the chair
Speaker 1: in your power, seam and dey and bear? Do you
Speaker 1: gaze as your door step and picture me? Then? Is
Speaker 1: your heart feel with pain? Shall I come back? Yeah? Tell?
Speaker 1: Are you lonesome? Tone? That's the first half of the song.
Speaker 1: The song version all questions a man is wondering whether
Speaker 1: his lover misses him. Then comes the spoken bridge, in
Speaker 1: which the emotional tables are turned and the man leaves
Speaker 1: himself bare. Are you learnesome Tonight? Has been recorded countless
Speaker 1: times over the years. A lot of performers leave out
Speaker 1: the bridge because it's corny and way too long and hard.
Speaker 1: Elvis kept it in, so does Jack White. I wonder
Speaker 1: if you're lonesome tonight. You know someone said that the
Speaker 1: wilds of stage and each must play a part. If
Speaker 1: you'd had me playing in love with you as my sweetom,
Speaker 1: that one was where we had I loved you at
Speaker 1: first glance. You read your line so cleverly, You've never
Speaker 1: missed a Q thing came back too. You seem to change,
Speaker 1: You're acted strange and why I've never known? Honey. You
Speaker 1: lied when you said you loved me, and I had
Speaker 1: no cause to doubt you. But I'd rather go on
Speaker 1: hearing your lies. I'm gonna go on living without Now
Speaker 1: the stage is there and I'm standing there with emptiness
Speaker 1: all around. If you won't come back to me and
Speaker 1: then you bring the curtain back, is your heart fill play?
Speaker 1: Shall I come back again? Tell me so too? WHOA wait?
Speaker 1: You would you enjoyed that I did? It gets I
Speaker 1: gets there's some nice parts where it gets the you
Speaker 1: can see up playing that live now. I just did that,
Speaker 1: like well, we just did that. I played it once
Speaker 1: yesterday like reading this, but now playing like that, I
Speaker 1: could see while live you could really that really could
Speaker 1: get to be in a really emotional song. So I
Speaker 1: didn't really think about it till just then. What led
Speaker 1: you to think that just now? Because it feels like, well,
Speaker 1: it's in a mine, it's a lot of minor chords,
Speaker 1: so that that that's already gets you in that melancholy vibe,
Speaker 1: but it has it has that. Um. What just occurred
Speaker 1: to me now is he doesn't he doesn't. He doesn't
Speaker 1: really care that if she's lonesome, he's lonesome. That's the
Speaker 1: singer is lonesome. And it's a it's a mcguffin to
Speaker 1: pretend like I'm I'm worried about you? Are you lonesome tonight?
Speaker 1: You know? But it's really he's the singer is worried
Speaker 1: about himself. So that could be. Um, you know, you
Speaker 1: take that kind of emotional song and you put years
Speaker 1: and years on stage, and then you put drugs in
Speaker 1: the mix, and then in your own state of mind
Speaker 1: at the time, it could be a real you could
Speaker 1: be onto something there. It could be a real diversion
Speaker 1: that it's too powerful. What's fascinating is the the song parts,
Speaker 1: the singer is in control and he's worried about her.
Speaker 1: Right the spoken parts, the singer is vulnerable, he's confessing
Speaker 1: his own and it's still screwed up. It's like, I
Speaker 1: know you lied to me, and I wish you hadn't right.
Speaker 1: I wish I didn't know that you lied to me
Speaker 1: because I'd rather be in the state of being deceived
Speaker 1: than know the truth, which is like seventeen convolutions of neuroticism.
Speaker 1: Because he's still he's still blaming her, most of the lines,
Speaker 1: still still pointing the finger. White says, you can't run
Speaker 1: from that kind of emotion, not if you're singing the
Speaker 1: song properly, and so when he writes songs, he tries
Speaker 1: to establish some distance between himself and the feelings he's
Speaker 1: singing about. I tried to push it into a character's
Speaker 1: standpoint rather than it being a self confession 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. But you can't avoid
Speaker 1: a song's emotional effects all the time, and especially not
Speaker 1: when you have to read a soliloquy in the middle
Speaker 1: of it, which is what the are you lonesome? Bridge?
Speaker 1: Is a speech parachuted into the heart of the song.
Speaker 1: I had a little flub moment at one point trying
Speaker 1: to figure out We'll wait a minute, it's a waltz.
Speaker 1: You know you have that. So if I'm like, I
Speaker 1: wonder if two three so one two three one two three,
Speaker 1: your brain kind of wants to go, I wonder if
Speaker 1: you're lonesome tonight? That's what your brain wants to do.
Speaker 1: You know, someone said that the world's a stage and
Speaker 1: we must each play a part. Then it starts to
Speaker 1: get that's it breaks down. Yeah, I mean would, I
Speaker 1: mean I would. I can definitely say that this would
Speaker 1: be a lot easier someone else was playing guitar and
Speaker 1: I could just recite, uh that part which I recited
Speaker 1: while you played a guitar. Yeah, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: torch you with my rendition of the spoken bridge. Well
Speaker 1: maybe later. I'm just saying until I die, I can
Speaker 1: say I play with Jack White and then because how
Speaker 1: many opportunities? Am I going to get like this? I
Speaker 1: asked Jack White to help me edit the soliloquy. If
Speaker 1: one were to rewrite it, I'm thinking you that you uh,
Speaker 1: you lose the first three lines fate had me playing
Speaker 1: in love you as my sweetheart? Or even act one
Speaker 1: was when we met? Why why don't they just start
Speaker 1: with act one? That act one was where you met
Speaker 1: I loved you at first class. You read your lines
Speaker 1: so carefully, never missed a Q. When I do there,
Speaker 1: you say carefully instead of cleautiful, then came back to
Speaker 1: you seem to change. You acted strange. What did Jack
Speaker 1: White do there? The actual lyric is you read your
Speaker 1: lines so cleverly, He said, you read your line so
Speaker 1: carefully carefully for cleverly, A man singing one of the
Speaker 1: songs of his musical idol comes to the emotionally complex center,
Speaker 1: and what do we hear? A moment of vulnerability? Can
Speaker 1: he be as clever as Elvis? He's not sure. He
Speaker 1: must be careful para praxis Sometimes you know I love
Speaker 1: I love him so much, and that you know I'm
Speaker 1: afraid to learn more about certain things, like you know
Speaker 1: when it's you're so close to it, and you've experienced
Speaker 1: certain things about you know nothing in comparison to what
Speaker 1: he went through, but you're in the same where we
Speaker 1: do the same kind of thing. We perform, and we
Speaker 1: go on stages and we make records and all this stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm from a different time period, but you notice these
Speaker 1: tiny little moments that are when you see certainly went, oh,
Speaker 1: I know exactly what that's about. I don't know exactly
Speaker 1: what that feels like. There are ten known live recordings
Speaker 1: of Elvis performing Are You Lonesome Tonight, starting in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty one in a concert at Bloc Arena in Honolulu,
Speaker 1: up to the end of Elvis's life in nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 1: Alan Elms and Bruce Heller analyze them all in their
Speaker 1: essay Twelve Ways to Say Lonesome, Assessing error and control
Speaker 1: in the music of Elvis Presley. Elms and Heller find
Speaker 1: that Elvis performs the sung portion of all You Lonesome
Speaker 1: Tonight more or less flawlessly because the sung portion is
Speaker 1: the part of the song where the singer is in control,
Speaker 1: but in the spoken bridge, the narrator is suddenly the
Speaker 1: one who's been deceived and rejected and that's the part
Speaker 1: Elvis can't get right. Elms and Heller count total of
Speaker 1: a hundred and nine errors in those ten live performances
Speaker 1: of The Spoken Bridge, twenty nine of which involved just
Speaker 1: four lines. I loved you at first glance, where he
Speaker 1: confesses the depths of his feelings. You seem to change,
Speaker 1: You 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 conditions 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? And one day you went in
Speaker 1: and said I'm leaving. There was another man in your life.
Speaker 1: He was your karate teacher, right, Mike Stone. And you
Speaker 1: went off then and lived with him. Priscilla Presley back
Speaker 1: on the couch with Barbara Walters, America's primetime Freudian. It
Speaker 1: was said that Elvis tried to kill him or wanted
Speaker 1: him killed, right? Do you believe that? I think at
Speaker 1: that time, yes, he did. He wanted that to happen.
Speaker 1: I du the chasing your father seeing empteed? Do you
Speaker 1: game that your bullhead? I wish you had her? Fool
Speaker 1: with pain? Shall I come back to me? Dude? Are
Speaker 1: you lost? Lord? Lord? I want to A man who
Speaker 1: fears betrayal an abandonment, is betrayed and abandoned. I had
Speaker 1: no call to Dog. It's too much. He's a wreck.
Speaker 1: Your baby shot. Come again, Tobby, Dude, are you lonesome?
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. You may remember Bobby Braddock from season
Speaker 1: two of Revisionist History. He's the legendary songwriter I called
Speaker 1: the King of Tears. Braddock wanted to introduce me to
Speaker 1: a good friend of his, a singer songwriter named Casey Bowles.
Speaker 1: That's the church across alto thirty something, long red hair,
Speaker 1: the kind of person who if you touch you expect
Speaker 1: a little jolt of static work. Young. We were in
Speaker 1: the biggest of the Sony recording studios, on the main floor,
Speaker 1: in a corner where the piano was Casey sang are
Speaker 1: you lonesome? Tonight? With Bobby on the piano toss me
Speaker 1: are you Sobby? 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. My dad thought he was Elvis.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, he really. He was a Church of
Speaker 1: Christ long leader and really wanted to be a Jordinaire badly,
Speaker 1: And so ray Walker was one of the Jordanaires, and
Speaker 1: he tried to emulate him by way of dress and hairstyle.
Speaker 1: And so I grew up either hearing him say hello,
Speaker 1: darling nastasy or doing this sort of you know, is
Speaker 1: it vaudeville style or just just sort of a over
Speaker 1: the top modeling style. I guess is modeling the way
Speaker 1: you'd say it modeling. Then Bobby Braddock started talking about recitations,
Speaker 1: the spoken part in many older country songs, and he
Speaker 1: made the same point that Jack White did, that they're
Speaker 1: much easier if they're set to music, if you could
Speaker 1: just as easily sing them. Like on one of Braddock's
Speaker 1: most famous songs, he stopped loving her to stay recitation,
Speaker 1: Yeah you could sing that. She came to see him
Speaker 1: one last time. We all wonder if she and that
Speaker 1: works either way. But this is just like, uh, we
Speaker 1: got this song, let's get a recitation. Threw it in
Speaker 1: there and they office made it work. And I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: just instinctively, just because he was h he was just
Speaker 1: so good. Recitations are unusual these days. Braddock hasn't written
Speaker 1: one since something he did for Toby Keith in the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties. Last successful recitation. Your song I ham was
Speaker 1: actually it was a well, actually it was it was
Speaker 1: it was a hip hop thing. I want to talk
Speaker 1: about me. That was talking talking, talking what I'm thinking about,
Speaker 1: But it was you know what can you you can?
Speaker 1: You can you pay a little slice of that? You
Speaker 1: remember I never do that? Why do that always? I
Speaker 1: always do it with with with a karaoke thing where
Speaker 1: I get up there and play the thing. I want
Speaker 1: to talk about me, I want to talk about I
Speaker 1: want to talk about number one or now. You talk
Speaker 1: about your work, how your boss is a jerk, You
Speaker 1: talk about your church in your head and when your urse,
Speaker 1: talk about the trouble you've been having with your mother
Speaker 1: and your daddy, with your brother and your daddy and
Speaker 1: your mother and your crazy Acts lover, you know, and
Speaker 1: then and then the minstrel menstrual period of line, which
Speaker 1: everybody said, you can't put that in a song, nobody'll
Speaker 1: ever cut it, you know, And it was one of
Speaker 1: the biggest songs. They were about your medical charts and
Speaker 1: when you start check that out, nobody recording to He's
Speaker 1: probably the only one who would have though. Then I
Speaker 1: showed them the prize. I brought it my bag, my
Speaker 1: copy of the Handbook of Psychobiography containing the Heller and
Speaker 1: Elms essay. Hold on, I'll have my book here. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you the specimen is fascinating. To a pair of
Speaker 1: Elvis fanatics. It was like I'd unearthed the Dead Sea scrolls.
Speaker 1: What's the book. It's the book called Handbook of Psychobiography,
Speaker 1: and it has an essay on this song. Wow, psycho
Speaker 1: biography and so yeah, So here's so this guy has
Speaker 1: gone through. He've made a chart of all of the
Speaker 1: lyrical mistakes that Elvis made an every known live recording of. Yeah.
Speaker 1: These were two songwriters and I felt they immediately saw
Speaker 1: themselves in that chart. Do you find yourself making the
Speaker 1: kind of errors, sometimes even subtle ones that you know,
Speaker 1: we've been talking about that's so interesting. I wrote a
Speaker 1: song about my mother called Somebody Something, and my mother
Speaker 1: is adorable, and whenever you heard about things going wrong
Speaker 1: or like some multivate story, it was my dad. And
Speaker 1: so I finally was like, you know what, why aren't
Speaker 1: we the only person in the family that there's nothing
Speaker 1: I haven't written about? So I was trying to dig
Speaker 1: dirt on her and there was nothing, And so I
Speaker 1: ended up writing this song about her, called Somebody Something,
Speaker 1: and I cry every time I do it. And there
Speaker 1: is a line it says, you know, she's always been
Speaker 1: somebody something. She's lived every life but her own, and
Speaker 1: it's gone. I can't remember it right now. I don't
Speaker 1: know that feeling. I can't remember it. She's always been
Speaker 1: somebody something's been everything but alone, a daughter, a mother,
Speaker 1: a lot, a daughter, a lover, hawife, and a mother.
Speaker 1: She's lived to every life but her own. Yes, she's
Speaker 1: always been somebody something. And there's a line that says,
Speaker 1: you know, she she wonders what it might be like
Speaker 1: to be somebody else, and she wonders what it feels
Speaker 1: like to be free, But she's always imagined being nobody's nothing,
Speaker 1: And that's something she never want to be. But that
Speaker 1: line usually is just gone. And um, a lot of
Speaker 1: times I'll go hold on and divert and tell a
Speaker 1: funny story really quickly. Um yeah, wait, what's the specific
Speaker 1: line that's gone? Is which one? Uh? Let's gone again? Um,
Speaker 1: she's always been somebody something that's been everything but a daughter,
Speaker 1: a daughter, a lover, a wife, and a mother. She's
Speaker 1: been everything but alone. Yeah yeah, why is it that longe?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think that, Um, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think when you've even she's so when you see
Speaker 1: somebody give so much of themselves and that's truly the
Speaker 1: only thing that she will ever experience. And I think
Speaker 1: it's what I've experienced the most stuff. A minute before,
Speaker 1: we were joking about Toby Keith. Now Casey is pensive
Speaker 1: as she compares her mother's life to her own. Not
Speaker 1: being able to make a relationship work the first eighteen
Speaker 1: thousand times out of the gate or you know, officially
Speaker 1: the first two and um, not being a mother and
Speaker 1: we're still real closer, right, Yeah, I love her. Go
Speaker 1: to church where they're right? Do I sit still? Because
Speaker 1: she makes me and I stay awake. It's good when
Speaker 1: I when I was a kid, if I get bored
Speaker 1: in church and my mother reached him and pinch me, Oh,
Speaker 1: I got smacked. We Casey, can you play that song
Speaker 1: for us? Is it's going to be two let's say, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: Well we'll see if this happens. She grew up playing
Speaker 1: cowgirl in Bill Road Town, dreaming. She'd see, Oh, shoot,
Speaker 1: hold on, there's a little linebout Elvis in this. That's
Speaker 1: just random. Hold on dreaming. See she Hollywood, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go again. What did I just say? Sorry, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about mom. She grew up playing cow girl. She grew
Speaker 1: up playing cowgirl in Bellroad Town, dreamings. She'd see HollyHood Sunday.
Speaker 1: She knew Sunday distant Friday night with a singer. It
Speaker 1: just right. They would come and carry away as as
Speaker 1: far shakes safe from that's all right. Hold one 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 1: She married in December. Any work and address her Mamma made,
Speaker 1: she looked down, grown up standing there like that, had
Speaker 1: a honeymoon in Memphis Town. Yeah, she looked for out
Speaker 1: us all around, made loving the gray. How coming back
Speaker 1: as far as she could see from there, those were
Speaker 1: just the backslide. You went from somebody's daughter somebody's wife.
Speaker 1: A parapraxis is not failure. When the performer slips, the
Speaker 1: audience is not cheated. It's the opposite. Parapraxis is a gift.
Speaker 1: I presented myself as interested in this story, but now
Speaker 1: you know that this subject doesn't just interest me. It
Speaker 1: worries me. Losing control is my great anxiety. When Jack
Speaker 1: White said carefully instead of cleverly, it was a hint
Speaker 1: that playing Alvis wasn't a trivial matter for him. It
Speaker 1: was a sacred act. Carefully full of care, and Elvis,
Speaker 1: after the loss of Priscilla sang a song hit sang
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 Braddick and I
Speaker 1: sat there listening to Casey sing tears in her eyes,
Speaker 1: fumbling to remember the lyrics of a song about her mother,
Speaker 1: fumbling not because her mother didn't matter to her, but
Speaker 1: because she did. She's always there, somebody something. She's been everything, daughter, daughter, mother, wife, fan, mother,
Speaker 1: She's lit every life. But she'd say, that's just called
Speaker 1: and a woman. She's always there somebody, So God's beautiful.
Speaker 1: Why are you covering your mouth? I'm just that's just
Speaker 1: weird because I've never It's just weird when you're thinking
Speaker 1: about what it is like, I just thought, oh, bad memory,
Speaker 1: too many songs, old, too many songs in there. But
Speaker 1: at any point in time, I could pull out a
Speaker 1: rap from new edition from nineteen eighty two, like why
Speaker 1: is that in there? And something that you wrote is
Speaker 1: not in there? That is so weird. It's not weird.
Speaker 1: A lesser person would have sung it perfectly. Thank you
Speaker 1: for listening to Season three of Revisionist History, And if
Speaker 1: you like this episode, you'll enjoy my new series launching
Speaker 1: later this year. It's called Broken Record, and you can
Speaker 1: subscribe right now on Apple Podcasts. Revisionist History is a
Speaker 1: Upleat production. The senior producer is Mia LaBelle, with Jacob
Speaker 1: Smith and Camille Baptista. Our editor is Julia Barton. Flawn
Speaker 1: Williams is our engineer. Fact checking by Beth Johnson. Original
Speaker 1: music by Luis Gara. Special thanks to Kim Green and
Speaker 1: Hal Humphreys of Storyboard EMP in Nashville and here in
Speaker 1: New York. Thanks to Jason Gambrel, Evan Viola, Rachel Strom,
Speaker 1: Nicole Bunsis, Kate Mescal, Kristin Mindzer, Carly Migliori, Andy Bowers,
Speaker 1: and of course el Hefe Jacob Weisberg. I'm Malcolm Gladmow Okay,
Speaker 1: so it will be. I wonder if you're lonesome tonight.
Speaker 1: You know, someone said that the world's a stage and
Speaker 1: each must play a part. Fate had been playing in
Speaker 1: love you as my sweetheart. Act one was when we met.
Speaker 1: I loved you at first glance. You read your line
Speaker 1: so cleverly. Never missed a Q then came back two.
Speaker 1: You seem to change, and you acted strange, and why
Speaker 1: I'll never know. Honey. You lied when you said you
Speaker 1: loved me, and I had no cause to doubt you.
Speaker 1: But I'd rather go on hearing your lives than go
Speaker 1: on living without you. Now the stage is bare and
Speaker 1: I'm standing there with emptiness all around. And if you
Speaker 1: won't come back to me, then make them bring the
Speaker 1: curtain down. How about doing nice, very good? I must
Speaker 1: say I'm not very musical. Now it's very good, it's good.