Did the youth of the 70’s like Elvis?

Elvis has always had a strong fanbase which supported his records during his career and virtually guaranteed at least a Top 30 chart appearance even for some of the poorer records. Moody Blue was a good song and did well in the spring of ‘77 and climbed the charts gradually from #40 to #22 eventually peaking at #6” but Way Down which was released a couple of weeks before he died struggled initially, charting at 46, then went just 4 places higher the next week. Then the following week, it had jumped up to #4 off the back of his death, reaching #1 the next week where it remained for 5 weeks. I doubt it would have been that successful had it not been for the event of 16th Aug ‘77.

 

The 70s were my grade school years but I liked Elvis and so did my friend the same age who lived across the street. We liked his old and new stuff. Way Down was loved by me when it was new and now as well.

 

In the U.K., whilst still being regarded as a really big artist, by early 1963, that interest was dropping off as the singles were not regarded as being top quality. Between 1960-62, he’d had 8 singles that reached #1 and would have had 9 on the bounce which was spoilt by Wild in the Country only teaching #4. In the Spring of ‘63, he released One Broken Heart For Sale which was regarded as being very poor by Elvis’ standards especially as it barely lasted 1 min 30 sec. - it failed to reach the Top 10. And by then, there was a big change in the music scene - lots of fans lost interest in the records he was releasing and the fact that promises to come to the U.K. never materialised was another reason they deserted. Apart from a couple of big hits in the mid 60s, he never recaptured the status he had enjoyed in the 50s and early 60s until 1969 when he had a big comeback. But being a teenager in the mid to late 60’s, I could see that Elvis was no longer regarded as being "cool".

 

I was born in the summer of 1970. I did have friends that were into Elvis and Neil Diamond, but they were the kids whose mothers had total control of the car radio (and invariably it would be on the AM dial).

 

I was 10 is 1975. I just remember the old fat drugged Elvis. I had certainly seen clips of him younger, and all I could think was: what happened ...

 

I did...still do.

 

"Burning Love" an incredible song...I loved when it popped on the radio...

 

Glenn Danzig was just entering his teenage years in the 1970s.

 

My cousins loved Elvis in the mid 1970s. In 1976 they were about 12, 9 and 5 years old. They had the 1973 Elvis double LP compilation album and we listened to it a lot on their little portable stereo record player. It sounded great with the added echo and reverb on those mixes.

 

He's a drag. A well known drag. We turned the sound down on him and said
rude things.

 

This one never took to him.

 

I was born in 52 so I was too young for the 1950's Elvis. My folks didn't listen to him, they were listening to Sinatra and Dino and their contemporaries. I listened to Johnny Horton and Tennessee Ernie Ford when I was a kid. The Beatles changed all that in 1964. I didn't listen to Elvis in 70's.

 

Not that I can recall. In the '70s Elvis was seen as an aging relic by most of the young hip kids.

Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Boston, Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles etc ruled the airways. Heck, the kids of the 70's didn't even like the Beatles that much.

 

Everyone I knew in college -- 1974-78 -- thought Elvis was their parents' music.

 

I grew up in a small town and during the 1960's my friends and I used to go to the Saturday Matinee every week no matter what movie was showing.

The (6-10 year old) crowd always groaned out loud when the previews indicated that next week's movie was going to be an Elvis flick. We went anyway.

Elvis as a cheesy actor in bad movies is the image that stuck with me when I was a teenager in the 70's.

 

I was 15 in 1974 and didn't care much about Elvis but have some more respect for him now.

 

Nearly everyone of every generation has always liked Elvis, but as a child of the 70’s I think we were a little concerned for/embarrassed by him at that time. The 70’s weren’t his best decade...

 

I was twelve when he died and deeply into early rock n roll from the 50s and early 60s. I don't think I was aware of what he'd been doing since, but I sure loved that Golden Records album! It was way pre-internet and I lived far from town, so my input and source of knowledge was just the old records and what I might happen to catch on TV.

 

Exactly. I was a teen throughout the 70s and recall none of my friends liking Elvis. By then he was an overweight Vegas singer in tight spandex jump suits and looked embarrassing. We regarded him as an oldies act and it was our parent's music for the most part (although my parents who were young in the 50s were Sinatra all the way and never liked Elvis either).

When you're listening to the likes of Genesis, Yes, ELP, Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Steely Dan, Neil Young etc by the mid 70s, you have no time to listen to Elvis on the oldies station. And if you did, you were not "cool".

 

Was with you until your last sentence. I became a Beatles fanatic in the early to mid 70s as a young teen. Really the first group I ever dived deeply into and started buying multiple albums of. Sgt Pepper, White Album, Abbey Road fascinated me. It helped that Band on the Run was one of my first album purchases and McCartney was massive in 73-74. I remember as a kid being shocked when the Beatles broke up, and later had the pics from the White Album on my wall. The Beatles were still all over the radio, both AM and FM in the mid 70s. Most everyone I knew for the most part liked The Beatles to some degree and recognized their massive influence, with the exception of the "everything sucks" burnout crowd. In college in the late 70s I used to have huge debates with one of my roommates, Stones or Beatles. The late Beatles albums were in a lot of college dorm rooms even in the late 70s.

 

Every generation has its own legends and heros. At the end, the youth that deeply cared about Elvis was those born around the 1940's; it was a real musical shock if you listen to what they said:

"Elvis was a giant and influenced everyone in the business."
- Isaac Hayes

"I learned music listening to Elvis' records. His measurable effect on culture and music was even greater in England than in the States."
- Mick Fleetwood

"I remember Elvis as a young man hanging around the Sun Studios. Even then, I knew this kid had a tremendous talent. He was a dynamic young boy. His phraseology, his way of looking at a song, was as unique as Sinatra's. I was a tremendous fan, and had Elvis lived, there would have been no end to his inventiveness."
- B.B. King

"I remember when my mother came back from work brought home the record 'Heartbreak Hotel.' I'd never heard anything like that before. I'd never been around music like that, music that was so powerful. That moment, that song would forever shape the way I listened to music."
- Elton John

"The first concert I attended was an Elvis concert when I was eleven. Even at that age he made me realize the tremendous effect a performer could have on an audience."
- Cher

"That night at the Eagle's Nest, he was playing a D-18 Martin acoustic guitar and he was dressed in the latest teen fashion. ...The thing I really noticed was guitar playing and you didn't want to hear anything else."
- Johnny Cash

“I wasn’t just a fan, I was his brother. He said I was good and I said he was good; we never argued about that. Elvis was a hard worker, dedicated, and God loved him. Last time I saw him was at Graceland. We sang Old Blind Barnabus together, a gospel song. I love him and hope to see him in heaven. There’ll never be another like that soul brother."
- James Brown

“He was the firstest with the mostest.”
- Roy Orbison

“Elvis was the king. No doubt about it. People like myself, Mick Jagger and all the others only followed in his footsteps.”
- Rod Stewart

“He was a unique artist - an original in an area of imitators.”
- Mick Jagger

“Before Elvis, there was nothing. Nothing really affected me until I heard Elvis. If there hadn't been an Elvis, there wouldn't have been The Beatles."
- John Lennon

“...it was like he came along and whispered some dream in everybody’s ear, and somehow we all dreamed it.”
- Bruce Springsteen

“When I first heard Elvis' voice, I just knew that I wasn’t going to work for anybody; and nobody was going to be my boss...Hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail.”
- Bob Dylan

“Elvis had an influence on everybody with his musical approach. He broke the ice for all of us.”
- Al Green

“A lot of people have accused Elvis of stealing the black man’s music, when in fact, almost every black solo entertainer copied his stage mannerisms from Elvis.”
- Jackie Wilson

“You have no idea how great he is, really you don’t. You have no comprehension - it’s absolutely impossible. I can’t tell you why he’s so great, but he is. He’s sensational.”
- Phil Spector

“Elvis is the greatest cultural force in the twentieth century. He introduced the beat to everything, music, language, clothes, it’s a whole new social revolution - the 60’s comes from it.”
- Leonard Bernstein

“It was the finest music of his life. If ever there was music that bleeds, this was it.”
- Greil Marcus, From his book "Mystery Train," remembering the 1968 TV Special

 

Indeed, and I doubt anyone would dispute the effect he had in the 50s, but all of that is somewhat irrelevant to how the youth of the 70’s perceived Elvis and his music. Being a teenager and an Elvis fan in the 60s, I could see how other teenagers could not connect with the kind of music he was releasing at that time and whilst his records improved dramatically in 1969/1970, and there was a big interest in that comeback period, by 1972, that interest had waned and whilst his concerts were always sellouts, by then, he was seen more as an iconic curiosity rather than someone who was giving amazing concert performances with mind blowing music. Of course loyal fans still ran with him, but the youth of the 70s only saw him as a Vegas singer dressed in jumpsuits and the majority could not connect with that either.

As an aside, it has never been documented when or where John Lennon was in the early 60s when he supposedly said that without Elvis, there would have been no Beatles. As Lennon was equally blown away by a Little Richard record a couple of weeks after hearing Heartbreak Hotel in 1956, I suspect that The Beatles would have still happened had Elvis not existed.

 

I heard McCartney naming Little Richard several times so I guess he is a big fan, but Lennon was definitely a huge Elvis fan although he clearly prefered the 1954 / 1960 era. The author Ray Connolly (who met Elvis in Vegas in 1969) still remembers that both Lennon and Dylan kept asking him about those night shows and the setlist: did Elvis sing those Sun recordings? Was Scotty Moore still around?

 

I was born in 1961 so Elvis still loomed large. I didn't own any of his albums but did appreciate him very much for his contribution to music. After all he is the king and was just plain cool.

 

Oh I wasn’t suggesting that Lennon was not a huge Elvis fan…he was especially as you say, the Sun stuff and the early RCA recordings and they always included a few earlyElvis stuff in their setlists. Lennon was definitely blown away when he first heard Heartbreak Hotel and up until then, he had never heard such a recording although he had been influenced by Lonnie Donegan with regard to getting into music. But when he heard Little Richard’s "Long Tall Sally" he experienced exactly the kind of euphoria he’d had with Elvis, and found that he was torn between the two artists. And McCartney felt exactly the same. But they both agreed that by 1960, Elvis had mellowed with many of the recordings he was putting out. In fact two years earlier, they felt Elvis had sold out when they heard his recording of Hard Headed Woman. They both imagined that with a title like that, it was going to be a big heavy weight rock n roll song and then when they heard the big trombone thing in the middle, they were so disappointed.

Of course Elvis was still their hero even through the 60s etc, but they just did not like the recordings he was putting out. But for Lennon to say that had Elvis not existed, then neither would the Beatles, he would have had to have lived in a parallel world that had no Elvis so that he could have lived and seen the outcome in 1956.