These were the words spoken by the lovable bully Rooney in the unfairly forgotten eighties' masterpiece Heaven Help Us. He and his buddies Dunn, Caesar, Williams and Corbett had just skipped out on a chance to see the Pope paying a visit to the United States for the first time in order to bear witness to someone they doubtless worshiped far more. Though set in Brooklyn in 1965, the gang attended a showing of Blue Hawaii. It's possible a New York cinema would have been playing a four-year-old picture on some random afternoon but why on earth was Rooney so surprised by Elvis' metamorphosis at this late stage?
As many have pointed out over the past several decades, those two years spent in the army changed Elvis. He got himself hooked on amphetamines, his mother Gladys passed away and his trademark sideburns got taken out of the picture. What this conveniently leaves out though is that Elvis Presley was probably going to change anyway. He had a huckster manager who was convinced rock 'n' roll was little more than a passing fancy so he had to get him set up for a more conventional showbusiness path of traditional pop and Hollywood. By marking his return on a Frank Sinatra television special, Colonel Tom Parker knew exactly the kind of audience he wished to court.
The other thing to consider is that Elvis probably had to change by the turn of the sixties. The public perception of rock music by this time was a passing fancy. Rather than leading a whole new generation of wildcat sex god singers, The King began to become more like the crew of stars — Paul Anka, Frankie Avalon, bloody Fabian — that had risen in prominence as an alternative to everything he once represented. Not nearly as musically gifted or curious as The Everly Brothers or Buddy Holly, it wasn't as though he was about to start experimenting or anything. Elvis, there's nowhere else for you to go so take the middle of the road.
"It's Now or Never" is the first true post-army Elvis work. It's the first hit single that he couldn't possibly have made prior to the winter of 1958. Slushy love songs were never his specialty but it's likely that maturity and better material to work with upped his game considerably. The same cannot be said for his rockers if "A Mess of Blues" is anything to go by. Though the majority of his Canadian singles were still being marketed as double A-sides, this tactic wasn't fooling anyone by then. Everyone bought it for "It's Now or Never", everyone who requested their local DJ play it wanted him to spin the side with "It's Now or Never" and everyone who popped a nickel or dime into a jukebox was either going for an entirely different record on offer or "It's Now or Never". I wouldn't have done any of these things myself but you do you, as they say.
So, who exactly did cut Elvis' balls off? The army and/or Colonel Tom are the easy culprits but he undertook the emasculating of his own accord. As Tom Ewing states in his review, he sounds like a great big wimp in the verses. "It's No or Never" has never been sexy but neither is it the strong statement that it is meant to be. Who issues an ultimatum by being such a pathetic worm? It is only with the powerfully delivered chorus that Elvis rescues this recording from the gutter. He had changed and things would never be quite the same again but it's not as though The King's vocal prowess had deserted him completely — not yet, at any rate.
Score: 5
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