WEEK 7 - PERSUASION

EXPRESSIONS OF PERSUASION

- Are you sure you ought to make that complaint?

- That's quite a good idea, you know.

- What about your friends?

- I could do with your support, you know.

- I can assure you of my full support.

- Please!

- Give it a try.

- Come on.

- Why don't you...?

- It will be fun, I'm sure.

HYPOTHESIS

A quiet, chilling ballad, Suppose is worth a listen in its own right. It is one of a handful of Elvis’s recordings that ¬– like his cover of Dylan’s Tomorrow Is A Long Time – suggests roads he sadly never got to take. Yet it also intrigues me because of the possibility – and I put it no more strongly than that – that it inspired Imagine, the utopian anthem that became John Lennon’s signature song. The mere suggestion has divided Presley’s legion of fans. On one online forum, some have noted similarities between the songs – one even suggesting "It’s obvious that John Lennon committed plagiarism" ¬– while another countered: "To say this inspired Imagine is ludicrous and there is nothing remotely close between the 2 songs except the titles. Thanks for the laugh."

Suppose has no right to be as good as it is. The song’s co-writers are George Goehring and Sylvia Dee. Goehring is best known for writing Little Donkey while Dee provided the lyrics for Chickery Chick, a song about a chicken with the irritating habit of saying "Chickery chick, cha-la, cha-la, chekala romey/In a bananika bollika wollika" which topped the US charts in 1945. She also co-wrote Moonlight Swim with Ben Weisman for Blue Hawaii. In a bizarre coincidence, Dee died, at the age of 52, eight days before Elvis recorded Suppose in MGM Studios in Culver City, California.

Goehring and Dee’s reflective, desolate ballad clearly intrigued Presley. He can be heard performing it at Graceland on The Home Recordings compilation and, in June 1967, he cut a long and a short version of the song. Elvis's phrasing is impeccable – the pause after "suppose I had no wish" and before "to be alive" is exquisite. Though Elvis sings as if he’s gripped by existential despair, his performance, like the song, is simple and plaintive, letting the haunting lyrics work their magic. When he speculates that the tall green trees may not survive, the thought is mysteriously moving.

This was clearly a song that Elvis cared deeply about and so, inevitably, it was not included in Speedway, the movie for which it was created. It was buried at the film’s soundtrack album, the worst selling in Presley’s career, stalling at No82 in the Billboard charts.

This week, I have studied some vocabulary on Internet.