Tag Archives: Elvis Presley

Leonard Cohen, Was (Not Was), and Elvis’s Rolls Royce

No, the preceding heading is not an argument I’m having with myself. Leonard Cohen & Was (Not Was), as any member of the Hard Core Cohen Contingent knows, is the collaboration that led to another of those Leonard Cohen songs that you’ve probably never heard; in this case, however, it’s a song that is (relatively) easy to find.¹

But before we get to the song, let’s ponder that positive-thinking group with the self-negating name, …

Was (Not Was)

Who remembers Was (Not Was)?

Need a hint? OK, perhaps you recall their one Top 40 hit, a 1988 dance ditty called Walk The Dinosaur. It had a contagious chorus that, once it infected ones brain, would nest in a sulcus, triggering its host to begin singing these lines² at especially inappropriate times over the next several years:

Open the door, get on the floor
Everybody walk the dinosaur

I won’t ask who else, besides me, liked the song, because I know you too cool for school sorts won’t fess up to perpetually humming it from 1988 to 1996. Admit it, though. You would like to hear it just one more time, wouldn’t you? Maybe even see that silly music video? Well, I’m no spoilsport. Check it out.

It’s OK. Go ahead. I won’t tell anyone.

Was (Not Was) deserved more hits but, while they managed to release four albums from 1981 through 1990 as well as the occasional single and to develop a cult following, especially around their hometown of Detroit, they were never superstars. (Ongoing recording-contract problems may have had something to do with that.)

They specialized in R&B and funk, often played at an upbeat dance tempo, routinely integrating other musical genres, including but not limited to jazz, pop, hip-hop, hard rock, Motown soul, and spoken word poetry into the mix.

Their outstanding feature, however, in my estimation, was the humor and clever lyrics of their songs. How could anyone not like I Feel Better Than James Brown with its tune and lyrics (including the line, “And Fidel and I open a chain of Kentucky Fried Chicken shops”) that play off James Brown’s I Feel Good? And I couldn’t resist smiling every time I heard the the lines in Somewhere In America that described a neighborhood with “no saber-tooth neighbors” and “no day care Felinis.”

Was (Not Was) was also known for their guest vocalists, including Ozzie Osborne, Elvis Costello, Mel Torme, Marshall Crenshaw, Doug Feiger (The Knack), and Frank Sinatra, Jr.

They also cut a track on one of their albums with a fellow named Leonard Cohen, which brings us to …

Elvis’s Rolls Royce

In 1990, Was (Not Was) published the album, Are You Okay?, which included the song, Elvis’s Rolls Royce,³ with Leonard Cohen as lead vocalist  (and Iggy Pop contributing backing vocals).

Otherwise competent music critics have described Cohen’s performance as rapping; I defer to those with more expertise than I, but to my ear, this track has more in common with T.S. Eliot or Yeats reading their own poetry than Dr. Dre or Jay-Z rapping. No one, I’ll wager, will confuse LC with Snoop Dogg, which will be, I suspect, a relief to both of them.⁴

In any case, one suspects that it was fun to produce, and it’s clearly fun to hear. This excerpt⁵ is characteristic of this song about Cohen chauffeuring the King from London to New York City:

I got a little nervous
I think I lost my poise
As we crossed the great Atlantic
In Elvis’s Rolls Royce

Elvis Presley, His Cars, & Leonard Cohen

Considerable poetic license was involved in the composition of Elvis’s Rolls Royce. Elvis owned many, many cars, a significant number of which he gave away to friends and family.  He did own a Rolls Royce:

January 1961 Elvis signed a 5 year contract with Hal Wallis. To celebrate he went out and bought a Rolls Royce Phantom V from a Beverly Hills dealer only to bring it home and have his mothers’ chickens peck away at their reflections in the elegant finish. Most people would have just shot the birds but Elvis just chose to have the car repainted four or five times.⁶

That Rolls Royce is featured in the extraordinarily rare⁷ photo of Elvis, Leonard, & the Rolls atop this post.

Images in the accompanying video are likewise “inspired by” rather than “based on” Elvis’s cars.  Viewers are advised to rev up their “willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic faith;”⁸ a literal-minded perspective may result in significant cognitive whiplash.

Video Added Nov 18, 2011: Was (Not Was) & Leonard Cohen – Elvis’s Rolls Royce

_____________________

1. So, yes, you should be ashamed of yourself [↩]
2. The complete lyrics of Walk The Dinosaur follow:
   Boom boom acka-lacka lacka boom
   Boom boom acka-lacka boom boom

   It was a night like this forty million years ago
   I lit a cigarette, picked up a monkey skull to go
   The sun was spitting fire, the sky was blue as ice
   I felt a little tired, so I watched Miami Vice

   And Walked the dinosaur, I walked the dinosaur

   CHORUS:

   Open the door, get on the floor
   Everybody walk the dinosaur

   I met you in a cave, you were painting buffalo
   I said I’d be your slave, follow you wherever you go
   That night we split a rattlesnake and danced beneath the stars
   You fell asleep, I stayed awake and watched the passing cars

   And walked the dinosaur, I walked the dinosaur

   CHORUS

   *One night I dreamed of New York
   You and I roasting blue pork
   In the Statue of Liberty’s torch
   Elvis landed in a rocket ship
   Healed a couple of lepers and disappeared
   But where was his beard?????*

   A shadow from the sky much too big to be a bird
   A screaming crashing noise louder than I’ve ever heard
   It looked like two big silver trees that somehow learned to soar
   Suddenly a summer breeze and a mighty lion’s roar

   I killed the dinosaur, I killed the dinosaur

   CHORUS [↩]

3. Often spelled “Elvis’ Rolls Royce” [↩]
4. For one thing, coming up with a rapper’s name for Leonard Cohen might be a problem: Ice Zen? LC Gaunt? Ur Mann? I don’t think so. [↩]
5. The lyrics to Elvis’s Rolls Royce follow:

   Well I saw a crowd a-gathered
   Must’ve been somebody shot
   Reporters scribbled shorthand
   And photographed the spot
   I moved in a little closer
   But I couldn’t see no blood
   Just a gold-plated chariot
   Arisin’ from the mud
   Then I heard a soulful murmur
   And it sounded like his voice
   It began to sing, it was the King
   It was Elvis’s Rolls Royce

   Now the wood-grained bar was open
   Like he was about to have a drink
   A white-gloved chauffeur at the wheel
   I never saw him blink
   The bobbies looked indifferent
   Clearly they were not amused
   It was just another auction piece
   And it didn’t matter whose
   D-Day was upon me
   And I had to make a choice
   Next thing I know
   I’m at the wheel of Elvis’s Rolls Royce

   Well I made a left at Parliament
   And hit the pedal hard
   And I tipped my hat and I smiled
   As I passed by Scotland Yard
   Now the voice is talkin’ to me
   It says “There’s nothing to fear”
   It was coming from the back seat
   But there was no one in the mirror
   I got a little nervous
   I think I lost my poise
   As we crossed the great Atlantic
   In Elvis’s Rolls Royce

   When we got to New York City
   The crowds went wild to say the least
   As I steered my precious cargo
   Through the belly of the beast
   Then I took off down the Interstate
   And drove throughout the night
   Till I reached the state of Tennessee
   In the early morning light
   There they were, the gates of Graceland

   My eyes got kind of moist
   Home sweet home to rock’n'roll
   And Elvis’s Rolls Royce [↩]

6. ElvisPresleyNews.com [↩]
7. It is so extraordinarily rare  that it was, in fact, nonexistent in the pre-Photoshop world [↩]
8. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, 1817 [↩]