The Waterboys: I Can See Elvis (2014)

Name-checking Elvis, Memphis and Jesus in alt.country songs has been such as cliché as to be meaningless and mostly just a cheap reference for some kind of credibility.

Singing about a girl in blue jeans in a pick-up who loves Elvis means . . . what exactly?

But every now and again someone comes up with an Elvis reference which places The King in a new context and uses him as a cipher to channel some very different ideas.

This song by Mike Scott and Jay Barclay of the Waterboys moved Elvis from image to icon and then on to the afterlife as a kind of philosopher-poet-king who co-exists with Hendrix, James Dean, Bob Marley and others, among them Joan of Arc, Plato and Shakespeare who are all equal in Heaven.

It also moves from romantic images of Elvis to something more gritty in the final lines.

As he told Elsewhere at the time, “Like everyone else in rock'n'roll, I was influenced by Elvis. If it wasn't for Elvis I wouldn't have a job, and I think he made such fantastic music in those early years and occasionally in his later life as well. He helped us liberate our sexuality and fused black and white music. So he was this huge cultural figure.

“I wanted to reclaim Elvis for the counterculture in the song. I didn't want the guy who made all the bad movies or the Las Vegas caricature Elvis.

“I wanted a young Elvis who hadn't gone wrong, who was influential and on fire.

I Can See Elvis was on the Waterboys' album Modern Blues

.

For more one-offs, oddities or songs with an interesting backstory see From the Vaults