Revisionist History - Encore: Analysis, Parapraxis, Elvis

Episode Date: July 17, 2025

Malcolm’s habit of reading footnotes leads him to the psychologist Alan Elms, which leads him to the one song Elvis couldn’t sing. We revisit this 2018 episode as part of our encore music series. Get ad-free episodes to Revisionist History by subscribing to Pushkin+ on Apple Podcasts or Pushkin.fm. Pushkin+ subscribers can access ad-free episodes, full audiobooks, exclusive binges, and bonus content for all Pushkin shows.  Subscribe on Apple: apple.co/pushkinSubscribe on Pushkin: pushkin.fm/plusSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Pushkin. To introduce this episode, I just want to relate how random my journey to it was. I was reading a book, I can't even remember what it was, and in a footnote, I always read the footnotes, the author said the psychologist whose work she was referring to had done a very strange paper once about Elvis. At which point I stopped reading the book and looked up the very strange paper about Elvis. It was by Alan Elms. It was amazing. So immediately I go to the next question. Was Alan Elms still alive? Yes, living in Davis, California. Next step, I gotta go see him. So I immediately fly to San Francisco, rent a car, but the rental agency is out of all cars except for a

bright canary yellow Chevy Corvette. Which I take happily, but then halfway to Davis, driving at speeds that are very, very far from legal, I start thinking, what's this guy going to think of me if I show up in a bright canary yellow Corvette? He's a brilliant psychologist. I don't want him prejudging me. So I park it around the corner, walk to his house, and spend a lovely afternoon with him. Sadly, he was feeling poorly at the time and didn't speak well enough for me to use a tape afternoon with him. Sadly, he was feeling poorly at the time and didn't speak well enough for me to use a tape of his interview. But my spontaneous journey set the correct tone, I think, for this whole episode, which is

that it was intended to be a caper, a grand caper, in which many crazy unexpected things happen. And, as you will discover, so it was. By the way, the thing that Alan Elms and I talked the most about was not actually his Elvis paper. It was another, even more genius thing he once wrote about the Wizard of Oz, which I promise you that I will get to one day here at Revisionist History. Join me for a walk down revisionist history memory lane. 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. My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast about things

overlooked and misunderstood. After the first two episodes on memory earlier this season, I decided to do a third. 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, 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. 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 dog is gone And no more with old sheep will I roam That's one thing I know Old Shep has a wonderful home Old Shep is not one of Elvis's 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' cover. I'm going

to come back to Heller and Elms in a while because they really do the most thorough analysis of Elvis' 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. 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. Hank Snow sings, I stroked the best pal a man ever found. So I scarce me 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, 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 the 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. 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. Mm-hmm. It went into weeks, I guess, 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, that's how he, um, 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 him 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 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 miss me?

LWB 010, take two. 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 Anasini 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? This voice is so amazing. Is he, 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. He always preferred to have everyone in one room and record live. Oh, even in one room, not in booths? 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. And then they, this was the second take, which they told him of the background singers, you know, P-pop, because he said, just stop the tape, you know, I'm done. They said, just do it once more because, you know, we hit a P-pop 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 got re-released they finally released it as a single and didn't go out on, he had done eight songs for Elvis's back and 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 Prest 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 his life of him being able to recite, to sing from memory, massive amounts of stuff. I'm worried, I'm interested about that. There's a little slip. I'm worried about that. 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. 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 the story because isn't this story that I'm talking to you 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 just, it's, he's

just singing a song he's singing thousands of times and he just completely loses control of it. Now I can skip it. Okay, here it comes. okay here comes and plus tax. You read your lines so right, it's never really, you never missed a cue. Then came back too, you forgot the words, you seem to change, you fool. When I first saw it, it, as someone in a, I mean, I'm not Elvis, but I'm someone in a creative field,

it terrified me. It's like up on stage doing what he's paid to do and he He just The stage is bare and I'm standing there without any hair You all come back to me. What the heck, Willie. Every live performance he's ever given of this that we have on tape, he mangles the bridge. He can't do it right. It's his which he's returning to the song again and again and again and again and again and doing the same

Kind of in this particular, you know, it's always a bit so kind of like a singing part. He's almost over How many years did this go on? years Okay in 1982 this left inversion was radio in the UK reached number 25 in the British samples 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. There's sweat and tears streaming down his face. It goes on like this. On and on. Shall I come again? Tell me dear, are you lost something to me? 14 years of living on the ground, 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. Do you mind flipping the 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 Treat me like a cool Oh darling Oh darling I want you to love me Love me just the same

Love me just the same Treat me just the same I won't love me I won't love me Sometimes I'll do that one I was going to say don't stop. I'm enjoying it. Anything, any other ones you do? Oh wait, by the way, why do you, why that one?

What's about that song? Um, 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 really doing it. And I started doing it when I put in coffee houses I started playing that I was like 16 yeah so I 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 that Elvis poked his head out in the

hallway and sang that song to Robert Plan. They sang it back to each other and were crying. And must've been an amazing moment. Jack White owns the original acetate pressing of Elvis's 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 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 her a couple of whirls, but... the world's but are you tonight do you miss me

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 parlour seem empty and bare? Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me there? That's the first half of the song. The sung version. All questions. 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. 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. Back one was where we met.

I loved you at first glance. You read your lines so cleverly and never missed a cue. Then came back 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 maybe you'll bring the curtain down. 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, you could really, that really could get to 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 in a minor, 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 that if she's lonesome, 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 is 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, 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, right. The spoken parts, the singer is vulnerable and 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. He's 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 confession, confessional for me. Cause 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, three, so one, two, three, one, two, three, two, three. 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 to do.

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. Do we do that?

Yeah. I'm not gonna torture you with my rendition of the spoken bridge. Well, maybe later. I'm not gonna 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 gonna get like this?

I asked Jack White to help me edit the soliloquy. If one were to rewrite it, I'm thinking that you lose the first three lines. Mm. Fate had me playing in love, you as my sweetheart. Or even Act One was when we met. Why don't they just start with Act One? 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, she said cleverly. Beautiful front. Then came act two. You seemed to change, you acted strange. What did Jack White do there? The actual lyric is, you read your lines so cleverly. He said, you read your lines 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 I love him so much and that you know I'm afraid to learn more about certain things like it you know and it's so you so close to it and you've experienced certain things about nothing in comparison to what he went through, but we do the same kind of thing.

We perform and we go on stages and we make records and all this stuff. Not from a different time period, but you notice these tiny little moments that are, when you see something, you're 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's life in 1977. Alan Elms and Bruce Heller analyzed them all in their essay, 12 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. 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 prime-time 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, see you 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, Lord.

I wonder how. A man who fears betrayal and abandonment is betrayed and abandoned. It's too much. He's a wreck. Bobby. Shall I come back again? Tell me dear, are you alone somewhere? 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.

You may remember Bobby Braddock from Season 2 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 of Christ alto. Thirty-something, long red hair, the kind of person who if you touch, you expect a little jolt of static. It'll work.

Oh, you're going 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. Yeah he really he was a Church of Christ song leader and really wanted to be a Jordanaire 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 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 rest of the day is like... Hmm. Hmm. Ooh.

She came to see him one last time. Ooh. Oh, we all wondered if she would. 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 that 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 a hip hop thing,

I won't talk about me, but that was talking, talking, talking. See, Toby Keith, that's what I'm thinking about. Can you play a little slice of that, do you remember? I could 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 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 and your church. You talk about the trouble you've been having with your mother and your daddy and 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 gut 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 will record 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.

What? Oh my gosh. 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. Whenever you heard about things going wrong or like some tumultuous story, it was my dad. 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. She's always been somebody, sometimes 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. Yes, she's always been somebody something. And there's a line that says you know she 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? Uh, well it's gone again. She's always been somebody so there's been everything but alone. Daughter, lover, a daughter, a lover, a wife, and a mother. She's been everything. But alone, yeah.

Yeah. Why is it that long? I don't know. I think that, um, I don't know. I think when you see, she's so, 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 and000 times out of the gate or 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 and I stay awake and it's good. Funny, 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 too...

Let's see. Okay. Okay, well we'll see if this happens. She grew up playing cowgirl in a railroad town. Dreaming she'd see... Oh shoot, hold on. There's a line by Elvis in this. That's just random. Hold on.

Dreaming she'd see Hollywood. I'm gonna do again What did I just say sorry I'm thinking about mom she grew up playing 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. 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 it worked, 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. He went from somebody's daughter to somebody's wife. She's always this... 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. She's always been somebody, something. She's been everything but alone. A daughter, a daughter lover, a wife and a mother. She's lived every life but her own.

She'd say that's just called being a woman she's always there somebody's something God it's beautiful why are you covering your mouth? I'm just it's just weird because I've never it's just weird when you I've never, it's just weird when you're thinking about what it is. 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. 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 three 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. Flon 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 Buntzis, Kate Mascal, Kristen Meinzer, Carly Migliori, Andy Bowers, and of course, El Jefe, Jacob Weisberg.

I'm Malcolm Gladwell. I'm Malcolm Gladwell. Okay. So it'll 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 is 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? Nice. Very good. I wasn't, I'm not very musical.

No, it's very good. It's good. Yeah. This is an iHeart Podcast.