The Ancient Rocker

The Ancient Rocker

Elvis - the King Would Have Been 70

By Mike Jahn

New York, December 27, 2004 -- On January 8, Elvis would have been 70. The thought gives me more heartburn than I got the day I saw Paul McCartney's mug on the cover of "Modern Maturity."

Elvis at 70! Imagine the effect of jowls on the downturned snarl that made Sylvester Stallone's career possible. Think of the hips that turned TV censors livid in the 50s wracked by rheumatoid arthritis.

Imagine the national, birthday-celebration binge on peanut butter and banana sandwiches.

The latter doubtless will happen all over the planet, and will be but one of a hunka hunka of official and unofficial commemorative events planet-wide. The official events will revolve around Graceland, Elvis's Memphis estate-turned-theme park. More about the celebrations in a moment. First, a confession about Elvis and me.

"Hound Dog" was the first rock and roll record I bought. It was a 45, which for those too young to recall was kind of a flat black donut with grooves on it.

I bought all the funky little rockers that Elvis made for Memphis's legendary Sun Records, and then tuned out when he switched to RCA and began mass-producing hits. Then he was drafted, his situation satirized in the Broadway show and movie "Bye Bye Birdie."

When your career becomes a joke for Dick Van Dyke, it's over. Appropriately, when Elvis got out of the Army he retired from mass-producing hits and went into mass-producing generally awful Hollywood movies.

Fast forward ten or so years. It's 1969. Elvis is still churning out Hollywood stinkers, and he still gets hits. However, this music is slick pop crooning far removed from the glory days of Memphis Elvis. For those caught up in the golden age of rock, Elvis's best moments were a faint memory and his late-60s career an embarrassment. The King is a has-been. Rock has passed him by, and he knows it.

What to do? He decides to return to his roots, to performing live, something he had done only once since 1957 (a 1961 benefit for the U.S.S. Arizona memorial in Hawaii). His comeback will take place in Las Vegas.

Generally speaking, comeback concerts staged in Vegas mean but one thing - you're no longer simply an embarrassment; you're a lounge act. You're dolled up and singing standards - "Mack the Knife," "One for My Baby," a couple of show tunes, "Moon River" and maybe a medley of your old rockers sweetened up with lush orchestrations.

That's what I expected when I got to Vegas to cover the comeback. Eight or nine months before, I had broken the story of his comeback and now I would get to watch him join the ranks of those who are old and in the way - the King of Rock and Roll singing "My Yiddishe Mama," "Volare," and taking requests. And this would happen within three weeks of Woodstock.

I was so sure that a debacle loomed that I didn't bother to shake his hand when offered the opportunity. At a pre-concert party, a flunkie asked, "would you like to meet Elvis?"

Though he was standing close enough to smack with a peanut butter and banana sandwich, I said, "No, that's okay."
Who wanted to meet a has-been? I once tried to hold a conversation with Frankie Valli and that was enough, thank you. I wanted to remember Elvis as I imagined him when I bought that copy of "Hound Dog."

So when it came time for the concert I trudged to a VIP table smack up against the stage, sat down across from Henry Mancini, and waited for the has-been singer to flatter the composer with a rendition of "Moon River."

I guess I was wrong, right? After spending an hour watching Elvis rock out just above my head - and ducking flying panties tossed by fans (if memory serves, a bright pink one touched down on Mancini's chrome dome) - I admitted that I was wrong about the King. Here is some of what I went back to the hotel room and wrote 35 years ago:

" ... with the opening song on his first night, it was clear that Elvis Presley still knows how to sing rock 'n' roll. He seems, in fact, to have lost nothing in the past decade ... Elvis Presley came to this place and provided an unbelievable exercise in pure, exciting rock 'n' roll. Despite the flashiness, despite the fact that most of the male customers had awful James Bond fixations and most all the women seemed to dress out of the Fredericks of Hollywood catalogue ... Elvis Presley made Las Vegas an incredible experience."
The experience was incredible enough for me to also participate in conceiving a son there. At least I got THAT right.

Now Elvis would have been 70 had he lived. What's happening to commemorate the event?

Fresh from signing Howard Stern, the self-proclaimed "King of All Media," Sirius Satellite Radio will honor the birthday of the King of Rock and Roll with "a raucous weekend of music" on its commercial-free, all-Elvis music channel, "Elvis Radio." That's the first officially sanctioned radio station devoted 100% to Elvis songs.

Broadcasting live from Graceland will be George Klein, he of Sirius's "The Elvis Hour with George Klein." He was a gofer at Sun Records who became a friend of Elvis; Presley later served as best man at Klein's wedding. Eventually, Klein was a pallbearer at Presley's funeral. For the birthday party, Klein joins other Elvis friends, Sirius DJs and experts for as much of the King's music as you can possibly want - or stand, if you take the movie music into consideration.

As for Graceland itself, the 70th celebration includes a silver-jump-suit laundry list of events -- a cake cutting and Elvis Day proclamation by local officials; tour of the Elvis Automobile Museum; memorial hockey game (Memphis RiverKings versus New Mexico Scorpions) and distribution of "limited edition Elvis Presley Commemorative Hockey Pucks;" and birthday dance at Memphis's Holiday Inn Select on Democrat Road at Airways Boulevard.

No messing around with fancy midtown Marriotts here, but a party out on Airways Boulevard where it's more likely for an Elvis sighting to occur.

As for birthday celebrations elsewhere, it's an easy bet that every other saloon in the industrialized world will have something.

Other Elvis news, happy and sad: a Broadway show, "All Shook Up," is planned for 2005. A four-part miniseries is under production for CBS, also for 2005. And Nicholas Cage, who once played a sky-diving Elvis impersonator, has divorced Lisa Marie Presley.

Oh, and for your own Elvis 70th birthday celebration, here's the recipe for fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches: Smear peanut butter on one slice of bread. Spread mashed bananas on another. Merge and fry (both sides, now) in bacon fat. Eat.

Sing "All Shook Up," which goes, "my hands are shaking and my knees are weak."

Call 9-1-1.

Text (c)Mike Jahn 2004. May be used only by arrangement.

Home

Rock in the
Golden Age