Heartbreak Hotel was not Elvis Presley's first single--songs like That's Alright Mama, Mystery Train and I Forgot To Remember To Forget, his first national chart-topping hit, predated it by a year--but it was destined in many ways to define the Elvis persona and arguably become the first rock 'n' roll record. It was a song of teenage angst. Not the puppy love hand-wringing of later songs of the era but the real end-of-the-line, so-lonely-I-could-die variety that in those early days only Elvis and his rebel stance could make ring with authenticity. It established rock 'n' roll as an attitude -- brash, rebellious and sexually- charged -- as much as a musical style and gave it life as the soundtrack for alienated youth even during American boom times in the '50s. John Lennon once commented that if there had been no Elvis, there would have been no Beatles.
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Heartbreak Hotel was not Elvis Presley's first single--songs like That's Alright Mama, Mystery Train and I Forgot To Remember To Forget, his first national chart-topping hit, predated it by a year--but it was destined in many ways to define the Elvis persona and arguably become the first rock 'n' roll record. It was a song of teenage angst. Not the puppy love hand-wringing of later songs of the era but the real end-of-the-line, so-lonely-I-could-die variety that in those early days only Elvis and his rebel stance could make ring with authenticity. It established rock 'n' roll as an attitude -- brash, rebellious and sexually- charged -- as much as a musical style and gave it life as the soundtrack for alienated youth even during American boom times in the '50s. John Lennon once commented that if there had been no Elvis, there would have been no Beatles.
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as Self (archive footage)
