There Was Never A Time "When I Was Cruel"

I was never cruel. or at least I like to think I wasn't. I have been cold, and I have failed to hide my distaste for certain people, but I would not say I was cruel, because I never had any intentionality. So why is it I have spent twenty years loving a record called "When I Was Cruel"?

Maybe it's because cruelty never sounded like so much fun.

Ironically, that cruelty extended to its relationship with the listeners. It is an album that has no sympathy for us; it distorts vocals and instruments in unpleasant ways, it gives us two versions of the same song for no apparent reason, it features long strings of lyrics that should have been edited down. Elvis simply didn't care what the audience would make of this record, he only cared about what making the record would do for him. That's a form of artistic cruelty, which is understandable, but does seep into the intent behind some of the lyrics.

That story begins with "When I Was Cruel No 2", which is seven minutes of hypnotic loops and flat vocals, cruelly crushing our expectations of the song ever developing into something more than a stretched out sketch. The lyrics tell the story of a wedding of convenience, where nobody wants to be there or go through with it. We have exes spilling secrets, and a bride who looks weary even before the night is over. Through the whole thing, Elvis' character is in the wedding band, telling us what he sees, but in a way that is cruelly confusing.

After detailing the bickering and insults, Elvis notes there are some things he can't tell us, but perhaps he could have when he was cruel. Even after twenty years of listening to the song, I can't wrap my head around what he is meaning to say. He had nothing to do with the cruelty being expressed at the event, and I would hardly claim that telling the story of an unnamed woman would qualify as cruel. If he was threatening to name names it would be one thing, but this story is all petty stuff, which he then hypes up with his bluster. There's no payoff, in the music or narrative. Elvis is using the song to annoy us, wasting seven minutes without a point.

There is also the fact it is "No 2", which implies there was a first version of the song this one was derived from, so either this story is an incomplete telling, or it is an edited version of the story that still is this flimsy. Either way, it's a bit cruel, wouldn't you say?

Also cruel is splitting "Dust" into two separate songs, and sequencing them with others in between. If the lyrics are so important that both versions of the song needed to be included, why not arrange them into one longer song? Or why not put the two songs back-to-back so the story has a through-line we can easily see? Elvis is deliberately obscuring his intent with these songs, fragmenting his big ideas, while stretching out his small ones. He is making this a record of frustrations, where nothing is as it seems, and our ears need to be on the lookout for tricks and traps.

Also cruel is the engineering of the record, where guitars, vocals, and horns are pushed through the red-line, distorting to push the anger and aggression. Elvis' reputation was that of an 'angry young man', but at forty-five years old, he didn't have that in him anymore, and he used his rudimentary production skills to accentuate every bit of brittleness to its breaking point. If he was not the person he once was, this 'return to form' record was going to be made to sound like it anyway. So he slapped on extra distortion, he made the record loud and abrasive, and he relied on people not looking below the crusty surface. It worked.

He tossed out a classic line like, "'Cause I love you just as much as I hate your guts" in "Alibi", and that was enough to overlook the song's repetitive nature and nonsensical lyrics. Four minutes (if we're being generous) of ideas get stretched to seven, with the constant refrain of "alibi, alibi" turning the song into a laundry list of excuses. For what? We're never told. All we know is that Elvis' narrator is forgiving, but he apparently lives with the alibi as well. I have no idea whether he needs one himself, or he is complicit in hers. The story is left incomplete, which is again cruel.

Also cruel is "Spooky Girlfriend", where the lyrics talk about how disposable Elvis' narrator sees women. He wants a girlfriend his is "helpless and frail", who will "hitch up her dress" in front of the cameras, and who will sit on his knee. He makes her sound like a child being abused, and then he turns around and says if she won't become the submissive he envisions, he'll just screw her mother instead. It is completely callous, and not in the way his use of racial language in "Oliver's Army" at least had the intent of calling out a regressive political movement. This is a sketch of cruelty with no remorse, with no moral at the end of the story.

And yet, despite "When I Was Cruel" being a record that gets uglier the more you stare at it, I still love it. I am by no means a masochist, but perhaps the record's slap to the face is a grounding force. Looking at this record now, it is in a similar category to Weezer's "Pinkerton", where there is so much about it I should hate, and I should want to push away, and yet I don't.

Maybe the lesson is that being challenged can be a good thing. Like with "Pinkerton", I didn't hear any of this twenty years ago when I first listened to this album. I heard some songs with interesting phrases and good melodies. I didn't need to look any further. Now, the record challenges me to hear the cruelty, to figure out how to react to it. I am not saying I'm a better person for listening to "When I Was Cruel", but listening to it in this light, I know I am a better person.

So maybe I'm just talking out of my ass, but that's part of the process. We learn from everything we experience, and looking back on "When I Was Cruel" twenty years later, I know that's true.