In 2005, Beck suffered a spinal injury during his video shoot for “E-Pro.” While filming, he was suspended by wires over computer-generated scenes when he injured his back. He canceled a planned tour and wasn’t sure if he’d ever be the same.
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Future sessions were difficult. He recorded Modern Guilt in severe pain, forced to sing in a whisper to keep from wincing in agony. It was his final album for his longtime label, Geffen Records. The next album, Morning Phase, wouldn’t arrive until 2014.
During the gap, he’d been busy writing but remained unsure if he wanted to release new music again. Then Beck traveled to Nashville to record at Jack White’s studio, Third Man. The resulting tracks were released on White’s label. A few others were recorded during the same sessions and set aside for what became Morning Phase.
Beck returned to his home in Los Angeles and finished the album with his regular collaborators: bassist Justin Meldal-Johnson, drummer Joey Waronker, guitarist Smokey Hormel, and Roger Joseph Manning Jr. on keys.
With a healed body and a new batch of songs, Beck emerged with a beautiful and cathartic album, releasing Morning Phase in 2014 on Capitol Records. A sonic cousin to his 2002 folk masterpiece, Sea Change, yet lighter and hopeful by comparison.
California Dreamin’
Beck described “Blue Moon” as a California song—a descendant of The Byrds, Gram Parsons, and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, with a borrowed title from the Rodgers and Hart standard.
The opening line, I’m so tired of being alone, is a call for human connection. Beck read Peter Guralnick’s two-volume bio on Elvis Presley, Last Train to Memphis & Careless Love. Beck was reflecting on Presley at the beginning of his career and who he’d become at the end. Early on, the world’s biggest rock star was accessible but ended up alone in hotel rooms, a prisoner of his fame.
I’m so tired of being alone,
These penitent walls are all I’ve known.
Songbird calling across the water,
Inside my silent asylum.
Perhaps he felt like a traitor to his family, friends, or even himself. A touring musician lives like a vagabond—with an address to spend fleeting moments from a busy travel schedule. If you are the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, once home, you hide behind guarded walls while multitudes of strangers—or fans—wait outside to glimpse their hero.
See the turncoat on his knees,
A vagabond that no one sees.
When a moon is throwing shadows,
You can’t save the ones you’ve caught in battle.
Curious if Presley had moments of wishing he wasn’t famous. The following lines describe bringing a musical god back to Earth. The irony of fame is loneliness.
Cut me down to size so I can fit inside,
Lies you try to hide behind your eyes.
Presley covered the Rodgers and Hart standard in 1954 with Sam Phillips. It appeared on his self-titled debut, released in 1956. Using the King as inspiration, Beck completed a blue circle with a borrowed title from the old ballad.
It Almost Didn’t Happen
Classic albums are full of accidents, and “Blue Moon” almost didn’t make the album until Beck discovered a demo of the song toward the end of the Los Angeles sessions.
Returning to the Presley biography, Beck told NPR’s All Songs Considered that the book had been sitting on his shelf for 15 years. The dark truth of the music business is how it created the myth of Elvis Presley and then destroyed him with it. It struck Beck and led him to write “Blue Moon.”
Everybody Hurts
The King wasn’t immune to loneliness, and his life ended tragically in a bathroom at Graceland. The cause of death was cardiac arrest. Presley had been abusing pills for some time, but the medical examiner ruled out drugs as the cause—a finding at odds with the toxicology report showing high levels of opiates. For the purity of the myth, the King had a broken heart. On “Blue Moon,” Beck created a beautifully complex portrait of the emotions surrounding the life of Elvis Presley—the rise and colossal fall of a legend.
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Photo by Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for The Art of Elysium
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