Over the years I’ve heard many live recordings of Love Me Tender. The “official single” — the one you hear on the radio — is noteworthy as the only performance where Elvis does it straight.
In all the other ones he fucks it up. Either he breaks out laughing in the middle of it, or he inserts alternate words. Instead of “You have made my laugh complete” he’ll say: “You have made my life a wreck” or something of the kind.
At first I though this was just a funny little thing. But then, as I heard more and more of the live recordings, I realized that he did it every time. He _always_ fucked it up.
So my question is: why? What’s the story behind this? Because there must be one.