Elvis Presley - Burning Love

First performance: 12/04/1995


Coverinfo

Bruce played the song 7 times: 
 
 
28-song set includes the tour premieres and sole tour appearances of "Burning Love" and "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", the latter featuring the fan who requested it joining in on tambourine. 

2013-06-29 Stade De France, Saint Denis, France
Paris' crowd is treated to a three-song pre-show solo acoustic performance, including "Burning Love".

2012-06-10 Stadio Artemio Franchi, Florence, Italy
by sign request, "Burning Love" was soundchecked a week or so ago in San Sebastian. 
With Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers. Second of two shows to celebrate the 15th anniversary of American Babylon .

2009-08-22 Comcast Center, Mansfield, MA

2009-08-02 Auditorio Monte Do Gozo, Santiago De Compostela, Spain
 
 

1995-04-12 Carnegie Hall, New York City, NY 
During the sixth annual Rock for The Rainforest benefit for the Rainforest Foundation. Bruce performed the song with all performers : James Taylor, Elton John. Sting, Jessye Norman, Billy Joel, Jon Bon Jovi, Paul Simon, Geoffrey Oryema. Bruce is on the lead vocal. 
  

Songinfo

"Burning Love" is a song written by Dennis Linde and originally recorded by country soul artist Arthur Alexander, who included it on his 1972 self-titled album. It was soon covered and brought to fame by Elvis Presley, becoming his biggest hit single in the United States since "Suspicious Minds" in 1969 and his last Top 10 hit in the American Hot 100 or pop charts. Elvis Presley's cover version became much more popular than the original version, and was released as a single on August 1, 1972, with the B-side "It's a Matter of Time". He performed it in at least two high-profile productions: the concert film Elvis on Tour (during which he had to use a lyric sheet as the song was still new to him), and the later Aloha from Hawaii concert.
 
 
 
 
 

Other cover versions

Bruce on the artist

Whenever he could, Bruce would mention the enormous influence, Elvis had on him and on his music. Elvis is the most covered artist by Bruce (23 times) together with Chuck Berry, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan. The Influence of Elvis on Bruce, is described in a documentary compiled from previously existing footage by Dennis P. Laverty, a former Old Bridge resident who now lives in Staten Island (and who calls Springsteen and Elvis Presley "my two favorite rock stars". He used concert footage and previously released interview segments with Springsteen and various rock experts to show just how important Elvis Presley was to Springsteen.
 
 
 
 
"It's a cliché story, but watching Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show changed Bruce Springsteen's entire life. "It was the evening I realized a white man could make magic," he said in 2012, "that you did not have to be constrained by your upbringing, by the way you looked, or by the social context that oppressed you. You could call upon your own powers of imagination, and you could create a transformative self." He urged his mother to buy him a guitar after that, and in 1976 he went to Graceland after a Memphis show and even hopped the fence in a failed effort to meet the King himself. Elvis died during the recording of Darkness on the Edge of Town, right as Springsteen was hoping the King would cover his new song "Fire." Springsteen channeled his sorrow into "Come On (Let's Go Tonight)," which later morphed into "Factory."
 
 
"In the beginning, every musician has their genesis moment. For you, it might have been the Sex Pistols, or Madonna, or Public Enemy. It's whatever initially inspires you to action. Mine was 1956, Elvis on the Ed Sullivan Show. It was the evening I realized a white man could make magic, that you did not have to be constrained by your upbringing, by the way you looked, or by the social context that oppressed you. You could call upon your own powers of imagination, and you could create a transformative self. A certain type of transformative self, that perhaps at any other moment in American History, might have seemed difficult, if not impossible. And I always tell my kids that they were lucky to be born in the age of reproducible technology, otherwise they'd be traveling in the back of a wagon and I'd be wearing a jester's hat. It's all about timing. The advent of television and its dissemination of visual information changed the world in the fifties the way the internet has over the past twenty years. Remember, it wasn't just the way Elvis looked, it was the way he moved that made people crazy, pissed off, driven to screaming ecstasy, and profane revulsion. That was television. When they made an attempt to censor him from the waist down, it was because of what you could see happening in his pants. Elvis was the first modern Twentieth Century man, the precursor of the Sexual Revolution, of the Civil Rights Revolution, drawn from the same Memphis as Martin Luther King, creating fundamental, outsider art that would be embraced by a mainstream popular culture. Television and Elvis gave us full access to a new language, a new form of communication, a new way of being, a new way of looking, a new way of thinking; about sex, about race, about identity, about life; a new way of being an American, a human being; and a new way of hearing music. Once Elvis came across the airwaves, once he was heard and seen in action, you could not put the genie back in the bottle. After that moment, there was yesterday, and there was today, and there was a red hot, rockabilly forging of a new tomorrow, before your very eyes."
 
Bruce also wrote a song : "I’m turning into Elvis" :
 
During the Rainforest Fund concert at 1995/04/12 Bruce played the song and used this as an intro :
 
" this is the second half of the show, gonna be a tribute to Elvis and his decade. It´s been done before and a lot prettier than we’re about to do it….but that´s ok, look at it like you’re 15 years old, you don’t know a whole lot about Elvis and your uncle gets up in the livingroom trying to explain to you what it was all about. So with that in mind I’ve written a song especially for this particular occasion. You remember the coach Tom Landry, when he was trying to explain his personal relationship that he had with God ? well, this is a song that’s sort of about my personal relationship with him….´´ [Taken from the Backstreets Magazine, issue 49.] 
  

Lyrics

Lord Almighty,
I feel my temperature rising
Higher higher
It's burning through to my soul

Girl, girl, girl
You gonna set me on fire
My brain is flaming
I don't know which way to go

Your kisses lift me higher
Like the sweet song of a choir
You light my morning sky
With burning love

Ooh, ooh, ooh,
I feel my temperature rising
Help me, I'm flaming
I must be a hundred and nine
Burning, burning, burning
And nothing can cool me
I just might turn into smoke
But I feel fine

Cause your kisses lift me higher
Like a sweet song of a choir
And you light my morning sky
With burning love

It's coming closer
The flames are reaching my body
Please won't you help me
I feel like I'm slipping away
It's hard to breath
And my chest is a-heating

Lord Almighty,
I'm burning a hole where I lay
Cause your kisses lift me higher
Like the sweet song of a choir
You light my morning sky
With burning love
With burning love
Ah, ah, burning love
I'm just a hunk, a hunk of burning love
Just a hunk, a hunk of burning love
Just a hunk, a hunk of burning love
Just a hunk, a hunk of burning love
Just a hunk, a hunk of burning love
Just a hunk, a hunk of burning love