She

Pretty self-explanatory
johnfoyle
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Re: She

Post by johnfoyle »

Elvis pops up in a few news accounts, now that his association with She has become so prevalent.

https://movies.yahoo.com/blogs/movie-ne ... 59890.html


CinemaCon 2014: Fox Unspools Footage from 'X-Men,' 'Gone Girl,' and More


By Kara Warner
March 27, 2014 5:09 PM
Yahoo Movies


"Gone Girl"

Our first look at David Fincher's big-screen adaptation of the hugely popular bestseller was all about "She." "She," as in the titular girl who has gone missing as well as the Elvis Costello classic, which Fincher selected as the background music for this extended trailer.
johnfoyle
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Re: She

Post by johnfoyle »

Image

Tracey Thorn's engrossing new book has many references to Elvis, including (on p.61) this fascinating snippet .

Image


Ms Thorn is clearly a big fan of Elvis. I'm only half way through the book so I don't know yet if she'll deal with her reaction to the Spinning Songbook show at the RAH in 2013. She realised after a few songs that she didn't like the format - the cage, the dancers, Elvis's mc routine etc. - and left the show. As is her norm , she tweeted words to that effect on the way home. I commented something along the lines that the format had been detailed in advance etc. I felt smart-arse enough to say she had displayed 'hubris ' in her decision , a short enough word , suitable for Twitter. I was promptly given a lesson on the etymological background of the word 'hubris' and general put in my place. I feebly tried to explain myself but gave up. I love her work but she's definitely a person very sure of her self.
sheeptotheslaughter
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Re: She

Post by sheeptotheslaughter »

I once got gardening advice from Tracey Thorn on twitter. She told me to plant my daffs and tulips in November. One solitary tulip grew the following spring and I called it Tracey. :D
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Re: She

Post by Mikeh »

During an England football game last year, Ben Watt tweeted that Tracey was getting excited during the match, showing an interest in football for the first time in her life. I tweeted asking if Tracey thought England had got everything but the goal. Unsurprisingly, I got no reply at all.
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Re: She

Post by verbal gymnastics »

:lol:
Who’s this kid with his mumbo jumbo?
johnfoyle
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Re: She

Post by johnfoyle »

New to youtube - a performance of She by Elvis , Steve & a string section from January 2000. Just what we always wanted.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmHJXQe ... e=youtu.be


http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... _TV,_Japan
johnfoyle
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Re: She

Post by johnfoyle »

http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books ... -1.2315966

Irish Times - book review

August 15th 2015

Engaging exploration of the art of singing

Sinead Gleeson


(extract)

Naked at the Albert Hall is Tracey Thorn’s exploration of singing, songs and countless singers, filtered through her complex relationship with her own voice. Mercifully unencyclopedic, it’s an engrossing whirl through everything from accents, miming, stage fright, microphones and how we define a singer by their voice. When Elvis Costello recorded Charles Aznavour’s She for the Notting Hill soundtrack, he asked writer Richard Curtis “Would you like me to do one as ‘Elvis Costello’?” Gone was the romantic crooning, replaced by the sinister persona Costello’s singing voice often has.
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Re: She

Post by johnfoyle »

Image
Charles Aznavour (red top) and Herbert Kretzmer, both in their 90s, meet at a London hotel. Photo by David Sandison



http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-enter ... 16956.html


Charles Aznavour and Herbert Kretzmer: Joining an expertly guided tour through the history of entertainment

John Nathan joins the double act on a trip down memory lane


Sunday 1 November 20150




Now that he is 90, Herbert Kretzmer, one of the grand old men of musical theatre and lyricist of Les Misérables, tells a joke about the death of songwriters.

“Songwriters never die,” he says in a cultured drawl that, despite the 60 years since he moved to London, still carries a trace of his native South Africa. “They just decompose.”


We are sitting on what is, for nonagenarians, uncomfortably low furniture in probably the plushest suite in one of the poshest hotels in London. It is not Kretzmer staying here, however, but Charles Aznavour, the man for whom Kretzmer wrote the lyrics to the French star’s breakthrough international hit of 1974, “She”.

“How are you Herbie?” says Aznavour as he walks into the room. Napoleonic in height and probably charisma too, Aznavour is a year older than Kretzmer but he moves with the speed and stride of a man in his sixties. And though his hearing is much diminished, the voice – both speaking and singing – remains strong and true. “Slowing down, Charles. Slowing down,” says Kretzmer.


France’s greatest living performer – not a man who enjoys the publicity machine – is in the UK to dutifully do some television and radio interviews ahead of his concert tomorrow at the Albert Hall. But this one – part interview, part reunion – is different.

Aznavour and Kretzmer first met in 1965 when Kretzmer, then a Fleet Street journalist, interviewed Aznavour at his home in Galluis, west of Paris. Edith Piaf, with whom Aznavour travelled the world as a companion, secretary and occasional songwriter (but not lover, he insists) had died two years previously. Aznavour had taken her place as, to use Kretzmer’s words, “the mirror in which the French see subtly reflected their national preoccupation with the game of love.”

“His English was beautiful,” remembers Aznavour of Kretzmer. “I said, have you written songs? He said ‘Yes, one, for....’” Aznavour clicks his fingers, commanding the memory to catch up with the brain. “The English actor...I made a movie with him....”

“Peter Sellers?” asks Kretzmer.

“Yes, Sellers.”

“And Sophia Loren,” says Kretzmer, then adding “Goodness Gracious Me,” the title of his song. It was an early example (1960) of the chart novelty song. Sellers sings in the character of an Indian doctor and Loren his Italian patient. “I said ‘Do you think you could collaborate with me?’” continues Aznavour. “He didn’t say ‘Non!’”

Kretzmer went on to write the English version of many Aznavour songs. “He put in my mouth the best words – for the English public, for my personality – for who I was” says Aznavour. A French romantic down to the marrow of his Paris-born, Armenian bones, Aznavour wrote songs of loss, longing and the poignant passing of time. Kreztmer re-wrote (not translated, for as he is quick to point out “translate” inadequately describes the process of re-imagination) the words to about 30 of them, he reckons.

“Double that,” says Aznavour.

Among them was “Yesterday, When I Was Young”, which did well. But not as well as “She”. Number one for four weeks in the summer of 1974, it was introduced to a new generation in 1999 with Elvis Costello’s version recorded for the film Notting Hill.

“Do you remember how it came about?” asks Kretzmer. “London Weekend Television approached me for a song for the television series Seven Faces of Woman. When they came to me, they originally wanted Marlene Dietrich [to sing it]. I said ‘What is the song to be about?’, and they said ‘the mystery of woman’ – like I knew something about it. They said they were in negotiations with Dietrich. I told them it won’t work. Because if there is one thing I know about the mystery of women it’s that they don’t talk about it. If they did, it wouldn’t be a mystery.

“‘It’s got to be a man,’ I said. “They said ‘Who?’ and I suggested Charles and phoned him the same afternoon. So Marlene Dietrich was out – and Charles Aznavour was in. All in one day. You didn’t know that?”

“I didn’t know,” says Aznavour, his eyebrows rising. “The song took much longer to be a success in France,” Aznavour adds. “It starts with words which are not nice in French.”

He sings the opening line. “She, may be the face I can’t forget...” But in French, he explains, “she” sounds like “chier”, slang for “shit”, and “face” sounds like “fess” or, erm, “spanking”.

“People said, ‘You must change this.’ I said, ‘I change nothing!’”

“I didn’t know that,” says Kretzmer.

“We can still surprise each other, eh?” says Aznavour.

“Not bad for 90” says Kretzmer.


The first time he heard Aznavour play the melody for the song was at the Paris studio of the French producer Eddie Barclay whose singers included Jacques Brel. “The moment you played that first note – daaaaaaa – I heard the word ‘Sheeeee,’” says Kretzmer. “And the whole song just hung from that word. The perfect word, the perfect note. And it made a big difference to your life and to mine.”

For Kretzmer, it gave him the self-belief that his work as a “spare time, part-time” lyricist (he was also theatre critic for The Express and then TV critic for The Mail) was worth persevering with. “It reinforced my self-confidence, which, having grown up in a one-horse town in South Africa, was always a wavering thing. ‘She’ was one of the songs that convinced me to keep going – to strive ever forward,” he says, deploying the rhetoric of endeavour. He adds, self-mockingly, “Then Les Misérables came along and I never had to work again.”

Aznavour gets up from the over-stuffed sofa without so much as a hint of protest from his 91-year-old body, and walks to a chair in the corner of the room on which sits a little rucksack.

“I found a song,” he tells Kretzmer as he unzips the bag. “I’m going to sing it in the Albert Hall, but I’m going to have to read it because I haven’t had time to memorise the lyric.”

He leafs through a fistful of songsheets with lyrics written in large bold typeface. It’s “Remember”.

“Ah!” says Kretzmer.

“Do you remember?”

“No,” chuckles Kretzmer.

“Your lyrics are beautiful. And I wrote beautiful music for it. Read it,” orders Aznavour. Kretzmer clears his throat and reads.

“The years begin to go so fast,

Each one more quickly than the last,

It’s time to gather up the past,

Remember.”

“Let’s be pretentious for a second,” says Aznavour. “We were good.”
johnfoyle
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Re: She

Post by johnfoyle »

http://www.iol.co.za/capeargus/trevors- ... ck-2024239


Trevor’s life is an original soundtrack

CAPEARGUS /
20 May 201
By: Gasant Abarder

(extracts)

Trevor Jones has scored countless Hollywood blockbusters over an award-winning career, but it all started at the Gem Bioscope in Woodstock, writes Gasant Abarder.

Cape Town - It may be 17 years on, but I bet somewhere in London a French publisher is kicking himself for not returning calls for permission to use the Charles Aznavour song She on the soundtrack of Notting Hill.

Cue the goosebumps: it is the song that carries the pinnacle moment of the romantic comedy - the soundtrack that sees Hugh Grant’s character, William Thacker, a bookstore owner from Notting Hill, sweep Julia Roberts’s Hollywood A-list actress character, Anna Scott, off her feet at a packed press conference.

The scene moves into a montage of their wedding, a red-carpet appearance and a park scene with an expecting Scott lying with her head in Thacker’s lap on a bench.

It’s a film score that earned composer Trevor Jones a Brit Award - a man whose love affair with music and film started at the Gem Bioscope in Woodstock.

------


But back to the French publisher who dropped the ball. The release of Notting Hill was fast approaching and there was still no response.

“The publisher was actually in London at the time and, in fact, a few streets away from where we were, but still didn’t get in touch. It got to the date where I couldn’t wait any longer and we decided to re-record it with Elvis Costello.

“When I called him and spoke to him about it, he said: Trevor, I can’t do that, I’m leaving tomorrow.’ I said: What time?’ He said: I think the flight is at 4 o’clock, I’m not sure.’

“I asked him if he could come to Abbey Road Studios before his flight and he said he’d make an effort, but it would be on the way to the airport. We got into Abbey Road Studios, he warmed up a bit and then he did a couple of takes.

“Then he called his dad before doing some more takes. His father is a very good singer as well. I think he was discussing phrasing, breathing and all kinds of things with his dad on the phone.

“That was it. He left, got on the plane and left. I mixed the orchestra and Elvis Costello’s vocals, and the rest is history.”
johnfoyle
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Re: She

Post by johnfoyle »

What with renewed discussion of Elvis's version of the late Charles Aznavour's She it seems appropriate to bump up this .
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Re: She

Post by Fishfinger king »

I think it would be a lovely gesture and respectful to Charles's memory, for Elvis to retire this song from future concert performances........
Can't you see I'm trying to change this water to wine
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Re: She

Post by verbal gymnastics »

:lol:

There’d be no complaints from me!

Unfortunately I fear it’ll be the other way round and it’ll become a regular tribute.
Who’s this kid with his mumbo jumbo?
sheeptotheslaughter
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Re: She

Post by sheeptotheslaughter »

I love She but then again I think I am the only 'old romantic' among us :wink:
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Re: She

Post by taramasalata »

sheeptotheslaughter wrote:I love She but then again I think I am the only 'old romantic' among us :wink:
Don't worry sheeptotheslaughter, you're not the only one.
I love it too.
I love it for what it is.
A great romantic love ballad.
Perfectly suited to close a great romantic love movie.
Which has to be a bit cheesy for that's what it's all about.
And for that purpose, Elvis' rendition is wonderful.
And that's for what he got so much love and affection for by people from all over the world, who would have never listened to the rest of his music.
And that only partly because they just never had heard of him.

And I can't understand so many on this forum for not being able to accept this song just for what it is. To me, it seems to be that similar kind of reactionary attitude that didn't let him sing "I just don't know what do do with myself" or "My funny Valentine" in 1978 or go into C&W back in 1981.
And all the other endeavours driven by just personal love for all the variety in music, that he followed thereafter.
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Re: She

Post by verbal gymnastics »

I simply don’t like the song.
Who’s this kid with his mumbo jumbo?
sweetest punch
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Re: She

Post by sweetest punch »

Herbert Kretzmer RIP: https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/L ... 5-20201014

(...)
As a lyric writer he wrote weekly songs for That Was The Week That Was and the later Ned Sherrin television shows. He won an Ivor Novello Award for the Peter Sellers/Sophia Loren comedy song 'Goodness Gracious Me'. Other award-winning songs include two written with, and for, Charles Aznavour: 'Yesterday When I Was Young' and the chart-topping 'She'.
(...)
Since you put me down, it seems i've been very gloomy. You may laugh but pretty girls look right through me.
Hawksmoor
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Re: She

Post by Hawksmoor »

verbal gymnastics wrote:I simply don’t like the song.
I'm not a big fan of the song, to be honest. But, predictably for people on this forum, I honestly think EC's is the best version of it!
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