Elvis alternate music career

Jan Gronvik

What if colonel Parker dies in, let's say, 1961?
What will happen to Elvis Presley's career?
Who will take over as his manager?
Extrapoints if you can make Elvis a real challenger to Beatles and Rolling Stones during the 60's and start to make world tours before the 70's.
 
Plumber

Plumber

theodorerooseveltawardforexcellence.png
Elvis has a much greater chance of transitioning to becoming a serious actor, which is what he wanted. Parker rejected attempts for Elvis to be in a few very good movies around this time, but for the life of me I can't find the information about it now. And we all know what actor Elvis means... ;):cool: You'd have to something about the drugs, though, or Elvis' life isn't going to have a happy ending

theodorerooseveltawardforexcellence.png
 

cclittle

Confederate War of Independence

Unfortunatley both Elvis's mother and father were killed in the Second War for Independence. So, there is no Elvis, Tom Parker or Rock and Roll.
 

Jan Gronvik

He would need to make some good movies during the 60's, one or two that were oscar nominated. He would also have to get good song material from modern songwriters (Bob Dylan? even Lennon/McCartney?).
 

MacCaulay

Banned
Jan Gronvik said:
He would need to make some good movies during the 60's, one or two that were oscar nominated. He would also have to get good song material from modern songwriters (Bob Dylan? even Lennon/McCartney?).
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If he had gotten that supporting role in The Rainmaker, then he would've been primed for a take off.

King Creole showed everyone that he could actually act: his turn in that film was like a musical James Dean. He could do the sullen loner thing very well, and he did it again in Flaming Star and made another riff on it in Charro!.

I think he could've been really good in ensemble films like Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, etc., that had a number of talented actors and let them all have a moment in the spotlight. Elvis was fine with sharing the spotlight back then: he just wanted to show folks he could act and wanted parts that stretched his dramatic chops.


Heck...to take a page from a recent remake: perhaps he could've played Le Beouf in the original True Grit. Lord knows he wouldn't have been a worse or less logical choice than Glen Campbell. :D
 
Plumber

Plumber

wolf_brother said:
Off-topic, but why is it I've lurked at this site for over a year before joining and I've never seen this image before, though I've seen the Vlad Tepes award dozens of times.
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Polish Eagle created a rougher version once, and I polished the image. It's new :cool: Spread the faith! Spreaaad!

Ok so Parker ruined Elvis' chance of being in these movies: :mad:
Thunder Road 1958
West Side Story 1961 (!)
Midnight Cowboy 1969 (!)
A Star is Born 1974 The POD makes Thunder Road too late, probably West Side Story since Elvis was a year before IIRC (he was offered Thunder Road in '57 and liked it, but Parker demanded too much money).
Hmmm... what time would Parker's death be the best for Elvis? Seems to me he was good at the very beginning (Love Me Tender), but that's it. Perhaps while Elvis is in Germany? Too late for Thunder Road though...
 

MacCaulay

Banned
I pitched this idea to my mother, who's a die-hard Elvis fan. She thought the whole West Side Story pitch was kind of an odd fit, but made an interesting point:

"If Trini Lopez could be in Dirty Dozen, then Elvis could do it." And she's got a point. Trini Lopez was like the Ricky Martin of his generation, and they cast him in that film. I think Elvis could've easily pulled off that role, with it just rewritten as a Southern soldier instead of a hispanic character.

All folks need to do is think of the range Elvis had: most folks think of Elvis and picture Blondes, Blondes, Blondes or something. Not many of them picture Charro:

charro.jpg


Sure, maybe the movie wasn't a classic but it showed he had the ability to play "grizzled."
 

phx1138

cclittle said:
there is no Elvis, Tom Parker or Rock and Roll.
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You're joking, right? Elvis was just not that important to the creation of R&R. It might not be as big, & you might butterfly The Beatles, but there'd be R&R. Might be called R&B still, or rockabilly, instead, tho, & sound more like Poco than the Stones.
MacCaulay said:
"If Trini Lopez could be in Dirty Dozen, then Elvis could do it." And she's got a point. Trini Lopez was like the Ricky Martin of his generation, and they cast him in that film. I think Elvis could've easily pulled off that role, with it just rewritten as a Southern soldier instead of a hispanic character.
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Take another angle or 2. Rick Nelson did a couple of films, & Dean Martin did a few. (Hell, Audie Murphy did a few!) None of them were exactly great actors; they were box office draws, which was what counted. Was Elvis serious about acting, about actually getting good? Looks could carry him til he got good enough. (It's worked for a lot of pretty women who weren't really good at first, & a few men, too.)
Plumber said:
Ok so Parker ruined Elvis' chance of being in these movies: :mad:
Thunder Road 1958
A Star is Born 1974
The POD makes Thunder Road too late, probably West Side Story since Elvis was a year before IIRC (he was offered Thunder Road in '57 and liked it, but Parker demanded too much money).
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Seeing "Thunder Road" was a Mitchum vanity project, I'm not sure Elvis would get it anyhow. Or was he up for Jim Mitchum's role (the brother)? Also, IIRC, Elvis was offered "A Star is Born", but didn't want to play a has-been.
 
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Plumber

Plumber

phx1138 said:
You're joking, right? Elvis was just not that important to the creation of R&R. It might not be as big, & you might butterfly The Beatles, but there'd be R&R. Might be called R&B still, or rockabilly, instead, tho, & sound more like Poco than the Stones.

Take another angle or 2. Rick Nelson did a couple of films, & Dean Martin did a few. (Hell, Audie Murphy did a few!) None of them were exactly great actors; they were box office draws, which was what counted. Was Elvis serious about acting, about actually getting good? Looks could carry him til he got good enough. (It's worked for a lot of pretty women who weren't really good at first, & a few men, too.)

Seeing "Thunder Road" was a Mitchum vanity project, I'm not sure Elvis would get it anyhow. Or was he up for Jim Mitchum's role (the brother)? Also, IIRC, Elvis was offered "A Star is Born", but didn't want to play a has-been.
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I'd say no Beatles and a possible name change is a pretty significant difference from OTL ;) Yes, Elvis wanted to be a serious actor. Parker (and Elvis' deference to him) ruined that since after all, "the only sure thing in Hollywood is an Elvis picture". Jim Mitchum's role was written for Elvis.
 

Jan Gronvik

DuQuense said:
Without Parker, I feel that Elvis would have drifted back more towards his Country Music Roots.
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I think that depends on who becomes his new manager. If he gets a manager who knows a lot about different kinds of contemporary popular music and who has a big network of contacts (songwriters and producers), then I think that Elvis will record all sorts of songs.

It would be really cool if he could challenge the biggest names of the 60's in their own game at the right time. Imagine a real Elvis wank:

1962: An album with Dylan style songs

1964: An album in the British pop genre (like The Beatles)

1965: An album in the British rock genre (like The Stones, The Kinks etc)

1966: A real soul album

Combine this with a really good elvis movie every other year of the 1960's and his career would hit the stratosphere...
World tours with all this good music material would be a sure thing in the later half of the decade.
With this type of career change Elvis might limit the drug use considerably because he would have personal challenges to achieve all the time instead of sinking into boredom.
 

phx1138

Plumber said:
I'd say no Beatles and a possible name change is a pretty significant difference from OTL ;)
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Ah, but that's not "creation", exactly, is it? Elvis played no part, AFAIK, in the naming: that was Alan Freed. Rock & roll, by any name, would have happened without Elvis, & that's the point. Nor are the Beatles "creation", either: "success", yes, even "revolution" (tho as a non-Boomer, I'm sick of hearing how the Beatles were the most important thing to happen to music since notes:rolleyes::rolleyes:), but not "creation".
Plumber said:
Yes, Elvis wanted to be a serious actor. Parker (and Elvis' deference to him) ruined that since after all, "the only sure thing in Hollywood is an Elvis picture". Jim Mitchum's role was written for Elvis.
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I could see it. I can also believe Elvis could do it: he worked pretty hard making his music work. Also, didn't he have some qualms about doing R&R, believing it "devil's music"? He might've been able to make an acting career & stick to gospel (where he won his Grammys anyhow).:cool:
 

arrowiv

AFAIK, Elvis unsuccessfully tried to fire the Colonel in 1973 but backed down only to be told he owed Parker two million dollars. Just before he passed away, he definitely planned to fire Parker and road manager Joe Esposito once and for all.
 

TRX

Only peripherally related to this thread, I had a disturbing dream the other night. I dreamed I was watching some "moldy oldie" rock video channel (I don't even have a TV...) and saw Elvis Presley doing his cover of Cheap Trick's "Surrender" from a live performance during his 1979 Comeback Tour. It bothered me enough to wake me up from the dream; I couldn't remember of the "Dream Police" album came out in 1982 or 1983; the anachronism made me get up and go to the web, where I found Cheap Trick had actually released that track in 1978. No anachronism.

Sometimes the dreaming mind gets a little strange...

"Mother told me
yes she told me
I'd meet girls like you.
She also told me
'Stay away, you never know
what you'll get!'"
 

Janprimus

Without colonel Parker born as Dries van Kuijk in Breda, North Brabant, the Netherlands, Elvis could have become a even bigger star outside the US. Colonel Parker didn't want nor arrange performances or even a tour outside the US (with the exception of Canada); some speculate that this may have something to do with the fact, that colonel Parker (Van Kuijk) was afraid that he was considered an illegal alien in the US or even a stateless citizen, because by joining the US army he also had lost his Dutch citizenship.

IMHO more internal performances/tours would greatly benefit the popularity of Elvis outside the US.
 

Dilvish

The Million Dollar Quartet becomes an ongoing side project for Elvis. The Quartet's members are Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis. A couple of albums and tours feature Ray Charles filling in for Jerry Lee Lewis, who is unavailable due to legal problems.
 
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