"Elephant Talk" is a song by the band King Crimson and was released in 1981 on the Discipline album. The song is led primarily by Tony Levin's Chapman stick, playing a Go-go-style bass line. The band plays verses, choruses and several guitar solos, the latter of which are deliberately played and processed to resemble trumpeting elephants or squeaky mice.
Adrian Belew sings five stanzas of humorous lyrics, each one beginning and ending with the phrase "Talk! It's only talk!". The other lyrics consist of yelled synonyms for talking, with each stanza containing words of a different letter (Alliteration). The five stanzas progress alphabetically (the first stanza using "talk" synonyms beginning with "A", the second "B" and so on.) Belew's vocal delivery is reminiscent of that of David Byrne, with whom Belew performed in the band Talking Heads.
It was released as a single in 1981. Its tracks are from the album Discipline.
Read more about Elephant Talk: Personnel, Live Versions, Covers
Famous quotes containing the words elephant and/or talk:
“Even the elephant carries but a small trunk on his journeys. The perfection of traveling is to travel without baggage.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“They talk about their Pilgrim blood,
Their birthright high and holy!
A mountain-stream that ends in mud
Methinks is melancholy.”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)