Say it quietly: Whispering Bob has got it wrong
The amiable music buff Bob harris, 75, known as ‘Whispering Bob’, is now regarded as one of the great sages of rock music, the Kahlil Gibran of the hippy generation.
his personal website bills itself ‘a growing resource of news, events and information’.
It comes with a quote from the American country singer Ashley McBryde: ‘I always thought it was Morgan Freeman and then I heard Bob harris speak and I was like, “Oh, ThAT’S what God sounds like.”’
Well, yes and no: it’s hard to imagine Bob as the wrathful God of the Old Testament — for example: ‘And the Lord shall cause his glorious voice to be heard, and shall shew the lighting down of his arm, with the indignation of his anger, and with the flame of a devouring fire, with scattering, and tempest, and hailstones’ (Isaiah, 30, 30).
No: Bob’s approach would be much more softly-softly. ‘And Bob shall quietly send a light shower with a moderate breeze and sunny intervals’ is more like it.
however, his soft voice possesses a sort of benign authority, leading many of the faithful to take his pronouncements as the gospel truth. But should they be so trusting?
In a new podcast, Bob claims that when John Lennon met elvis Presley in 1965, ‘it was hate at first sight’.
‘For John it was a very disillusioning moment because he loved elvis’s records, so . . . to discover he was a Right-wing southern bigot was a big shock. equally, elvis saw Lennon as being this upstart Liverpudlian know-it-all who’d taken his crown. he usurped elvis and he was resentful as hell.’
Bob harris further claims that President Nixon ‘was a great friend of elvis and vice versa. Nixon had
instructed elvis to gather as much information about John Lennon as he possibly could’.
But Whispering Bob’s account is far from accurate.
elvis Presley met John Lennon only once, when the Beatles visited him in Beverly hills on August 27, 1965.
It certainly wasn’t hate at first sight. The Beatles had long been in awe of elvis, and were clearly nervous. ‘You could hear a pin drop when they walked in,’ recalled elvis’s wife Priscilla. ‘I was amazed at how shy they were . . . they were speechless, totally speechless, truly like kids meeting their idol. especially John — John was shy, timid, looking at him... he just couldn’t believe he was actually there with elvis Presley.’
She remembered the atmosphere as ‘a little awkward because they kept looking at him’. But eventually they grew more relaxed, and played a few songs with elvis before being sent on their way.
The next day, John told one of elvis’s aides how much the evening had meant to him, asking him to tell elvis that ‘if it hadn’t been for him, I would have been nothing’. But he also complained to the other Beatles that their meeting had been ‘a total non-event’.
elvis felt much the same. After the Beatles had left, he told his friend and hairstylist Larry Geller that what really blew his mind was the state of their teeth. Why, with all their money, hadn’t they got them fixed?
Similarly off-target is Whispering Bob’s claim that ‘Nixon was a great friend of elvis and vice versa’. In fact, Nixon and Presley met just once, on December 21, 1970.
Virtually unannounced, elvis had arrived at the White house in full makeup, wearing a brassbuttoned edwardian jacket over a purple velvet tunic, held up by a vast gold belt, carrying a Colt 45 handgun as a gift for the President.
The two men had little in common, and their brief conversation proved uneasy. It was all transcribed by Bud Krogh, a presidential adviser.
The oddest part of it came when elvis, zonked on drugs, launched a diatribe against the Beatles for taking American money and then fostering anti-American feeling back home. Nixon was lost for words. ‘The President nodded in agreement and expressed some surprise,’ observed Krogh.
AFeW minutes later, Presley gave the President a farewell hug. ‘You dress kind of strange, don’t you?’ said Nixon, stealthily extricating himself from Presley’s embrace.
‘You have your show and I have mine,’ replied elvis.
Contrary to Whispering Bob’s claim, President Nixon did not ‘instruct elvis to gather as much information about John Lennon as he possibly could’. In fact, he couldn’t wait to see the back of him, and the two men never met again.
But none of us wishes to upset Bob harris’s status as the fount of all wisdom, so whisper it not . . .