Zitat von Mondstaub

In contrast, when Guralnick praises Presley, it’s usually Elvis reverting to his feeling, unthinking self. In a 1961 performance in Hawaii, Guralnick says, “he forgets the words, even loses the structure of the song, but embraces the moment with pure, uninhibited feeling.” When Presley succeeds within a song’s structure, it’s because he “poured himself into it in a way that had nothing to do with craftsmanship, nothing to do with professionalism ….” While the performances that Guralnick finds to commend in the last nineteen years of Presley’s life are rare enough (”Are You Lonesome Tonight?” is not one of them), the criterion — Elvis as an unselfconscious force of nature — is remarkably consistent. So, “If I Can Dream,” the stunning conclusion to the 1968 come-back TV special, is “… one of those rare instances where Elvis pays no attention to formal boundaries ….” The special itself “all comes down to that one moment in which not just self-consciousness, but consciousness itself, is lost ….” And as the star ages, Guralnick reminds us that “honesty, sincerity, the purely instinctual gut-level response — that was what his music was all about, it was what it had always been about.” [author’s italics]


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