Jolly ole England is abuzz today with the BBC Radio 4 broadcast of Bono’s 14-minute long poem about Elvis Presley.
The poem, titled “American David,” was read to and recorded by a journalist a decade and a half ago, and has now, inexplicably, been exhumed for broadcast. Some of the lines will be very familiar to U2 completists, of which I am one. Part of the poem wound up as lyrics to the Bono-penned song “Elvis Ate America,” which was a highlight of the album Passengers: Original Soundtracks 1, a weird, delightfully throwaway collab between the members of U2 and Brian Eno.
The full text of the “American David” can be found here. Included are some annotations by professor. He doesn’t hold back. The poem is pretty bad, but the parts that got song treatment in “Elvis Ate America” are still fun. Especially if you have that song’s idiot beat in your head as you read it.
After the jump: The lyrics to “Elvis Ate America.”