Revisionist History - Analysis, Parapraxis, Elvis

Episode Date: July 19, 2018

The one song The King couldn’t sing.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute is in a very formal European-style building on a quiet side street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Oak tables, high ceilings, in the library long ribbons of leather-bound volumes, and five different busts of Sigmund Freud all in a row. I went there to meet with the Society's president, Michelle Press, a psychoanalyst herself, with that lovely quality of patience and openness the best therapists always have. I wanted to talk with her about a subject that I've always found deeply interesting, what Freud called parapraxis.

But not just anyone's parapraxis, the king's parapraxis. It involves an odyssey. This odyssey took me from the pages of the handbook of psychobiography to a shrine in Tennessee, to the legendary battery studios in Times Square, and to the hushed offices of the New York Psychoanalytic Society, where I sat with Michelle Press in search of an answer to a simple question. What if a singer couldn't remember the words to a song, a song he'd sung a thousand times, particular parts of the song,

the same part of the song over and over? What would that tell us about the singer? It was a term in German, faulty acts or faulty functions. It would be slips of the tongue. It could be misreadings, mishearings. But it's Freud's invention. Michelle Press is talking about parapraxis. From the Greek, para meaning abnormal, beyond, praxis meaning act, abnormal speech acts, or as they are more

colloquially known, Freudian slips. Does Freud mean that there are no accidental slips or that if you look at the range of accidental slips, you can find meaning in some? So when you read him, he doesn't want to sound that kind of definitive. He'll say, yes, maybe one might prove that there are some that are truly accidental or truly a result of fatigue or of maybe some, you know, medical illness. But he said, if you do the work, one will find the reasons for the slip, that they're not accidental, that they have, he called it, a sense, and that that sense has to do with unconscious forces or unconscious ideas that are trying to find expression, but are, because they're unacceptable, they emerge in these ways when one might be unguarded.

Now, is that concept of unacceptability central to the notion of parapraxis? Yes. When I was a lad, an old ship was a pub Over hills and meadows with strain In 1956, early in his career, Elvis Presley recorded a song called Old Shep. It's a sentimental song about a boy and his dog, Shep, written in the 1930s by Red Foley. The dog gets old and sick. The vet says there's no hope. The boy aims his rifle at Shep to put him out of his misery, but he can't pull the trigger. He lies down next to Shep, cradles him in his arms as the dog dies.

And the song ends. Old Shep, he has gone, where the good doggies go and no more with old ship will I row but if dogs have a heaven there's one thing I know Old Shep has a wonderful home Old Shep is not one of Elvis' more famous songs, but in an essay published in 2005 on Elvis, the psychologists Alan Elms and Bruce Heller have an aside about a small but significant discrepancy between the original version of Old Shep and Elvis's cover. I'm going

to come back to Heller and Elms in a while because they really do the most thorough analysis of Elvis's lyrical parapraxis. But let's start with Old Shep. Listen to Hank Snow performing the lyrics as they were originally written. The boy has just put away his gun, realizing he can't shoot Shep. So I threw down that old gun, ran right up to his side, he laid his faithful old head right on my knee. And friends, I stroked the best pal that a man ever found. I even cried so I scarcely could see. Now listen to Elvis sing his version. so I scarce could see Hank Snow sings I stroked the best pal

a man ever found meaning that the boy considers an act of violence against his best pal then decides against it and takes instead the path of nurture and sympathy he recovers his humanity but Elvis sings

I had struck the best friend a man ever had He recovers his humanity. But Elvis sings, I had struck the best friend a man ever had, which turns the meaning of the song completely upside down. The boy does not recover his humanity. He now holds himself responsible for an act of violence against Shep, an act of violence that, in fact, he did not commit. Stroke becomes struck, and all of a sudden a song about moral redemption turns into a song about morbid remorse. Now, I suppose you can say stroke, struck, whatever.

Those two words sound the same. It's just a cover, but it's not just a cover. Elvis was obsessed with Old Shep. It's the first song he ever learned on the guitar. He played it incessantly as a child. At age 10, he played it at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair, his first public performance. He played it at his high school talent show and won. He played it on dates with girls. He played it well into his career. And why does the song resonate so much with him?

It's a song about love, betrayal, and loss, themes that are at the center of Elvis's life. He's a twinless twin, someone whose twin died in utero, and he's obsessed by that fact. He brings it up again and again, the loss of someone who should have been his closest friend. Elvis's mother, Gladys, is to say the least unusual. She's controlling, intense. He calls her baby. Gladys died when Elvis was just 23. When he first saw her casket,

he threw himself on top of her body, then stepped back and talked about how beautiful she was while pointing to her dead feet. He called them her little sooties. He did this again and again. At the end of the funeral service, he lay on top of her casket saying, I want to go with you. I don't want to stay here. I can't be without you. And we haven't even gotten to Priscilla, Elvis's wife. He spotted her when she was 14 and eventually convinced her to move in with him in Memphis. Once, Elvis took you to a morgue. Yes, he did. This is Priscilla being interviewed by Barbara Walters in 1985. Why? Why that fascination with dead bodies?

I don't know what the fascination was. This is not the first time that he had done this. I don't know if it was for the shock value, you know, to see how people would react, or just for his own thrill of it. You wrote, There were times when you and Elvis spent days in the bedroom. Freezing bedroom, he liked it very cold.

The windows with blackout drapes so no sunlight entered, day after day. It went into weeks, yes, we stayed like that. We had our food delivered by the door, and it was cold. I mean, he did like it cold, and it was dark. And it could get real lonely. And that's how he liked it at times. Like a cocoon. Almost like a womb, I guess.

You think? Priscilla and Barbara Walters are on a white couch surrounded by pink flowers. Priscilla is in a strapless sundress. She looks amazing. Barbara Walters turns to her and says, Elvis controlled your looks, your clothes, your hair, your makeup. He controlled you totally.

Priscilla says, yes, he did. Then. Six years you lived there before he decided to marry you. In those six years of sleeping with him every night, he never had intercourse with you. You wrote in your book that there were times when you begged him. Six years of that? Priscilla, why? Well, again, you know, I can only go back to what his concept was as what he wanted in a woman. And somewhere along in his past, he said that he wanted a virgin.

Elvis is complicated. And what does Freud's theory of parapraxis say? That complicated feelings, inappropriate, maybe unacceptable feelings, are normally suppressed. But every now and again, some little bit of that buried emotion slips out. And if you're paying attention and listening closely, that little slip can tell you something. Struck for stroke. But Old Shep is just the beginning. For Elvis, the real parapraxis occurs in Are You Lonesome Tonight, a song originally written in the 1920s and which Elvis took to the top of the charts just after he came out of the Army.

Are you lonesome tonight? Do you smile? Elton MPB 0106, take 2. Elvis at the RCA Studios on Music Row in Nashville, April 4th, 1960. The recordings from the original session now held in the Sony Music Archive. Yeah, this is, there's numerous takes here, so they fall apart, they make a mistake, and what have you. John Jackson and Vic Anicini from Sony, me, all listening together at the legendary Battery Studios in Manhattan, where everyone from John Lennon to Bruce Springsteen recorded. Holy ground.

I started my quest at the very beginning. Is your heart filled with pain? Shall I come back again? Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight? Ooh. to love This voice is so amazing. Yeah. Is he, uh, when he records that, are the Jordanaires singing along with him or are they laying that track down separately? No, live. Everything's live. Yeah, everything's live. Yeah. He always preferred to have everyone in one room. Yeah. And record live.

Oh, even in one room, not in booths? No, no, no, no, he hated booths. Recording the song was not Elvis' idea. It was a favorite of the wife of his manager, Tom Parker. In the studio, Elvis asked that the lights be turned off, so the room was in darkness. He did five takes. He didn't like any of them.

It was four in the morning when he recorded it so he made everyone get out of the studio go away and then he just did it this was the second take which they told him of the background singers because he said just stop the tape I'm done

they said just do it once more we hit a peep hop on there so the third take ends up being the master oh i see and they held it the label held it back for seven eight months oh they didn't realize what they had on their hands yeah it was seven months i think after he uh yeah they finally released it as a single and uh didn't go out he had done eight songs for elvis's back and uh this was just like, yeah, just try this one. Recorded in the wee hours of the morning in darkness as a favor to someone else, a song neither Elvis nor his label particularly liked.

It's almost like the song had a curse on it right from the beginning. And from then on, Elvis could never quite get it right. I talked about this with Michelle Press at the New York Psychoanalytic Society. Elvis wasn't typically someone who forgot the words to the songs he sang. There's all these examples, sort of,

in his life of him being able to recite, to sing from memory, massive amounts of stuff. I'm interested about that. There was a little slip. I'm worried about that. I said, I'm worried about that. I'm interested about that there was a little slip I said I'm worried about that I'm interested in that

and I'm wondering what would you make of that as a psychoanalyst I try to go on but of course I'm talking to a hardcore Freudian I meant to say I was interested, but what came out was worried. I mean, I'm still caught on your slip, obviously, thinking...

What do you make of it? So one thought was whether the slip might be a key to something that you're figuring out and puzzling with him. Because right now you're immersed in him. Oh, I am. with him, because right now you're immersed in him. Oh, I am. I've been singing this song under my breath for months. I can't understand why. I've never been an Elvis fan. I don't own a single song of his.

Or am I drawn to this story because isn't this story that I'm talking to the great anxiety of anyone in a creative field? That moment when you lose control, right? Where the presentation to the audience is unmasked. I want to show you. I take out my laptop, pull up YouTube. There's a mountain of Elvis on YouTube. One of the last performances of his life.

It's bananas. I mean, he's singing a song he's sang thousands of times, and he just completely loses control of it. I can skip it. Okay, here it comes. When I first saw it, it, as someone in a, I mean, I'm not Elvis, but I'm someone in the creative field. It terrified me. It's like up on stage doing what he's paid to do, and he just... What are they going to do in your life? They're going to go on living without you. And the stage is bare, and I'm standing there without any hair.

I don't know. If you all come back to me, I'm going to hang with you. Every live performance he's ever given of this that we have on tape, he mangles the bridge. He can't do it right. He's returning to the song again and again and again and again and again and doing the same kind of... In this particular... It's always a bit...

It's kind of like a rap. The singing part... He's almost... Over how many years did this go on? Years. Okay, in 1982, this live conversion was ready to hit the UK and reach number 25 on the British singles chart. At Battery Studios, I made the Sony

guys play every version they had. They even have names. Laughing Elvis, Crazy Elvis, each one stranger than the one before. The world's a stage and each must play a part. Ha ha ha! There's sweat and tears streaming down his face. And I had no cause to die. It goes on like this

On and on Sing it baby Shall I come again Tell me dear Are you lonesome Shall I call again? Tell me dear Are you lonesome tonight? That's it man 14 years I've got nothing to bring

Well I'll tell you. Have you ever played this song before? No, I never played it before. It's funny, I played a bunch of... Check. I played a bunch of his stuff. Would you mind flipping the... Is it a standby switch on the back? I'm with Jack White at his studio in Nashville, Third Man Records.

Jack White, formerly of the White Stripes, one of the great rock and rollers of his generation, and a huge Elvis fan. He has a shrine to Elvis in his hallway. Actual shrine. All that's missing is flowers. We met in his private office. Lots of black and yellow and leather and taxidermy.

He sat on the couch with a guitar. Do you play Elvis songs in concert? Sometimes I do. What's that? Treat me like a cool treatment, mean or cruel. Oh, darling, I want you to love me. Love me just the same. Treat me just the same. Oh, love me. Sometimes I'll do that one. I was going to say, don't stop.

I'm enjoying it. Any other ones you do? Wait, by the way, why do you, why that one? What's it about that song? I had heard that early from a band called the Flat Duo Jets that I really liked. And I didn't know it was Elvis. And then when I heard the Elvis version, I connected the two. Like, oh, now I'm going to do it.

And I started doing it when I played in coffee houses. I started playing that. I was like 16, yeah. So that goes back. Which is funny. I'd eventually heard a story of Robert Plant telling Elvis he loved that song when Led Zeppelin met Elvis. And then when they walked out of the hallway,

then Elvis poked his head out in the hallway and sang that song to Robert Plan. They sang it back to each other and we were crying. Must have been an amazing moment. Jack White owns the original acetate pressing of Elvis' first recording from 1953,

My Happiness. After we talked, White took me into his vault to show it to me. It's priceless. He asked me if I wanted to hold it. I was too terrified to say yes. Jack White seemed like the right person to see to try and understand Elvis' problem in Are You Lonesome Tonight. All right, let me see if I can take a crack.

I might have to give it a couple whirls, but... Are you lonesome tonight? Do you miss me tonight? Are you sorry we drifted apart? Does your memory stray to a bright summer day? When I kissed you and called you sweetheart Do the chairs in your parlor seem empty and bare? Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me then? Is your heart filled with pain? Shall I come back again? Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight?

That's the first half of the song. The sung version, all questions. A man is wondering whether his lover misses him. Then comes the spoken bridge, in which the emotional tables are turned and the man leaves himself bare. Are You Lonesome Tonight has been recorded countless times over the years.

A lot of performers leave out the bridge because it's corny and way too long and hard. been recorded countless times over the years. A lot of performers leave out the bridge because it's corny and way too long and hard. Elvis kept it in. So does Jack White. I wonder if you're lonesome tonight. You know, someone said that the world's a stage and each must play a part. Fate had me playing in love with you as my sweetheart Act One was where we met I loved you at first glance You read your lines so cleverly and never missed a cue

Then came Act Two You seemed to change, you acted strange And why, I've never known Honey, you lied when you said you loved me And I had no cause to doubt you But I'd rather go on hearing your lies Than to go on living without you Now the stage is bare, and I'm standing there with emptiness all around.

And if you won't come back to me, then may you bring the curtain down. Is your heart filled with pain? Shall I come back again? Is your heart filled with pain? Shall I come back again? Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight? Whoa! Wait, you enjoyed that.

I did. There's some nice parts where it gets the... You can see playing that live. Now that I just did that, I played it once yesterday, reading this. But now playing it like that, I can see, wow, live,

that really could be a really emotional song. So I didn't really think about it until just then. What led you to think that just now? Because it feels like, well, it's got a lot of minor chords, so that already gets you in that melancholy vibe. But it has that... What just occurred to me now is he doesn't really care if she's lonesome, if he's lonesome. The singer is lonesome.

And it's a MacGuffin to pretend like, I'm worried about you. Are you lonesome tonight? But it's really the singer's worried about himself. So that could be, you know, you take that kind of emotional song and you put years and years on stage, and then you put drugs in the mix, and then in your own state of mind at the time, it could be a real, you could be onto something there. It could be a real diversion that it's too powerful to sing. What's fascinating is the sung parts the singer is in control and he's

worried about her. Right. The spoken parts the singer is vulnerable. Yeah. He's confessing his own and it's so screwed up. It's like I know you lied to me and I wish you hadn't. Right. I wish I didn't know that you lied to me because I'd rather be in the state of being deceived than know the truth, which is like 17 convolutions of neuroticism. Right. Because he's still blaming her, most of the lines. Still pointing the finger. White says you can't run from that kind of emotion, not if you're singing the song properly.

And so when he writes songs, he tries to establish some distance between himself and the feelings he's singing about. I try to push it into a character's standpoint rather than it being a self-confessional for me, because I think that would be really hard to consistently keep living that moment over and over and over again. I've definitely seen older artists ignoring certain parts of their certain songs in their career because it's probably too close to home about something or other. But you can't avoid a song's emotional effects all the time, and especially not when you have to read a soliloquy in the middle of it,

which is what the Are You Lonesome bridge is, a speech parachuted into the heart of the song. I had a little flub moment at one point trying to figure out, well, wait a minute, it's a waltz. You know, you have that, so if I'm like, I wonder if, two, three, So one, two, three. One, two, three. Three. So your brain kind of wants to go,

I wonder if you're lonesome tonight. That's what your brain wants to do. You know someone said that the world's a stage and we must each play a part. Then it starts to get,

that's kind of hard. Oh, I see, it breaks down. Yeah, I mean, I can definitely say that this would be a lot easier if someone else was playing guitar and I could just recite that part. Wait, should I recite it while you play the guitar? Yeah, let's do that. Let's do that.

I'm not going to torture you with my rendition of the spoken bridge. Well, maybe later. I'm just saying to torture you with my rendition of the spoken bridge. Well, maybe later. I'm just saying, until I die, I can say I played with Jack White. And then, because how many opportunities am I going to get like this? I asked Jack White to help me edit the soliloquy. If one were to rewrite it, I'm thinking that, that you, you lose the first three lines. Fate had me playing in love, you as my sweetheart. Or even, act one was when we met.

Why don't, why don't they just start with act one? I'll do that. Act one was where we met. I loved you at first glance. You read your lines so carefully, never missed a cue. What did I do there? You said carefully instead of cleverly, but she said cleverly. Beautiful, Frank. Never missed a cue.

Then came act two. You seemed to change, you acted strange. What did Jack White do there? The actual lyric is, you read your line so cleverly. He said, you read your line so carefully. Carefully for cleverly. A man singing one of the songs of his musical idol comes to the emotionally complex center. And what do we hear? A moment of vulnerability. Can he be as clever as Elvis? He's not sure. He must be careful.

Parapraxis. Sometimes, you know, I love him so much that, you know, I'm afraid to learn more about certain things. Like, you know, when you're so close to it and you've experienced certain things about it you know and it's so you're so close to it and you've experienced certain things about you know nothing in comparison to what he went through but you're in the same where we do the same kind of thing we perform and we go on stages and we make records and all this stuff i'm from a different time period but you notice these tiny little moments that are when you when you see something like oh I know exactly what that's about.

I know exactly what that feels like. There are 10 known live recordings of Elvis performing Are You Lonesome Tonight. Starting in 1961 in a concert at Block Arena in Honolulu, up to the end of Elvis' life in 1977. Alan Elms and Bruce Heller analyze them all in their essay, Twelve Ways to Say Lonesome, assessing error and control in the music of Elvis Presley. Elms and Heller find that Elvis performs the sung portion of Are You Lonesome Tonight more or less flawlessly, because the sung portion is the part of the song where the singer is in control.

But in the spoken bridge, the narrator is suddenly the one who's been deceived and rejected. And that's the part Elvis can't get right. Elms and Heller count a total of 109 errors in those 10 live performances of The Spoken Bridge, 29 of which involve just four lines.

I loved you at first glance, where he confesses the depths of his feelings. You seemed to change, you acted strange, where he testifies to his betrayal and rejection, and Why I've Never Known, where he expresses his feelings of anger and victimization, and With Emptiness All Around, where he admits to his loneliness. The most problematic renditions of the bridge are the later ones, which come after the summer of 1972.

What happens in the summer of 1972? And one day you went in and said, I'm leaving. There was another man in your life then. He was your karate teacher, Mike Stone. And you went off then and lived with him. Priscilla Presley, back on the couch with Barbara Walters, America's primetime Freudian. It was said that Elvis tried to kill him or wanted him killed.

Right. Do you believe that? I think at that time, yes, he did. He wanted that to happen. I do the chairs in your parlor seem empty and bare. Do you gaze at your bald head and wish you had hair? Is your heart filled with pain? Shall I come back?

Tell me dear, are you lost? Oh, Lord, Lord. I wonder how. A man who fears betrayal and abandonment is betrayed and abandoned. And I had no cause to die. It's too much. He's a wreck. See you, baby. Shall I come back again?

Tell me dear, are you lonesome? After I left Jack White, I went to see Bobby Braddock, just down the street at the Sony Studios on Nashville's Music Row. This was just tuned. Good. You may remember Bobby Braddock from season two of Revisionist History. He's the legendary songwriter I called the King of Tears. Braddock wanted to introduce me to a good friend of his, a singer-songwriter named Casey Bowles. Come on. That's the church across Alto. 30-something, long red hair,

the kind of person who, if you touch, you expect a little jolt of static. It'll work. Oh, you want to sing that song? You want me to sing that song? We were in the biggest of the Sony recording studios on the main floor, in a corner where the piano was. Casey sang Are You Lonesome Tonight with Bobby on the piano.

Are you lonesome tonight? Do you miss me tonight? Are you sorry we drifted apart Then we sat and they talked about Nashville. They talked about how they both grew up in the Church of Christ, the most strict

of Southern fundamentalist denominations. And they talked about Elvis. My dad thought he was Elvis, I think. He really, he was a Church of Christ song leader and really wanted to be a Jordanair badly. And so Ray Walker was one of the Jordanaires and he tried to emulate him by way of dress and hairstyle. And so I grew up either hearing him say, hello, darling, nice to see you, or doing this sort of, you know, is it vaudeville style?

Or just sort of a over-the-top modeling style, I guess. Is modeling the way you'd say it? Modeling? Then Bobby Braddock started talking about recitations, the spoken part in many older country songs. And he made the same point that Jack White did, that they're much easier if they're set to music, if you could just as easily sing them. Like on one of Braddock's most famous songs,

He Stopped Loving Her Today. The recitation like... She came to see him one last time. Oh, we all wondered if she would You could sing that She came to see him one last time Oh, we all wondered if she would And it works either way

But this is just like We got this song, let's get a recitation Throw it in there And Elvis made it work And I'm thinking just instinctively just because he was just so good. Recitations are unusual these days. Braddock hasn't written one since something he did for Toby Keith in the 1990s. Last successful recitation song I had was actually,

well, actually it was a hip- hop thing, I want to talk about me but that was talking, talking, talking Toby Keith, that's what I'm thinking about but it was all in there can you play a little slice of that, do you remember? I can pretend I'm Toby Keith I never do that when I do that, I always

do it with a karaoke thing where I get up there and play this thing I want to talk about me, I want to talk about I want to talk about number one do it with a karaoke thing where I get up there and play the thing. I want to talk about me. I want to talk about I. I want to talk about number one. You talk about your work, how your boss is a jerk. You talk about your church and your head. Talk about the trouble you've been having with your mother and your daddy,

with your brother and your daddy and your mother and your crazy ex-lover, you know. But it fits that. And then the menstrual period line, which everybody said, you can't put that in a song, nobody will ever cut it, you know. And it was one of the biggest songs

they ever had. About your medical charts and when you start. Yeah. Take that out. Nobody recorded it. Toby Keith did. He's probably the only one who would have, though.

Then I showed them the prize. I brought it in my bag. My copy of the Handbook of Psychobiography containing the Heller and Elms essay. Hold on. I have my book here. I'll tell you. Oh, that's fascinating.

Yeah, that is fascinating. To a pair of Elvis fanatics, it was like I'd unearthed the Dead Sea Scrolls. What's the book? It's a book called Handbook of Psychobiography, and it has an essay on this song. Wow, psychobiography. And so, yeah, so here's,

so this guy has gone through, he made a chart of all of the lyrical mistakes that Elvis made in every known live recording of... Yeah. These were two songwriters and I felt they immediately saw themselves in that chart.

Do you find yourself making the kind of errors sometimes, even subtle ones that we've been talking about? That's so interesting. I wrote a song about my mother called Somebody Something. And my mother is adorable. And whenever you heard about things going wrong or like some tumultuous story, it was my dad. And so I finally was like, you know what, why aren't we the only person in the family that there's nothing I haven't written about? So I was

trying to dig dirt on her and there was nothing. And so I ended up writing this song about her called Somebody Something and I cry every time I do it. And there is a line, it says, you know, she's always been somebody something. She's lived every life but her own. And it's gone. I can't remember it right now. I don't know that feeling. I can't remember it. No. She's always been somebody, something. It's been everything but alone.

A daughter, a mother, a life. A daughter, a lover, a wife, and a mother. She's lived every life but her own. Yeah, she's always been somebody, something. And there's a line that says, you know, she wonders what it might be like to be somebody else. And she wonders what it feels like to be free. But she's always imagined being nobody's nothing. And that's something she never want to be. But that line usually is just gone. And a

lot of times I'll go, hold on and divert and tell a funny story really quickly. Yeah. Wait, what's the specific line that's gone is which one? What's gone again? She's always been somebody, she's been everything but alone. Daughter, a lover, a wife, and a mother. She's been everything but alone. Yeah. Yeah. Why is it that line? I don't know. She's been everything, but alone, yeah.

Yeah. Why is it that long? I don't know. I think that, I don't know. I think when you see somebody give so much of themselves, and that's truly the only thing that she will ever experience, and I think it's what I've experienced the most of. A minute before, we were joking about Toby Keith.

Now Casey is pensive as she compares her mother's life to her own. Not being able to make a relationship work the first 18,000 times out of the gate or, you know, officially the first two and not being a mother. But still real close to her, right? Yeah, I love her. She's wonderful. Go to church with her, right? I do. I sit still because she makes me.

I stay awake and it's good. When I was a kid, I'd get bored in church and my mother would reach down and pinch me. Oh, I got smacked. Wait, Casey, can you play that song for us? Or is it going to be two? Let's see. Okay.

Okay, well, we'll see if this happens. Here it is. She grew up playing cowgirl In a railroad town Dreamin' she'd see Oh, shoot. Hold on. There's a line about Elvis in this. That's just random. Hold on.

Dreamin' she'd see Hollywood. I'm gonna do it again. What did I just say? Sorry, I'm thinking about mom. She grew up playing cowgirl. She grew up playing cowgirl in a railroad town. Dreaming she'd see Hollywood someday. She knew some distant Friday night with a cigarette to hold just right. Fate would come and carry her away As far as she could see from there

Those were just the facts of the That's not right. Hold one second. My first reaction to Casey's failure of memory was to be embarrassed for her, worried that she had lost control. That's the way we're trained to think. Just listen to the words I've just used.

Failure. Embarrassed. Worried. In one way or another, that's what this season of Revisionist History has been about, about the ways we judge each other for our mistakes and choices. The easiest thing in the world is to look at those mistakes and condemn. The much harder thing is to look at those mistakes and understand. She married in December, maybe work, in a dress her mama made. She looked all grown up standing there like that. Had a honeymoon in Memphis town.

Yeah, she looked for Elvis all around. Made love in the greyhound Coming back As far as she could see from there Those were just the facts of life You went from somebody's daughter To somebody's wife Parapraxis is not failure. When the performer slips, the audience is not cheated.

It's the opposite. Parapraxis is a gift. I presented myself as interested in this story. But now you know that this subject doesn't just interest me. It worries me. Losing control is my great anxiety. When Jack White said, carefully instead of cleverly, it was a hint that playing Elvis wasn't a trivial matter for him.

It was a sacred act. Carefully, full of care. And Elvis, after the loss of Priscilla, sang a song he'd sung a thousand times, only now in a way that gave the audience a window on his pain. Mistakes reveal our vulnerabilities. They are the way the world understands us, the way performers make their performances real. So Bobby Braddock and I sat there listening to Casey sing, tears in her eyes, fumbling to remember the lyrics of a song about her mother. Fumbling not because her mother didn't matter to her, but because she did. Daughter, lover, wife and mother.

She's lived every life but her own. She'd say that's just called being a woman. She's always there Somebody, something God, this is beautiful. Why are you covering your mouth? I'm just, it's just weird. Because I've never, it's just weird when you're thinking about what it is.

Like, I just thought, oh, bad memory like I just thought oh bad memory too many songs Old too many songs in there, but at any point in time I could pull out a Rap from new edition from 1982 like why is that in there and something that you wrote is not in there. That is so weird It's not weird. A lesser person would have sung it perfectly. Thank you for listening to Season 3 of Revisionist History. And if you liked this episode, you'll enjoy my new series launching later this year. It's called Broken Record, and you can subscribe right now on Apple Podcasts. Revisionist History is a Panoply production.

The senior producer is Mia LaBelle with Jacob Smith and Camille Baptista. Our editor is Julia Barton. Flan Williams is our engineer. Fact-checking by Beth Johnson. Original music by Luis Guerra. Special thanks to Kim Green and Hal Humphries of Storyboard EMP in Nashville. And here in New York, thanks to Jason Gambrell, Evan Viola, Rachel Strom, Nicole Buncis, Kate Mescal, Kristen Meinzer, Carly Migliore, Andy Bowers, and of course, El Jefe, Jacob Weisberg. I'm Malcolm Gladwell. Okay. Okay. So it would be, I wonder if You're lonesome tonight You know

Someone said That the world's a stage And each Must play a part Fate had me playing in love You as my sweetheart Act one was when we met I loved you at first glance You read your lines You as my sweetheart. Act one was when we met.

I loved you at first glance. You read your lines so cleverly, never missed a cue. Then came act two. You seemed to change, and you acted strange. And why, I'll never know. Honey, you lied when you said you loved me and I had no cause to doubt you. But I'd rather go on hearing your lies than go on living without you.

Now the stage is bare and I'm standing there with emptiness all around. And if you won't come back to me, then make them bring the curtain down. How am I doing? That's nice. Very good. I'm not very musical. No, it's very good. It's good.