You wanna know what happened to Elvis?
I’ll tell ya what happened.
I oughta know, man, I was one of his army.
I mean, man, I was on his side,
He made us feel all right.
We were the first wave in the post war baby boom.
The generation before had just come out of the great depression
and World War Two,
You know, heavy vibes for people to wear,
So much heaviness
Like some kind of voiding of the emotions.
Their music,
You know, the songs life always carries.
You know, every culture has songs?
Well, anyway, their music was restrained emotion,
You know, like you didn’t wanna dance
If you didn’t know how,
Which says something strange.
Well, anyway, Elvis came along about ten years after the nuke
When the only generals America had and the only army she had
Were Ike and Mac
And stupor hung over the land,
A plague where everyone tried to materially free themselves,
Still too shell-shocked to understand
To feel what was happening.
The first wave rebelled,
I mean, we danced even if we didn’t know how,
I mean Elvis made us move.
Instead of standing mute he raised our voice
And when we heard ourselves something was changing,
You know, like for the first time we made a collective decision
About choices.
America hurriedly made Pat Boone a general
In the army they wanted us to join
But most of us held fast to Elvis and the commandants around him
Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly,
Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Gene Vincent,
You know, like a different Civil War all over again
I mean, you take ‘Don’t Be Cruel’, ‘I Want You I Need You I Love You’
And ‘Jailhouse Rock’,
Or you take Pat and his white bucks singing love letters in the sand,
Hell, man, what’s real here?
I mean, Pat at the beach in his white bucks,
His ears getting sunburned,
Told us something about old wave delusion.
[...]
Then before long Elvis got assassinated in all the fame,
Taking a long time to die.
Others seized control while Elvis rode the needle out
Never understanding what he done.
It’s like we were the baby boom because life needed a fresher start,
I mean, two world wars in a row is really crazy man
And Elvis, even though he didn’t know he said it,
He showed it to us anyway
And even though we didn’t know we heard it,
We heard it anyway
Man, like he woke us up
And now they’re trying to put us back to sleep.
So we’ll see how it goes,
Anyway, look at the record, man,
Rock ’n’ roll is based on revolutions
Going way past 33⅓
You gotta understand, man,
He was America’s baby Boom Ché.
I oughta know man,
I was in his army.
I’ll tell ya what happened.
I oughta know, man, I was one of his army.
I mean, man, I was on his side,
He made us feel all right.
We were the first wave in the post war baby boom.
The generation before had just come out of the great depression
and World War Two,
You know, heavy vibes for people to wear,
So much heaviness
Like some kind of voiding of the emotions.
Their music,
You know, the songs life always carries.
You know, every culture has songs?
Well, anyway, their music was restrained emotion,
You know, like you didn’t wanna dance
If you didn’t know how,
Which says something strange.
Well, anyway, Elvis came along about ten years after the nuke
When the only generals America had and the only army she had
Were Ike and Mac
And stupor hung over the land,
A plague where everyone tried to materially free themselves,
Still too shell-shocked to understand
To feel what was happening.
The first wave rebelled,
I mean, we danced even if we didn’t know how,
I mean Elvis made us move.
Instead of standing mute he raised our voice
And when we heard ourselves something was changing,
You know, like for the first time we made a collective decision
About choices.
America hurriedly made Pat Boone a general
In the army they wanted us to join
But most of us held fast to Elvis and the commandants around him
Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly,
Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Gene Vincent,
You know, like a different Civil War all over again
I mean, you take ‘Don’t Be Cruel’, ‘I Want You I Need You I Love You’
And ‘Jailhouse Rock’,
Or you take Pat and his white bucks singing love letters in the sand,
Hell, man, what’s real here?
I mean, Pat at the beach in his white bucks,
His ears getting sunburned,
Told us something about old wave delusion.
[...]
Then before long Elvis got assassinated in all the fame,
Taking a long time to die.
Others seized control while Elvis rode the needle out
Never understanding what he done.
It’s like we were the baby boom because life needed a fresher start,
I mean, two world wars in a row is really crazy man
And Elvis, even though he didn’t know he said it,
He showed it to us anyway
And even though we didn’t know we heard it,
We heard it anyway
Man, like he woke us up
And now they’re trying to put us back to sleep.
So we’ll see how it goes,
Anyway, look at the record, man,
Rock ’n’ roll is based on revolutions
Going way past 33⅓
You gotta understand, man,
He was America’s baby Boom Ché.
I oughta know man,
I was in his army.
Contributed by Bernart Bartleby - 2015/12/14 - 11:15
Mi dispiace, come sospettavo il testo riportato non è completo...
Ma non disperate: dovrei avere da qualche parte il vinile di "AKA Graffiti Man"! Se è così - come spero - magari nella copertina interna c'è il testo integrale e lo contribuirò appena riesco...
Saluti
Ma non disperate: dovrei avere da qualche parte il vinile di "AKA Graffiti Man"! Se è così - come spero - magari nella copertina interna c'è il testo integrale e lo contribuirò appena riesco...
Saluti
B.B. - 2015/12/14 - 19:47
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Note for non-Italian users: Sorry, though the interface of this website is translated into English, most commentaries and biographies are in Italian and/or in other languages like French, German, Spanish, Russian etc.
Scritta da John Trudell (1946-2015) con Jesse Ed Davis (1944-1988), come Trudell musicista e nativo americano, di etnia Comanche, morto di overdose molti anni fa.
Nell’album intitolato “Aka Graffiti Man” (1992), forse il lavoro più noto del grande musicista ed attivista politico nativo americano, di origine Santee Dakota, scomparso di recente.
Benchè Elvis Presley e molti altri mostri sacri del rock and roll dei Fifties e Sixties non siano certo stati nella vita dei rivoluzionari, in questa canzone John Trudell – un pellerossa, uno che ha sempre lottato per la libertà e la dignità del suo popolo, contro il regime dei “visi pallidi” e che per questo pagò un prezzo grandissimo (cui forse non è estraneo il tumore che l’ha ucciso a soli 69 anni), ossia la morte, quasi certamente l’assassinio, dell’intera sua famiglia nel 1979 – il musicista Trudell arriva a paragonare “The Pelvis” al “Che” Guevara, guida non solo spirituale (nelle mani una chitarra invece di un mitra) di una rivoluzione contro il buio e l’inferno di due conflitti mondiali conclusisi con le tanto apocalittiche quanto inutili atrocità di Hiroshima e Nagasaki.
“E’come se noi tutti allora fossimo dei baby boomers, perché la vita ha sempre bisogno di un nuovo inizio / Voglio dire, due guerre mondiali di fila è veramente da pazzi / E Elvis, anche se non ne era cosciente, lo disse / Ce l’ha mostrato in ogni modo / E anche se pure noi non ne eravamo coscienti, lo abbiamo avvertito comunque. / Amico, lui ci ha svegliati / e adesso stanno cercando di nuovo di metterci a dormire… / Vedremo come va a finire… / In ogni caso, amico, guarda come stanno le cose / il Rock 'n' roll è basato su rivoluzioni, rivoluzioni a 33 giri / Devi capirlo, amico, lui era un baby boom Che Guevara / Io l’ho conosciuto, ero nel suo esercito.”
Il brano è costellato di riferimenti a canzoni simbolo di Elvis Presley, come “Love Me Tender”, “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You” – ripresi anche nelle introduzioni - “Don’t Be Cruel” e “Jailhouse Rock”… La figura del “viso pallido” revanscista e guerrafondaio la fa invece, giustamente, il cantante Pat Boone, fondamentalista cristiano, sostenitore della guerra in Vietnam, razzista, amicissimo dei Reagan e dei Bush.