What were Elvis highlight moments after 1973?

#264588

JLGB wrote:After 1973(Aloha) there were plenty of highlights FOR FANS ONLY.

Yeah, ok.

#264596

Steve_M wrote:Pete, believe me he didn't want it, he much preferred to take the drug addiction line he ended up taking.

Unless anyone has evidence to the contrary this was all Elvis' own doing and NO ONE ELSE forced him or held a gun to his head. There is evidence to the opposite, people did try and help Elvis going as far as making plans for him to dry out, everything taken care of, all it required was for Elvis to say "Okay".

As a responsible fan I won't put on the rose coloured specs in front of other Elvis fans. I may point out more positive things of Elvis' life when dealing with music lovers in general, but die hard Elvis fans know the truth and most are responsible enough to accept the facts no matter the good facts or the bad.

Elvis did check in a few times to "dry out" but unfortunately it didn't work out. It's ok not to put on rose coloured specs, but it's also ok to show the man some compassion as well, after all, he had an illness. Unfortunately, that gets lost on several members on this board, who use his illness as a way to dismiss the many great things that he did in the seventies, which is a damn shame. Just to add to this, I became a fan in the seventies, it was then only that I discovered the fifties and sixties. I'm sure I'm not alone in this area.

#264606

There were highlights Steve, just not at the same level as earlier in the decade. My argument is that while people have rose coloured specs, it also works the other way where his post Aloha shows and recordings are for the most part, written off, which shouldn't be the case, point in case, Ger's attitude towards this era. He's let his negative 70's bias cloud his thinking, thus he comes across as an ass sometimes because he won't take his blinders off and listen to what other people who have opposing views, have to say.

Jesse Garon · #264614

Well,,,,

there's his Grammy win for a 1974 live performance

(but he didn't go to Grammy ceremony and the grammy people probably simply put his engraved award in a box with packing peanuts and taped it up and putt it in the mail to Memphis.)

big whoop in that respect.

There was that picsleeve-advertised 1974 EASTER SPECIAL that never materialized.

He had two hit singles in 1975 ..... My Boy and T-R--O-U-B--L-E

elvis_mania54545 · #264660

Most dont have any idea of what depression is like,and most dont care too really know, they just run there mouth or in this case type there ignorance,elvis gave you great music, why do you think you have the right to judge or tell us what you would have done,he didnt owe you his life,i get so sick of this topic,and pete is right, he"s !00% right,if you make statments like he didnt want to do this or do that, then you have already missed the point about what depression can do a human, it can kill and it still does to this day and its only get worse. some of you seem to have no compassion,you didnt know elvis,why do so many pretend they do??? unless you have dealt with depression first hand you havnt a clue!!!

#264672

I've Got a Thing About You Baby, despite a disappointing top 40 peak (#39), was his first country top 10 hit (#4) since There Goes My Everything, and sold nearly 500,000 copies. This was also a critically acclaimed single.

If You Talk In Your Sleep went to #17 on the top 40 chart. The B side Help Me hit #6 on the country chart.

Promised Land went to #14 on the top 40 chart (his highest charting record since Burning Love) and went top 10 in the U.K. It was also a critically acclaimed record. It's Midnight, the B side, went to #9 on the country chart.

My Boy hit the top 20 of the top 40 chart (#20), top 10 in the U.K., and was a #1 adult contemporary (easy listening) chart hit.

Hurt hit the country top 10 (#6). It looked to be heading for the top 20 of the top 40 chart when it strangely lost momentum and stalled at #28. Still it was another critically acclaimed single.

Moody Blue was #1 on the country chart, #2 on the adult contemporary chart, and top 10 in the U.K.

While it's true that the top 40/pop chart performance of these records wasn't particularly strong, it was solid and repectable overall. And his performance on the country, U.K. and occasionally adult contemporary charts was strong and competitive!

#264673

Steve, he still performed many great shows after Aloha, c'mon. It's ridiculous to keep using Aloha as a measuring stick. That would be like saying Wilt Chamberlain had no more highlights after he averaged 50 points a game one season, since he never matched it again. Everybody has peaks and valleys for fok sakes. Name me one singer who has had a number one single every year with a career spanning over twenty years.

#264688

jetblack wrote:In the early 70's most things were going great for Elvis, careerwise. A great recording session in Nashville and 'That's The Way It Is' in 1970, 'On Tour' which won Golden Globe in 1972 and 'Aloha From Hawaii'in 1973.

Now with his divorce and lack of recording in the last 4 years what are the highlights that can be picked out?

A couple that come to mind are playing his hometown of Memphis in 1974 that was recorded by RCA and the fabulous 'Today' album of 1975.

Andy

To me it was every time I went to see him.

#264692

Steve -
With the exception of Suspicious Minds the comeback period singles didn't hit # 1. If I Can Deam #12; Memories #35; In The Ghetto #3; Clean Up Your Own Backyard #35; SM #1; Don't Cry Daddy #6; Kentucky Rain #16; The Wonder of You #9; I've Lost You #32; You Don't Have To Say You Love Me #11; I Really Don't Want To Know #21. While there were no smash hits 73-77 his chart performance was comparable to some of the records of the comeback period. They are career maintainer chart positions. All long-lived careers experience this. And Elvis' was the first long-lived career of the rock & roll era.

You're failing to recognize the nature of addiction. Elvis couldn't 'choose' to take the stuff once the addiction took root. It controlled him! Yes you can criticize him for not getting help but that too is the nature of addiction. An addict has to absolutely hit rock bottom before they'll face up to the fact that they need help. And even then it's usually grudgingly. That's what addiction does to a person. Think of Robert Downey Jr.

#264716

jetblack wrote:In the early 70's most things were going great for Elvis, careerwise. A great recording session in Nashville and 'That's The Way It Is' in 1970, 'On Tour' which won Golden Globe in 1972 and 'Aloha From Hawaii'in 1973. Now with his divorce and lack of recording in the last 4 years what are the highlights that can be picked out?

The biggest post-1973 highlight of his career? His death on August 16, 1977.

#264724

I really hate to think of all of Elvis' un-tapped potential. It seemed like He was just playing with us just giving half effort a lot. The years 54-60 were great, they were all great. But He got caught up in the movies most of the 60's, after His comeback, yeah, He had some great shows and #1burning love but nothing really that great. Don't misunderstand me. I can go through just about every year and give a list of my favorite songs even to His last recording sessions, but these are personal favorites, not really any thing that pop culture was really taking note of. If Elvis wanted to, I think He probably could have dominated the charts His whole career. But probably after 18-19 years he lost a lot of desire, I'm sure it became just a job sometimes.

#264729

thenexte wrote:
jetblack wrote:In the early 70's most things were going great for Elvis, careerwise. A great recording session in Nashville and 'That's The Way It Is' in 1970, 'On Tour' which won Golden Globe in 1972 and 'Aloha From Hawaii'in 1973. Now with his divorce and lack of recording in the last 4 years what are the highlights that can be picked out?
The biggest post-1973 highlight of his career? His death on August 16, 1977.

Classy post. I can't believe some of you guys.

#264810

Pete- I left off stuff like "Promised Land" or "Thing about You" because they were recorded in 1973. I meant no slight towards them. "T-R-O-U-B-L-E" was a terrific and was at least an influence on Travis Tritt who remade it in a sanitized version in the early 1990s and Wayne Newton in an even more sanitized version incorporated it into his live act. People were still listening.

Steve- The attendance record was very important in that it was not a record for a particular arena but an all time record for a particular attraction.

The Grammy award was nice as well. I can't get too worked up over it because the Grammys are pretty much a bogus and clueless award they are coveted.

I think the thread is a little flawed in that it's aimed at a relatively short period in Elvis' career. We could make a similar thread about Bob Dylan between 1980 and 1983 or the Beach Boys between 1976 and 1980 and come up with less.

Delboy · #264858

Steve_M wrote: even if it wasn't the usual sell out.

Steve,

Are we sure Pontiac wasn't a sell-out? I always thought it was never intended to seat fans in the top tier of the stadium. I think the stadium seats 90,000 in three tiers and fans were in two of them.

Juan Luis · #264861

I just remembered Elvis was routinely (all the way to 77) reported in Billboard magazine in the top 5 and a lot of #1s as top $$$ grossing act of any particular week for live shows. He was up there with Dylan, Led Zep, Grateful Dead and other famous acts from that time period.

Juan Luis · #264882

Yes but in this day and age with large video screens is a different story. If from the start the top floors of venue were not intended to be sold even if there was a DEMAND then it qualifies as a sell out to me.

#264899

To add to the highlights list, although I would agree with likethebike that we are talking about a very short period so the argument is a bit flawed. For example, if we said "what were the highlights from 1964-1967" we might have trouble coming up with some things, too. However, it seems that gets a a pass becausei t's not the later 70's.

Honestly, I think this discussion has more of an undertone of - "Elvis didn't have many highlghts in the last 4 years of his career since he was degenerating so quickly" but that's not here nor there.

Here are my picks:

Elvis began scoring more and more hits on the country charts during the period 1973-1977. Practially all of his 70's albums during this time charted well, most in the top 10, and 3 out of his last 4 albums were #1 on the country charts, with the 4th making it to #4. Also, Elvis' singles continued to enjoy succes on the country charts, often doing much better than on the pop charts. To me, this signals more of a shift in style than declining popularity.

As has been mentioned, Elvis continued to set and break attendance records, not the least of which was the record set by his 1974 Astrodome performances, which broke the previos record (held by Elvis) and stood as the highest attendance figure at the Astrodome until the early 90's. Elvis regularly was ranked as oneof the highest, if not the highest grossing touring acts of the 70's, often beating out 70's staples like the Rolling Stones and Kiss.

Additionally, Elvis was the highest grossing touring act (for arenas under 20,000) for 1977, despite giving only 54 shows that year. I think that says a lot about Elvis' drawing power, right up until the end.

In 1976, WHN radio in New York conducted the world's largest listener poll. Somewhere around 1 million votes were cast for most popular entertainer - the winner? Elvis.

Elvis' December 1976 Vegas gig brought more people to the Hilton showroom than all of the other Vegas showrooms combined, despite being Vegas' slow period.

These are some that I could come up with off the top of my head. If I were to research newspaper articles or attendance figures I'm sure I could come up with more.

#264909

Not bad at all.

Thanks! It's been a while since I compiled a list of Elvis' achievements from the later 70's.

I wonder if there were more highlights from 64 - 67 than 74 - 77 ?

Interesting question - off the top of my head, I'd say that '67 was a very low point chartwise - the first time Elvis missed having a top 40 hit (and actually the only time I can think of that this happened), low charting albums as well, and the decline of the movie career.

I'm not coninced that the stats for the 77 shows are highlights or even something that Elvis would or should be proud of. After all the quality of the shows didn't deserve those stats.

Well, I certainly wouldn't lump all later 70's shows together, and I personally don't think that Elvis' drawing power was based on his name alone. Promoters won't continue to pay top dollar to get an artist into a venue if the public doesn't want it.

Breaking it down some could turn that around to Elvis was commiting robbery by getting away with charging and grossing so much for those shows when what he gave in return was not much compared to his shows of only 6 or 7 years earlier.

Well, if you want to be cynical, you you also say that Elvis was a Vegas lounge lizard who camped up his shows into overblown spectacles and wasted his talent performing 50 minutes shows on a Vegas stage instead of doing "real" touring (something that could be applied to the entire 70's period) or you could even be more cynical and say that Elvis' shows were short compared to other 70's artists so he was ripping people off anyway. I don't agree with either statement - I'm just playing devil's advocate

The real bottom line is that it's all in how you look at it. Statistcs only tell us so much about an artist and they can work in both positive and negative ways.

#264914

Yes statistics are very limited, or so 8 out of 10 people say.

when you thought about the 64 -67 period you immedialtely and only quoted the chart success.

True, and I'm not a fan of pulling out chart stats to say how good or bad an artist is. I was doing a brief comparison between '67 and '76 (chartwise) in my comments.

I was thinking of highlights overall for Elvis and his fans. Maybe getting married and his wife falling pregnant weren't highlights for Elvis in 67. mnay have said that's not how he wanted his life to go.

Interesting - I was thinking more along the lines of career stats than Elvis' personal highlights (or fan highlights). If we did that that's another can of worms. Heck, I know several people for whom seeing Elvis in 1977 was a highlight of their lives, so it is all a matter of perception.

Being one of the highest paid movie stars despite the quality of film may have been another highlight, though looking back some movies weren't as bas as we've talked them up to be.

I'd agree here, although I think you could apply your concert argument to this and say Elvis was reaping a profit he didn't deserve. Again, not my personal view - I was just applying your argument to another area of Elvis' career. Using your logic, Elvis wasn't giving the same quality of performance in the later 60's movies than he was in the early 60's ones, but he was still getting paid well...

i don't know what a highlight is and all I've been able to do is to ascertain no one else can define it, or doesn't want to, and that it also seems something that is an individuals opinion as to what the definition is and then again consequently what falls into that given definition.

My perspective is that an objective "highlight" would have to be more statistical to keep emotions and opinions out of it.

I don't see how 1977 specifically is a case of lumping all latter 70's concerts together.

Sorry, my mistake - I missed the 1977 part of your comment. Keeping it there, I'd probably agree that Elvis, had he lived, might not have been proud of some of those moments, but I think the same could be said about a number of things in his career.

Promoters couldn't give a crap about diddley squat so long as they made money out of it.

Yes, that's my point - if they made money out of it. Elvis' fees for performing were pretty high, and if promoters saw nothing but diminshing returns I'd think they might not want to book him in the future. Thus, something was keeping them booking Elvis and turning a profit...

Juan Luis · #264915

From the other side of the coin a #1 country album in 77 is no big deal compared to the 80s-90s when the country music market grew incredibly meshing with mainstream. Imo.

#264943

It didn't matter that the quality of the shows had gone bad. It didn't matter if 30,000 people wanted to see Elvis instead of 60,000 because the arena could only hold 10,000 anyway.

I'm not sure where you're getting this idea that fewer people wanted to see Elvis in the later 70's due to the declining quality of his performances. Elvis rarely played in huge arenas at all, let alone in the later 70's. Parker liked to keep Elvis in the under 20,000 seat venues...if you look at attendance figures throughout the 70's this is the norm and I don't believe it had anything to do with the quality of Elvis' shows. I've never heard that Elvis couldn't get booked into larger venues in the later 70's.

For example, Elvis played the Chicago Stadium (which, apart from Solider Field was the largest venue in the city at the time) in 72, 76 and 77 and sold it out each time, three times in 72 and twice in a row in 76 and 77, and the Rosemont Horizon (now the Allstate Arena), which is of comparable size, although not even completed in 1977, was already looking to book Elvis for it's opening act...this hardly speaks of declining interest in my book.

Elvis' performances in his 64-67 films was 100% just like his performance in King Creole was. The script might have been lacking but Elvis wasn't.

See, now we're getting into the opinion part of it. I love Elvis' movies, particularly his later ones, and I'd be the first to defend mid to late 60's films, but if I have to be honest, Elvis' performances were not all 100%. I believe even he would admit that. I love "Double Trouble" for example, but Elvis does seem to be phoning it in in that movie.

That's another highlight from the 64-67 years:
Elvis wrang the absolute best out of the movie soundtracks, no one else could have made some of that utter crap sound half way decent.

I completely agree with you here - I love the movie soundtracks, particularly some of the most maligned ones, like Double Trouble. However, you mention this as a "highlight" and I'm sure there are lots of people who would disagree with you (not me personally, though). I'm just pointing out the subjectivity of it all.

#264950

Those chart stats again which have no bearing on Elvis' vocal ability which was growing and growing.

I completely agree - I'm not arguing your point here at all. I'd apply this logic to Elvis' 70's vocals as well, which I think continued to develop.

The reason why i say not so many fans wanted to see Elvis in 77 compared to say 70 was because more and more fans were complaining about what they saw in 1977 and you'd be hard pushed to find one that did anything of the sort in 1970.

I've seen a number of good reviews of Elvis in 1977 as well, including Ann Arbor, Syracuse, and Indianapolis. And I do seem to recall a bad review ofo ne of Elvis' tour shows in 1970 - written by one Albert Goldman I believe

#264960

Elvis had gone almost operatic with how he tried to sing on some numbers and he didn't have the stamina in 77 to pull it off. So bad was his state of health in 1977 that he died. Well I do try to give the evidence to support the claim.

We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. Why did Elvis even bother putting more difficult songs into his stage act in the later 70's if he couldn't sing them? To me it seems he had something to prove, which suggests an awareness of his physical condition. There was no need for Elvis to continue to sing Hurt, or to add Unchained Melody into his act, or to do My Way with a big ending...he could have skated by with other songs or could have done the above songs less intensely...yes, Elvis was winded occasionally, but to say that he couldn't hit any high notes is quite the exaggeration.

While I will be the first one to admit that the Elvis of 1977 was not the Elvis of 1970, I'd submit the Elvis of 1972 was not the Elvis on 1970 either...the difference in my opinion is Elvis gets more of a pass in 1972 because he looked better.

Juan Luis · #264970

A singer does not know beforehand if the high note will be hit on the mark until it is done. Of course if the singer feels and sounds good the attempt will hardly be risky. In Elvis' case it was wise on his part and very generous to his fans by singing those difficult songs live. Imo.

Juan Luis · #264984

In Elvis' case with Unchained it is a falsetto and he actually got it with Nielsen just extending what Elvis did. With My Way (not falsetto but full) It is even clearer and just getting backup for just in case. So we really at a certain point hear two voices blended together and separated at the last fraction of a second with the "extension".

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What were Elvis highlight moments after 1973?

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