Elvis Presley 'Suspicious Minds'

Between maybe 1930 and 2000, a new renaissance took place in the world of music. The popular music of the 20^th Century, and particularly Rock ‘n’ Roll, will eventually take its place alongside the artistic renaissance of the 14^th to 17^th Century. It will stand with the great paintings and sculpture of the era. It will stand with the classical outpourings of Beethoven, Mozart and Chopin. It will be seen as the equal of the great era of Jazz, of Armstrong, of Holiday, Fitzgerald or Vaughan, of Davis or Coltrane. And Elvis Presley will be the Michelangelo or Da Vinci of this ‘new renaissance’.

Of late I have been overcome with a great sense of despair at the passing of time. I have been filled with a sense that something is being lost. And something is being lost. In many ways something is always being lost, but of late it seems greater. Bowie, Fats Domino, Glen Campbell, Chuck Berry, Prince, Michael Jackson, Malcolm Young, even Johnny Hallyday (the French Elvis) have all passed. Life is fickle. Such is life. Cliches come and go. But there is a ‘certain desperation’ in the knowledge that a group, such as the Five Royales, or a singer, such as Ferlin Huskey, have no relevance anymore. Granted there are people who still marvel at the beauty inherent in the music of Hank Williams or the glory of Sam Cooke. But their time will also pass.

Songs will still echo through the generations. ‘Duke of Earl’ or ‘Light My Fire’ will still pulsate through the airwaves in all their glory, but their relevance will be all but lost. Young people no longer know who Al Jolson or Bing Crosby are. And while this fills me with a despondency that I can hardly describe, it is the nature of life. Perhaps this is not such a bad thing. After all, the past should always be brushed aside. It is thus we create the new.

Rock ‘n’ Roll destroys my world. It uplifts me. It breaks my heart. It thrills me. It encompasses me. It makes me believe in all the things that are possible. It is all that is possible. It is love. It is hate. It is hope. It is hopelessness. It is the dreams of yesterday, the dreams of tomorrow. It is dreams.

Yes it is dreams. Rock ‘n’ Roll is dreams. And that is its glory, its redemption, nothing more, nothing less. And Elvis is at the heart of this. 

Everything starts and ends with Elvis. Elvis tore up the rules. Everything he did had an odor of contempt for everything that had gone before. It is hard now, in 2018, to appreciate the sense of rebellion, the wonder and magic of it all. But Elvis, in his sound, in his movement, broke the world. I know that sounds like hyperbole, but it isn’t. Elvis was rock ‘n’ roll. He was Punk. He was the essence of everything that is great in counter culture. He was the atomic bomb of popular music. He tore through the stratosphere as comets burn through the night sky. 

Elvis’ career is too often compartmentalized. There are the awe inspiring Sun years, the early glory of his RCA output, the movie years, the 68 Comeback Special, the Vegas years and the sad demise towards the end. And even within this there is much generalization. For while the movie years produced such nonsense as ‘Yoga Is As Yoga Does’, they also saw Elvis record ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love’. And here lies the crux of the problem. Elvis’ output was so vast that there were always going to be a number of duds and the ‘misdirection’ his career took following his return from the army was not without its highlights. But in many ways the magnificence of Elvis, his essence, if you like, is embodied in ‘Suspicious Minds’. 

Try to imagine December 3rd 1968. Elvis hadn’t performed live in 7 years. He had been in the army, he had made 28 movies (well actually 31 – 3 would be released in 1969). He was considered by many to be a spent force, a relic of a more innocent age. As Thom Zimmy’s documentary ‘The Searcher’ points out, Elvis was nervous. He nearly backed out of the whole thing. This was it; Elvis’ chance to banish the demons, to make amends, to show that he was still relevant. And the glory of Elvis, the glory that is Elvis, lies in the fact that he stood in the moment, he stood in the eye of the storm and he delivered. 

The 1968 Comeback Special is perhaps the greatest moment of Rock ‘n’ Roll. The moment when Elvis went to the top of the mountain and despite everything, despite the turmoil that wracked the world, despite Vietnam, despite the assassination of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, Elvis connected. He connected in a visceral way. It was almost a recreation of the ‘Mystery Train’ or ‘That’s alright Mama’ moment in Sun studios. It was almost like the beautiful disarray of his appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. Elvis could still do it. Elvis could still be at the back, centre and front of Rock ‘n’ Roll. Elvis was still Elvis. And the ’68 Comeback Special was a huge success, both artistically and commercially. He, and we, could still dream.

Flush from the success of the ’68 Comeback Special, Elvis headed for Muscle Shoals in Memphis. Elvis was home. American Sound Studio was started in 1967 by Lincoln Wayne ‘Chips’ Moman and Don Crews. Moman had worked for Stax and had written/co-written songs such as ‘The Dark End of the Street’ and ‘Do Right Woman, Do Right Man’. The house band, known as ‘the Memphis Boys’, consisted of Reggie Young (Guitar), Tommy Cogbill and Mick Leech (bass), Gene Chrisman (drums), and Bobby Emmons and Bobby Wood (Keyboards). From 1967 to 1971 American Sound Studio would be responsible for approximately 120 top 100 hundred billboard hits. And it was into this melting pot that Elvis walked.

Elvis’ aching vocals capture perfectly the moment when someone, despite still being in love, realise that their love is doomed to failure. The lyrics are simple, fraught and desperate. Elvis still loves his partner but she no longer trusts him. However, the beauty of the lyric lies in the fact that while Elvis pleads his love, and tells us that his tears are real and that he never lied, he also never denies cheating and we are never sure the extent of the trap that Elvis finds himself in.

And then there are the backing vocals, brass section and drums. All burst through the recording in a fundamental way that seems to echo some kind of new beginning. The backing vocals on the track were by Jeannie Green, Ronnie Milsap, who would later become a prominent country singer, and Donna Jean Godchou, who would go on to provide vocals for the Grateful Dead, though, I would argue that the vocals they added to Suspicious Minds were perhaps the pinnacle of their careers. 

Whoever worked out the backing vocals for Suspicious Minds, probably Felton Jarvis, Elvis’ producer, was a man of rare talent. They first appear at 37 seconds into the recording, initially echoing Elvis, but it is the ‘Ahs’, ‘Oohs’, ‘Whoos’ and ‘Yeahs’ as the crescendo builds which mark out the backing vocals as some of the best in Rock ‘n’ Roll. And it is the interplay between Elvis, the backing vocals and the perfect, yet not overbearing, brass section which elevates Suspicious Minds to a new level.

Then, after the bridge, Gene Chrisman’s drums really kick in and the song builds in a breath-taking combination of vocals, backing vocals, drums, bass, guitar and brass until we think the track is over, only it’s not. Because Felton, the producer, decided to add a premature fade-out, only for the recording to then fade-in again; Chips Moman in an interview in 2012 suggested that Felton had done this as he was unhappy with Elvis recording at American Sound Studios and inserted the fade-out, fade-in, in an attempt to exert his control over the recordings. Whatever might be true and whether the fade-out-in works is, in many respects, unimportant. Elvis had produced a new classic and was back at the top of the charts.

Suspicious Minds is the quintessential Elvis track. Not because it is his best song or recording. He probably never surpassed the Sun or early RCA recordings. But more because it encapsulates his comeback; Suspicious Minds highlighted the fact that Elvis was still relevant in 1969, fifteen years after his initial forays into recorded music and sadly eight years before his death. It stands as a monument to his greatness and to the greatness of Rock ‘n’ Roll.