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In a Metal Mood · Revisionist History

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: This episode contains explicit language.
• 0:25
  Speaker 3: You're listening to the smooth stylings of Patrick Charles Eugene
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: pat Boone, pop star of the nineteen fifties, host of
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: the Pat Boone Chevy Showroom, maybe the whitest, squarest rock
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: musician of all time. In nineteen ninety seven, Pat Boone
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: put out an album covering, among others, Judas Priest, Metallica,
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: Ozzy Osbourne, led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple.
• 0:52
  Speaker 4: Well, we all came down.
• 0:54
  Speaker 5: To the true.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: On the lad.
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: On the front of the album, Pat Boone looks out maniacally,
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: or at least as maniacally as he can, wearing only
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: a black leather vest.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Exam, I am the mother.
• 1:13
  Speaker 6: Place.
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: You can find the whole thing on YouTube. In a
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: metal mood, no more.
• 1:17
  Speaker 7: Mister nice guy, I mean all great songs that he
• 1:21
  Speaker 7: was chosen and peckahol.
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: Fires, Pat Boone performed an act of cultural appropriation, outrageous
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: cultural appropriation. A square white guy, a middle aged crooner,
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: walked in and shamelessly appropriated the heavy metal cannon. Here's
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: my question, what should we make of that fact? How
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: should we feel about? In a metal mood? Yes, so,
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: I asked my friend Dave Hill. Dave is a metal
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: aficionado lead guitarist for Valley Lodge and Witch Taint, maybe
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: the most metal band name ever. If you root around
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: the internet, you can find some videos we've done together
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: over the years, which have literally hundreds of likes. We
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: go to the same coffee shop, say hello to Dave.
• 2:25
  Speaker 5: Well.
• 2:25
  Speaker 7: The Devil's Interval is the beginning of metal. Basically, it's
• 2:31
  Speaker 7: the flat at fifth.
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: I assigned Dave in a metal mood as homework. Listen
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: to it, break it down, report back to me. That's
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: how this whole thing began. At the time he puts
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: this out, he's sixty three. He's been a krooner. He's
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: an evangelical Christian. He's been a crooner for forty years.
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: He's best known for sporting like v Nex sweaters and
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: khakis and topsiders yeah, or not even top upsiders. Those shoes,
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: those those white box Yeah, that's what he does.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: I like a nice white can you.
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: You couldn't have imagined a less metal pedigree than Pat.
• 3:19
  Speaker 7: Boonth No, he's pretty not metal, but it depends how
• 3:23
  Speaker 7: you define metal.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: I mean.
• 3:27
  Speaker 7: Musically, no, but very metal in many other ways.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: Tell me what you mean by just like.
• 3:33
  Speaker 7: As far as like committing to being a crooner? Pretty metal?
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: Did you catch that, Pat Boone? Pretty Metal? My name
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: about things overlooked and misunderstood. This episode is the official
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: launch of my campaign to get Boon into the Rock
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: and Roll Hall of Fame. We're climbing aboard the Pat
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: Boone train. Why because if there is ever a cultural
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: figure who has been misunderstood and overlooked who fits the
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: literal definition of the Revisionist History mandate, it is Pat Boone.
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: You think I'm joking, I'm so not joking. What follows
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: is an argument in two parts. Part one, Pat Boone
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: no longer mister nice guy. Part two, Taco Bell.
• 4:54
  Speaker 6: It's very secure.
• 4:56
  Speaker 8: Got a wait for this top secret.
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: Taco Bell is so important to my defense of Pat
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: Boon that I traveled clear across the country to Irvine, California,
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: to the INTERN national headquarters of Taco Bell and talk
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: my way into their inner sanctum through double sets of
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: security doors, all sorts of scanning of ideas. I feel
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: like I'm in the CIA retinal scan exactly. They sit
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: me down. They ply me with one delicious bit of
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: fast food after another, including most memorably one of Taco
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: Bell's top selling concoctions. Then ny could chicken chilloupa. I
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: have not.
• 5:41
  Speaker 9: Nobody was asking for this because it wasn't even people
• 5:44
  Speaker 9: don't even comprehend this idea.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: That's really what.
• 5:47
  Speaker 6: It's really good.
• 5:49
  Speaker 9: Yeah, but it is.
• 5:49
  Speaker 8: One of those things you could never sit with consumers
• 5:51
  Speaker 8: and they would say, you know what I would like,
• 5:53
  Speaker 8: I'd like you to make me this right?
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: Where do we know where?
• 5:57
  Speaker 7: So?
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: Do we know the idea where this came from? I
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: mean it's the Banana's idea. That Banana's idea came from
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: Talk Bell. Oh and it was good. Hold that thought.
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: We're coming back to Taco Bell, but first, Dave Hill
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: and I have some work to do.
• 6:27
  Speaker 7: I skipped right ahead to Holy Diver by Dio, and
• 6:31
  Speaker 7: I was really impressed with it because that song, the
• 6:35
  Speaker 7: original version, there's a minute in twenty seconds of just
• 6:39
  Speaker 7: kind of ominous like Middle Earth sounds.
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: Holy Diver might be the quintessential metal song. Dave Hill
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: considers it Ronnie James Dio's masterpiece.
• 7:30
  Speaker 10: Dive You've been.
• 7:31
  Speaker 7: Down Young in the Middes, so yeah, but even just
• 7:36
  Speaker 7: the pure balls to be like, I'm gonna make everyone
• 7:39
  Speaker 7: wait a minute and twenty seconds before I even smack
• 7:44
  Speaker 7: you around with one of the greatest metal songs of
• 7:46
  Speaker 7: all time. And then I was like, well, Pat Boone
• 7:50
  Speaker 7: doesn't have the balls to commit to that, but sure
• 7:53
  Speaker 7: enough he did. He did so right there, Huge fan.
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: Track number eight on in a metal mood, right after
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: Pat Boone's cover of Enter Sandman by Metallica.
• 8:22
  Speaker 10: Holy Diver, You've been down too long in the mid
• 8:25
  Speaker 10: and I see, Oh, let's become of me.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: By the time you can see his strikes. But you
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: know where he's me.
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: Oh, don't you know what I mean?
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: You gotta get away.
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: Epic, simply epic. This concern with Pat Boone's legacy did
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: not start with me or Dave Hill. It started with
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: another friend of mine, Bruce Hedlin, my oldest friend in
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: the world, and that on the first day of first grade. Bruce,
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: the producer Rick Rubin, and I are now partners on
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: the Broken Record Music podcast, another epic Pushkin Industry's production,
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: which you should be listening to anyway. Bruce always had
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: a b in his bonnet about Pat Boone.
• 9:25
  Speaker 4: I went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: in Cleveland, which I'd never been to, and I went
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: downstairs where it all kind of starts, and you see
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: these you see exhibits like the precursors to rock and roll,
• 9:35
  Speaker 4: and then you walk into what is probably the biggest
• 9:38
  Speaker 4: part of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: the most famous part, which is the Elvis section, how
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: Elvis basically founded rock and roll. And I was kind
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: of amazed. I went through it. I looked at all
• 9:51
  Speaker 4: these exhibits. All I could think of was, where is
• 9:53
  Speaker 4: Pat Boon? Now? Why would I be Why would I think?
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: Where is Pat Boone?
• 9:59
  Speaker 9: Well?
• 9:59
  Speaker 4: Pat Boone had an amazing career before Elvis, and in fact,
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: Pat Boone did a lot of the things Elvis did
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: before Elvis did it. I mean, just by raw numbers alone,
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: he was Pat Boone was on the top one hundred
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: charge the hot one hundred. I guess it's called for
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: I think two hundred and twenty consecutive weeks. That record
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: stood for I think close to fifty years. I think
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: the only people who've been on longer were Lil Wayne
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: and Drake. Lil Wayne Drake.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: And Pat Poot and Pat Pat. That's your that's our
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: top three.
• 10:37
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: The nominating Committee for the Rock and Roll Hall of
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: Fame is made up of rock music insiders, serious music people.
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: They meet every September and have a day long debate
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: about the ten or twenty names that should be on
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: the ballot for the upcoming year. The whole thing is secret, intense.
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: There's lobbying, campaigning. I asked Terry Stewart about the process.
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: He ran the Hall of Fame for fourteen years.
• 11:03
  Speaker 5: You know, I had some people that weren't very nice.
• 11:05
  Speaker 5: People would back you against the wall in the corner
• 11:07
  Speaker 5: and motherfucker. You know, there's sort of all that sort
• 11:10
  Speaker 5: of stuff. So it would go a lot, it would
• 11:13
  Speaker 5: go it could go dark, but you know it's I
• 11:15
  Speaker 5: understand that it meant a lot to these artists, and
• 11:16
  Speaker 5: I try to explain that there was a very methodical process.
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: So then I asked him did things ever get dark
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: over Pat Boone?
• 11:25
  Speaker 5: There wasn't a lot of discussion about Pat Boone.
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: Has he never even made the ballot? No, he's never
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: made it out of that ballot that comes out of
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: the room.
• 11:33
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: Now, if you know anything about popular music, you'll know
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: why Pat Boone is persona non grata in Cleveland. It's
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: because he made his name during the nineteen fifties covering
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: black R and B songs. A handsome young white guy
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: just graduated from Columbia University, and his record company has
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: him doing these whitewashed versions of songs by people like
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: Little Richard and Fats Domino. For music officionados, the idea
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: of Pat Boone as a serious musician is offensive.
• 12:05
  Speaker 5: But it took a lot of hutz futter really even
• 12:09
  Speaker 5: bring it up, because of that feeling that you know,
• 12:14
  Speaker 5: he had stolen this music. The majority of the people
• 12:17
  Speaker 5: involved always felt fairly strongly that it wasn't appropriate to
• 12:21
  Speaker 5: have Pat Boone in the Hall of Fame. But that's
• 12:24
  Speaker 5: the way it all. X Y's he never made the ballot.
• 12:28
  Speaker 5: It was discussed, but never made the ballot. And that's
• 12:31
  Speaker 5: that's just the nature of the beast.
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: In other words, Pat Boone's album in a Metal Mood
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: is not some weird one off. It's what he does.
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: He wanders into someone else's world and he takes their music,
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: and that does not pass the smell test at the
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But are they right.
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: That's what Dave Hill and I were trying to figure out,
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: which is why we sat in the studio together deconstructing
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: Pat Boone's cover of Holy Diver.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: You can see his fights.
• 13:03
  Speaker 7: There's no reason see right away when deals things about
• 13:08
  Speaker 7: the tiger, You're like, that's a scary tiger, Pat Boone.
• 13:11
  Speaker 7: They're like, I'm not afraid of that tiger. Get over here, tighter.
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: I mean, so, what's he doing here with this song?
• 13:19
  Speaker 7: I don't know, like I immediately or like you hear
• 13:23
  Speaker 7: and you're like, hey, did you Has anyone seen the
• 13:25
  Speaker 7: guy with the chicken skewers? I wanted to get some
• 13:28
  Speaker 7: of those, do you know what I mean? Like it's
• 13:31
  Speaker 7: it's like it's sort of an early cocktail party, corporate
• 13:36
  Speaker 7: fundraiser scenario.
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: Pat Boone is the poster child for cultural appropriation. Now,
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: why does this make me think of taco bell? Because
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: taco bell is the same thing for food. The bell
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: in taco bell is not some reference to the classic
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: bell towers in Spanish colonial architecture Elle Campanario. No, the
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: bell in Taco Bell refers to Glen Bell of the
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: Iowa Bells, a white guy who in the mid nineteen fifties,
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: decided to open a fast food restaurant in San Bernardino, California,
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: Glen Bell's Tacos Taco Bell. It became a chain. Whenever
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: he opened a new restaurant, Glen Bell would hire a
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: mariachi band. On the cover of his biography, Taco Titan,
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: Glen Bell of the Iowa Bells is wearing a sombrero.
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: Glen Bell is Pat Boone, two white guys in the
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: mid nineteen fifties appropriating someone else's culture. So if we
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: have a Pat Boone problem, we should also have a
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: Taco Bell problem, which I'm not happy about, by the way,
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: because I love Taco Bell. That was my moral quandary. Okay,
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: So Laverne, We're going to start with Laverne Baker. I'm
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: sitting around my dining room table with Bruce Jacob Smith,
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: my producer, and Justin Richmond, the producer of Broken Record.
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: We decided to convene a cultural appropriation summit to figure
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: out who is the appropriate appropriator. Bruce o'was from rural
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: southwestern Ontario. Jacob a half Jewish, half Catholic millennial from
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: Long Island. Justin, a mixed race hipster from Long Beach,
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: California and me Jamaica, Canada, England whatever. I felt we
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: needed to cover as many bases as we could. We're
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: listening to Laverne Baker, an early R and B legend,
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: perform Tweedledee in nineteen fifty five.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: Lady, all right, what's the other one?
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: Georgia Gibbs, which, by the way, if you do the search,
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: comes up right underneath it she Gibs. By the way,
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: Georgia gives his real name is FRIEDA.
• 16:13
  Speaker 4: Lipshitz, something like that Lipschitz.
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: From I'm assuming. Several years after, Laverne Baker does the
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: black version of Tweedledee, Georgia slash Frieda does the white version.
• 16:24
  Speaker 6: Tweet tweet D happy asking Ben is it's Jim many Jack?
• 16:38
  Speaker 6: You make my heart? Don't clay class.
• 16:42
  Speaker 7: Tweet tweet D.
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: All right, what's to compare those two versions?
• 16:48
  Speaker 4: Do I like the first one better? Yes? Are they
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: almost identical?
• 16:53
  Speaker 8: Yes?
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: Did she lift the arrangements? Yeah?
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: Of course second was not so bad. Actually I can't
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: you know, no, but.
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: It's precisely like the first one.
• 17:01
  Speaker 7: It is.
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: Laverne Baker actually famously had to take out flight insurance
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: once she was on tour, and she named Georgia Gibbs
• 17:09
  Speaker 4: as her beneficiary because she said, if the plane goes down,
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: her career is over.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: Too amazing.
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: That is okay, so oh we agreed though. That is
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: if you want a definition of cultural appropriation, that's it.
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: Next we turn to Elvis. Everyone loves Elvis, right. Remember
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: the last episode of season three of Revisionist History where
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: I put Elvis on the couch and everything ended in tears.
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: I love Elvis well. In his early years, a lot
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: of Elvis' songs were written by a man named Otis Blackwell.
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: He is black He was a songwriter. He wrote probably
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: his most famous song is Fever, which was a Peggy
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: Lee song later Madonna song. But he wrote don't be cruel.
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: All shook up, paralyzed, returned to sender.
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: Here we are, Yeah, yeah, great ball's a fire he wrote, Yes,
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: wrote great balls fla he did, yeh, yep, Oh my god,
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: guys genius. Otis Blackwell writes the songs, then records a demo,
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: gives the demo to Elvis. Ready, this is Elvis doing
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: his version of don't be cruel.
• 18:13
  Speaker 7: You know I can't be sitting all alone if you
• 18:20
  Speaker 7: can't come.
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: Please, please tell the phone, don't be cruel.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: Hard It's true.
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: Okay, that's Elvis. Now, this is Blackwell doing his version,
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: the version that came first. He's performing it on an
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: old episode of Late Night with David Letterman.
• 18:43
  Speaker 5: Alone.
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: Oh my god, it's the same song. As we're listening,
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: Justin puts his head in his hands. I'm sorry, that's brutal.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: I forget how I forget how bad it is A
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: This is just Elvis Well.
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: This is the king of rock and roll, the singer
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: with his own vast, dedicated room at the Hall of Fame.
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: Now imagine how Otis Blackwell or any of the other
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: black songwriters of that era felt about what Elvis did.
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: They'd been asked to write a song for someone much
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: more famous than they were. Fine. What hurts is when
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: a so called genius takes the song that you wrote
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: and that came out of your cultural community and doesn't
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: change a lick of it. One Broken Heart for Sale,
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: a hit song written by Otis Blackwell for Elvis in
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: nineteen sixty two.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Excud is that Otis It's done might be Elvis demo
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: in and the Otis demo.
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's Otis Blackwell. Did you guys think it was Elvis?
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's Elvis Demoinda, Oh my god, that's
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: Alas black Wait.
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: This is a perfect illustration of what we're talking about.
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: We're listening to a song on YouTube that's supposed to
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: be by Otis Blackwell, and we have no idea whether
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: it's Otis Blackwell or Elvis, because Elvis is completely Yeah,
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: he's completely stolen the sky's sound. Maybe this is why
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: not everyone out there likes Elvis as much as the
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame does. People like Justin
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: a purist on some level. He feels like it's his
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: music that's being violated here. And immediately Justin brings up
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: Public Enemy and their frontman, Chuck D.
• 20:53
  Speaker 10: Because I feel like Chuck D is the reason Elvis
• 20:55
  Speaker 10: is so hated.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah in black because.
• 20:58
  Speaker 10: Elvis was a here at the most, but it never
• 20:59
  Speaker 10: meant shit to me because he strayed our racist to
• 21:01
  Speaker 10: Suckle was simple and playing motherfucker men, John Wayne.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: Elvis wasn't here. Elvis was here the most, but he
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: never meant shit. I'm proud most of my heroes don
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: a peeral, no stamp.
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: Oh hell, this let's take a break, and when we
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: come back, we're going to eat some more. Taco Bell
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: Glen Bell was born in nineteen twenty three grew up
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: in the Depression. It was a hobo for a while,
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: riding the rails, living by his wits. During the war
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: he was a steward for a Marine Corps general, and
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: when the war was over, he came back to San Bernardino,
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: California and decided to open a hamburger stand. At first,
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: tacos were just something that he added to the menu.
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: He'd eaten them in the Mexican restaurants of southern California
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: and thought they were the perfect fast food, easy to
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: make and eat, super cheap. Then he added refried beans.
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: Then he dropped the burghers and fries altogether, and after
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: a decade of stops and starts, he opened Taco Bell Tacos, tostadas,
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: Frijulaz burritos, all for nineteen cents each. By the late
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: nineteen sixties, Taco Bells are everywhere with a standardized look,
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: slumpstone brick which looks a bit like adobe red clay
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: tiles on the roof Bell Tower, Mexican food in a
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: building straight out of Mexico. Taco Bell is as bad
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: as Elvis, except have you ever been to a Taco Bell?
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: Where are the carnadas? They don't have carnadas, don't spill
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: the beer. Oh yeah yeah, way way way off the menu.
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: So you pekin, this is our. When I was in
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: the test kitchen at Taco Bell's headquarters, the question of
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: carnadas came up, and they said that, for whatever reason,
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: shredded me meat doesn't work for them. Or Molay. If
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: you were ripping off Mexican food, if you wanted to
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: be Elvis of Mexican food, you would have Molay. But
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: there's no mole at Taco Bells.
• 23:20
  Speaker 11: Or ras Basket Inspired and it's just not familiar enough.
• 23:23
  Speaker 11: And if it's not familiar enough, again in thirty seconds,
• 23:26
  Speaker 11: we can't make it familiar to you.
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: This is Renee Peshati.
• 23:30
  Speaker 11: We just can't, as much as we'd love to.
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: What's hard about moley sauce, for example?
• 23:35
  Speaker 6: Mole sauce, So first off, I think there's so many different.
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: Types, and this is Liz Matthews, head chef.
• 23:42
  Speaker 8: I think Molay in general, especially a red moley, it's
• 23:46
  Speaker 8: rich and earthy, and I don't think that's something that
• 23:49
  Speaker 8: people are familiar with.
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: Are ready another thing. We're the soft corn tortillas. Nothing
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: is more quintessentially Mexican than the traditional soft corn tortilla.
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: There are no soft corn toutias at Taco Bell. They
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: tried it once Mexican street tacos.
• 24:07
  Speaker 11: What happened we had we We're getting a lot of
• 24:09
  Speaker 11: calls from customers that they got a taco but the
• 24:14
  Speaker 11: shell was raw, the shell was uncooked. They had no
• 24:18
  Speaker 11: reference for a cornth or tilla that wasn't deep fried, like,
• 24:23
  Speaker 11: they had no idea what a soft fresh.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: Corn or tia was all about. It was a crisis.
• 24:29
  Speaker 11: These were calls from Indiana. I mean, I just remember
• 24:32
  Speaker 11: they started streaming in. I'm like, oh my god. People
• 24:34
  Speaker 11: are worried that we're serving them uncooked food. There was
• 24:37
  Speaker 11: no reference for it whatsoever.
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: Now, the Taco Bell guys weren't upset by that reaction.
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: Their attitude isn't, oh, our customers have to get more sophisticated. No,
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: to them, it's just a reminder that they aren't in
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: the business of making real Mexican food. That's not why
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: people go to Taco Bell.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: I don't think people want to see authentic for they.
• 24:58
  Speaker 6: Want the variations and different. I don't know that that's
• 25:03
  Speaker 6: just not us. That's not who we are. We're inspired
• 25:06
  Speaker 6: by it, but that's not what we're driven by.
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: Taco Bell is an interpretation of Mexican food, a riff
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: on Mexican food for people who don't necessarily think of
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: themselves as people who eat Mexican food. That's a very
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: different game, and a harder game, by the way, because
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: you have to find the familiar part of the unfamiliar
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: and somehow make it seem new. If you were the
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: Elvis of Mexican food, you wouldn't need a test kitchen,
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: would you. If you're stealing something, why would you need
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: to test it? You test what you invent. Case in point,
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: the naked chicken chiloopa. The inspiration came from Taco Bell's
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: Heather Motorshaw, one of the foods signed tots I was
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: meeting with.
• 25:50
  Speaker 9: I remember Heather said something like, Steve, what do you
• 25:52
  Speaker 9: think if we made you know, a taco shell out
• 25:55
  Speaker 9: of chicken something? And I'm like, well, what are you
• 25:57
  Speaker 9: talking about? It was sort of like, well, you know,
• 25:59
  Speaker 9: like chicken milonaise. So in my mind I'm thinking like
• 26:03
  Speaker 9: literally like chicken milonaise, pound it out, you know, chicken
• 26:06
  Speaker 9: breast and that flavor profile, thinking like you're Heather, But
• 26:09
  Speaker 9: what really comes out is, you know, she's probably onto something.
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: We probably they ended up with a white meat chicken breast,
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: deep fried in batter, molded into the shape of a
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: taco and filled with lettuce, cheese, tomatoes, and avocado ranch sauce.
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: Did you have difficulty kind of convincing people?
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: We couldn't even describe it to each other at first,
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: So how do you actually get that message across to
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: consumers so they're like, oh, I want to go in
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: and try that. I mean, that was a pretty a
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: pretty big feat.
• 26:39
  Speaker 12: But that was part of the conundrum because we originally
• 26:44
  Speaker 12: were talking about this as a Crispy Chicken taco, and
• 26:48
  Speaker 12: when you called it a Crispy Chicken taco, people were
• 26:51
  Speaker 12: expecting a taco shell, regular taco shell with a piece
• 26:55
  Speaker 12: of crispy chicken inside.
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: This is Heather of naked chicken chilupa fame.
• 27:00
  Speaker 12: So it wasn't until we then converted and started to
• 27:03
  Speaker 12: call it a chiloopa, which is on more premium taco
• 27:07
  Speaker 12: where consumers like, oh, Okay, I got it.
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: But even here they're making things up. In Mexican cuisine,
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: a chiloopa is a deep fried masa dough pancake shaped
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: to resemble a flat fishing boat. That's why it's called
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: a chiloopa. Chiluopas are basque whaling boats, small, wide bottom,
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: shallow sided. But in the Taco Bell universe, a chiloopa
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: is not a shallow boat anymore. It's a taco, a
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: high sided boat. And it's naked. You're calling it a
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: naked what's the meaning of the word naked in that context?
• 27:41
  Speaker 6: It didn't it didn't have the shell, So it's.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: So I was wondering, like, where are you guys going
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: with this? So what's interesting about this is that it's
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: it's really conceptually a step outside of the traditional Mexican food.
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: This is this is We're no longer it looks like
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: a taco. It's not a taco. It's something else. This
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: is not the same as Elvis and Otis Blackwell? Is it?
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: Elvis appropriated the song Don't Be Cruel and also everything
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: else otis Blackwell style vocal tics. Elvis stole the song
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: Soul Taco Bell appropriated the taco, but not the tacos soul.
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: They turned it into something that is about as far
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: from a taco as humanly possible. By the way, I
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: haven't even mentioned the craziest thing in the Taco Bell lab.
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: It's for the Indian market, but they cooked one up
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: for us. It's an Indian spiced potato latka in the
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: shape of a taco, filled with all kinds of delicious flavors.
• 28:52
  Speaker 9: Y spicy, it's yeah, this spice is a little bit
• 28:56
  Speaker 9: of a delay, so you might take a few bikes bites.
• 28:59
  Speaker 9: It's not spicy, and then it's.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: I want to talk.
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: I have many questions about spice.
• 29:02
  Speaker 9: Yeah, Bluey, Justin and I.
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: You do you want me to feed you? Justin Justin
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: Richmond from the Cultural a Creation Summit. Alvis doesn't mean
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: shit to me. I brought him along as my soundtech,
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: but he was holding microphones with both hands so he
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: couldn't eat, and all this food was passing right under
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: his nose, and we were getting concerned about his state
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: of mind, especially the Taco Bell people. This was their
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: professional responsibility and they felt they were failing him.
• 29:31
  Speaker 6: So you want us to cut things up for you,
• 29:36
  Speaker 6: so you want me to hold the microphones in India?
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: And now I kind of have to take a foray
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: into the Dorritos locus Taco Taco Bell's taco where the
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: shell is made out of a dorrito, which turns out
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: to be this fantastically complicated engineering feet because you have
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: to simultaneously please the universe of hardcore Dorito's fans and
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: the universe of hard core Taco Bell lovers. Did the
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: lawyers have to get involved? There's like all this ip
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: going on between and Taco Bell, and I.
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: Think I can tell story, but I mean the story
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: really is.
• 30:11
  Speaker 6: There was a handshake.
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: The CEO of Frido Le and the CEO of Taco
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: Bell worked it out one on one. Taco Bell, born
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: of San Bernardino meets Doritos inspired by authentic Mexican tortilla chips,
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: but actually created in its current form as you may know,
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: at a restaurant in Disneyland.
• 30:32
  Speaker 8: They did a handshake because they knew if we got
• 30:35
  Speaker 8: everybody involved, we would.
• 30:37
  Speaker 6: Never get this idea out the door. And knew we
• 30:39
  Speaker 6: had this magical thing, and we knew that that would
• 30:42
  Speaker 6: not happen.
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: It was like a summit, did they like meet in
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: some secret location.
• 30:46
  Speaker 6: All the lawyers were like, what did you guys do?
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, probably got a golf course. Let's be honest.
• 30:51
  Speaker 6: Yeah, maybe.
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: Taco Bell is not Elvis. Elvis could never have pulled
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: off the Doritos Locos Taco. I can't go on without
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: one more moment from our cultural appropriation summit when we
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: finally got to the matter at hand, what's the best Pat.
• 31:28
  Speaker 4: Boon touty fruity?
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: Just do the two touty fruity. So we'll start with
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: Little Richard's tooty fruity. But the best tooty fruity fact
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: I learned recently was that it's originally tooty fruity. Good
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: booty boy Blah, Pat Boom comes along the boy wonder
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: and should we should we do the lot?
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: We have a lot.
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: It's a live version of him. Let's go the live
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: version just for fun. It's an old performance on Canadian
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: television from the nineteen fifties. Pat Boom looks like he
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: flew in straight from a boy Scout jamboree. The video
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: begins with a title card, so the caption like pouring
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: cream into coffee.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: Oh, this is so good.
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: Pat Boon lightened and sweetened R and B, and he
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: made a smoothie out of tooty fruity.
• 32:26
  Speaker 7: Calf. All right, here's the gal that I love.
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: Here's a gal that I love best, which fruity completely.
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: He doesn't he doesn't go behind the men.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: That's that's really the that's what all of them have done.
• 32:55
  Speaker 10: By the way, all the white versions have simplified the beat,
• 32:58
  Speaker 10: like the beat is feels a little more dense, a
• 33:00
  Speaker 10: little more complex in the black versions and the white version.
• 33:03
  Speaker 10: It's like this is the one, two three four that
• 33:06
  Speaker 10: you can't miss it.
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: You know, Pat Boon not copy Touty Fruity. He made
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: a smoothiet of Touty Fruity. Years later, Little Richard did
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: an interview with the music journalist Joe Smith. He wasn't
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: happy what he would do.
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: He would take over the pop stations and it would
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: kill me costing over.
• 33:23
  Speaker 10: And see, it would kill me costing overcause he would
• 33:26
  Speaker 10: kill me because the white station will play him.
• 33:28
  Speaker 12: He wouldn't blame me. And so when you go in
• 33:29
  Speaker 12: the record stop, you could find his, you can find mine.
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: But Little Richard says that later he changed his mind.
• 33:36
  Speaker 8: But really be true.
• 33:37
  Speaker 5: When I look back over, it was a blessing and
• 33:39
  Speaker 5: a lesson because he opened doors for us. He made
• 33:42
  Speaker 5: the white kids more aware of me, and because they
• 33:46
  Speaker 5: won't my version of it. That's what he says, I've
• 33:48
  Speaker 5: been He says I opened some doors.
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: He opened a whole out of doors.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: Yes, and oh he's a beautiful person.
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: When it works, cultural appropriation serves as the basis for
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: something new, but it also widens the audience for the
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: real thing. It's the way the original, authentic idea moves
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: into the mainstream. That's what my friend Bruce has been
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: trying to tell us.
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: The contrast chairs with Elvis. I'm not blaming Elvis directly,
• 34:15
  Speaker 4: but he did a version of hound Dog. Big Mama
• 34:20
  Speaker 4: Thornton didn't then crash the pop charts afterwards with her
• 34:25
  Speaker 4: version of hound.
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: Dog or because there was no room for it, because
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: he'd already he did it so well, there was no
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: reason to go back and do the original.
• 34:32
  Speaker 4: Yes, And that's what I th That's essentially the distinction
• 34:35
  Speaker 4: I'm making, which is, you know, if if Elvis Presley
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: is the Columbus, you know Pat Boone is the guy
• 34:42
  Speaker 4: who landed in the New World and then went back
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: to Europe and said we should make friends with these guys.
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: They've got great tobacco. He didn't show up and saying
• 34:51
  Speaker 4: I'm taking over the content.
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: He's John the Baptist, whereas Elvis pretends to be Jesus.
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: Alvis says I'm the risen Lord. Pat Boon's not pretending
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: to be the risen Lord. He's like, I'm just the
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: guy preparing the way for the risen Lord.
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: He is John the Baptist, John the Baptist and Taco
• 35:08
  Speaker 4: Bell same time.
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: Pat Boone, John the Baptist.
• 35:12
  Speaker 4: Is handsome, wholesome. He's really handsome.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: He's a wholesome.
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: He's a really nice guy. There he is running to
• 35:17
  Speaker 4: his mark right now.
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: I think he's a nice guy, Ladies.
• 35:20
  Speaker 7: And gentleman, Pat Boone.
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety seven, at the height of his metal period,
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: Pat Boone went on the Easter Seal telephone.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: I got a bad reputation. You want and I don't
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: know why.
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: I rushed my hair, I rushed my teeth.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: I go to church.
• 35:45
  Speaker 10: I'm a really.
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: Sweet, nice guy. You're trying to tell me he doesn't
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: belong in the Hall of Fame. I used to be
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: such a sweet, sweet thing till they got a Let's
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: make this happen, people, Let's get Pat Boone on the ballot.
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: Info at rockhall dot org. That's info at rockhall dot org.
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: Then crank up a little in a metal mood on
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: your phone, order a naked chicken jaloopa at the nearest
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: Taco Bell, and ask yourself if the world is in
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: a better place with the right kind of cultural appropriation.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: Lou waw, mister nice guy, they say, day you would see.
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: Revisionist History is produced by Mila Bell and Jacob Smith
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: with Camille Baptista. Our editor is Julia Barton. Flon Williams
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: is our engineer. Fact checking by Beth Johnson. Original music
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: by Luis Guerra. Special thanks to Carlene Migliori, Head Fein,
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: Maggie Taylor, Maya Knigg, Jason Gambrel, and Jacob Weisberg. Oh
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: and Justin Richmond, who turned down Taco Bell in the
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: service of his duty, and Bruce Hadlam, the brains behind
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: this particular operation. Revisionist History is brought to you by
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: Pushkin Industries. I'm Malcolm Godlong, what I'm coming back to
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: Pat Boone? So he takes an absolutely iconic song.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: And he does this.
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: Jazz lounge. Yeah, can you give us a can you
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: try a little bit of a jazz loungee?
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: Holy dive?
• 37:45
  Speaker 7: You've been down to see now?
• 37:47
  Speaker 8: You know?
• 37:48
  Speaker 7: Where as I attempt to do it, I'm also showing
• 37:51
  Speaker 7: you what's great about Pat Boone because I can't emulate
• 37:55
  Speaker 7: just the swagger and you know that you can tell
• 37:59
  Speaker 7: you like, he's got a bit of a tan.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: You can hear it in his voice.
• 38:02
  Speaker 7: Yeah, you've been down too long in the men not see. Oh,
• 38:09
  Speaker 7: come in with me and see I've just got taken it,
• 38:14
  Speaker 7: you know.
• 38:14
  Speaker 13: Now we're at a coffeehouse on some sp fun So
• 38:19
  Speaker 13: what this is interesting, what he's done is not it's
• 38:24
  Speaker 13: not a trivial accomplishment.
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: No, there's some there, there's a there's a degree of
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: difficulty in what he's done here. Oh yeah, no, one can.
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: You can't walk in off the street and do Pat Boon.
• 38:34
  Speaker 7: No, No, you'd be a fool. You know, as as
• 38:38
  Speaker 7: much as you'd be a fool to think you could
• 38:40
  Speaker 7: do a d o, you'd be as as maybe as
• 38:44
  Speaker 7: much a fool to think you can do Pat phone