Revisionist History - In a Metal Mood

Episode Date: August 8, 2019

Two seasons after its investigation of the decline of McDonalds french fries, Revisionist History returns to fast-food’s high-tech test kitchens. This time the subject is cultural appropriation. The... case study is Taco Bell. Oh, and Pat Boone is involved. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This episode contains explicit language. You're listening to the smooth stylings of Patrick Charles Eugene Patboone, pop star of the 1950s, host of the Pat Boone Chevy showroom, maybe the whitest, squarest rock musician of all time. In 1997, Pat Boone put out an album covering, among others, Judas Priest, Metallica, Ozzy Osbourne, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple. On the front of the album, Pat Boone looks out maniacally, or at least as maniacally as he can, wearing only a black leather vest. You can find the whole thing on YouTube.
Starting point is 00:01:09 In a metal mood, no more Mr. Nice Guy. I mean, all great songs that he's chosen. Impeccable. Pat Boone performed an act of cultural appropriation, outrageous cultural appropriation. A square white guy, a middle-aged crooner, walked in and shamelessly appropriated the heavy metal canon. Here's my question. What should we make of that fact? How should we feel about in a metal mood? So I asked my friend Dave Hill. Dave is a metal aficionado, lead guitarist for Valley Lodge and Witch Taint,
Starting point is 00:02:01 maybe the most metal band name ever. If you root around the internet, you can find some videos we've done together over the years, which have literally hundreds of likes. We go to the same coffee shop. Say hello to Dave. Well, The Devil's Interval is the beginning of metal, basically. It's the flatted fifth.
Starting point is 00:02:33 I assign Dave in a metal mood as homework. Listen to it, break it down, report back to me. That's how this whole thing began. At the time he puts this out, he's 63. He's been a crooner. He's an evangelical Christian. He's been a crooner for 40 years. He's best known for sporting like V-neck sweaters and khakis and top siders.
Starting point is 00:02:59 Yeah. Or not even top siders, those shoes, those white bucks. Yeah. That's what he does. I like a nice white buck. You couldn't have imagined a less metal pedigree than Pat Boone? No, he's pretty not metal. But it depends how you define metal. I mean, musically, no, but very metal in many other ways.
Starting point is 00:03:22 Tell me what you mean by that. Just like as far as committing to being a crooner, pretty metal. Yes. Did you catch that? Pat Boone, pretty metal. My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History,
Starting point is 00:03:42 my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This episode is the official launch of my campaign to get Pat Boone into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. We're climbing aboard the Pat Boone into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. We're climbing aboard the Pat Boone train. Why? Because if there is ever a cultural figure who has been misunderstood and overlooked, who fits the literal definition of the revisionist history mandate,
Starting point is 00:04:17 it is Pat Boone. You think I'm joking. I'm so not joking. What follows is an argument in two parts. Part one, Pat Boone, no longer Mr. Nice Guy. Part two, Taco Bell. It's very secure. This is like top secret.
Starting point is 00:04:50 Top secret. Taco Bell is so important to my defense of Pat Boone that I traveled clear across the country to Irvine, California, to the international headquarters of Taco Bell, and talked my way into their inner sanctum. Through double sets of security doors, all sorts of scanning of IDs. I feel like I'm in the CIA. Do you have to do retinal scanning?
Starting point is 00:05:13 Exactly. For tacos. They sit me down. They ply me with one delicious bit of fast food after another, including, most memorably, one of Taco Bell's top-selling concoctions, the naked chicken chalupa. Have you had this?
Starting point is 00:05:31 I have not. Nobody was asking for this because it wasn't even, people didn't even comprehend this idea. That's really good. But it is one of those things you could never sit with consumers and they would say, you know what, I'd like you to make me this, right? Do we know the idea for this came from? I mean, it's the bananas idea.
Starting point is 00:05:51 Yeah. We do. It's us. That bananas idea came from Taco Bell. Oh, and it was good. Hold that thought. We're coming back to Taco Bell. But first, Dave Hill and I have some work to do. I skipped right ahead to Holy Diver by Dio. Uh-huh.
Starting point is 00:06:22 And I was really impressed because that song, the original version, there's a minute and 20 seconds of just kind of ominous like Middle Earth sounds. Holy Diver might be the quintessential metal song. Dave Hill considers it Ronnie James Dio's masterpiece. Yeah, yeah Holy diver You've been down too long in the midnight sea So, yeah, but even just the pure balls to be like,
Starting point is 00:07:29 I'm going to make everyone wait a minute and 20 seconds before I even smack you around with one of the greatest metal songs of all time. And then I was like, well, Pat Boone doesn't have the balls to commit to that. But sure enough... He did. He did. He did.
Starting point is 00:07:46 So right there. Huge fan. Track number eight on In a metal mood right after pat boone's cover of enter sandman by metallica holy diver you've been down too long in the midnight sea oh what's becoming of me ride the tiger you can see his stripes but you know he's clean Oh, don't you know what I mean Gotta get away Epic Holy diver
Starting point is 00:08:33 Simply epic Yeah Got Got! met on the first day of first grade. Bruce, the producer Rick Rubin, and I are now partners on the Broken Record Music Podcast, another epic Pushkin Industries production, which you should be listening to. Anyway, Bruce always had a bee in his bonnet about Pat Boone. I went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, which I'd never been to. And I went downstairs where it all kind of starts and you see these, you see exhibits like the precursors to rock and roll. And then you walk into what is probably the biggest part of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the most famous part, which is the
Starting point is 00:09:32 Elvis section, how Elvis basically founded rock and roll. And I was kind of amazed. I went through it. I looked at all these exhibits. All I could think of was, where is Pat Boone? Now, why would I think, where is Pat Boone? Well, Pat Boone had an amazing career before Elvis. And in fact, Pat Boone did a lot of the things Elvis did before Elvis did it. I mean, just by raw numbers alone, he was, Pat Boone was on the top 100 chart, the hot 100, I guess it's called, for I think 220 consecutive weeks. That record stood for, I think, close to 50 years. Like the only people who've been on longer were Lil Wayne and Drake.
Starting point is 00:10:23 Lil Wayne, Drake, And Pat Boone. And Pat Boone. That's our top three. The nominating committee for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is made up of rock music insiders, serious music people. They meet every September
Starting point is 00:10:40 and have a day-long debate about the 10 or 20 names that should be on the ballot for the upcoming year. The whole thing is secret, intense. There's lobbying, campaigning. I asked Terry Stewart about the process. He ran the Hall of Fame for 14 years.
Starting point is 00:10:54 You know, I had some people that weren't very nice, people that would back you against the wall in the corner, you motherfucker, you know, all that sort of stuff. So it would go a lot, it could go dark, but, know, it's, I understand that it meant a lot to these artists. And I try to explain that there was a very methodical process. So then I asked him, did things ever get dark over Pat Boone? There wasn't a lot of discussion about Pat Boone. Has he, wait a second, has he never even made the ballot? No. He's never made it out of that ballot that comes out of the room? Yeah. Now, if you know anything about popular music,
Starting point is 00:11:31 you'll know why Pat Boone is persona non grata in Cleveland. It's because he made his name during the 1950s, covering black R&B songs. A handsome young white guy just graduated from Columbia University, and his record company has him doing these whitewashed versions of songs by people like Little Richard and Fats Domino. For music aficionados, the idea of Pat Boone as a serious musician is offensive. But it took a lot of chutzpah to really even bring it up because of that feeling that, you know, he had stolen this music. The majority
Starting point is 00:12:07 of the people involved always felt fairly strongly that it wasn't appropriate to have Pat Boone in the Hall of Fame. But that's the way it all, that's why he never made the ballot. It was discussed, but never made the ballot. And that's just the nature of the beast. In other words, Pat Boone's album, In a Metal Mood, is not some weird one-off. It's what he does. He wanders into someone else's world, and he takes their music.
Starting point is 00:12:38 And that does not pass the smell test at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But are they right? That's what Dave Hill and I were trying to figure out, which is why we sat in the studio together deconstructing Pat Boone's cover of Holy Diver. See, right away, when Dio sings about the tiger, you're like, that's a scary tiger. Pat Bo like, I'm not afraid of that tiger. Get over here, tiger. I mean, so what's he doing here with this song? I don't know. Like, immediately you're, like, you hear it and you're like,
Starting point is 00:13:14 hey, has anyone seen the guy with the chicken skewers? I wanted to get some of those. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's like sort of an early cocktail party, corporate fundraiser scenario. Pat Boone is the poster child for cultural appropriation. Now why does this make me think of Taco Bell? Because Taco Bell is the same thing for food.
Starting point is 00:13:41 The bell in Taco Bell is not some reference to the classic bell towers in Spanish colonial architecture, El Campanario. No, the bell in Taco Bell refers to Glen Bell of the Iowa Bells, a white guy who in the mid-1950s decided to open a fast food restaurant in San Bernardino, California. Glen Bell's Tacos, Taco Bell. It became a chain. Whenever he opened a new restaurant, Glenn Bell would hire a mariachi band. On the cover of his biography, Taco Titan, Glenn Bell, of the Iowa Bells, is wearing a sombrero. Glenn Bell is Pat Boone, two white guys in the mid-1950s appropriating someone else's culture.
Starting point is 00:14:27 So if we have a Pat Boone problem, we should also have a Taco Bell problem, which I'm not happy about, by the way, because I love Taco Bell. That was my moral quandary. Okay, so Laverne, we're going to start with Laverne Baker. I'm sitting around my dining room table with Bruce, Jacob Smith, my producer, and Justin Richmond, the producer of Broken Record. We decided to convene a cultural appropriation summit to figure out who is the appropriate appropriator. Bruce, a wasp from rural southwestern Ontario. Jacob, a half-Jewish, half-Catholic millennial from Long Island. Justin, a mixed-race hipster from Long Beach, California.
Starting point is 00:15:16 And me, Jamaica, Canada, England, whatever. I felt we needed to cover as many basses as we could. We're listening to Laverne Baker, an early R&B legend, perform Tweedledee in 1955. Still good. Yeah. That is good. Yeah. That is good. All right. What's the other one? Georgia Gibbs.
Starting point is 00:15:55 Which, by the way, if you do the search, comes up right underneath it. Georgia Gibbs, by the way, Georgia Gibbs' real name is Frida Lipschitz? Lipschitz? Something like that, yeah. Frida Lipschitz? Lipschitz? Something like that, yeah. Frida Lipschitz from, I'm assuming, Brooklyn? Several years after Laverne Baker does the black version of Tweedledee, Georgia slash Frida does the white version. Tweedle, Tweedle, Tweedle Dee. I'm as happy as can be.
Starting point is 00:16:25 Jiminy, Jiminy Jack You make my heart go clickety-clack Tweedly, tweedly, tweedly-dee All right, let's compare those two versions. Do I like the first one better? Yes. Are they almost identical? Yes. Did she lift the arrangements? Yeah, of course.
Starting point is 00:16:47 Second one's not so bad, actually. I can't, you know. No, but it's precisely like the first one. It is. Laverne Baker actually famously had to take out flight insurance once. She was on tour. And she named Georgia Gibbs as her beneficiary because she said, if the plane goes down, her career is over too.
Starting point is 00:17:09 Amazing. That is, okay, so we agreed that is, if you want a definition of cultural appropriation, that's it. Next, we turn to Elvis. Everyone loves Elvis, right? Remember the last episode of season three of Revisionist History where I put Elvis on the couch and everything ended in tears? I love Elvis.
Starting point is 00:17:30 Well, in his early years, a lot of Elvis' songs were written by a man named Otis Blackwell. He's black. He is black. He was a songwriter. He wrote, probably his most famous song is Fever, which was a Peggy Lee song, later a Madonna song. But he wrote Don't Be Cruel, All Shook Up, Paralyzed, Return to Sender. Here we are, yeah, yeah. Great Balls of Fire, he wrote Great Balls of Fire?
Starting point is 00:17:51 Yes, he did. Oh my God, the guy's a genius. Otis Blackwell writes the songs, then records a demo, gives the demo to Elvis. Ready? This is Elvis doing his version of Don't Be Cruel. You know I can be fine Sitting home all alone This is Elvis doing his version of Don't Be Cruel. Okay, that's Elvis.
Starting point is 00:18:28 Now this is Blackwell doing his version, the version that came first. He's performing it on an old episode of Late Night with David Letterman. Oh my God. And if you can't, call me around Let me use this telephone Don't be cruel Oh my God. To a heart so true It's the same song. As we're listening, Justin puts his head in his hands. I'm sorry, that's brutal.
Starting point is 00:18:57 I forget how bad it is every time I hear it. This is just Elvis. This is the king of rock and roll. The singer with his own vast, dedicated room at the Hall of Fame. Now imagine how Otis Blackwell or any of the other black songwriters of that era felt about what Elvis did. They'd been asked to write a song for someone much more famous than they were.
Starting point is 00:19:19 Fine. What hurts is when a so-called genius takes the song that you wrote and that came out of your cultural community and doesn't change a lick of it. One Broken Heart for Sale. A hit song written by Otis Blackwell for Elvis in 1962. Is that Otis? That might be Elvis demoing. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:19:53 The Otis demo? Yeah. That's Otis Blackwell. Did you guys think it was Elvis? Yeah. I think that's Elvis demoing. One broken love is half-old. One broken heart is a confused. Oh my God, that's Otis Blackwell.
Starting point is 00:20:12 Wait, this is the perfect illustration of what we're talking about. We're listening to a song on YouTube that's supposed to be by Otis Blackwell, and we have no idea whether it's Otis Blackwell or Elvis, because Elvis has completely... Yeah. He's completely stolen this guy's sound. Maybe this is why not everyone out there likes Elvis as much as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame does. People like Justin, a purist. On some level, he feels like it's his music
Starting point is 00:20:38 that's being violated here. And immediately, Justin brings up Public Enemy and their frontman, Chuck D. Because I feel like Chuck D is the reason Elvis is so hated. Yeah. In black and white. Because Elvis was a hero to most, but he never meant shit to me because he's straight out a racist, a sucker, was simple, and plain.
Starting point is 00:20:53 Motherfucking man, John Wayne. Elvis was a hero to most. Elvis was a hero to most, but he never meant shit to me. Elvis was a hero to most, but he never meant shit to me because he's straight out a racist, a sucker, was simple, and plain. Motherfucking man, John Wayne. I'm proud most of my heroes don't appear on no stamp oh Elvis let's take a break
Starting point is 00:21:19 and when we come back we're gonna eat some more Taco Bell. Glenn Bell was born in 1923. Grew up in the Depression. Was a hobo for a while, riding the rails, living by his wits. During the war, he was a steward for a Marine Corps general. And when the war was over, he came back to San Bernardino, California and decided to open a hamburger stand.
Starting point is 00:21:49 At first, tacos were just something that he added to the menu. He'd eaten them in the Mexican restaurants of Southern California and thought they were the perfect fast food. Easy to make and eat. Super cheap. Then he added refried beans.
Starting point is 00:22:03 Then he dropped the burgers and fries altogether, and after a decade of stops and starts, he opened Taco Bell. Tacos, tostadas, frijoles, burritos, all for 19 cents each. By the late 1960s, Taco Bells are everywhere, with a standardized look. Slump stone brick, which looks a bit like adobe, red clay tiles on the roof, bell tower, Mexican food in a building straight out of Mexico. Taco Bell is as bad as Elvis. Except, have you ever been to a Taco Bell? Where are the carnitas?
Starting point is 00:22:41 They don't have carnitas. Don't spill the beans. Oh, yeah. Way, way, way off the menu. So if you peek in, this is our... When I was in the test kitchen at Taco Bell's headquarters, the question of carnitas came up. And they said that, for whatever reason, shredded meat doesn't work for them. Or mole.
Starting point is 00:23:02 If you were ripping off Mexican food, if you wanted to be Elvis of Mexican food, you would have mole. But there's no mole at Taco Bell. Our brand is Mexican inspired, and it's just not familiar enough. And if it's not familiar enough, again, in 30 seconds, we can't make it familiar to you. This is Rene Pichotti. We just can't, as much as we'd love to. What's hard about mole sauce, for example? Mole sauce.
Starting point is 00:23:28 So, first off, I think there's so many different types. And this is Liz Matthews, head chef. I think mole in general, especially a red mole, it's rich and earthy, and I don't think that's something that people are familiar with already. Another thing, where are the soft corn tortillas? Nothing is more quintessentially Mexican than the traditional soft corn tortilla. There are no soft corn tortillas at Taco Bell.
Starting point is 00:23:55 They tried it once, Mexican street tacos. What happened? We were getting a lot of calls from customers that they got a taco um but the shell was raw the shell was uncooked they had no reference for a corn tortilla that wasn't deep fried like a sauce they had no idea what a soft fresh corn tortilla was all about it was a crisis these were calls from indiana i mean i just remember they started streaming in. I'm like, oh, my God, people are worried that we're serving them uncooked food. There was no reference for it whatsoever.
Starting point is 00:24:30 Now, the Taco Bell guys weren't upset by that reaction. Their attitude isn't, oh, our customers have to get more sophisticated. No, to them, it's just a reminder that they aren't in the business of making real Mexican food. That's not why people go to Taco Bell. I don't think people want to see authentic. They don't. Yeah. They want the variations and different. I don't know that that's just not us. That's not who we are. Yeah. We're inspired by it, but we're not. That's not what we're driven by. Taco Bell is an interpretation of Mexican food, a riff on Mexican food for people who don't necessarily think of themselves as people who eat Mexican food.
Starting point is 00:25:09 That's a very different game, and a harder game, by the way, because you have to find the familiar part of the unfamiliar and somehow make it seem new. If you were the Elvis of Mexican food, you wouldn't need a test kitchen, would you? If you're stealing something, why would you need to test it? You test what you invent. Case in point, the naked chicken chalupa.
Starting point is 00:25:35 The inspiration came from Taco Bell's Heather Motteshaw, one of the food scientists I was meeting with. I remember Heather said something like, Steve, what do you think if we made, you know, a taco shell out of chicken? And I'm like, Steve, what do you think if we made, you know, a taco shell out of chicken? And I'm like, well, what are you talking about? And it was sort of like, well, you know, like chicken Milanese.
Starting point is 00:25:52 But so in my mind, I'm thinking like, literally like chicken Milanese pounded out, you know, chicken breast and that flavor profile. Thinking like, you're crazy, Heather. But what really comes out is, you know, she's probably onto something. They ended up with a white meat chicken breast, deep fried in batter, molded into the shape of a taco and filled with lettuce, cheese, tomatoes and avocado ranch sauce. Did you have difficulty kind of convincing people?
Starting point is 00:26:19 Absolutely. We couldn't even describe it to each other at first. So how do you actually get that message across to consumers? So they're like, oh, I want to go in and try that. I mean, that was a pretty big feat. But that was part of the conundrum, because we originally were talking about this as a crispy chicken taco.
Starting point is 00:26:39 And when you called it a crispy chicken taco, people were expecting a taco shell, regular taco shell, with a piece of crispy chicken taco. People were expecting a taco shell, regular taco shell, with a piece of crispy chicken inside. This is Heather of naked chicken chalupa fame. So it wasn't until we then converted and started to call it a chalupa, which is our more premium taco, where consumers were like, oh, okay, I get it. But even here, they're making things up.
Starting point is 00:27:03 In Mexican cuisine, a chalupa is a deep-fried masa dough pancake shaped to resemble a flat fishing boat. That's why it's called a chalupa. Chalupas are Basque whaling boats, small, wide-bottomed, shallow-sided. But in the Taco Bell universe, a chalupa is not a shallow boat anymore. It's a taco, a high-sided boat. And it's naked? You're calling it a naked, what's the meaning of the word naked in that context? It didn't have the shell, right? So
Starting point is 00:27:34 it's the protein, so it's naked. Oh, I see. Oh, I see. Okay. So I was wondering, like, where are you guys going with this? We just call everything naked. So what's interesting about this is that it's really conceptually a step outside of the traditional Mexican food. This is, we're no longer it looks like a taco. It's not a taco.
Starting point is 00:27:55 It's something else. This is not the same as Elvis and Otis Blackwell, is it? Elvis appropriated the song Don't Be Cruel, and also everything else. Otis Blackwell style, vocal tics. Elvis stole the song's soul. Taco Bell appropriated the taco, but not the taco's soul. They turned it into something that is about as far from a taco as humanly possible.
Starting point is 00:28:32 By the way, I haven't even mentioned the craziest thing in the Taco Bell lab. It's for the Indian market, but they cooked one up for us. It's an Indian spiced potato latke in the shape of a taco filled with all kinds of delicious flavors. It's really spicy. Yeah, this spice is a little bit of delicious flavors. It's really spicy. Yeah, this spice is a little bit of a delay, so you might take a few bites, be like, it's not spicy,
Starting point is 00:28:51 and then it's going to catch up to you. I have many questions about spice. By the way, Justin, do you want me to feed you? Justin. Justin Richmond. From the Cultural Appropriations Summit. Elvis doesn't mean shit to me. I brought him along as my sound tech, but he was holding microphones with both hands so he couldn't eat. And all this food was passing
Starting point is 00:29:10 right under his nose and we were getting concerned about his state of mind, especially the Taco Bell people. This was their professional responsibility and they felt they were failing him. Do you want us to cut things up for you? I'll just stash it, don't worry. Are you sure? You want me to hold the microphone? And now, I kind of have to take a foray into the Doritos Locos Taco. Taco Bell's taco where the shell is made out of a Dorito.
Starting point is 00:29:39 Which turns out to be this fantastically complicated engineering feat because you have to simultaneously please the universe of hardcore Doritos fans and the universe of hardcore Taco Bell lovers. Did the lawyers have to get involved? There's like all this IP going on between Frito-Lay and Taco Bell. And I think I can tell the story, but I mean, the story really is, it was a handshake. Yeah. The CEO of Frito-Lay and the CEO of Taco Bell worked it out one-on-one. Taco Bell, born of San Bernardino, meets Doritos, inspired by authentic Mexican tortilla chips, but actually created in its current form,
Starting point is 00:30:20 as you may know, at a restaurant in Disneyland. They did a handshake because they knew if we got everybody involved, we would never get this idea out the door. And we knew we had this magical thing. And we knew that that would not happen. It was like a summit. Did they like meet in some secret location? All the lawyers were like, what did you guys do? I mean, yeah.
Starting point is 00:30:40 It's probably on a golf course, let's be honest. Maybe. Taco Bell is not Elvis. Elvis could never have pulled off the Doritos Locos Taco. I can't go on without one more moment from our Cultural Appropriations Summit, when we finally got to the matter at hand. What's the best Pat Boone... Tutti Frutti. Let's do the two Tutti Fruttis.
Starting point is 00:31:23 Yeah. So we'll start with Little Richard's Tootie Fruity But anyway The best Tootie Fruity Fact I learned recently Was that it's originally Tootie Fruity Good Booty
Starting point is 00:31:32 Good Booty So funny Pat Boone comes along The Boy Wonder And Should we Should we do the We have a There's a live version of him Oh boy Pat Boone comes along, the boy wonder, and should we do the live version of him? Let's go the live version, just for fun. It's an old performance on Canadian television from the 1950s.
Starting point is 00:31:59 Pat Boone looks like he flew in straight from a Boy Scout jamboree. The video begins with a title card. So the caption, like pouring cream into coffee. Oh, this is so good. Pat Boone lightened and sweetened R&B. And he made a smoothie out of Tutti Frutti. I got a gal. I need to do. You know just what to do.
Starting point is 00:32:21 I got a gal. I need to do. All right. You know just what to do. I've been through the east, I've been through the west. She's the gal that I love best. Tutti Frutti. Here's the gal that I love best.
Starting point is 00:32:36 Tutti, Tutti Frutti. He's completely on the beat. He doesn't go behind the beat. That's really the difference. That's what all of them have done, by the way. All the white versions have simplified the beat. He doesn't go behind the beat. That's really the difference. That's what all of them have done, by the way. All the white versions have simplified the beat. The beat feels a little more dense, a little more complex in the black versions.
Starting point is 00:32:53 In the white version, it's like, this is the one, two, three, four. You can't miss it. Pat Boone did not copy Tutti Frutti. He made a smoothie out of Tutti Frutti. Years later, Little Richard did an interview with the music journalist Joe Smith. He wasn't happy. What he would do, he would take over the pop stations and they would kill me crossing over. See, it would kill me crossing over. He
Starting point is 00:33:16 would kill me because the white station would play him and they wouldn't play me. And so when you go in the record shop, you could find his, you can find mine. But Little Richard says that later, he changed his mind. But really, to be true, when I look back over, there was a blessing and a lesson, because he opened doors for us. He made the white kids more aware of me. Because they want my version. That's what he says. When I've been here, he says, look, I opened some doors.
Starting point is 00:33:41 He opened a whole lot of doors. Oh, he's a beautiful person. When it works, cultural appropriation serves as the basis for something new. But it also widens the audience for the real thing. It's the way the original, authentic idea moves into the mainstream. That's what my friend Bruce has been trying to tell us. The contrast here is with Elvis. I'm not blaming Elvis directly,
Starting point is 00:34:06 but he did a version of Hound Dog. Big Mama Thornton didn't then crash the pop charts afterwards with her version of Hound Dog or... Because there was no room for it. Because he'd already, he did it so well, there was no reason to go back and do the original. Yes.
Starting point is 00:34:23 And that's what I, that's essentially the distinction I'm making, which is, you know, if Elvis Presley is the Columbus, you know, Pat Boone is the guy who landed in the New World and then went back to Europe and said, we should make friends with these guys. They've got great tobacco. He didn't show up and saying, I'm taking over the contest. He's John the Baptist. Whereas Elvis pretends to be Jesus. Elvis says, I'm taking over the contest. He's John the Baptist. Whereas Elvis pretends to be Jesus. Elvis says, I'm the risen Lord. Pat Boone's not pretending to be the risen Lord.
Starting point is 00:34:52 He's like, I'm just the guy preparing the way for the risen Lord. He is John the Baptist. He's John the Baptist. And Taco Bell at the same time. Pat Boone, John the Baptist. He's handsome, wholesome. He's really handsome. He's a wholesome. He's a really nice guy. There he is running to his mark right now. I think he's a nice guy. Ladies and gentlemen, Pat Boone. In 1997, at the height of his metal period, Pat Boone went on the Easterseal telethon.
Starting point is 00:35:46 You're trying to tell me he doesn't belong in the Hall of Fame? I used to be such a sweet, sweet thing Till they got a hold of me Let's make this happen, people. Let's get Pat Boone on the ballot. Info at rockhall.org. That's info at rockhall.org. Then crank up a little inner metal mood on your phone. Order a naked chicken chalupa at the nearest Taco Bell.
Starting point is 00:36:11 And ask yourself if the world isn't a better place with the right kind of cultural appropriation. No more Mr. P. No more Mr. Nice Guy. They say he's sick, he's obscene. Revisionist History is produced by Mia LaBelle and Jacob Smith with 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 Carly Migliore,
Starting point is 00:36:46 Heather Fane, Maggie Taylor, Maya Koenig, Jason Gambrell, and Jacob Weisberg. Oh, and Justin Richmond, who turned down Taco Bell in the service of his duty,
Starting point is 00:36:57 and Bruce Hadlam, the brains behind this particular operation. Revisionist History is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. I'm Malcolm Gladwell. Yeah!
Starting point is 00:37:17 What I saw, I'm coming back to Pat Boone. So he takes an absolutely iconic song and he does this jazz lounge. Yeah. Can you give us a, can you try a little bit of a jazz loungy?
Starting point is 00:37:35 Holy diver, you've been down to, see, now, you know, we're, as I attempt to do it, I'm also showing you
Starting point is 00:37:42 what's great about Pat Boone because I can't emulate just the swagger and, you know, that. You can tell, like, he's got a bit of a tan. You can hear it in his voice. Yeah, yeah. Oh, a diver, you've been down too long in that midnight sea. Oh, what's becoming of me? See, I've just gone taking it.
Starting point is 00:38:07 You know, now we're at a coffee house. Yeah. On some strip mall. He's gone. So this is interesting. What he's done is not a trivial accomplishment. No. There's a degree of difficulty in what he's done here.
Starting point is 00:38:22 Oh, yeah. You can't walk in off the street and do Pat Boone. No, no. difficulty in what he's done here oh yeah no one can you can't walk in off the street and do pat boone no no you'd be a fool you know as as much as you'd be a fool to think you could do do you'd be as as maybe as much of a fool to think you can do pat prune

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