Performativity and the Myth of Elvis Presley in “Tupelo” by Nick Cave & “The Bad Seeds”

1.      Introduction

Nick Cave and “The Bad Seeds” have been creating music since 1983. They are known for special “dark” gothic atmosphere of their music, concerning violence, mystery, references to legends, the Bible, fiction, and music. Nick Cave as an artist is also known in connection with literature and films.

The artist has released a series of books with lyrics of his songs called Complete Lyrics. Starting point is 1978, when Cave was in “The Birthday Party”. The books were released in 2001, 2007, and 2013. Nick Cave is praised as a good writer. In introduction to the collection of essays The Art of Nick Cave: New Critical Essays the editor John Baker marks the richness of images and language in Cave’s songs and recognizes his lyrics as a good material for analysis, “His abilities as a lyricist are extensive and his command of language often masterly.” (2013: 4)

Nick Cave’s songs are rich with intertextual references to the Bible, classical writers as Shakespeare or John Donne, and blues, rock-n-roll, rock music. On references to the Bible and characters from history of blues and rock-n-roll is based the song “Tupelo” which was released in 1985 as a single to the second album by Nick Cave and “The Bad Seeds” The Firstborn Is Dead. The song is assumed to tell a story about the birth of ‘the King of rock-n-roll’ Elvis Presley in Tupelo, Mississippi, during a big storm. Nick cave reinterprets this story, using images from the Bible and folklore, references to music of John Lee Hooker and Lead Belly. As a result, Cave creates a new narrative. Moreover, it is important how he tells this story, how he performs, and the official video for “Tupelo” can help to understand it.

In the essay I would like to explore how Nick Cave interprets the myth of Elvis Presley through intertextual images and performativity. It is worth mentioning that both Presley and Cave are assumed as good performers, and the act of interpreatation in “Tupelo” creates a correlation between them. First of all, I would like to analyze the images in the song as a literary text. Then I will proceed to describing the peculiarities of Elvis Presley’s myth basing on essay by Greil Marcus in order to be able to compare the researcher’s image with the image created by Nick Cave. In a third step, it is necessary to explore the meaning and value of performativity on the example of “Tupelo”. 

2.      Performativity and the Myth of Elvis Presley

2.1 Plot and Images in “Tupelo”

 Analysis of a song is a special process as long as a song is not only a text and not only music. A song is a field for intermedial research. As Werner Wolf states in “Literature and Music: Theory”, “the singing of a song is rather a synthesis than a combination of media, although for the sake of analysis, the two medial components can still be clearly distinguished” (2015: 463). This can be referred also to songs of Nick Cave which are the synthesis of lyrics and music. Moreover, one more medium can be added to words and sounds – it is the body of the artist which integrates the performative component.

In video for the song “Tupelo” Nick Cave looks like a magician, a person who is performing a sacred act. He appears from the darkness, like a lightning. There is a lightning on the screen behind Cave and a sound of thunderstorm. So, the recipient can get a feeling of witnessing a special ritual.

Nick Cave tells a story about the King, who is born in Tupelo. First of all, the song has a plot and narrative structure, which refers more to the literary tradition, than to musical one. This text has features of a legend, as it is impossible to imagine described events in the real life, it is hyperbolized. The first and second stanzas prepare the recipient for a big disaster, coming to Tupelo:

Looka yonder! Looka yonder!

Looka yonder! A big black cloud come!

A big black cloud come!

O comes to Tupelo. Comes to Tupelo.

Yonder on the horizon

Yonder on the horizon

Stopped at the mighty river

Stopped at the mighty river and

Sucked the damn thing dry. (II. 1-9)  

The life stops and turns into a nightmare: “Ya can tell ya self ya dreaming  buddy / But no sleep runs this deep” (II. 26-27). A cloud sucked all the water from the river and is going to pour it down on Tupelo. This creates a big flood, like the Biblical Great Flood. It is the end of the world, and another one Biblical image “The Beast it cometh” (I. 14) strengthens apocalyptic motives. The Judgment Day is coming and citizens will have to pay for Tupelo’s shame, as if it was the Original Sin:

Women at their windows

Rain crashing on the pane

Writing in the frost

Tupelos' shame. Tupelo's shame. (II. 30-33)

Only the newborn King, the new Messiah, can take away the shame:

The King will walk on Tupelo!

Tupelo-o-o! O Tupelo!

He carried the burden outa Tupelo! (II. 80-82)

In addition to Biblical intertextuality, Nick Cave’s “Tupelo” is based on the song by blues musician John Lee Hooker “Tupelo Blues”. John Lee Hooker sings about great storm in Tupelo which destroyed the town and lives of its citizens and performs his singing calm and neutral (unlikely to Cave). The reference to Hooker is not only about on Tupelo, it also creates a connection with “black” blues music. Additionally, the first words “Looka younder!” refer to the song of another blues and folk singer Lead Belly “Black Betty”.

The King’s name is not mentioned in the song, it relies upon the erudition of recipient. But for those who are familiar with the history of rock-n-roll it is clear, that the King’s name is Elvis Presley. The reference to rock-n-roll music can be found also in the words “O ma-ma rock your baby / O ma-ma rock your lil' one slow” (II. 70-71), so Cave compares carrying a child to dancing to rock-n-roll, as if Elvis did his special performative moves from the day he was born. Beside this, Presley was born after his stillborn brother. Nick Cave also mentions this fact in his song:

Well Saturday gives what Sunday steals

And a child is born on his brothers heels

Come Sunday morn the first-born dead

In a shoebox tied with a ribbon of red (II. 63-66).

A phrase “the firstborn dead”, which refers to Elvis’s brother, gives the name for Nick Cave’s album. On the one hand, it looks strange because the accent is supposed to be on Elvis himself. On the other hand, it creates the atmosphere of something supernatural, magic, as birth and death go hand to hand, and a legend of rock-n-roll is born “on his brother’s heels”. It gives an impression that the King of rock-n-roll got his talent from higher forces.

All the biblical images emphasize the strength of Elvis Presley. The redeemer is born and even the nature feels it. Biblical motives strengthen the symbolical meaning of the song. Nick Cave uses these motives to create the image of half-god, half-human, to strengthen the myth of Elvis Presley. On the other hand, the King can be seen both Messiah and monster. He comes to carry “the burden” of people, but he is simultaneously monstrous, as long as his birth is followed by death and the appearance of the King is like the Doomday, it causes fear, “Why the hen won't lay no egg / Can't get that cock to crow” (II. 19-20).

Probably, there can be a parallel between the image of Presley and Sandman. Originally, Sandman as a character of folklore is not evil, he sprinkles magic sand into people’s eyes and puts people to sleep. On the contrary, there is novel The Sandman by E.T.A. Hoffmann in which Sandman steals children’s eyes. Nick Cave uses images from the Bible, folklore, history of blues and rock-n-roll in their full complexity, creating layers for interpretation and causing complicated reactions:

O go to sleep lil children

The sandmans in his way

But the lil children know

They listen to the beating of their blood […]

The sandman's mud! (II. 35-45) 

The end of the song “Tupelo” is unexpected. Nick Cave finishes with the words from Galatians: “You will reap just what you sow” (I. 88). These words mean that every action has its consequences. It is difficult to understand if it is a claim that the Judgment Day is coming, that Elvis is a consequence of certain processes in the society, or if it is just a paronomasia.

2.2 The Myth of Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley became a character of modern mythology. It is rather not a person, but an image, a full complexity of his biography, his music and the most remarkable – his performance; moreover, Elvis as an image is also a product of collective work, counting those who helped him to create his music and those who listen to his music. As Greil Marcus ironically mentioned in his essay “Elvis: Presliad”, even credible writers became obsessed with the King, so their musical reviews “sometimes resemble Biblical accounts of heavenly miracles (2005: 132). In comparison with these words, Cave’s version of Messiah Presley, on the one hand, seems to complement the general trend; on the other, it can be an irony, a play.

Elvis Presley became a part of the myth of American dream. A boy from countryside became a star with shiny smile and glittering costumes. This image could fulfill high hopes and hidden desires of the audience. Elvis was “a great artist, a great rocker, a great purveyor of schlock, a heart throb, a great bore, a great symbol of potency, a great ham,  great nice person, and, yes, a great American” (2005: 132).

At the beginning of his essay Greil Marcus sees Elvis Presley as a superficial image which hides a complete emptiness, absence of commitment and creativity. Marcus asks: “How can anyone create when all one has to do is appear?” Elvis did not have to struggle with someone, because his audience was completely satisfied accepting him. He was “appearing” and at the same time did not seem to believe in his myth completely, distancing himself with irony, “so he performs from a distance, laughing at his myth, throwing it away only to see it roar back and trap him once again” (2005: 133). It is also interesting how Marcus sees this “performativity” as something superficial and as a sign of uncreativity, imitation. Both Elvis Presley and Nick Cave are good performers, both of them take something from the predecessors in country music, blues, rock-n-roll, but it is even not “ready-made”. The artists reconsider and actualize the heritage of former years, like Nick Cave does it with Elvis Presley.

Greil Marcus writes about the “mission” of “professional” singer, such as Jimmy Rodgers or Hank Williams:

           “The most vital were singers… They were men who bridged the gap between the community’s sentimentalized idea of itself, and the outside world and the forbidden; artists who could take the community beyond itself because they had the talent and the nerve to transcend it” (2005: 143)”.

From this perspective an artist is a trickster, a mediator between ordinary world with its rules and laws and bigger free universe. Not everyone can transcend the limits of the society.

Developing his ideas in the essay, Greil Marcus mentions that Elvis was not so vane. His earlier songs were unique. Moreover, Elvis, who rose from the tradition of “black” country and blues music, was already an “outsider” as long as he was “white” and could not belong to official community. He was new and genuine, which made him the King. Nowadays he could be compared with Eminem, “white” author who sings “black” music and sometimes acts or “performs” like Elvis to emphasize this connection. All in all, Presley did not imitate “black” tradition, he used it as a basis for creating something different: “instead of following Rodgers’ musical style […] Elvis followed Rodgers’ musical strategy and began the story all over        again” (2005: 173). Thus, there is something special about Elvis, his music and performance, it is the way Elvis distanced himself with irony and emotions he filled his songs with “an overwhelming outburst of real emotion and power, combined with a fine refusal to take himself with any seriousness at all” (2005: 179).

Also Greil Marcus mentions that to some extent Elvis was a product of the society, that wanted to believe in American dream and the King, “This really the last word of our mainstream; its last, most seductive trap: the illusion that American dream has fulfilled itself, that utopia is complete in an America that replaces emotion with sentiment and novelty with expectation” (2005: 189). The artist transcends the limits of the society, but simultaneously he is bounded to be a part of this society. As a result, there could not be any King without America’s wish to believe in illusion.

 At the end of his essay Greil Marcus analyzes the studio version of the song “Mystery Train” and reveals the essential features of Elvis’s performativity. The song was recorded with Parker and Phillips and was supposed to be gloomy blues song about loss of love. It was supposed to expose “almost supernatural loneliness”, even though the text is illogical, the narrator is riding a black train which is simultaneously taking away his love, ” it makes no sense; it simply defines the singer’s world, and there is no way out” (2005: 191). In the classical country and blues music the singer reveals loneliness and emptiness of the world, “The singer was to enter this world, suffer it, make that world real, and thus redeem it” (2005: 192). He is supposed to be a redeemer, Messiah. On the contrary, Elvis is not about sadness and loneliness, even in this song he manages to rebel against the doom, he is singing with protest and joy in his voice:

“Elvis escaped the guilt of the blues – the guilt that is at the heart of the world the blues and country music give us – because he was able to replace the sense that men and women were trapped by fate and by their sins with a complex of emotions that was equally strong and distinctive” (2005: 193).

Thus, Elvis is not a redeemer, but he is the King because he found his special manner to protest against ‘supernatural loneliness’.

2.3 Performativity and Voice

The video for the song “Tupelo” strengthens the atmosphere of mystery. Before Nick Cave and “The Bad Seeds” start to play, there are few seconds of full darkness, creating suspense. Musicians appear with the flash of light, the sound of lightning and thunderstorm, as if the story of the song is happening in real time. The picture is blurred and constantly changing from Cave to “The Bad Seeds”, as if they were continuing flashes. The low sound of bass-guitar appears and it sounds more like a ritual instrument. The basis of the song is composed with bass-guitar, percussion and Cave’s voice. Nick Cave is telling a story from the scene, but still it is not clear, whether he is telling about events he saw or just retelling a legend.

Emotions of the narrator, Cave, are so vivid, that listener can really believe in story about the King. The singer is constantly repeating phrases from the song, which, on the one hand, creates more rhythmical structure, on the other, sounds like a magic spell. Nick Cave is not even singing “normally”, he is reciting more, modulating his voice, playing with it. In the text of “Tupelo” there are assonances and alliterations which strengthen the sounding during recital, “Yonder on the horizon” (I. 5), “Distant thunder rumble” (I. 12).

The gestures of Nick Cave, stunned glances of musicians from “The Bad Seeds” are also important, they complement the story and make the recipient believe and sympathize. In the essay “Intermediality and Performance Art” Christina Ljungberg writes about different definitions of performance and emphasizes the importance of body in the process of producing art, “the key medium is the artist’s body and the work of art is what the performance produces through the live actions s/he performs” (2015: 548).

“Tupelo” is based on features of religious narrative and myths about Elvis Presley. Nick Cave is using Biblical references, but in connection with Elvis Presley and rock-n-roll music they are rather strange. On the one hand, it develops the process of mythologization of “the King”. On the other hand, it complements the general complicated vision of religion in Cave’s songs. Sacred and profane are mixed in order to step “beyond the good and evil” and reach the own enlightenment. Lyn McCredden describes this complicated vision as

“Cave’s sacred is part prophetic Jesus, part Father in the Christian tradition, part Old Testament force of retribution, part metonym for human love and sexual energy, part violent power with unknown capabilities, part absence, part extension of the Cave ego” (Lavery 2013: 30).

Nick Cave can be seen as a private person and a performer. In the essay “The Performance of Voice: Nick Cave and the Dialectic of Abandonment” Carl Lavery mentions that during the analysis of the songs “Cave” can be referred only to the singer, performer, constructed image, but not to the private person: “the name ‘Cave’[…] is posited as an authorial ‘gesture’, a proper noun that ‘marks the point at which a life is offered up and played out in the work” (2013: 30). Like Elvis, at some point Cave becomes a “gesture”, a certain myth of himself. Thus, performativity concerns superficial image, which hides a rather unknown person.

Carl Lavery states that Nick Cave’s listener is influenced not only by the lyrics, content, but also by the music and the voice of the performer. The listener associates himself with the narrator through the voice. As a result, the listener not only feels compassion for the singer, he or she relives the events and emotions implicated in the song. Furthermore, the listener is supposed to pass a complicated way through abandonment towards grace:

“By ‘touching’ our senses with his voice, Cave manages to put the listener in the same anxious and wretched position as the narrator of the song. We are ‘parachuted’ into the place of Other, seduced into going somewhere else, towards a place where we, too, are abandoned and lost” (2013: 29).

Listening to music and interpreting – are individual processes. Each statement is marked by personal features of the listener and by inability to really express the reaction. In connection to this idea, Carl Lavery cites the words of Roland Barthes from the essay “The Grain of the Voice”, “‘[w]hat I shall attempt to say of the “grain” will, of course, be only the apparently abstract side, the impossible account of an individual thrill that I constantly experience in listening to singing” (Lavery 2013: 39). Therefore, interpretation of songs varies depending on the perception of the interpreter and in some cases may reveal more about the interpreter than about the song.

Carl Lavery mentions that Cave’s protagonists are often anti-heroes, “monsters”, “men who have gone too far’ and distanced themselves from the values of the community they used to belong to” (2013: 33). If we think about Elvis Presley, he is also a controversial character – he is an icon of rock-n-roll, he is a symbol of protest and sexuality. For Nick Cave this transgression over human moral laws is the way of achieving something big and true, “Abandonment in Cave’s work, as it is in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling , is inherently dialectical: the more one distances oneself from the world of morality, the better one’s chances of experiencing grace.” (2013: 33)

Carl Lavery makes a comparison between Cave’s characters and Kierkegaard’s vision of Abraham in the Fear and Trembling. Abraham is ready to sacrifice his son Isaac, to reject rules and ethics of the society, where social commitment and integration are fundamental. Thus, Abraham is ready to break the universal law and this individual act will make him closer to the divine. The main difference between Abraham and Cave’s characters is that people in the songs of Nick Cave do not have such strong faith and commitment to the divine, they are ready to renounce God in praise of human, “human love appears to triumph over divine love” (2013: 33).

Probably, Elvis Presley from “Tupelo” has so much in common with Jesus because Jesus sacrificed himself for the people. Messiah Elvis is bringing redeem for the citizens. Here Tupelo can be a metonymy of the whole human world. But Elvis is not the saint; he can be saint only in a different system of values.

The listener of Nick Cave’s song is supposed to reach the divine through abandoning old laws of moral. When it comes to experiencing grace, no words can be found to explain this. Where words are meaningless, the listener is left with the sound, “the logos , by itself, is no longer […] a bridge to God; rather, language and voice play with and against each other to leave us naked and alone” (2013: 35).

Analyzing Nick Cave’s song “When I First Came to Town”, Carl Lavery mentions, that at some point the voice becomes self-sufficient, the semantics of the text are no longer important. Thus, singing becomes “a performance about performance, singing that shows itself, that foregrounds its own physicality and allows the vocal gesture to appear” (2013: 39). This performativity is constituted as a “gesture”, an act of communication, in which words are present, but meaningless. The voice becomes an instrument, which touches listener’s imagination, “the voice throws off the demand to signify, and allies itself, instead, with the music, transforming itself into an instrument in its own right, something non-human.” (2013: 40)

For Lavery listening to the song is connected with experiencing a real “thrill”, existential loneliness, and vanity of being, “The timbre, cadence, melisma and rhythm of Cave’s voice sensitizes us to time, and exposes the ephemeral and transient qualities of being, the fact that words come from and retreat back into the void of the body, the ‘cave’ of the mouth” (2013: 39). At this point it is interesting, if Lavery’s words can be referred only to special features of Nick Cave’s songs or to music in more general sense. The author makes a comparison between Cave and “the ‘cave’ of the mouth” where all words dis/appear, as well as their meaning. The singer or performer also turns into some chthonic creature. Moreover, Lavery says that Cave’s singing moves the listener also because it is often difficult to understand, what the singing is about. To some extent it is true, in “Tupelo” it is not always clear which words does Cave sing, like with “Looka yonder!”. He is playing with his voice. And the most important – he is trying to imitate the manner of Elvis’s singing, like, for instance, while singing “O ma-ma rock your baby”. Again, it is a “performance about performance”.

 In the words of Carl Lavery about the processes of listening to music a refer to performativity can also be found. According to Lavery, the listener can start to sing along, move the facial and chest muscles and thus become a part of this performance, “Music transforms us into mimics. We mouth and repeat the word and melodies that we hear.’ (2013: 40) 

Alike to Greil Marcus, who stated that a good singer is a mediator between society and the larger universe, Carl Lavery sees a singer as a mediator. Only for Lavery singer does not bridge the listener and the divine directly, he does it through transgression of the limits of moral, testing these limits and stating sacred through evil,

“to sing is not to create community or to overcome differences in some dream of reconciliation. Rather, singing is now an act that divorces us from the world of language, and engages us, physically and psychically, in […] a dialectic of abandonment” (2013: 41).

Performativity is an instrument of engaging the listener into the act of transgression, as long as words do not have a full power. In combination of words and music the central component is the voice of a singer, performer, mediator, magician, it transmits the meaning which logos cannot transmit and discloses the core of being, “What we are left with is the voice – the senseless thing that discloses the very void at the heart of language and being” (2013: 41).

 On the other hand, performativity is not only about transmission. For Christina Ljungberg performativity is creativity, “making of meaning rather than obediently transmitting meaning” (2015: 552). It is a self-sufficient process. And for this process the truth is not so important, “performative acts are acts that are neither true nor false since the reality to which they refer is only created by the statements being uttered” (2015: 552). Therefore, it is difficult to understand from the song “Tupelo” the exact attitude of Nick Cave to Elvis Presley, if he really appreciates the King or if it is an ironical play, if Elvis is a new Messiah or a monster. In general, this attitude is irrelevant, and Nick Cave as an artist actualizes blues and rock-n-roll tradition, performing a magical musical act. As Cave mentioned, “Elvis is my favourite singer. Well, he’s actually not my favourite singer. He’s my favourite performer” (“The Firstborn Is Dead”).

3.      Conclusion

In the essay were examined the plot and images of the song “Tupelo”, as well as the representation of the myth of Elvis Presley and the role of performativity. Nick Cave bases his song on the real fact of Elvis’s birth and death of his brother, takes a song by John Lee Hooker about storm in Tupelo, adds a reference to Lead Belly and broadens intertextual connections. The atmosphere of mystery, archetypal fear is created with images from the Bible and folklore. Nick Cave uses images in their complexity and creates a situation of ambiguity, when different interpretations are possible. The most ambiguous image is Elvis Presley who is seen by critics as a half-god and a bright picture which hides complete emptiness. Greil Marcus shows that Elvis realized himself as a performer, as a certain image and could distance himself with irony. Presley’s secret, according to Marcus, is in his own interpretation of blues and country tradition, in his manner of resisting existential sadness. Nick Cave also sees Elvis Presley as a great performer, so “Tupelo” is performed as a theatrical play; it is full of gestures, voice modulations and emotions. Especially important role belongs to the voice: at some point words lose their meaning and the listener is followed by the voice to reveal what logos cannot reveal, to experience “the dialectic of abandonment”. As Carl Lavery states, Nick Cave transcends the limits of moral, telling stories about death, crimes, bad people, in order to move through evil to good, and the listener gets a chance to relive these stories and find the grace.

Considering these results, it is possible to say that analysis of songs concerns engagement of text and music analysis. Moreover, it is important to pay attention to performativity, as it complements the meaning of the song. Still, interpretation of songs is concerned to be highly individual. In case of Nick Cave performativity plays a big role in revealing the sense of the song. Sometimes performance can even substitute the text. Thus, a song is supposed to be an object of intermedial analysis, including textual, musical and performative parts.   

4.      Works Cited

Baker, John H. (2013). “Nick Cave, Twenty-First Century Man.” The Art of Nick Cave: New Critical Essays. Ed. John Baker. Bristol ; Chicago: Intellect Books Ltd. 27-44. Print.

Cave, Nick (2007). Complete Lyrics 1978-2007. Rev. and updated ed. London: Viking / Penguin. PDF.

Lavery, Carl (2013). “The Performance of Voice: Nick Cave and the Dialectic of Abandonment.” The Art of Nick Cave: New Critical Essays. Ed. John Baker. Bristol ; Chicago: Intellect Books Ltd. 27-44. Print.

Ljunberg, Christina (2015). „Intermediality and Performance Art.“ Handbook of Intermediality: Literature – Image – Sound – Music. Ed. Gabriele Rippl. Berlin ; Boston: Walter de Gruyter GmbH. 547 – 561. Print.

Marcus, Greil (2005). “Elvis: Presliad.” Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock’N’Roll Music. London: Faber and Faber. 113 – 195. Print.

“Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Tupelo” (2009). You Tube. Vevo, 12 Feb. 2009. Web. 29 Aug. 2017.

“The Firstborn Is Dead” (n.d.). Nick Cave. n.p. Web. 29 Aug. 2017.

Wolf, Warner (2015). “Literature and Music: Theory.” Handbook of Intermediality: Literature – Image – Sound – Music. Ed. Gabriele Rippl. Berlin ; Boston: Walter de Gruyter GmbH. 459 – 474. Print.