Album: King of America
Year: 1986
King of America was supposed to be half recorded with The Attractions and half recorded with The Confederates, the crack backing band that T-Bone Burnett rustled up for him early in 1985.
But things weren’t working out with The Attractions, as too many years too close together were finally taking their toll musically and emotionally.
That is, except for “Suit of Lights,” the folk-rock masterpiece that is the one recording with The Attractions that actually made it on King of America.
Written about his singer father, Ross, as the audience for what Ross had done all his life, “Suit of Lights” starts with Elvis spitting quiet venom:
While Nat King Cole sings “Welcome To My World”
You request some song you hate you sentimental fool
And it’s the force of habit
If it moves then you fuck it
If it doesn’t move you stab it
And I thought I heard “The Working Man’s Blues”
He went out to work that night and wasted his breath
Outside there was a public execution
Inside he died a thousand deaths
Then, having laid back during the verses, The Attractions ever-so-subtly lay into the gorgeous, almost 12-bar-blues chorus:
And they pulled him out of the cold cold ground
And they pulled him out of the cold cold ground
And they pulled him out of the cold cold ground
And they put him in a suit of lights
With the exception of Steve Nieve’s piano flourishes, the sound of “Suit of Lights” maps near-perfectly to the rest of the album. Maybe there’s a little bit more of the rock going on, but only to the point where those who didn’t read the credits closely would just assume that this was Elvis leading the rest of The Confederates in a more rock direction.
So the irony here is that Elvis probably wanted The Attractions to do half of King of America because he wasn’t sure he wanted to completely dump the band that had helped make him a household name in households like mine, it was probably the song recorded with The Attractions that made him realize that he didn’t need them to make successful music.
“Suit of Lights”
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