Elvis Presley - It's Easy for You - From First Take to the Master

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Throughout the eighties and nineties, in Europe and the UK in particular, it was a very rare occurrence indeed to find any Elvis track on a mainstream various artists compilation album. This was especially annoying to a teenager who was an Elvis fan in a period where Elvis was not seen as cool by his peers. With most Elvis singles released by RCA/BMG at this time struggling to reach the top 40, it is understandable that Elvis could not be heard on the hits compilations such as the very popular "Now That's What I Call Music" series. However, no such excuse could be made for emissions on other compilation series' such as an equally popular best less enduring series "The Very Best........album in the world" or other numerous decades albums of the period. Whether this was down to the constant anti-Elvis agenda which seemed to being pursued, particularly by the written media, or whether it was because the music industry was embarrassed by the legend that Elvis had become, ever more posthumously. This could possibly be attributed to the huge shadow his death seemed to have caused or could it have been simply because RCA/BMG wanted too much money in royalties from the relevant companies which produced these compilations?
With Sony's acquisition of RCA and by default the Elvis Presley back catalogue, this trend began to be reversed especially since many of the companies producing these albums were Sony subsidiaries. However despite there being a golden opportunity to push some of Elvis' more obscure quality recordings into the public consciousness, it seems that the same tracks that even those furthest removed from the Elvis world would be familiar with constantly found themselves regurgitated onto these compilations.
Whilst this does now seem to be the norm there are some examples where Elvis recordings almost completely unknown outside his fandom have appeared on compilations and one example in relatively recent years, was the inclusion of "It's Easy For You" on the 2018 release "Andrew Lloyd Webber - Unmasked - The Platinum Collection" on the UMC label. This is actually the second such Lloyd Webber compilation to feature "It's Easy For You", with "Sixty" in 2008 by Polydor, although the most recent set was more heavily marketed.
It will come as no surprise that Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote "It's Easy For You" with long time collaborator Tim Rice, and is an almost unique stand alone piece by the duo, that is to say it was written without a musical in mind. In an interview with "Rolling Stone", Lloyd Webber remarked “It’s Easy for You” is one of the very, very few songs that I’ve written that has been recorded outside of a show. In fact, I’m fairly certain it’s the only one”.
Elvis recorded the song sometime during the night between 29 and 30 October 1976, the first of three songs recorded during the first day recording of the second of the two sessions that took place at Graceland in the "Jungle Room", with the previous session having taken place over six days in February. Four takes of the song were attempted, with two completed, and the second of those, take two, was selected as the master. After completing "It's Easy For You", "Way Down" and "Pledging My Love", Elvis would record just one more song, "He'll Have To Go", about thirty six hours later by overdubbing his vocal to a track laid down by the band the previous evening.
Elvis was in better voice during the October session than in February, and it is no coincidence that there are far less orchestral overdubs on the songs recorded in October. These overdubs by Felton Jarvis was undoubtedly attempting to mask the deficiencies in Elvis' voice from February beneath a concoction of strings, and almost all of those were released on the "Boulevard" album. "It's Easy For You" became the closing track to Elvis' final studio album, "Moody Blue", which due to a lack of studio material was padded out with live tracks, but unlike the "Boulevard" album, "Moody Blue" contained two massive worldwide hits including the title track.
It is unfortunate that "It's Easy For You" was placed at the end of the album rather than an upbeat song like "Way Down" or "Pledging My Love", as it makes for a rather downbeat ending to the album. "It's Easy For You" is a song which I've always liked personally, and Elvis seems to bring alive the story being told by the protagonist. This is no surprise as Elvis always seemed to be at his best in storytelling mode. The undubbed complete takes seem to capture the desolation of the song better, and at times it even feels like a different song altogether.


As with all of these videos, to get the most out of the audio, I highly recommend you use ear /headphones and turn the volume up as much as you dare!