It’s an American trilogy! My original plan for the Elvis entries was to do them as a high concept piece inspired by (ripping off) Borges’ “Pierre Menard, Author Of The Quixote”. Since, in their wisdom, the Official Charts Company decided these were new singles not re-entries, I would write three pieces about an artist in 2005 who had arrived, note for note, at the same recordings as Elvis Presley in the late 1950s.
This treatment didn’t survive contact with a blank page but the conceit worked best for “It’s Now Or Never” – writing a blue-balls ballad around an interpolation of an ice cream ad is the sort of thing 21st century acts wind up doing. The odd thing is, the fictional Menard-Elvis’ decision to nick “Just One Cornetto” for his third single – two bangers then a slowie, the traditional formula – is actually fairly close to what the Elvis-Elvis really did with “O Sole Mio”, the late 1890s smash which eventually reached him during his army service in Germany, in another English-language version. The tune captivated him, he decided he wanted one for himself, and commissioned a new set of lyrics.
My original “It’s Now Or Never” entry was desultory, but unlike the other two Elvis tunes I got the basics right – Elvis’ reading of his song is odd to the point of feeling creepy: belting choruses and ludicrous hammed-up delicacy on the verses, like this fancy new style he’s trying out is Dresden china.
For me, everything good about the song comes from the band, whose easy Nashville swing puts some life in the recording and means “It’s Now Or Ever” avoids the orchestral tar pit that sucked in the likes of “Cara Mia”. If in 1960 “It’s Now Or Never” looked like a bet against rock’s longevity, with hindsight it’s jumping to a sinking ship: it’s a late flowering of the Italophilia that helped define 50s pop culture and which endured in fashion and food.*
If Elvis had to have yet another No.1 (and he really didn’t) then I guess it’s fitting it’s with one of his genuine signature tunes, which kicked off the post-Army era and ignited the phase of his career which brought him most UK success. As a career move at the time it must have been fascinating, shocking even – Elvis as Mario Lanza! The results delighted him – both Elvis and Priscilla Presley described the track as his favourite, further evidence that artists’ opinions on their own careers are fascinating but not always trustworthy.
*(Including ice cream! Walls’ “Just One Cornetto” ad, with a gondolier serenading a young woman as an excuse to snatch her ice cream cone, reintroduced “O Sole Mio” to my generation of kids in 1982. Obviously the version of the song it’s riffing on is “It’s Now Or Never” – “give it to me!” cries and all. By this point the semiotics of European sophistication were remarkably tangled. The ad is treating the romance of Italy and Venice as a cliche to have a bit of over-the-top fun with, but the same year Walls launched Viennetta, whose sensual ads (equally corny now) dripped with masked-ball chic and touch of the gothic. And Cornetto was originally an Italian brand, acquired by Walls around the time Elvis raided the German pop charts for “It’s Now Or Never” – but the intriguingly Austro-Italian sounding Viennetta originated in Gloucester. Oh, and the gondolier turned out to be Renato, who sold millions that year with his own absurd take on the pop aria. “O Sole Mio” is a wild fractal of a song – the more you look, the more stories you can turn up.)
Score: 4
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I still really like this. One of my favourite Elvis UK #1s. I will double Tom’s score and give this an 8/10, the same as my initial rating.
P.S. I do quite like Ashanti’s ‘Only U’ #2 hit (held off by Elvis). I don’t remember it at the time, but I think I prefer it to many of the ’04-’05 number ones.
At this point, on the Radio 1 chart show front, it’s time to say goodbye to Wes for whom this reissue was the final ever UK number one single he got to reveal – t.A.T.u.’s “All the Things She Said” on 9th February 2003 (its’ first week at No.1, 2nd February 2003, was instead revealed by Scott Mills).
My parents had the original “It’s Now Or Never” 45 in their collection. They didn’t seem to like it much, feeling that it wasn’t Elvis at his best, so I have no idea why it was there and not any of the better Presley discs they might have chosen to own. Then again, the singles they owned were treated with a disrespect the albums never saw, all out of their sleeves and piled up in a higgeldy heap in a tiny cupboard. They appeared to be deemed disposable product – shrapnel from their teenage lives – whereas the LPs were clean, uncreased and filed neatly and alphabetically in a proper rack.
I was forbidden from touching the LPs with my sticky child’s fingers, but the singles were deemed fair game, and “It’s Now Or Never” was one of the ones I liked and played a lot. I can still see my sticky, jammy fingerprints all over the grooves of the copy (which I rescued from a charity shop bag my parents made many decades ago). What I loved about it as a kid was that galloping rhythm, and the fact Elvis seemed to be singing his adoration from the bottom of some kind of cavernous well. It sounded heroic and grand and it had a tune I could hold in my head easily. I didn’t ask for much more from pop songs as a small child. My other big favourite at this time was “Wild West Hero” by ELO which expressed similar qualities in a different way.
The main reason I can’t be bothered to clean the thing up and get it into a more playable state these days is because truthfully, I can’t get back to that place as an adult, anymore than I really want to listen to “The Smurf Song” again. These days it sounds too simple, too cartoonish, far too much of a cliche of a serenade. Sing this to a woman now in an attempt to woo her, and she’d laugh, even if your voice was extraordinary. It’s almost insincere in its grandstanding, and the “cha cha cha” bit on the end is almost John Shuttleworth by modern-day standards as well (or perhaps John Shuttleworth by way of Stevie Wonder’s “I Just Called To Say I Love You”).
All that said, I still enjoy that galloping rhythm and the heroic daftness of it when I’m in the right mood. And for reasons nobody can discern, it’s my sheepdog’s favourite song – or at least the only one she howls along to while thrashing her tail if an ice cream van plays it or anyone tries to sing it. Maybe especially bright dogs and very small children have a point of entry here nobody can yet explain.
4 from me, 10 from the dog, then.
Funnily enough, my dad had a 45 of this. He’d bought a second hand Wurlitzer juke box which was stuffed with singles, mostly from the post-rock’n’roll/pre-Beatles fallow. Loads of great stuff in retrospect though at the time I was miffed it didn’t have more of the cool 60s bands that the britpoppers were talking about.
I remember playing this a fair bit cos it was Elvis who was one of a handful of people among the stack of 7″s I’d heard of and liking it enough but finding it pretty corny even back then.
Some posts ago I alluded to the end of 2005 being when I discovered the recent Elvis No. 1s. That’s because I got that year’s British Hit Singles & Albums for Christmas, which had a feature for the first 1,000 number one singles. Definitely puzzled me that seeing as both of the reissues listed – and then this one – passed me by.