Elvis, occasionally during live performances, would randomly change lyrics to give them humorous connotations
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
Elvis, occasionally during live performances, would randomly change lyrics to give them humorous connotations.
This also happened while singing "Are You Lonesome Tonight?":
The first recorded example of this was during his famous benefit concert for the USS Arizona Memorial at Bloch Arena in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on March 25, 1961. During this frenzied concert, Presley in a clearly fun mood while performing the spoken word section over constant audience screams, delivers lines like "Then came Act Two. You seemed to change. You got fat!" and "Now the stage is bare, and you've lost your hair." The most popular among these humorous versions however was recorded at the International Hotel in Vegas on August 26, 1969. During the performance, instead of singing: "Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me there", he sings "Do you gaze at your bald head and wish you had hair". Moments later, he saw a bald man in the audience (as legend has it), and burst into laughter which continued into the next lines. The audience was treated to additional laughter during the spoken verse singing: "You know someone said that the world's a stage, and each must play a part." "All the world's a stage" is the phrase that begins a monologue from William Shakespeare's As You Like It, spoken by the melancholy Jaques in Act II Scene VII. Seeing the irony of his own lyrics, Elvis was again overtaken by laughter and barely recovered. The audience enjoyed the sincerity of the moment while Elvis regained his composure.
