Great to see some love for this song and these special sessions on the last page or so.
TheKingOfMusicEP wrote: ↑Sat Jun 03, 2023 9:58 am
I love Elvis version and I love the whole album. The songs fit well together like almost an concept album. His deep voice and high notes on some of the songs catching my soul every time.
Live would have been great to hear the song from Elvis.
Bang! Nailed it.
In many ways, I think these so-called "Jungle Room Sessions" (to borrow the FTD moniker) are the welcome, if tragic and sad, and much-needed bookmark to the yearning, high-voiced singer of awesome promise and radical innocence on the Sun sessions. The JRS recordings circumscribe loneliness/isolation, and ring out with the honesty of a person and an icon distilling their strange life with its unique ups-and-downs through music, with all their emotions channelled through the genius attributes of their legendary voice. And they also close a wider circle, stretching back to Elvis' humble yet grandiose ambition as a young aspiring mimic/singer/entertainer/musician/creator to be "a music man like nobody ever saw" (notice, in his paradoxical phrasing, his emphasis on music and
sight, as well as the abnegation of true "seeing" -- i.e, have we ever really "seen" Elvis; have we ever truly encountered him through his music; or are we too eager to dismiss and not see the liquid gold he poured out right in front of us?).
It might be perverse to call the JRS material "a blast"; because, well, obviously, these sessions are
different. Or at least different enough that they can't really be weighed against more anonymous if commendably solid work like the "Today" sessions, for instance, or even other reputed highpoints like the TTWII/EC recordings, or the Stax material, or whatever other latter-phase career high-point or milestone fans might point to. This final mound of sound comprises probably the most significant set of songs he recorded, or happened to be recorded singing and working his way through, since the American Sound sessions of 1969. On other sessions following his incredible work with Chips Moman, he was (to my estimation) either hanging back, not fully engaged, bothered by something, or perhaps singing with
too much enthusiasm and abandon; and sometimes, maybe, the material wasn't the best fit for his voice or emotional state, or even the surroundings just didn't click. And I say this as a fan, to varying degrees, or pretty much everything Elvis ever recorded (i.e., it's all worth a listen and most of is worth more than one).
It's not that he never found paydirt before; rather, it's as if he hadn't yet grown comfortable with a gnawing melancholy that took him into depression and disillusionment as his Protean moods and mounting setbacks slowly unmade him; as his Comeback Special regeneration slipped father and father into the rear-view mirror, yet with the essential nub of self-belief in his own talents (as he somewhat rediscovered in said special) remaining. Of course, he could certainly sing with conviction and pull you into his emotional world(s), at pretty much any time in his life -- he could, to paraphrase DJC, practically sing the phone book and make it interesting. Yet, on earlier recordings from the same decade, he always seemed to be battling this black dog on his shoulder, never quite embracing it; it was an adversary to deny or appease rather than an underworld companion through Elvis' protracted "dark night of the soul". But, finally, in a recording environment either more favourable to his mental constitution, or with a platter of songs more suited to his regrets and sorrows, he seemed to accept that he had changed and his voice along with it -- he finally, in some sense, embraced every song on its own terms, whilst also singing as if crafting an aural record of resignation, defeat, and flagellating rage. He had finally started to craft not just a concept album, but brought into the world an unspoken new totality, as he always did when operating at his best.
The perversity of all this, it must be said, is that Elvis wasn't really at his best on these sessions (as detractors are all too ready to point out); yet he was at his best
for these sessions. That is to say, he was in a state of mind and a quality of health where he happened this time to find a beguiling musical simpatico -- as if each song he sang were an old friend he was pouring his heart out to, and the record button just happened to be pressed to capture what he said, how he sounded. In other words, Elvis practically created a new genre of music here. If the Comeback Special was the first real "unplugged" event of its kind, then the JRS material, if haphazard in its construction (metaphorically speaking: a whole city district and then an abandoned block or two), was a kind of operatic "man cave" journal -- perhaps the nearest Elvis came to emulating those much-lauded "late night confessional" Sinatra albums of the 1950s, but done with Elvis' trademark effusion, bringing his still-inviting, ageless combination of country, r-'n'-b, gospel, and pop fusion, in that prismatic way that only Elvis really could. Bleaker than before, but very raw and real.
"I'll Never Fall in Love Again" is Elvis with his sword and shield -- or, perhaps, a man who knows he is defeated, but who is raging against the dying of the light with overwhelming pride (he tells us he has "cast aside his pride", but we can tell he isn't too happy with that being the final word on his emotional state), making it clear he's willing to meet his end on his shield if that's what it comes to. It's one of those very blunt statements he was willing to make from time-to-time; something like a tuning fork for the entire body of material recorded here. The truncation of verses compared to the better-known Tom Jones version is notable; as, of course, is the broken, shot-through-with-despair way that Elvis sings what he's left himself and the listener with. The chorus singing has this markedly downbeat quality to it, but Elvis still makes sure to furnish the song with moving conflagrations, like when he suddenly operatically cups his voice and protests, "NOOOO, I'm never gonna fall in love..."; or the stunning climax, which might feel a little disconnected from the main body of the song, but which provides a dramatic sense of catharsis, to the exact degree required. The song definitely creates a downbeat mood, one so thick with disenchantment on the part of the singer that you feel Elvis is done with the world and has given up, but he actually stores up his indignation until the end, and those final notes are like the sounds of a man drowning at sea, being pulled to the depths by a Cthulhian beast, its tentacles practically wrenching this embittered sound out of its victim; who, if he has lost to an indifferent cosmos at the end, is still going to express defiance and let us know that he wrestled with himself and contended with nature herself until the bitter end.
All versions of this song have their merits, but in Elvis' capable hands, something fundamental about art can be glimpsed here; what art is, how it functions, and how art changes both the giver and the receiver. In the words of Andrei Tarkovksy: "The artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn't look for harmony, but would simply live in it. Art is born out of an ill-designed world." Thus, when Elvis told Red West in October 1976 that he was in the greatest shape of his life, he was perhaps unconsciously saying that he had essentially become the shape of the world. No, not merely fat or oblate, but that he had taken on a sort of tragic beauty; now he was, in some sense, both deformed yet ripened, perhaps in his final phase, and maybe dissolute, yet ready to be claimed by the waves of fate. Of course, compared to how Elvis started out, that might sound pretty sorrowful and grim -- but so be it. This was who and what he had become. If he was gripped by a strange fatalism, it was always there in some measure ("Blue Moon", anyone?). Elvis was the man with the golden records, the golden smile, and now, after a mixture of highs and lows, golden sorrow. "I'll Never Fall in Love Again" is drenched in bleakness that the title itself baldly suggests, and Elvis suitably floods the song with his uncanny presence, transforming the words and melody into a living thing (as was his gift -- "Recorded Live", indeed), reminding us that he could creatively assault us with mood and emotion like Rothko could confound and overwhelm people with colour. In short, like much of what we find in these JRS offerings, it's an underrated Presley palimpsest.
