Recently, Robin Leach interviewed Erich van Tourneau , the producer and musician who is responsible for the musical holocaust “Viva Elvis”. It is my intention to make some observations about this interview to show that Erich is not only lying, but also knows little about Elvis Presley or the culture/musical landscape that produced him. My comments are in bold and bracketed.
Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past decade giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premier platinum playground.
Cirque du Soleil’s Viva Elvis at MGM City Center’s Aria, Elvis Presley Enterprises and Legacy Recordings released Viva Elvis: the Album yesterday to commemorate the 75th birthday year of Elvis Presley. The album, a celebration of Elvis and his music featuring his voice in a new context, was produced and arranged by Erich van Tourneau, Viva Elvis’ music director and arranger at Aria.
The album includes re-imagined versions of “Blue Suede Shoes,” “That’s Alright,” “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Love Me Tender,” “King Creole,” “Bossa Nova,” “Burning Love,” “Can’t Help Falling in Love” and “Suspicious Minds,” as well as interludes based on “Memories” and “You’ll Never Walk Alone (Piano Interlude).”
Erich, who performs on bass, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, piano and keyboards on the new album, told me that he spent 3,000 hours listening to 914 albums with Elvis songs and that more than 17,000 samples of Elvis songs were used to make the 12 “new” tracks.
[ Upon immediate listen to "Viva Elvis", one thing stands out very clearly. This album was thrown together quickly. Reportedly, over 40 tracks were recorded, but the album was neatly trimmed down to 12 tracks. It is extremely doubtful that Erich spent 3000 hours listening to Elvis Presley, as the end result ( the album ) would have been a far different record. It is more likely, Erich spent a large amount of time listening to contemporary - or new - music, with an occasional Elvis disc to see how to spin this release. I'm also puzzled at how he was able to listen to 914 albums when there are only about 75 or so? Even with a massive collection of bootlegs and the entire FTD catalog , how could he still listen to 914 albums? Was he listening to the multiple re-hash releases that Sony/BMG cranks out on a yearly basis as well? Even with all of those, I find the number 914 to be unbelievable. ]
“His voice is the heart of this project,” Erich told me. “I was taking vocals he recorded 66 years ago back in 1954 and painting new colors on them to make it relevant in today’s music.
[Relevant? A term all too often used to try and validate inferior new music with superior old music. Simply ride the coat tales of the music greats, and it might get you somewhere. How can anybody with a brain think Elvis Presley is not relevant? That he is forgotten? That his original recordings are not good enough? Another question is simply : "Why?" Why does Elvis need to be relevant with today's music? Elvis isn't going anywhere, nor has there been any indication that he is going to be disappearing. Elvis has always 'been there' and he'll always 'be here'. To make this statement, Erich needs to back it up, and it had better be good.]
It was the most interesting project of my life and at the same time the most complicated.”
[And it will probably be his last. Erich signed his own "Career Death Certificate" by making this project in the manor he did so.]
“A lot of his best material goes back to the ’50s when he was a dangerous rebel who created a musical revolution. It was the ultimate technical technique to bring him back to life today.
[ The first statement, is correct. But as far as "bringing him back to life today" , what indication in those alleged 914 albums gave the indication that Elvis would sound like this now? Also, haven't Ernst and Roger been spending the last 22 years trying to make Elvis's masters sound fresh and strong while retaining their original sound and impact? ]
It was like changing an old black and white movie into HD super sound.
[ Black and White movies are not artistic statements, or not worthy? And why turn them into HD super sound? Don't you mean HD Super "Picture Quality" and "Sound" ?]
Remember when he recorded ‘That’s Alright,’ it was in mono — not even stereo!
[ The first 70 years of the 20th Century was predominantly mono. A blatant display of ignorance about our musical past, and the history of the recording business.]
“I used a state-of-the-art program, which in some way makes audio-engineering history, where we took the heavenly choir of the Jordanaires,
[ I noticed the Jordenaires to be predominantly missing throughout the album. Erased. Gone. Nowhere to be found except buried deep in the mix for only seconds?]
changed the key and transposed the vocals to get the perfect note of the chords. You couldn’t have Elvis more modern if you ever tried to beat what we did. It’s as if Elvis is here in the room with us because we wanted him living in 2010.
[ There is a serious ego emerging here, with no humble mentions. Here, Erich begins to make it very clear that this is 'his' album. Not an Elvis album.]
“We even have his first live recording when he was just 19 years old and showed his distinctive style. It was recorded at the Louisiana Hay Ride. These are lost recordings
[ No. They are not lost recordings. They have been widely available since the early 1980s. There ARE lost recordings, but none were used on this project.]
– little pieces of magic that we’d sample from each one during editing to get the best Elvis voice possible. We worked with the original masters from SUN Studios, which is really The Holy Grail.”
[ No, you didn't work with the original masters from Sun Studios, because Sony/BMG only owns the tape given to them by Sam Phillips which contained dubs of the 78rpm releases, and a few out-takes. The master tapes reside with a private collector in Europe. Erich worked with 'second generation' masters. Not the real masters.]
Erich explained that today’s new record in a sense becomes Viva Elvis’ soundtrack.
[ Since few of us have ever seen the show itself, this came as a severe shock! The public was told this WAS the soundtrack to Viva Elvis. So this isn't what the show sounds like? If not, what was the point in making it?]
“With so many variations, it’ll take another couple of weeks before those modifications are worked into the show at Aria. It’s a case of where the egg came before the chicken because we did our project first, and now the show will change to match it. That’s a first in theater history.
“Sometimes I stripped out Elvis’ original musicians from back then to use our own musicians here at the Vegas show. But I’d still use a guitar track from back then and mix with our own musicians.
[ Generally, throughout the album, Erich completely erased Elvis's musicians from the recordings. It is very evident, that it is mostly Erich performing the instrumental backgrounds. Almost NONE of Elvis's musicians are on the record. If there grounds for any legal action, I suggest they take it against all parties responsible for this atrocity]
Cirque du Soleil’s Viva Elvis, Cirque’s seventh spectacular on The Strip, fuses dance, acrobatics and live music in the tribute to the life and music of the late King of Rock and Roll and had its world premiere in February in a specially designed 1,800-seat theater at Aria.
[ Cirque has recently acquired Michael Jackson also. There seems to be a goal here to become the World's largest Rock And Roll Circus, almost a bizarre variation of Disneyland in some respects]
“I gave my life to this project. I have no regrets, and I am very reverential toward Elvis. I gave a new lease of life to the original superstar. Every track has the same energy he had back in 1954 but in a 2010 technological way.”
[ Ending with the ego in full force. ]
Interview by Robin Leach
Commentary by Steven B. Roberts
What a douche…. Eff that guy.
Pingback: Viva Elvis goes off the beaten path, sending some fans off the deep end « The Mystery Train Elvis Blog
Hello,
Glad for the info. One thing I heard about the show is that there is a heartbreaking yet beautiful interlude where a simply dressed young woman sings Elvis’s supposedly “cleaned-up” lyrics to “One Night” and sings them AS A BALLAD. The reason? It accompanies a scene about Elvis and his dead twin brother. I haven’t been, but everyone singles that out as perhaps the loveliest moment. What is described here lacks that sort of creativity and sounds like a travesty. I sure hope they left off “Mystery Train” because to remove Elvis’s incredible rhythm guitar {he not only led his little band, but pulled it together as a single instrument!}, Scotty’s soul-searching solo, and that rumble with drumsticks from Bill Black. It doesn’t need ANYTHING! In ’69, the “Bobby Morris Orchestra” and James Burton’s slick solos kinda ravaged it; this sounds like it would be far worse. If he listened to all that stuff, how come he never heard “I Didn’t Make It On Playin’ Guitar” a guitar instrumental that Elvis wrote at the microphone in ’70? Needed more lyrics, so that might have been interesting. {Elvis was not one to go back to the hotel, sit on the bed, and work out the lyrics to the irony of the title and his casual composing on guitar; if it didn’t happen at the mic, he just moved on along. Lil’ Wayne, today, works the same way, I might add. So Elvis WAS already “modern” of course. But many songs in those early ’70s sessions were improvisitory or just plain re-writes of some of the hack material Lamar brought over. Elvis did what he needed to do, but perhaps needed just a solid push to maintain focus and simply reject the junk songs and make ‘em up fresh. He had the chops, as we now know thanks to Ernst’s unearthing, but always felt “responsible” for the phalanx of people who lived off of his recording their crap, and more importantly, crediting them.}
Elvis’s music was so creative and fresh, from “My Happiness” onward that this is so absolutely absurd. But that’s what happens when you die young: any control you had is GONE, forever. Dylan’s company {now the same one as Elvis’s!} is releasing all the original mono masters of his early stuff, and they sound fantastic! Dylan is only a few years younger than Elvis, and intends to live a hell of a lot longer than 75, by the way. And he’s utterly in command, clearly. He knows that mono can shine brighter, and Elvis knew it too. If only he hadn’t . . . well, you know. If he had only gained the maturity to turn things around in his mid to late 30s, before he was just beyond anyone’s help, maybe he’d be here, and he would NOT be in a studio, allowing some hack to hack up his music.
Shoot, in the ’70s, Elvis heard RCA’s horrific “reprocessed stereo” of his ’50s stuff, and HATED IT. I don’t think he realized quite what they did, and thought the records perhaps actually sounded that way when he was a youth. “Man, they sound funny, boy!” he chuckled in early 1970, perhaps not realizing why. As a mature man, if he had somehow jumped over that most horrible time in his young manhood and lived, he would have realized what they did, and never would let it happen again.
But this is NOT his “75th birthday” because he only lived to 42, and barely got there, even. It is the ANNIVERSARY of his birth, not a “Happy Birthday” as RCA, Graceland, or whomever has printed stickers with that saying upon it: “Happy Birthday.” Some sick person did that. Yuck. “Happy?” Huh? My dad, my uncle, my aunt all celebrated their 75th’s a while back, and are fit as fiddles today. Elvis has now been gone longer than his age at the time of the ’68 Comeback special. No, that age was not, and should never be “a lifetime” but it really brings the horror of his exit into focus. Is there any acknowledgment of this tragedy, along with an appreciation for both the triumph and the struggles he endured in his brief life or do they just want to hack him up for a few bucks?
Do yourself a favor and get the recent set of “Legacy” recordings made at 827 Thomas St. in ’69, which has all the mono single masters that Elvis insisted upon, and if you can find it, get the VINYL version of “The Complete Sun Sessions.” It has most, if not all takes of the barely released “My Baby’s Gone,” a jukebox country tune with a different name that Elvis changed to a slow, emotionally withering Delta blues, with new lyrics, new blues melody, a guitar figure Scotty got from the Delmore Brothers and adapted to Elvis’s own chord changes. By the last few takes, he’s just swimming in the blues, when he’s not soaring. Brilliance that can chill the spine.
I like it that Elvis is at #48 with a bullet on Billboard’s album chart, but it’s not worth it. There is still amazing stuff either in the can, or only briefly released. Gosh, the very first concert of Elvis’s 70′s tours was filmed by Dennis Sanders in 1970: where is it?? Who needs THIS kind of trash when that’s available? They already did this type of thing back in like ’78 or thereabouts with Jerry Reed “updating” his guitar licks, with little success. It was that sort of nonsense that got guys like Roger and Ernst started! And now they’re going back to such travesties? Why? The re-mixes of “A Little Less Conversation” and “Rubberneckin’” were great because the DJs never got in Elvis’s way at all. They simply took their cues from him, and did not erase! This guy is crazy. Elvis’s stuff is literally timeless {okay, except for some unfortunate ’60s movie crap that Elvis hated}, and timeless in an almost unique way. Virtually NO ONE ELSE, even Dylan, Robert Johnson, or any of the greats, can match the timeless sounds that Elvis made. He once did a song called “A Hundred Years From Now” while bluegrass fast-picking on it himself. Goofing on it, he sang: “it’s all in the past, you can kiss my a–/I won’t care a hundred years from now.” Well, HE won’t, but others WILL care, and still be rockin’ their blues away to the original Elvis!
Best and Happy Holidays,
RM
Good Morning RM
Thank you very much for your in depth replies and very knowledgeable responses and analysis.
Feel free to shoot me an email at discoveringelvis@hotmail.com, I’d love to chat with you.
Take Care
Steve
Vista Elvis CD or Vista Elvis Fans
What’s the wrong with you all? I can imagine you, sitting on a pile of Elvis CDs, shouting out bright ideas! You have penis envy or what? I think if you do not like this CD than you do not like the Comeback Special! Is this really not my parents’ Elvis website? So why do you act as that guy in This Is Elvis: there is no room for rock’n roll in this city!
I’m happy that I was able to buy this CD, and I feel revival every time I listen it!
Why is everybody so hostile about me not liking this album? “Viva Elvis At Free Mail” ?
Johnny? isn’t it?
He sure did mess Elvis music up big time to and I would tell him to his face ehe did. What I have heard of that so called songs by Elvis sucks to high heaven nothing like Elvis ever sang a song in my life time and I remember when Elvis started out to. I was a teenager. I loved him ever since to. Have so much of his stuff I have no more room to keep it but still hanging onto it. I plated the words of his records off the record they were played so much. Still have the worn out record to.