Elvis had never left the building…

Elvis with his manager, Col Parker, in this 1957 photo.

ELVIS PRESLEY had been dead for 44 years, and would be 86 today had he lived.

Born on Jan 8, 1935 in Tupelo. Mississippi, USA, he died at age 42 at Graceland, Memphis, Tennessee of an apparent multi-prescribed drugs overdose.

His sudden demise was one of the most shocking deaths ever – everyone, from fans to the man on the street, could remember the exact place and time when they had heard the news (reminiscent of John F Kennedy’s assassination some 14 years earlier, in 1963, on Nov 22).

The phrase ‘Elvis has left the building’ originated from the emcee announcing to fans at the end of the artiste’s live stage performances in Las Vegas – started in July 1969 and had gone on for a period of five years – due to his habit of performing many encore songs that had resulted in many fans staying behind after the show had officially finished to await yet another ‘final’ song!

My column today pays tribute to the man whom, in my eyes, had ‘never left the building’ – the ‘King of Rock and Roll’, a legendary entertainer, a film-star extraordinaire, a Grammy Award winner; the ‘USA Presidential Medal of Freedom’ recipient (posthumously in 2018), and probably the only musician who, during his lifetime, had managed to cross all boundaries of rock, pop, rockabilly, country, gospel, R&B and the blues.

Only Ray Charles, Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson are in the same class!

Elvis came onto the music scene in 1954 when he had cut a record for Sam Phillips of Sun Records in Memphis, but it wasn’t until January 1956 that his RCA single ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ became his first No 1 hit in the USA.

By that time he had met and was managed by Colonel Tom Parker, an infamous and manipulative businessman without whom critics had said Elvis would never have become the phenomenon that he was to become. Within a year of Heartbreak Hotel’s release, Elvis would be selling 10 million records for RCA!

The very first Elvis’ single that I had ever bought was ‘It’s Now or Never’ (an adaptation of the Italian hit ‘O Sole Mio’) released in July 1960 – I was 10 years old and the 45rpm single had cost me $1.80 at Tai Chey Records in India Street.

Three months earlier, in May, I had just purchased my very first single, Paul Anka’s ‘My Home Town’ there. Long-playing albums were a lot more expensive, and it wasn’t until December 1961 that I had saved enough to buy my very first LP album, Elvis’s soundtrack of ‘Blue Hawaii’ – it had cost me $7.80!

Although my taste in music has seen many changes over the years, I wasn’t into the early Beatles of the 1960s nor the Rolling Stones as I preferred Beach Boys, Kinks, Marianne Faithful, Melanie and was heavily into Bob Dylan and later on Jackson Browne, The Eagles, Linda Ronstadt and finally Leonard Cohen; I would always return to the Elvis songs that I had liked.

The evolution of Elvis – from 1956 till his Vegas years in 1970s.

What had made Elvis so appealing to me?

His voice, his good looks and his persona and from what was published his love for his mother, his religious upbringing and his attitude towards the elders and the women, and his patriotism and generosity. He had appeared dangerous, edgy and yet, was a mummy’s boy and a women’s darling. Most of all, his unique and incredible voice – be it singing rock, pop, gospel or the blues.

I didn’t much go for his made-to-order soundtrack ditties that were churned out like clockwork to a cookie-cutter formulaic cycle – they were rather atrocious and lacked warmth, sincerity and appeal. In most of those songs, you could actually hear Elvis himself giving throwaway performances. These I would classify as the ‘contract numbers’ that his manager Col Parker had signed him up to do – at a pace of three movies a year, which were produced for very low budgets with pretty co-starring actresses and for which he was paid US$1 million per movie (a princely sum at the time!).

It was only much later after that it was revealed in the many insightful books and articles published that we had found out that his manager had taken a gigantic cut of 50 per cent of all of Elvis’ earnings, an unheard of figure when most talent managers would only get between 10 to 15 per cent.

In a much-anticipated movie just completed in Australia by ‘Moulin Rouge’ director Baz Luhrmann on the life of Elvis, he had picked Tom Hanks to star in the character of Col Tom Parker – a most exciting casting indeed!

‘Elvis’ is scheduled to be released on June 24, 2022, and we hope this would prove to be the definitive feature film ever shot on the life of ‘The King’. There have been numerous attempts in the recent past in feature films, TV mini-series and specials, movies and documentaries too many to mention here – with big stars, from Kurt Russell to Harvey Keitel, Jonathan Rhys Meyers to Don Johnson and Michael Shannon.

At least 28 movies / TV productions have been produced since Elvis’ death.
The Elvis whom I had first discovered and had loved with ‘It’s Now or Never’, followed by ‘Surrender to King Creole’ to ‘Jailhouse Rock’ to ‘Follow That Dream’ and ‘Flaming Star’, had ended with probably his most famous ‘Blue Hawaii’. From around the mid-1960s, his career had started to fade to mediocrity. An extremist fan had managed to go on a watching binge of all 31 of Elvis’ films over a period of three days and nights (only breaking for sleep).
Even for myself, and I consider myself a true fan, having served as the president of the ‘Official Elvis Presley Fan Club of Malaysia’ (from 1965 to 1968), I doubt that I could even manage that feat today!

Photo taken on Jan 8, 1968, showing an ‘Elvis Fan Club’ party in Kuching hosted by the writer.

For a number of years, I had personally produced a monthly bulletin (cyclostyled and distributed to members) called ‘The Aron’ (Elvis’ middle name) that featured news, reviews and gossips. I had even organised an Elvis party at my folks’ residence in celebration of Elvis’ 33rd birthday on Jan 8, in 1968! It was attended by popular Radio Sarawak personalities of that era – Anthony Ramanair and Rosli Ahmad; even the famous Kuching’s Saufi sisters (Mariam, Aziza and Tom) were there! A group photo of that occasion accompanies this column here.

Some of Elvis’ movies are really great (King Creole, Flaming Star, Follow That Dream, Jailhouse Rock and Blue Hawaii, to name a few); a few were really terrible and the rest were just cheesy, wholesome but fun. Most provided really good looking eye candy in the form of young curvy actresses for the boys!

However the songs featured in the later days’ soundtracks were really cringeworthy and not worth the bother.

Elvis’ influence on music in general had never left the building at all!

He himself was heavily influenced by pop and country music of the time (1940s/50s), the gospel music he heard in church (he was a Baptist) and the all-night gospel sings that he had been to; as well as the black R&B he absorbed on the historic Beale Street as a Memphis teen.

Who, in turn, did Elvis influence?

It was John Lennon who had said these famous words: “Before Elvis, there was nothing!”

Paul McCartney agreed: “I doubt very much if the Beatles would have happened if it was not for Elvis.”

From Keith Richards: “Before Elvis, everything was in black and white. Then came Elvis. Zoom, glorious Technicolour!”

Bob Dylan said it even better: “When I first heard Elvis’ voice, I just knew that I wasn’t going to work for anybody; and nobody was going to be my boss…hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail!”

Elvis had singlehandedly changed music in the 60s and people he directly influenced totally changed it again – his legacy is in all recorded music in some way or another.

Everyone singing today is inspired by Elvis – even if it’s not a direct inspiration, they’re still gaining inspiration from someone who had modelled their career in part from Elvis.

When you know you’ve influenced Bill Clinton, Bruce Springsteen, Margaret Thatcher, Bono, Madonna and Elton John, you know you’re a giant!

Long live the music of Elvis! Elvis is still in the building… somewhere out there!

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