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It was 30 years ago today…
August 16, 1977.
If you’re of a certain age, you remember where you were when Kennedy was shot. If you’re not old enough to remember that, you remember where you were when Armstrong walked on the moon. If you’re not old enough to remember that, you may well remember where you were when you heard that Elvis Presley had passed away.
I was born in 1968 so I missed the Kennedy assassination by five years, and I was too young to know anything about the moon landing in 1969, but I remember exactly where and when I found out about Elvis’ death.
I’ve always been into music, ever since I was a kid. I liked all sorts of things growing up, but in the early 70’s I was into glitter, tartan and rock ‘n’ roll. Chief among these was rock ‘n’ roll, and the main man Elvis. I can only imagine what it was like in 1956 when he first burst upon the world stage, but when I first discovered his records in my Mum’s collection, to my young ears it was magic. I loved everything - from Heartbreak Hotel, Jailhouse Rock and King Creole through to Hawaiian Wedding Song and Stay Away Joe. I loved the movies, too and all the songs they contained.
I remember watching the Aloha Hawaii broadcast in 1973 (maybe 1974), seeing a man who to me owned the world and had as much fun with it as he could. Sometime later, I saw the 1968 Comeback Special and was blown away once again. That broadcast is probably still my all-time favourite music DVD.
It was only as the years went on and I grew older that I began to realise that all was not as it seemed in Graceland. The stories of the drugs, the women, the burgers! Even if only half of it is only half true, that’s still too much for one man to take. When you add in the shadowy figure of “Colonel” Tom Parker, who was not a man who had the best interest of his star at heart, it’s a wonder that Elvis made it to 1977.
Elvis made a huge impact on me as a kid; he was the man I wanted to be - the helicopter pilot, the reformed criminal, the roustabout, the guy that got the girl (or girls). He was handsome, he was cool, he was everything I wanted to be and everything I wasn’t. When he got the chance he could really rock out, but he could also sing gospel like an angel. He could even act when given half a chance (King Creole). That influence has never gone away - even now, I’m sitting here with a Greatest Hits album playing. Every now and again, I’ll see a picture of him from the last three years or so of his life and it’s heartbreaking to see what he became in the end.
From 1956 to 1977, one man ruled the world. Sure, he had his moments; he came and went like any fashion, but through it all he remained. Until that fateful day in 1977, when he died at about four o’clock in the afternoon in a sunny back garden in an English south coast town.
sometimes there’ll be the feeling things are going wrong
the morning star is fading, lord the Mississippi’s cold
you can still be Marlon Brando and the king of rock and roll
but it’s a ways to go back to Tupelo
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