'Lust, Elvis'

An alternate EIN suggestion for a BMG compile to help celebrate Valentine’s Day.   The first time I met him I was blown away, I just looked at him and said, "Damn, son, you about the best looking thing I ever did see, kinda’ wish I was a girl right now, Elvis." - Jerry Reed.

"Lust, Elvis" – The unreleased BMG CD

The first time I met him I was blown away, I just looked at him and said, "Damn, son, you about the best looking thing I ever did see, kinda’ wish I was a girl right now, Elvis." - Jerry Reed (composer of ‘Guitar Man’).

"Elvis is wearing the black karate-style suit and his hair, dyed pitch-black as always, is swept back off his face in the style he created 14 years ago. His sideboards are now very long and spiked again, and are also jet-black. He is incredibly handsome, with possibly the best film profile since Rudolph Valentino." (Description of Elvis 1969) BMG yet again this year released another Elvis "love songs" compilation.

While there is a positive reason to have these kind of CDs in local record shops, Elvis Presley wasn’t always about love and, in the fifties more importantly, he was far more about lust!

EIN suggested in our recent review of "Love, Elvis" that the gorgeous & sexy tongue-kissing cover might have been more suitable instead for the still-missing RCA compile "Lust, Elvis"! The powerful impact that Elvis made in the 1950s was of a new sexual pent-up passion, suggesting that teenage middle-America could shatter their Perry Como shackles and break free.

In a delicious observation the New York Times’ Jack Gould said, "When Presley executes his bumps and grinds, it must be remembered by the Columbia Broadcasting System that even the 12-year-old's curiosity may be overstimulated."

However the suggested censorship of Elvis on TV "from the waist up" and the banning of his evocative & sexual rock’n’roll records would, of course, only fuel the adolescent fire. Elvis’ image threatened mainstream America and his curled-lip, greasy-hair, sideburns and flashy attitude challenged the post-war status quo.

If this juggernaut of teenage sensuality were allowed to escape, nothing would ever be the same. And so the media strained at the seams with both sides trying to repress Elvis’ new attitude while at the same time celebrating this new & exciting individuality.

Elvis was basically too damn sexy for 1950's mainstream TV - but 82% of the US viewing audience couldn’t help but watch! The battle for media censorship struggled while Elvis, seemingly unintentionally, kicked down the door for everyone to follow. American youth would never be the same, & the rest of the world would follow.

The train that was suggestively called "rock’n’roll" had already been trundling down the line towards middle-America for several years, but suddenly it had an unrelenting engine dripping with hot, greasy, sensual energy & sweat – It was totally unstoppable and the engine was Elvis!

And although the mundane American Dream was suddenly threatened by this nightmare, what made it even more unstoppable was that it was totally natural.

While Elvis oozed lust & desire from every pore, it was still totally spontaneous, unplanned, yet burnin’ hot!

As Elvis said in 1956, "I’m not trying to be vulgar, I’m not trying to sell any sex, I’m not trying to be nasty. I just enjoy what I’m doin’ and trying to make the best of it."

The FBI however didnt' see Elvis as so innocent! The FBI files kept about Elvis Presley officially stated his potent sexuality and the concerns of the government organisations in Elvis' power to corrupt the youth.
In fact Elvis was SO LUSTY as to be a "definite danger to the security of the US."

The files deal with the sexual drives of the American youth aroused beyond normality by Elvis Presley. In a 1956 letter to FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover a member of the Army Intelligence Service states...

"Presley is a definite danger to the security of the United States. Elvis' actions and motions were such as to rouse the sexual passions of teenaged youth. One eye-witness described his actions as 'sexual self-gratification on stage,' another as 'a strip-tease with clothes on.'"
Elvis' motions and gestures are like those of masturbation or riding a microphone. The indications of the harm Presley did were two high school girls whose abdomen and thigh had Presley's autograph.
It is known by psychologists, psychiatrists and priests that teenaged girls from the age of eleven, and boys in their adolescence are easily aroused to sexual indulgence and perversion by certain types of motions and hysteria, – the type that was exhibited at the Presley show. There is also gossip of the Presley Fan Clubs that degenerate into sex orgies".

(This is of course typical of EIN fan-club member get togethers nowdays!)

Elvis was just a natural great-looking, sex-god oozing LUST and surely that deserves a CD worth of celebration.

From his early days in the fifties, Elvis seemed to be a pent up mess of stuttering-teenage sexual energy trying to lure his babe into bedroom for some dirty deeds ...

"Oh, baby, baby, baby, baby baby.
Baby, baby, baby, b-b-b-b-b-b baby baby, baby.
Baby, baby, baby,
Come back, baby, I wanna play house with you"

And even in the clean-poppier early sixties some of Elvis’ most innocent lyrics sound very sexual when placed into the right context.. "Why make me plead, for something you need… I want to bring back the thrill, Give me the right." But by the end of the sixties - and after the hot sweaty-leather of the comeback special - Elvis’ lust was even more uncontrollable… "Touch it, pound it, what good does it do? There's just no stoppin' the way I feel for you .. Cos' every minute, every hour you'll be shaken by the strength and mighty power … of my love!" Does anyone have to question exactly what Elvis was singing about?

Even the most innocent of songs can have sexual feel, for instance as Elvis suggests "Let's uncork the stopper, come to papa, come on let's go!" in the very sweet 'Relax' from "It Happened At The World's Fair.'

I'm sure there are some personal favourites that everyone could add but why not burn this selection and have some lusty fun!

So here is the new BMG CD "Lust, Elvis - Play it dirty" as suggested by EIN, play it at home to the partner you desire.

Note - Interestingly Elvis is often compared to the British romantic poet Lord Byron. Byron was even noted for his disdainful curl of his upper lip. The astounding connection is that Byron also died young (aged 36) with his autopsy noting problems due to an enlarged heart and damaged liver!

Many thanks to 'Sanja Archives' for the images.

EIN postscript: With its sexy front cover image, this should be a HOT seller - if you see it in the shops, remember that EIN suggested it first!

Go HERE for EIN's review of the BMG CD "Love, Elvis"

Review by Piers Beagley.
-Copyright EIN June 2005
EIN Website content © Copyright the Elvis Information Network.

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