Collective Soul has a brand new retrospective documentary out on Blu-ray and video on demand, and the movie facilities across the recording of their 2024 effort, Right here to Eternity, which passed off at Elvis Presley’s Palm Springs home in late 2022 and early 2023. Because it occurs, the band was there when the information broke that Presley’s daughter, Lisa Marie, died in January 2023.
I had an opportunity to talk to Collective Soul’s bass participant and co-founder, Will Turpin, in regards to the occasion and the way it impacted the band forward of the documentary, titled Give Me a Phrase: The Collective Soul Story, hitting the 2025 film schedule. Turpin advised me Lisa Marie’s presence was very a lot felt that day..
‘It By no means Rains In Palm Springs’
January twelfth, 2023, was a tragic day for the Presley Household and their followers. Lisa Marie was solely 54 when she died from a bowel obstruction, a facet impact of bariatric surgical procedure, forsaking 4 kids, together with her daughter Riley Keough. Many Elvis followers had adopted Lisa Marie’s total life, from her delivery to Elvis and Pricilla in 1968, by the top, and her loss of life got here as an actual shock to everybody.
At Elvis’ Palm Springs home, the place Collective Soul was laying down the tracks of their new album, they’d arrange the management room for the recording in Lisa Marie’s childhood bed room. On the fateful day, Turpin defined, it rained, which is uncommon within the excessive desert of California. He mentioned of the day,
We have been proper in the midst of recording. That was January. So we have been proper in the midst of recording, and it would not rain quite a bit in Palm Springs. It rained that night time, and a first-time leak got here by what was her bed room, the place our engineering room was.
A dismal day in Palm Springs was like an omen for the band. Not a foul omen essentially, however an indication to the musicians that Lisa Marie’s presence was felt. Turpin mentioned of the shock storm,
We might arrange engineering in Lisa Marie’s previous bed room. I do not understand how this story did not actually slip into the documentary, however a leak got here by the roof. It did not get on any of the gear, nevertheless it rained that night time, and water got here by her ceiling, the place her bed room was.
Luckily for the band and people working with them to make the file, what may have been a catastrophe resulted in a contented and nearly heartfelt ending. If it was Lisa Marie’s spirit hovering about, she wasn’t upset about her childhood bed room getting used as a studio.
Water And Recording Tools Is A Dangerous Combo, However Once more, Lisa Marie Was There With Them
If you hear one thing a couple of leak in a management room, one which had, in keeping with Turpin, by no means appeared within the bed room earlier than, can be a recipe for catastrophe, as water and electrical gear clearly don’t combine. Nonetheless, Lisa Marie’s presence was once more felt when the costly gear was spared. As Turpin defined,
After which on high of that, it did not contact any of the computer systems or any of the gear, so it is nearly like she did not need to harm us.
Lisa Marie Presley was not solely the daughter of a musician, however she was additionally married to some, Michael Jackson and producer Michael Lockwood. She additionally recorded three albums of her personal, so she would by no means need to break an incredible session!
Recording In Elvis’ Home Sounds Like Fairly An Superb Expertise
In response to the documentary, this was the primary time a band had recorded in Elvis Presley’s desert home, apart from The King himself. The home has been preserved as carefully to the way it was when the present proprietor purchased it. Turpin was amazed by all of the little issues that have been nonetheless there from when Elvis final hung on the market, nearly 50 years in the past. Not solely was a number of the plush shiny pink carpet nonetheless there, and different issues that reminded him of Graceland in Memphis, however one little bit of safety, over the jacuzzi in again, was nonetheless there. Turpin says,
The Jacuzzi had this translucent form of high placed on it as a result of he was form of sufferer to one of many first paparazzi-type offers the place guys have been on a helicopter with a zoom lens they usually acquired footage of Elvis Presley in his Jacuzzi with some USC cheerleaders.
Apparently, Presley had the quilt put over the jacuzzi to keep away from this sooner or later, and it was all nonetheless there, as Turpin advised me,
Actually, the translucent little tops that he placed on high of the Jacuzzi, the place all that stuff was nonetheless there.
This may not be the form of story his spouse, Priscilla, whose personal story was not too long ago advised on display within the wonderful film directed by Sofia Coppola, would need to hear, however she have to be used to listening to tales about her late husband hanging out with cheerleaders, proper?
Elvis Was By no means A Direct Affect On Collective Soul, However He Is Nonetheless The King
After I requested about Elvis and his influence on Collective Soul, Turpin defined that being from Georgia, you possibly can’t assist by not less than be not directly influenced,
You recognize, being from the South, yeah, Elvis was an enormous deal, however oblique affect. You recognize, we by no means would have talked about Elvis essentially as a musical affect.
After all, if you’re within the rock and roll enterprise, Elvis isn’t that removed from what you do. Even when The King isn’t a direct affect on many bands nowadays, and even within the ‘90s, you don’t have to return too far to search out some side of a band’s music that factors to the primary true rock star, as Turpin explains about his bandmates Ed and Dean Roland,
[Elvis] was actually the one non-Christian sort of music that Mr. Roland listened to. So when [Ed and Dean] have been younger, they have been actually influenced by it.
Elvis additionally dabbled in gospel music, so it is sensible that he can be one of many few rock stars the Roland brothers’ preacher father would enable in the home. Whereas Elvis himself may not have been a direct affect, the influence of non secular music basically is clear in Collective Soul’s work.
Three Many years Later, It All Got here Full Circle
Within the Give Me a Phrase: The Collective Soul Story, the story of the Roland brothers and their associate, all these years, Will Turpin, comes full circle, and that music that so captivated them of their youth made its presence felt in very actual methods on their newest album. Chances are you’ll not hear Elvis (or Lisa Marie) of their music, however the influence is clearly there.
Maintain an eye fixed out for Collective Soul, as they’ll be out on tour enjoying all their hits from the Nineteen Nineties and songs from the brand new album, hopefully wth Lisa Marie Presley nonetheless wanting down on them, pleased with all they’ve achieved.