Losing Elvis so many years ago
How long would it take for America to recognize who it lost?
On vacation up in Maine, the radio blasting, all of a sudden I hear three Elvis songs in a row — “Hound Dog” and “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Suspicious Minds” — something you just didn’t hear on what Howard Stern called “terrestrial radio.” It never seemed more earth-bound then right then when an announcer’s somber voice comes on and tells his listeners the sad truth. Elvis Presley was dead.
Dead? Elvis? On the one hand, it seemed impossible. Wasn’t he touring, in fact, wasn’t he coming here? To Maine? Didn’t I read somewhere that he’d been in the hospital, resting up for a tour?
And now, gone. Over. Done. And he was, what did they say? 42? Wow. How many lifetimes did he fit into those 42 years? How many of them were happy?
Some of them, of course, were. A truck driver earning $18 dollars a week driving for Crown Electric becoming an international star almost overnight. Or so it seemed. And then the TV shows, on Ed Sullivan and a few others, those lame-ass movies, Las Vegas, a few hits here and there breaking through. He didn’t look healthy, of course, near the end. Renting amusement parks in the middle of night, sleeping all day, buying and giving away cars. We heard all the stories.
Once I got older and started reading writers like Peter Guralnick and Greil Marcus, learning more about Elvis at Sun, how he knocked the musical world on its rear end, I got “Sun Sessions” and explored those early records. One of my bootleg discoveries was one with Sun Studio outtakes that included a fiery discussion between Sun Records founder Sam Phillips and Jerry Lee Lewis about whether or not he was going to Hell and though I’d read about it before, hearing the conviction in each of their voices on that bootleg record, they were deadly serious down at 906 Union Avenue in Memphis. Elvis started all that.
You could say I grew up with Elvis. We didn’t have a lot of albums in our Brookline home. We had Percy Faith’s “Sounds Of Brazil” that my father would play at top volume on Sunday mornings when he was making waffles. One we did like was Elvis’s second album, the one where he has this stylish purple shirt. We played this a lot.
The first Elvis Presley album we had - where I got to know “The King.”
Of course, I loved the rockers — “Ready Teddy” and “Long Tall Sally” and “Rip It Up” and “Hound Dog” — I could see why America went absolutely nuts for that song, even as The Beatles were taking over the airwaves. I still loved Elvis, was happy to see The Beatles loved him, too. I kept playing that record and remember listening all the way through the weeper “Old Shep” — a song about a friggin’ dog — that made me sad, just as it was supposed to. Don’t think I cried, though.
It wasn’t until later on that I read that “Old Shep” was the song Elvis sang in his high school competition. And I tried to imagine the kind of nerve a shy, pimple-faced kid must have had, playing a song LIKE THAT in front of his classmates at Humes High in Memphis, singing his heart out for kids who probably didn’t even know he COULD sing, that he did sing. And a weepy song like that?
I wondered how he had the courage, the curiosity to hear what he sounded like to walk into Sun Studios and make a recording. Surely, he had no idea what lay ahead. Nobody could have dreamed that. And now it was all over.
Just so happened that Jackson Browne was on tour that summer and he’d be appearing at the Cumberland County Civic Center, exactly where Elvis Presley was supposed to begin a tour on the day he died.
I walked up to the box office to buy tickets for Jackson Browne. Turned out that his hit song “Stay” which he included on his live “Running On Empty” album that came out that winter was from the concert I saw. It was a great show. He didn’t mention Elvis, though.
Something else happened as I was walking away from the box office. A middle-aged man approached with four tickets in hand. I had an idea what they were and stood at the window.
“These were for the Elvis concert,” he said. “I wanna return ‘em.”
“Uh, sir,” I interjected. Couldn’t help myself. “You’re not going to KEEP them? Those tickets are going to be worth a fortune someday.”
“You want to buy ‘em?”
“Well, I would, but I’m on vacation and, well…”
“Thought so.”
He handed the tickets to the lady behind the counter and she laid out the money, he took it and left. He had four $15 tickets —$60. Imagine seeing Elvis Presley for what it costs you for a sub, chips and drink at Jimmy Johns?
From what I saw online today, those tickets are selling for $375. Each.
Of course, when I got back to the newspaper, I wrote something about Elvis and they agreed to run it on the Entertainment pages. What I didn’t know was that while I was away, one of our other writers wrote a mocking, taunting column about Elvis, one where she called him a national joke and ridiculed people who were mourning him.
And yeah, I got it. He was a target, had been, really since he showed America that it was OK to move on stage, to have fun, to make music that was exciting, groundbreaking, daring.
Some people just didn’t — and wouldn’t — get it. After my story ran, she walked by my desk and said, softly, “I liked yours better.”
I didn’t say anything back. I thought it, though. After all, he was The King.
Nice read. He indeed had an interesting and remarkable life. A huge legacy, and a sadness that was apparently passed on to his daughter by all accounts. Fame always seems to come at such a high cost, especially for those at a very young age. I would imagine the ridicule as displayed by your coworker took a toll no doubt adding to his demise. The legend will fondly live on forever though!