Even kings grow old

If Elvis had known in ’55 that when he died he’d be remembered as ‘Elvis the Pelvis’ he would have punched Tom Parker in the face instead of shaking his hand. The way most people are assessing his career now, you’d think his prime function as a human being was simply to rock and boogie till he died.

Okay I can accept that socially and musically he made the greatest impact in the fifties but if an artist is to be assessed and assured of his place in history only because of his innovative contributions to music and the changes he brought about in the social order of things then where will that leave Bowie, the Stones or the Beach Boys in fifty years time? But as if it wasn’t bad enough losing the man, the fans have to suffer not only gossip stories which are no more than cheap shit-slinging sensationalism, but they have to sit back and watch while the last seventeen years of their idol’s life are dismissed as irrelevant’.

It ain’t right.

Add to that the fact that within forty eight hours of his death we all had to try to come to grips with the ‘revelations’ that he had been sniffing coke, poppin pills, injecting himself and indulging in perverted sexual fantasies’. And that he was, indeed all that was bent and broken by The Beautiful American Dream’.

Yes I’m angry. But my anger is the same as that which drove Elvis into Rock ‘n’ Roll. I’m angry because I’m hurt.

I’m so angry I feel I have to straighten out one major misconception about Elvis Presley’s career.

Contrary to accepted assumptions, Elvis did not merely ‘forsake Rock ‘n’ Roll when he came out of the army’. He did not, as Jerry Lee Lewis said "sell his soul for the dollar" nor did he allow himself to be manipulated by Parker’s master plan to make his boy more palatable to adult tastes. He grew up.

This is going to sound like an absurd affirmation of the cliché, but the truth was is that the army DID ‘make a man of him’. This it did, initially because for the first time in his career he was on his own. After two years of having cronies, sycophants and sultry starlets tend to his every whim, he found he had to fend for himself. He had to polish his boots, make his own bed and most especially he had to smile and try not to smack some smartass who called him a "momma’s little boy".

WHICH IS WHAT HE WAS.

And for the first time in his life she was not there to talk with him, advise him and be one of the few people (if not the only one) whose love he knew was for him and not for what he had become.

Anyone can see that he depended upon her to an unhealthy degree but that was not the only reason why he was so affected by her death. He loved her yes, but also he felt that he himself was responsible, inadvertently, for her death. As one of Elvis’ friends recalled: "She wanted to look good for Elvis, to be thin and attractive, but she was not supposed to be thin so she stayed heavy, then she began to take diet pills, then switched to alcohol an’ I guess her big ol’ heart just gave out."

I can’t help but shiver when I compare that to the circumstances surrounding Elvis’ death. The same pills, the same complaint, roughly the same age and almost nineteen years later to the day.

His love for his mother had been the most potent motivating force in his life.

When she died the fire inside him was dimmed. The fire, which had made him the most highly –charged, outrageous stage performer of the fifties was replaced by a dull constantly aching hurt. He was still highly charged (probably even more so) but he began to sublimate his energy into daily six hour sessions of karate practice. He would never be as wild and uninhibited again. He lost the will to rock.

It amazes me how many critics ignore the interplay between Elvis’ life on an emotional level and his career. When he was young and hungry (as in the Sun recordings) the music was spiced with daring sexuality and humour. When he was dulling the pain with dope, the music was flat and innocuous (as in the middle/movie period) and when he was older and wracked by the accumulation of a lifetime of pain, the music was urgent, immediate and emotionally devastating.

So the great changeover in Elvis’ career was not altogether a perfect strategy by Parker, it was bound up with Elvis’ whole emotional development. Besides Parker’s stranglehold on Elvis was from the business side of things. He rarely, if ever, interfered with the recording sessions. Apart from the movie songs (which were situation ditties written in by solicited songwriters) Elvis choose all his own material.

And who can blame him, if after the greatest tragedy in his life he could no longer relate to lyrics about hound dogs, teddy bears and dancing to the jailhouse rock? Rock ’n’ Roll had been the outlet for his teenage lust and passion-but as he matured he needed something more.

In June ‘59 while Elvis was still in the army, Bert Bernard heard him singing "Willow Weep for me" alone and after hours in a Paris nightclub. He asked him why he didn’t record similar ballads in the Sinatra vein, Elvis answered: "I have a lot of fans who like me rocking, I like rocking too…When they want me to sing softer ballads, I’m ready."

That was one of the tragedies of Elvis’ life, he could never do what he really wanted to. He was trapped by his own public image of Elvis, the wild man of the fifties with the image conjured here-but in fact the comparison between Elvis and Sinatra is quite appropriate.

Although they seemed to be almost diametrically opposed in styles, basically they were alike. Street corner punk and Brooklyn hoodlum, both would likely fix whoever crossed them-yet underneath they both had the same aching lonely child appeal which made every girl want to mother them. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Elvis secretly yearned to be accepted as a salon-type singer of despairing ballads, but we never gave him the chance.

‘Soul’ is a matter, not of colour but of the pain you have suffered and retained to rechannel through your art. Otis Redding had it. So had Janis, Billie Holiday and Lester Young. And the most unfortunate truth is that life dealt such people its most bitter blows, it was we, and their public that gained because of it.

After he lost his wife and child, the process was complete. Elvis tore into the songs of lost love wrenched them from poetry far beyond their strict literal meaning. He became each song as if it were his only link with the reality of his own true feelings, and the world.

…And that’s how so many will remember him, as the embodiment of soul.

Elvis Presley could not come to grips with the fact that even kings grow old. And although some of us nourished the dream that he would one day take the dye out of hair, throw away the circus outfits and record some basic Rhythm and Blues albums with a few black musicians-it was never to be.

The public in general wanted Elvis to be, at forty-two, even fifty-two, the image of perpetual youth. They wanted him to remain the quintessential rocker, as though he could remain a teenager forever. Those are the ones who killed him.

But then, of course it’s easier for most people to relate to a basic one-dimensional lust (as in rock ’n’ roll) than it is for them to identify with the deeper multi faceted complexities of love.

And so he will be remembered as ‘Elvis the Pelvis’. Perhaps he himself was aware of that. In nineteen seventy three from a stage in Vegas, he said something which now seems to form the perfect epitaph: When he walked onto the stage, he told the audience how he felt like sitting down and just signing for them: the almost bitterly he added: "But if I don’t get up and strut my stuff y’all will say Elvis is dead, Elvis is finished he can’t shake no more. So weather I want to or not - I gotta dance…"

All the guy wanted to do was be a singer, but we wouldn’t let him. We wouldn’t let him be.