Did the youth of the 70’s like Elvis?

Marc Bolan and T. Rex were fantastic, although you're unlikely to understand what his songs are about. I don't think anyone does, but they're great records.

 

Elvis was always a popular act, and had hits throughout the 70s. Moody Blue was a top 10 hit just before he died, IIRC.

Marc Bolan, by contrast, had struggled for years. The odd hit occasionally, but nothing like his hey day of 1971/2. I think Marc had a single out when he died.. It was Celebrate Summer, which didn’t chart at all. Marc also had an ITV show running when he was killed.

Still, it seems odd that his record company didn’t reissue Hot Love or Get It On or something after his death… Maybe they did and it just didn’t sell. I can’t recall now.

I remember when Karen Carpenter died a few years later. This had no effect on record sales either. Though it has to be said that their various compilations have sold well in the U.K. over the years.

 

He was still having top 10 singles here up to his death, some of them re-issued oldies like 'Girl of My Best Friend' and 'Suspicion'. My parents were big fans. They still are.

 

I was a teenager in the 70s, I didn't like Elvis.

 

My old man was a teenager during the seventies.

He told me people loved Burning Love and rocked out to it.

But that was literally the last time Elvis was on the radar. After that he was seen as “the fat guy over in Las Vegas”.

 

I was a teen in the seventies. I liked Elvis a lot. But I knew my friends and most every other dude didn't like him. They were either in to country or Three Dog Night/Frampton/etc. So I kept it secret. Until my mom thought it would be funny to rat me out to my friends. With a mom like that...

 

That's right about 'Moody Blue', and 'Way Down' did well too before he died. He was still selling here, even if he was uncool

'Celebrate Summer' was a weak song, though - not a patch on the Dandy in the Underworld album, or Futuristic Dragon. But Marc Bolan was sort of making promising inroads again in the album chart with Dandy (even though his singles were doing worse than ever), and he had his own TV show, but his death seemed to wipe all these promising green shoots out completely. I don't think the record company did any single re-issues, but maybe MB just got lost in the slipstream of Elvis Presley's passing. A lot of famous people died that year, like Groucho Marx, Bing Crosby and Joan Crawford... There you go! Crosby's 'White Christmas' got into the top 1o that Christmas - even Bing Crosby! Poor Boley.

 

Me neither.

 

Ha! I remember conversations like that though for my parents who were born during and just after WW1 (I was a very late baby for that era) it was Bing and Groucho that touched them the most.

As for Elvis I kind of assume some people (across all the age groups from kids to pensioners) who may never have bought an Elvis record or may not have bought one since he went into the army wanted to have something as an Elvis "souvenir". He may not have been musically relevant but he certainly meant something very special to people who were born in the 40s.

The group of people who loved Marc would have been 17 tops when he died would most likely still have been living with their parents and probably already have enough Marc memorabilia in their lives. I didn't need anything to remember him by really.

 

I was 12 when Marc died, but I'd been a fan for a very long time (short trousers!) due to my uncle, who is ten years older than me. He got me into all that stuff and I never really left it. I have to thank him because it probably stopped me falling for... I don't know... The Rubettes and that sort of thing. That's a good point about the memorabilia, but I think he was on the way to becoming a cult artist. He'd never have made it big again. Might have had a sporadic mini-revival, like Slade did.

With Elvis Presley, it's like Bobby said, he was still, unlike Marc, very successful when he died, and all without trying to be hip, jumping on glam, disco bandwagons or whatever.

 

I am sure you are right. What I remember is that other than people well into middle age people either didn't care or took the ****. I was 15 and was definitely in the former category. He was as rock n roll to me as Andy Williams or someone with a Saturday night tv special. Though I am sure that could have been a London thing. Might have been different in the places where C&W and a fondness for Americana in general ruled.

 

I can only speak for myself and my immediate music loving friends.
We didn't care about Elvis Presley at all.

 

???

 

OK. Not musically relevant in 1977.

 

Thanks. That is quite a different statement. Thanks for replying.

 

I'm from the North and I felt the same way, but C&W is quite popular around here, or at least it was. We even had a local country singer who called herself 'Tammy Cline' (I kid you not!). I remember quite a few of my peers who like EP (though not hordes of them), but London has always been more "happening", I agree.

 

FWIW, Mr. Costello, great musician and songwriter that he is, was never 'The King.' He also was never 'The Boss' or 'The Queen Of Soul' or 'The Hardest Working Man In Show Business.'

 

My mum's family in South Wales were heartbroken but even The Beatles were a bit modern for them. These were people in their early 30s who probably hadn't bought a record other Shirley Bassey and Tom Jones since before Ready Steady Go started. They didn't even like Motown or Northern Soul stuff. It was all irrelevant to them. Their kids are all Hair Metal fans now so go figure.

 

In the context of current rock and roll in the 1970s, I don’t think Elvis appealed much to young music fans.

But, he was a big star, on the level of a Bob Hope or Bing Crosby, i.e., stars who transcended what they initially got famous for. I think he was respected as such by most people, including youths.

I don’t remember ‘hate’ towards Elvis until probably around the time he got fat and then sadly, died. Then there was a lot of cruel humor.

But his movies were on a lot and no doubt many a bored youth spent Sunday afternoons watching Kissing Cousins and Stay Away, Joe, on the local UHF Sunday Matinee….

 

This is so true.

 

Absolutely not...at least not the youth that I knew. We made fun of the "old ladies" and their Elvis records.

Then I remember everyone crying one day when I got home.

 

It's funny that some people ignored Elvis in the 70's but then 15 or 20 years later, they went back to his music and actually enjoyed it.

My uncle had that particular experience: he told me had no interest at all for (70's) Elvis, but in 1992, when RCA / BMG issued that 5CDs set called "The King of R'n'R: The complete 50's Masters", he bought it and was shocked by the quality and by the fact that he just loved the music. Like, it should not because, after all, it's Elvis and "he did not write his own songs..!" Seriously, that boxset, somehow, re-established part of Presley credibility. I've still got it next to the more recent "A Boy from Tupelo" (about the Sun years), which is fantastic too, and the FTD edition dedicated to the "Elvis is Back!" sessions.

 

The 3 decade boxes were a major jump off point for Elvis re-evaluation for many people I believe.

 

I think so. Plus in 2002, you had "ELV1S" and the single A LITTLE LESS CONVERSATION that boosted Elvis' popularity for a while. But after that, it seems that everything started to wane once again. The good thing is that thanks to Youtube, Spotify and so on, his legacy is available for anyone, everywhere. The interest is just not there.

 

I don't even know how many of the youth of the 60s were really into him. I was pre-teen when the Beatles hit our shores in '64. That really woke me and my generation up to this music. But by this time, Elvis was already a joke appearing in those lame movies of his. That's what Elvis was at the time -- a corny movie singer who was handsome enough to grab the girls' interest. But I didn't take him seriously as a musical artist until much later, looking back.