My Young Days as an Elvis Collector

My Young Days as an Elvis Collector

Making my annual effort to tidy up the house in order to discern some semblance of order among the chaos, I found my old Elvis annual from 1975. It was a Christmas present from that year. Elvis was still with us in 1975, and all was well with the world. A couple of highlights of the annual – and previous years' annuals – were the “Complete List of Elvis L.P. Recordings” and the “Full Elvis Song List.” I would circle the albums and songs as I “got” them in the passage of time, adding songs and albums as they would come out. I note I have written the "Good Times" album in an available space, complete with track listing. Happily, Elvis was still alive and still recording, so I had the job of keeping up with his latest releases whilst trying to catch up with the millions of records he had already released. It was my hobby, really. Apart from football and a bit of drawing/sketching, nothing else interested me much. Certainly, nothing obsessed me like collecting Elvis albums.

A couple of years later, and there would be no more music to come from Elvis ever again. So these album and song lists from the annual constituted fairly comprehensive guides to the music of Elvis Presley, and a further encouragement to keep buying with a view to one day doing the impossible and completing your collection. I was an avid Elvis collector. As the record company well knew, Elvis was an addiction, and their job was to keep feeding the addict. You could never really be satisfied buying Elvis albums. There were always other albums that you convinced yourself that you absolutely "needed" and simply must have. And in case you ever had any doubts on this, very many of the Elvis albums contained photos and promos of other albums for your collection. You couldn't enjoy the album you had just bought without having to ogle the ones you had yet to buy. So Elvis was this condition of permanent dissatisfaction. You kept on going until you gave up the endless pursuit.

I enjoyed it, all the same. Nothing much interested me at school, other than counting the minutes down until it was time for escape. I remember being taunted for having no interests and hobbies at all, nothing I could talk about. I responded by claiming, in all seriousness, that I collected Elvis records. To which I received the typical geek's response enquiring which was my most valuable record in my collection. You see, there is serious collecting, the things that philatelists and ornithologists do, and mere addiction. I was an addict. I didn't care for rarity and scarcity, just that an album had Elvis songs on there that I didn't yet have. I liked Elvis' voice and the songs he sang with it, it was as simple as that. The most valuable Elvis album to me was the one I loved listening to the most. And that changed with my moods. Some days I like happy, some days I like sad. It all depends.

At the front of this Elvis Special from 1975 I have written a list of my Elvis albums as I acquired them. I think the prices I have written alongside them must have been current prices. Separate Ways is priced at £1-25. I know for a fact that it cost 0-85p, since that is what is written on the back of the album. Same with "Flaming Star," "C'mon Everybody" and "I Got Lucky." So the prices may well be a 1975 guide based on my expert knowledge of current prices. Fairly accurate, I would say. With limited pockets and limitless desires, you learn to know the prices of things, watching for slight shifts in your favour making your purchases reasonable. I didn't do any jobs like delivering papers. I did run the odd errand as and when required, but such things didn't earn me much money. I didn't have regular and fixed pocket money, either. So it was quite an effort to save what little money came my way to buy these records. You learn the value of a penny here and a penny there, learn to add them up. I did without other things, such as sweets and drinks and the other things everyone else was enjoying. If you want to have what you really, really want you have to make sacrifices. Actually, if I am being totally honest, I just played on my mother's sympathies and didn't do without too much at all. But any entitlements I had went mainly on Elvis.

Was it all worth it?

It is interesting to chart my Elvis obsession back to the beginning, remembering how my appreciation of Elvis developed with each and every acquisition. I remember the days well. Being young and poor, and too bone idle to do a paper round or odd jobs, I had to scrimp and save and plead for sympathy in order to make every Elvis purchase. I learned to appreciate each album. It was a major event going out to the shops. I would venture out with a mission and a purpose, as if going on a grand safari. Having spent what seemed like eternities saving up the money for a particular record, I would set out hoping and praying that said record would still be available in the shops, panic-stricken in case it had gone, wondering what alternate purchase I would be able to make. There were a number of factors making for each purchase – price, budget (how much money I had to play with), occasion (birthday, treat, reward, Christmas etc., something free and at another's expense), the number of tracks on an album that I didn't have/the need to minimize duplicates. Each purchase was carefully weighed up in the main, certainly the purchases of non-budget albums.

So let me go through them, one by one, seeing what I can remember of those days when I and the world were young.

Separate Ways 

Elvis Sings Flaming Star

These two albums were bought together. My brother and I were Elvis fans (it should go without saying that my mother was an Elvis fan), and the day came in 1973 when, along with the purchase of the first family record player, my brother and I got a choice of an Elvis record each. The family had just obtained an old Dansette record player from somewhere, so we needed something to play on it. Money being tight as it was, our choice was limited to those 'budget' albums that gave fans a little bit of Elvis for a little bit of money. I remember choosing “Separate Ways” for the picture of Elvis in the spangly jump suit and cape on the front cover. My brother chose “Flaming Star” for the picture of Elvis as a cowboy on the cover. Neither of us had the first idea about the songs each album contained. 

The song my brother and I loved most of all was the lively “I Slipped, I Stumbled, I Fell.” We played the album over and again and obviously hooked ourselves on Elvis' voice. My grandmother, my Nin, was an Elvis fan too. We took the records up to her house. She was as excited as we were, and expressed a dear desire to hear Elvis too. She had one of those old wind-up gramophone records with the old heavy needles. I stood helpless, paralyzed with fear, as my new record was subject to extreme violence via highly inappropriate media. “It doesn't sound like Elvis,” my Nin said, as we were subjected to the sounds of a cat being strangulated at high pitch. She never said a truer word, it sounded absolutely nothing like Elvis. “Always on my Mind” was the song, and the experience has been on my mind ever since. It was obvious to me, as young as I was, that this could never end well. I was learning the hard way that just because someone is older than you, it doesn't make them necessarily wiser. Or at all. In fact, adults could just be plain stupid at times. I learned to do things my way. And "In My Way," the title of one of the most beautiful little songs on this first album. Another beautiful, and much more substantial, song was "I Met Her Today." This is not a well known song in the Elvis catalogue. It struggled for release at the time it was recorded and was somewhat overlooked. I loved it from the first and love it to this day. The same goes for "What Now, What Next, Where To." These are songs that are rarely, in fact never, mentioned as among Elvis' best, but to me they define Elvis as a vocalist much more than his rock'n'roll hits. He was a true singer, blessed with a beautiful voice, and this was never more apparent than on the simplest of material.

“Separate Ways” was an incredibly introspective, gentle, sedate, and at times downright melancholic album, a very odd record for an eight year old to be listening to at the height of glam rock. It was the age of T-Rex and Slade, the girls at school loved David Cassidy and David Essex, whilst a really precocious friend of mine extolled the virtues of Pink Floyd. (I'd never heard of them, but made up a story about them just to take part in his excitement over the band, which he took to be a wind up - as stories went, it did indeed sound like a wind-up. He scowled and shook his head and went on his way. That's the problem with trying to fit in, you end up saying things that cause people to leave you alone as an oddball). I was tempted by none of the current pop. Although I did like Slade, none could compare with Elvis. I always knew Elvis was the best, had more to offer. Everyone at school knew Elvis, of course, but none of them knew enough or were interested enough to be able to discuss anything of any importance. So my new Elvis albums were almost entirely without interest to others, except my best friend A O'C who, as luck would have it, was also an Elvis fan. His parents were actually quite well off, and so he never seemed to find it difficult to get any Elvis album he wanted. He didn't seem to me to speak of Elvis with the same passion and intensity that I did, and his amassing of Elvis albums seemed more a case of a spoiled boy being able to get whatever it was he wanted. All of which further motivated my desires for Elvis albums. In time, A O'C dropped Elvis without issue and regret and moved on to current rockers, bands like AC/DC. I loathed the band from the first. They were loud, but dull, predictable, and unexciting, all force and no real power. I dismissed them as a band for teenage boys. Which was an odd criticism for a teenage boy to level at another teenage boy. This was all to come in the future. For a couple of years I did actually have a friend who was an Elvis fan, with whom I could share stories about how great Elvis was.

“Flaming Star” escaped the treatment that had been meted out to my "Separate Ways" album by my Nin. This was an altogether much livelier album than "Separate Ways." My brother and I - me and 'ar Mike - clearly considered “Tiger Man” to have been the real highlight of the set, given the extent that we would play it over and again and scream and laugh out loud as to how wild and raucous it was. Not quite proper singing, but we loved it and thought it as exciting as hell. As luck would have it, the appalling way in which Elvis' career was managed ensured that this highlight of the '68 TV Special would be left off the album release of that event, replaced by a Christmas song at the insistence of Elvis' manager Tom Parker. So here on a budget album we got a good slice of Elvis at his best. And it was enough to hook us. 

There was some incredibly interesting material on this "Flaming Star" album, including the title track itself, from the film, a serious western rather than a musical. We didn't know how difficult some of the songs here had been to obtain and were just grateful for anything we could get. But "Night Life" was a cracking little rock number from "Viva Las Vegas," hard to come by. "Too Much Monkey Business" was a guitar driven corker of a track, too, a Chuck Berry song, we came to learn (whoever he was, he seemed to be important). It was one of those songs that Elvis was recording in an attempt to turn around his career in the late sixties, and was as yet not well known. "All I Needed was the Rain" was another one that stayed with me, a great little blues number that I continue to see as a great song in its own right, free of any association with the appalling film from which it came. There was no suppressing my sweet tastes, either, as I demonstrated a soft spot for the wonderful waltz of "Wonderful World."

These first albums took well with us, and so after a suitable passage of time we did it all again, and bought another couple of 'budget' albums.

C'mon Everybody

I Got Lucky

I maintain that these "budget" albums were actually very decent records, containing as they did some fine material from the sixties films. The wider world may judge these to be leftovers and scraps, but to those of us starting out the tracks were new and fresh. On here were songs from films such as “Viva Las Vegas,” “Kid Galahad,” “Follow that Dream,” early sixties when Elvis was in fine voice, as well as from the more dubious later films like "Easy Come Easy Go,” when things were not so good in the Elvis world. We knew then that songs like “Yoga is as Yoga Does” were a joke, although it took us a while to realize the extent to which Elvis' talent and career had been thrown away. We laughed at the time, at lyrics like:

"You tell me just how I can take this yoga serious
When all it ever gives to me is a pain in my posteriors."

But the joke, such as it was, soon wore thin, and came to realize that such songs served to make Elvis a joke. Other tracks like "I'm not the Marrying Kind" were more genuinely humorous, but still film fodder, not remotely Elvis at his best. We laughed with Elvis, only to understand that the world was laughing at him with material like this. And the dross, we learned, served to detract from the decent and good Elvis material.

There were still some wonderful songs on these albums: Rockers like "C'mon Everybody" and "King of the Whole Wide World," exquisite ballads like "Angel," "Today, Tomorrow, and Forever," and "Home is Where the Heart Is,"  infectious rhythm numbers like "Follow that Dream" and "If You Think I Don't Need You," twisters like "I Got Lucky," sophisticated jazz ballads like "I Need Somebody to Lean On." These tracks all hold up well today. And "I Got Lucky" boasted a non-film song which, I learned, was Elvis revisiting his R&B fifties roots, the cracking "Fools Fall in Love," which had been thrown away at the time through what I learned to be a mismanagement that typified the Elvis operation.

These albums were not Elvis the superstar hitmaker, but the songs were good enough for us to rate Elvis the best singer there had ever been. But that there were much better Elvis songs and albums out there soon became clear.

Elvis, A Legendary Performer vol 1

This album marked quite a step up in class. And in price. This album was among those available that were always slightly out of the reach of those of us with limited pockets. We'd gaze at them in the shops, dream about the day when, maybe, we could buy them, and then move on to survey other options. So it took some hard saving and nagging to land this one, giving ourselves a rare treat in the bargain. It was worth every hard earned/nagged penny. This album contained material from the whole of Elvis' career, the massive hit records from RCA alongside the rarities from Sun. It also had a pull-out colour photograph 'suitable for framing.' This was a quality album in every respect. The hit records were stunning: “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Don't be Cruel,” “Love Me Tender,” “A Fool Such as I,” and “Can't Help Falling in Love.” There were Elvis' earliest recordings, live performances from the '68 Special (complete with lots of women screaming and shrieking very loudly, which I found odd, irritating, thrilling, and alarming in equal measure - why are they doing this, I asked, frowning in disapproval), and “Peace in the Valley,” which struck me as a very different kind of song from the first time I heard, very deep and very moving. This was the album which offered proof for my belief that Elvis was the greatest.

G.I. Blues

Blue Hawaii

And still the treats came in twos. We were very probably into 1974 by this time. These were big treats, seeing as both of these were at the pricier end of the Elvis market. That's one of the good things about having a brother: whenever one is treated, the other one too must also be treated. And when both sides of the two in question are Elvis obsessives, then the treats can only take the one form. These were the two big film soundtracks. It is now evident that these were very much my mother's choices. Both films were immensely popular, with "Blue Hawaii" being the second biggest selling album of the 1960's. These films, however, are somewhat controversial in Elvis circles, since they mark the official end of Elvis the rocker, and his entry into the safe world of showbusiness and entertainment. This is Elvis selling out, ceasing to be what he once stood for, dashing the hopes of a generation for a life of easy listening and easy money. Interest went elsewhere with the arrival of The Beatles. Millions loved the change, however, and my mother was one of them. So this pair, as distinct from the fifties rock classics “King Creole,” “Loving You,” or “Jailhouse Rock,” was my mother's choice for a real, real treat for my brother and I. 

And treat they were. I remember the day we received the albums very well indeed, as my mother produced them out of the drawer of the sideboard in the sitting room with a huge beaming smile as she presented them, obviously enjoying the sheer pleasure recorded on the faces of my brother and I, me and 'ar kid. We'd seen and loved the films, of course. I even had my mother embroider “US Army” into my coat, to match the one Elvis had in "G.I. Blues." As for "Blue Hawaii," nothing much happened in the film, and it didn't need to in order to appeal. Blue seas and skies and golden sands to the soundtrack of pleasant music were more than enough to satisfy those of us living in grey terraced houses beaten into submission by a cold and rainy climate. As I say, not an awful lot happens in the film, but it looked good. And people said it was good. So we believed it to be good. I never quite understood what people were laughing at in the film:

Abigail Prentice : "Mr Gates, do you think you can satisfy a school teacher and four teenage girls?"

Chad Gates : "Oh, I'll sure try, ma'am. I-I'll do all I can."

It got worse. Much worse. Watch, if you have a strong enough stomach, "Tickle Me," in which Elvis plays an out of work rodeo star who takes on a job as trainer at a fitness salon and guest ranch by the name of "Yogurt Gulch" where actresses and models go to lose weight and to get in shape. I'm not making this up, honestly. (One day, if I ever get time, and pluck up sufficient nerve, I should write something on the Elvis films - a world in which seeing is disbelieving). Remarkably, Elvis won a 1966 Golden Laurel Award as best male actor in a musical film for this role. No Elvis film lost money, and Elvis often made a clean $1 million up front on them. And still people ask where it all went wrong .. Another day, when I am at a loose end, and have given up all hope.

The opening song in "Blue Hawaii," with Elvis crooning away, is somewhat restful. And "G.I. Blues" is somewhat lively, in an undemanding way. We thought these two films were Elvis' tops, and very much considered these soundtracks to represent the pinnacle of Elvis, Elvis at his best. So we were genuinely proud of our burgeoning Elvis collection. Little did we appreciate at the time that very many considered these films to be the point at which Elvis sold out, or was sold out by his management, when the rock'n'roll gave way to middle of the road crooning for popular entertainment. That debate goes on. 

In the very least, the albums kept us highly entertained at the time. And let's make this point, any records that contain tracks like “Pocketful of Rainbows,” “Wooden Heart,” “Can't Help Falling in Love” and “No More” can hardly be said to be lacking in quality. I love "Doin' the Best I Can" too. Rock'n'roll it isn't, but Elvis was always more than that. At the time, as a very young boy, I loved “Didja Ever” and “Almost Always True” most of all. Let's just say I don't now. Let me further say that there is a reason as to why Elvis captured such a huge fan base. Grasping the appeal of these films and their soundtracks helps us to understand why.

Elvis Sings Christmas Songs

This was the budget album from 1971, which was Elvis' 1957 Christmas album without the gospel songs but with “If Every Day was like Christmas” and "Mama Liked the Roses" added. Elvis' Christmas songs are classic. It's not Christmas without Elvis. I don't remember any particular excitement over this record, no great issue. It's Elvis, it's Christmas, what's not to like? I remember my granny loving the carols, “O Little Town of Bethlehem” in particular. I rather liked the savage “Santa Claus is Back in Town,” even though I didn't have the first idea as to just how salacious the lyrics were – or even what salacious meant, for that matter. As for the phrase "double entendre," I took "double meaning" as a licence for me to read anything I liked into words. I would then proceed to find meaning where there was none. My favourite song was "If Every Day was like Christmas," which I learned was a big Elvis single of 1967 that somehow bombed. I read that Tom Jones hated the song, saying that Elvis either didn't realize what rubbish he was recording these days, or didn't care. The Beatles, I learned, had stolen the crown and pop music had left Elvis well behind. That was a view which I didn't appreciate one little bit, but it led to a growing awareness on my part that the world did not necessarily share my view that Elvis was the best of all and king of the whole wide world. There were other views on the matter. Not everyone agreed. There was even the disconcerting suggestion that some people thought that Elvis was absolute rubbish, his songs mere fodder for the pop charts, consumed by non-too bright people who were easily parted from their money. I pondered for a moment whether those criticisms could be accurately directed at the likes of me, and decided most assuredly not and promptly went off in pursuit of my next album, counting the pennies in my hand.

Elvis' Forty Greatest

This was the album of 1974. It was advertised on TV, and was impossible to miss and absolutely impossible for those claiming to be Elvis fans not to have. It was also a double album and much more expensive than the albums normally within our price range. This was a big, big, big Christmas present, shared between my brother and I. We treated it with religious reverence, opening it up, reading the text over and again, examining the photographs. It contained forty songs, including no less than eighteen number ones! That is one mighty chunk of Elvis. Hit record followed hit record, track after track raining down like hammer blows as the album traced Elvis' evolution over the years from his fifties heyday to the present day. At ten tracks per side, it was effectively four albums in one, and we took it in one side/album at a time. And what albums! The best of Elvis. The impact was immense; the music hit with full force. I later came to realize that the record is heavy on the fifties Elvis and becomes remarkably sparse as the years pass, missing out much of worth in Elvis' sixties and, even more, his seventies career. But it was certainly a comprehensive document, filling in most of the essentials as I built my collection. With this, I now had a lot of quality in my Elvis collection.

Good Times

Go to any of the many record shops we once had in town, and there was always an extensive collection of Elvis albums on offer at various prices. Albums old and new, gold record albums, film soundtracks, newer releases, compilations, you name it, we had it. Elvis was effectively putting out three or more albums a year. The family was not made of money. We couldn't afford to buy them all. I doubt that anyone could. This was the seventies, a time of rising economic troubles, unemployment, strikes, 3-day weeks, power cuts. The pressures that the Elvis management put on Elvis fans through sheer greed and cynicism were cruel, frankly, forever present a range of impossible choices in front of us to incite insatiable desires. Choices had to be made. And you could never be too happy with the choice you came to make when you knew that there were three or more other options still available, albums left behind, desires left unsatisfied, more purchases that "needed" to be made in the future. A world of wants, desires, and fantasies. We can blame capitalism and commerce for this, for the endless inflation of insatiable wants rather than the satisfaction of real needs is how the system keeps on going. But we are all complicit in this to some extent, in that we willingly join in the endless pursuit of unattainable ends as fantasies rather than do the difficult thing of accepting reality, because life in the immediate is easier, more comforting, that way. It's a false comfort, of course, detrimental to our health and wealth. Elvis with his fantasies of kingship, fame and fortune is the personification of capitalist illusion and denial. At some point you start to realize that there is no true fulfilment this way, because true needs are being neglected in favour of the endless incitement of wants, all keeping you hooked and addicted, in a constant state of anxiety.

That was very much how I felt with “Good Times.” From 1975, this was Elvis' latest album, which I as a fan felt a natural obligation to buy. The problem was that there always seemed to be 'latest' Elvis albums to buy as essential purchases. They seemed to come off the conveyor belt every three months. My mother and father, whose money went for these purchases, knew it. They were under enormous pressure having to keep Elvis fans happy when Elvis' management were pursuing a strategy that kept fans buying in a constant state of want and dissatisfaction. And I learned, too, that we didn't live in a world of limitless choice, no matter how limitless our desires were. So choices always had to be made. It was either "Good Times" or “Raised on Rock,” or “Elvis Recorded on Stage in Memphis,” or “Promised Land,” all of them from Elvis' 'latest' from around this time in 1974. It was too much of a strain on our limited pockets. Why this and not the others? It had the new single "My Boy" on it, it was more visible, "Memphis" was a live concert recording, and "Promised Land" had yet to be released (having bought "Good Times," it was felt there was no need to buy "Promised Land" as an album which promised more of the same). 

As for “Good Times,” the material was weighty and dealt with adult themes well outside of my experience at the tender age of nine (and still outside of my experience, come to think of it). From the opening lines of “Take Good Care of Her,” I thought that Elvis sounded incredibly old. I now consider this Stax material from 1973 as Elvis' songs of experience. I was still the innocent. I did love "Loving Arms" from the first, though, and "Good Times Charlie's Got the Blues." I also always suspected that "If That Isn't Love" may well have been one of Elvis' greatest ever vocal performances, although I never said so aloud. I think I had remarkably good taste for a nine year old in the middle of glam rock, with disco around the corner. These are substantial songs, the qualities of which I came to appreciate more and more with the passing years. "I've Got a Thing About You Baby" is also a cracking tune, full of bouncy verve. I have no idea why it was never a big hit. Many complained about Elvis releasing too many ballads in the seventies. "My Boy" went top five at this time. "I've Got a Thing" deserved a similar placing. No one seems to know it. 

That's the Way It Is

This album was my mother's reward for my silence and complicity in her shopping expedition to Wigan in search of a new coat. She must have tried every damned coat in every damned shop in Wigan on! She was at one shop for so long that customers were approaching her for advice and assistance in the belief that she worked there. The promise of a new Elvis album kept me keen. Black and white coat finally purchased - for the life of me I couldn't see the attraction, but said nothing lest she try every coat on again - I was allowed to choose an Elvis album, free choice, money no object (however much she had left after the coat, although I was also treated to a big block of fruit and nut chocolate - a good day, all told). I went for the quality end of the market, of course. This album was one of the high price ones normally out of range, clearly an album of some distinction. In truth, I didn't have much of the seventies Elvis in my collection, so this one filled in many gaps. I remember returning on the bus home looking at the photos on the albums which accompanied each track, imaging what they sounded like from the actions in the pictures. It was the mature Elvis, Elvis the singer of big orchestrated ballads. It was the Elvis I saw on the posters in the pop magazines. The jump-suited Elvis. It very much cemented the idea in my head of Elvis as top dog. There are some glorious tracks on here: ballads like "I Just Can't Help Believin," "How the Web Was Woven," "Just Pretend," "The Next Step is Love," "I've Lost You," and an immense version of "Bridge Over Troubled Water," rhythm and soul material like "Patch it Up," "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin," and "Stranger in the Crowd." You could hear why such an album came with a high price tag. We were far from "budget" Elvis with this material. That said, it's probable that I would have appreciated the other album of 1970, “On Stage,” much more, given that it contained some powerhouse rhythm material. But that's the way it always was with the Elvis world, if you choose one then you cannot have the other. Freedom is not having everything you want, and a world of free choice is an illusion. (Of course, I have it all now, and alternate takes to boot, and it all seems very real to me).

I'm intrigued by the lack of activity in Elvis' purchases for 1975-1977. There's just the two albums between Christmas '74's "Forty Greatest" to Christmas '77's "Elvis in Concert." I'm wondering if we thought that we now had enough Elvis, since we had most of the hits, whether money was tight, or whether the list I drew up on the Elvis annual was in error (I don't think so, I distinctly remember the many purchases of 1978). There's just not a lot of activity in this period, and I don't recall why this should have been so. I was at that age, not quite a young boy anymore but not yet a teenager, somewhat in between and uncertain. I remember the Elvis collecting picking up with a vengeance when I was out and about with school friends. 1976 was a year of transition, the year I moved to the big school, saying goodbye to childhood and hello to who knows what. Interest in acquiring Elvis seems to have subsided a little in this period. I just don't remember that waning of interest. Maybe money was tight.

Elvis in Concert

Elvis' last album and my Christmas present for 1977. Elvis had died in the August of that year, so this last concert and TV special was very much a big Elvis "event." Add the fact that BBC TV were having a season of Elvis films that Christmas, and this was very much an Elvis Christmas. We played this album over and again during the holiday, (when the films weren't on, that is). At the time, we took at as proof that Elvis was as good as ever and that rumours of his decline, leading to untimely death, were unfounded. We still hadn't twigged that Elvis had declined over a period of time and then fallen spectacularly. We were in denial. There was no reason at all for his demise. He was in superb voice, we said, seizing on every instance of vocal skill, exertion, and power to be found on this two record set. My mother asked my dad, who was adopting his usual neutral silence, whether he liked Elvis. The implication was that since he was not joining in the huge pro-Elvis celebration that he must be somewhat negative in his appreciation. “Yes,” my dad said, in tones suggesting indignation that his fidelity could even be questioned, “when he had a voice.” Talk about damning with faint praise! The obvious implication was that he was no longer in good voice at the end. Elvis had a great voice to the end, a big, powerful, rich voice, we protested ... He did. And my dad gave in. But it is evident that there was a debate to be had over the decline and fall of the former king of rock'n'roll. I got more into this question as the years went by. At this stage, I was still of the blind and deaf to the faults school of Elvis opinion. Truth be told, too many fans were far too undiscerning in their Elvis appreciation for far too long, tolerating the intolerable and effectively aligning with Elvis' management, who saw music as mere product, as against Elvis the artist who yearned for, but could never achieve, creative space for his music. That's the way it is with addiction. As for this album, I remember thinking the fans' comments a bit loopy, the medleys of hits somewhat ephemeral and unexciting, and the ballads disconcerting. I noticed how out of breath Elvis sounded at times, and how many songs are cut short. And this was the material selected as the best performances ... That says something. I loved "Early Morning Rain," "Fairytale," "I Really Don't Want to Know," and "And I Love You So" all the same. I thought his performance of his old rock'n'roll hits like "Teddy Bear" execrable at the time and still do. He's singing memories from memory, and no more; he was in a creative cul-de-sac. He died because he was artistically frustrated, simple as that.

The best stuff was the deep stuff that pointed to big problems in Elvis' life. It was easier to treat this document as a celebration of the legend. Elvis died at the peak of his game, we told ourselves. This was, in truth, the moment the icon smashed into a million grubby pieces. Elvis sings “How Great Thou Art” as though he can see the Gates of Heaven opening in front of him. The uncritical, fawning fans can deal with their own complicity in this debacle - so long as they continued to buy it, regardless of quality, Tom Parker and RCA would shovel it out, cheap and cheerless. That may be unfair, since fans bought the albums in less and less numbers, which prompted RCA merely to pump more product out to make up the numbers. All along the line the concern was with control of Elvis and his "product," with Elvis allowed no artistic autonomy of his own. That being the case, it was down to Elvis to break out, and for whatever reason he never had the ability to do that. His fate was sealed. Either way, Elvis became a self-parody, a sick joke, a hollowed out shell, and none of it was necessary, not even for commerce. He'd have made money with quality material, paying songwriters what they were worth. The fans who had bought the dross would have bought the quality, and in greater numbers. We know this from Elvis' return in the late sixties into the early seventies. And we know it from what we now know since Elvis' death. His ex-wife Priscilla made more money out of Elvis dead than his management with their grubby obsession with "business" did when he was alive. Go figure. He could have made great music, he could have made more money than he could ever have had need of, he could have enjoyed creative fulfilment, and he could have lived a longer and happier life. The art of living and loving as against "business" and its grip of death.

Hits of the Seventies

This was an additional Christmas present, bought second hand at The Magpie's Nest, North Road, St Helens. It was an unexpected bonus, and an absolutely fantastic record. This record made a huge impression on me at the time, much more than “That's the Way It Is” or “Good Times,” other Elvis seventies records. It contained music of a far, far higher quality than that contained in the "Elvis in Concert" album that was my main Christmas present. Of course, concentrating the big hits of 1970-1972, with tracks like “The Wonder of You,” “Kentucky Rain,” “Always on my Mind,” and “An American Trilogy,” the quality is immense. This really was Elvis at his best. Although a very sad song, I loved "Until It's Time for you to Go." And there was a haunting beauty about "I'm Leavin'" that just burned deep into the psyche. It was that same old yearning quality that was always present in Elvis' voice. This was heavyweight Elvis, absolutely nailing flat the hoary old myth that the Elvis of the seventies was not as good as he had been in the fifties and sixties. He was every bit as good and these tracks show him to have been a whole lot better. "Teddy Bear" anyone? I am being deliberately provocative, of course. I listen to seventies Elvis a lot. These were some of the songs that should have found their way onto the "Forty Greatest" double album from 1974, giving a much more balanced and representative view of Elvis' career as a whole, acknowledging his current status as the world's number one recording artist. 

King Creole

Elvis' best film in the opinion of many, boasting a soundtrack to match. This was the definitive Elvis, king of the whole wide world. This was Elvis in his fifties pomp, covering everything from rock to ballads and adding a whole lot of Dixieland to boot; the music is lively, exciting, fresh, and vital. I loved the album then and I love it now, Elvis bursting with talent and the promise of an unlimited future opening in front of him. All things seemed possible. Then he entered the army.

Loving You

As above. I always saw “Loving You” and “King Creole” as a double album, from the same time (1957 and 1958 respectively), boasting similar album covers, similar rock'n'roll/pop soundtrack, hit singles, stellar tracks. Tracks like "Mean Woman Blues" were never hits or singles for Elvis, but they just sound like they were, they have rock'n'roll classic written all over them. Even a throwaway track like "Hot Dog" would be revived by rock'n'rollers like Shakin' Stevens decades later, becoming a big hit. This is the Elvis that swept the world with a winning grin, curling lips, and swiveling hips; this was what the fuss was all about. Of course, I already had the hit records from this album, "Teddy Bear," "Party," "Got a Lot O'Livin' to Do," and loved them. I preferred the simple acoustic version of "Loving You" as performed in the film to the album version, but it was fine (if no "Love Me Tender.") Side two here offered non-film studio recordings of ballads and blues, and really demonstrated Elvis' remarkable range and versatility as a singer. I was now starting to develop a truly comprehensive Elvis collection. And I was gaining some real insight into how great a singer Elvis really was. His performance of Ivory Joe Hunter's blues ballad "I Need You So" is exceptional, and the song remains one of my favourites. "Have I Told You Lately that I Love You" is a joyous slice of country. What really would have turned this album into an all-time classic would have been the addition of "Is It So Strange," a magnificently moody ballad, "One Night of Sin," " I Beg of You" and "When it Rains it Really Pours." That's my way of establishing just what an exceptional artist Elvis really was, because we would be looking at sixteen or more tracks on the one album, all top quality. Remarkable.

These albums were high quality additions from 1978. In fact, it is apparent that 1978 was really my glory year for Elvis acquisitions. I was selecting my targets with a keen eye and discerning taste. And it seemed that I had money available to make these purchases.

The Sun Collection

I bought this at the small record stall in the precinct leading to the Kwik Save supermarket, St Helens. I was tagging along on the weekly family shop, brought along for my bag-packing skills, no doubt (or probably because my mother didn't trust me in the house on my own). We'd always check the record kiosk, and this album had caught my eye. The album cover was striking, Elvis greased-up in loud colourful clothes, mic in hand, pointing to the crowd. These were the mythical first recordings Elvis made at Sun (1954-1955), the recordings we all read about as being legendary and world-changing. I couldn't believe my ears when I heard them. Heavens, they sounded different! These were not the polished Elvis pop/rock recordings we heard on the radio, with none of them making the national or international charts. They sounded incredibly primitive, sparse. The eerie wailing of "Blue Moon" sounded like it had been piped in from another world. Many of the tracks didn't even have drums on them, just Elvis on acoustic guitar, Scotty Moore on electric guitar and Bill Black on stand up base. They are primitive but vital, a throwback in many respects (if we are talking revolution, then Muddy Waters had a full electric band by the late 1940's). The songs have a real spontaneity in feel and performance. There are many classics here: "That's All Right," "Blue Moon of Kentucky," "Baby Let's Play House," "Good Rockin' Tonight," "Milkcow Blues Boogie," "Mystery Train," "Trying to Get to You," "I'm Right, You're Left, She's Gone." As the years went by and my Elvis fanaticism waned and, in the 1980's, died, this was the album that kept Elvis alive for me, containing the songs to which I would continually return even as I was inclined to repudiate all the others. The Sun sides kept Elvis alive for me, kept the flame burning, forever inviting me back when the time would come to return to Elvis. Stellar.

Elvis' Gold Records vol 4

Why vol 4, when critics consider the Elvis of this period as on the wane, retreating before The Beatles et al? Why not vols 1, 2, and 3? Simply because I had the bulk of the songs on the other three volumes, but few of the ones on this one. You can't buy them all, just the one. It was as simple as that. Of course I wanted the other three volumes. But the cost was prohibitive. I had always to select, and this one was my choice. These were tracks that had either been left behind or overlooked as the sixties progressed in an other than Elvis direction, tracks like “Ain't That Loving You Baby” from 1958, which was released as a B side in 1964, “A Mess of Blues” from 1960, also a B side. It also contained scandalously neglected classics like “It Hurts Me,” “Witchcraft,” "Just Tell Her Jim Said Hello," and a song I loved most of all at the time “Indescribably Blue.” It also contained "Ask Me," which I maintain to this day is one of Elvis' most beautiful ballads. None of it came remotely close to checking The Beatles' rise to global dominance, but the songs hold up strong for me, and sound much better with each passing year than they sounded at the time. Much of sixties music sounds dated now. These quality songs have not dated at all. I couldn't fathom why these tracks had not been the number one smashes that previous Elvis singles had been, the exception being the truly exceptional country rock of "Devil in Disguise," a track which showed the direction that Elvis could and should have gone in, had he been free from film commitments. Also worthy of note is the beautiful ballad "Lonely Man." Few of the songs here made much of an impact at the time they were released, but they are really the height of pop sophistication. Elvis had matured as an artist, but that growth went without recognition. But there it is. Elvis was developing as an artist, becoming more sophisticated, and in the pop world such things age you. Times had changed and pop music, forever young, had moved on: Elvis was no longer considered exciting. I'd been invited round to my friend ML's house to play the record. He had to leave for some reason but his sister M was more than happy to entertain me. She let me in, anyway, and put the record on. We listened. I was silent in reverence. M was silent too, although I'm not remotely sure why. I thought the music was stunning, and in the case of the opening "Love Letters" hugely romantic, and presumed that M had been paralyzed in her appreciation. She got up and left the room with the words “it's boring.” I don't know if she was referring to me or the music. In any case, I carried on listening to the end of the record. And then, alone, put it back in the sleeve and went home. Strange girl, I thought. I wonder if it was something I did, or didn't do. A couple of years later her younger sister C and her friend KW would try to tempt me away from football in the park. I carried on playing. Odd things, girls. Require thought, I think.

Elvis Sings Hits from his Movies

My rationale in buying this terrible album was simple – the record was cheap and contained tracks which I didn't have. That it was also a musical abomination, placing some of Elvis' best songs alongside some of his worst, is also undeniable. We were on holiday in the Lake District, and found ourselves in a small town (Kirby Stephen rings a bell). We headed to the little shops for souvenirs. An Elvis album is always most acceptable, and this really was dirt cheap, so why not? I'm prepared to argue that tracks like “Big Boss Man” and "They Remind Me Too Much of You" are Elvis classics (as is "Guitar Man," which I already had), and that “You Don't Know Me” and “Frankie and Johnny” (my biggest favourite at the time) are also very good indeed. I'll argue that these tracks justified my purchase of this admittedly truly appalling album. But I'll not deny that the album is utterly appalling, containing songs like “Confidence,” (the lamest copy of the lamest Frank Sinatra song "High Hopes"), “Old MacDonald,” (yes, unbelievably, the one with the farm and noisy animals), “Long Legged Girl (with the short dress on),” (which, I think, is an attempt to get with the music and sexual revolution underway in the sixties, but which sounds like a load of sad and clueless middle aged men in the middle of a mid-life crisis - these people thought this was rock'n'roll!!), and “How Would You Like to Be,” (not so much a song for children as a song for backward children), all of which are all so execrable as to run even “Queenie Wahine's Papaya” close for Elvis' worst song ever (and that's saying an awful lot). Frankly, anyone tempted into the world of Elvis by the cheap price and packaging here would never ever come close to buying an Elvis album ever again. You see, the casual fan wouldn't just listen to the good stuff, they would be exposed to the terrible stuff, and I'll guarantee that they would not be pleased. Records like this did immense damage to Elvis. Instead of showcasing the best of Elvis, such records drew attention to some real dross in Elvis' catalogue. Such songs should have been kept well hidden. The people behind this abomination ought to have been shot or, if we are going to be appropriately cruel and vindictive, made to listen to this album over and again on a tape loop.

U.S. Male

This was another 'budget' purchase I made on the same holiday, a little souvenir from the Lake District. "He's got them all," my mother said to the assistant as she waited for me studying the rack of Elvis albums. This album is actually very decent and possesses something of the feel of an authentic album. It has a consistent sound and the semblance of a coherent theme. It has the “Burning Love / It's a Matter of Time” single as well as the often overlooked “Guitar Man / Big Boss Man” sounding single “U.S. Male” as the title track. Beyond that there are a number of mature ballads from 1969, material from the American Sound sessions as well as from the films. Had it been packaged properly, and had the more anomalous film material here been replaced with more tracks from around 1969 (“I'll Be There,” "A Little Less Conversation," and “Rubberneckin'” for instance, which all turned up on other budget albums), and had we had a proper album cover instead of yet another damned image of Elvis in the jumpsuit (the '73 Hawaii concert has naught to do with the material on this album and the association merely confuses one and all to the detriment of the music), then we would have had a decent, coherent album in its own right, something that would have been to Elvis' credit. As it is, I love the simple ballads on here (“Let's Forget About the Stars” and “Let's Be Friends”) and the romantic ballads (“Almost in Love”) and rate this album most highly. It just could have been much better. The attitude seems to have been to keep pouring out padded albums instead of issuing the one good one. It's not only artistically insane, it also makes for incredibly bad business. Particular Elvis albums weren't selling in anything like the quantities they should have been selling in, so the company just kept issuing lots and lots of Elvis albums, selling in little quantities to make for a lot. Pathetic, frankly, and hugely detrimental to Elvis and his music. He should have cleared the whole lot of incompetents and half-heads out.

Easy Come, Easy Go

This was a present from my Auntie Mary. I remember going round to my auntie and uncle's house and eagerly ripping off the wrapping paper. My face must have dropped, because my Auntie made a comment which indicated her immediate recognition of the disappointment that was registered by my face. Actually, it was all a mistake on my part and misunderstanding on hers. For reasons best known to the idiots in charge of the Elvis releases, the front cover of this album used exactly the same photograph that had been used for the “C'mon Everybody” album, so I not unnaturally thought I'd received a duplicate as a present. Not so. My face registered immediate disappointment, until I realized the album was actually a new one. But there was no explaining to my Auntie that I really appreciated this new album as a present. Oh well, such is life, one long misunderstanding.

That said, this was such a strange record that I don't remember it with much fondness. In the first place, it actually does duplicate material from the other 'budget' albums I already had. In the second place, it contains some incredibly annoying rubbish like “I Love Only One Girl” and “Long Legged Girl (with the short dress on).” In the third place, it contains film songs that, in their appropriate setting, might make some kind of sense - “Santa Lucia” and “Guadalajara” - but which make no sense at all elsewhere. And finally, it contains tracks which would have been brilliant on the “U.S. Male” album, making it a good statement of the new Elvis of late sixties/ 1969 (“A Little Less Conversation,” “I'll Be There,” “Easy Come, Easy Go.”)  There's just no thought in such releases, just mere expediency. It's just irritating, and it doesn't surprise me at all how many people would come to give Elvis a wide berth. They can't even be bothered to present the material properly. 

But it being Elvis, redemption is always close by. The world now knows “A Little Less Conversation” to be an Elvis classic. I remember the days when it was dismissed as an Elvis film song (read John Robertson's guide to the "Essential Elvis" from the late '90s), and added to 'budget' albums like this. Elvis was very badly packaged and marketed, making him appear mediocre when he was anything but. It's as simple as that. We can now put all the material back together and identify the sense and sensibility that was always there, but which was buried by commerce, greed, and stupidity. With Elvis' management, it was senility that was always uppermost.

The '56 Sessions – volume 1

The '56 Sessions – volume 2

A quality release containing all of Elvis' stellar 1956 recordings, the songs with which he swept the world, issued over two volumes. Here I heard the blues and the country and the ballads beyond the hits the world already knows and loves. Here, we heard from where the hits came from, Elvis' musical bedrock, particularly when accompanied by "The Sun Collection." Elvis was no flash in the pan, there was a real musical intelligence and substance behind the hit-making. You should listen to the whole 1956 catalogue to understand the truth of that statement. There's just so much here to appreciate: "My Baby Left Me," "So Glad You're Mine," "Lawdy Miss Clawdy," "Any Place is Paradise" as stellar blues performances; "Any Way You Want Me" as peerless balladry; "Paralyzed" as unbeatable rhythmic pop. I could go on and on. These recordings are simply stunning. 

So there it was, I was now officially an Elvis connoisseur: I had the entire Sun and the 1956 recordings, the key Elvis recordings in the eyes of music critics, and I also had a sizeable chunk of the hit records and gold records beyond those first recordings. That's not a bad collection at all, I thought. 

My record buying in 1978 had been extensive. I must have found a way of making much more money than I had ever done to be able to have made all these purchases. I know my mother would give me the bus fare to travel to school every day, two buses there, two buses back, with cash over in case I lost any money. The truth is that I would walk to and from school and pocket the money. I did that for five years. So I had more money than ever in my pockets. And more temptations to spend/waste it on. 

My interest in Elvis was now at peak, and it is evident that the decline in Elvis purchases the previous couple of years was down to a lack of funds coming my way via my parents. There may well have been other considerations. At this somewhat late stage, my dad suggested to my mother that I ought to diversify a little into other artists. It was always possible, he said, that I may go off Elvis at some time in the future, leaving me with a vast collection of records that one day I would no longer listen to. It's too late now, I thought, as I pondered my next purchase. 

Oddly, I can never remember expressing any desire to obtain the “Elvis in Memphis” album or its “Back in Memphis” counterpart. These American Sound recordings of 1969 are considered to be on a par with Elvis' best fifties work, and yet I never considered buying them. In fact, I was never really that aware of them and their significance. I think the reason for their absence in my collection was their sheer inaccessibility – I don't recall ever seeing them, nor, apart from “Suspicious Minds” and “In the Ghetto,” was the material familiar. The American Sound material was invisible, and so there was no great desire on my part for "Elvis in Memphis." It's a huge omission, of course. This is one for the shops. It is clear, however, that these albums of high quality material and performance were not, actually, among the most popular of Elvis' albums. They lacked anything like the visibility of the films and their soundtracks, for instance. And that explains their omission from my ample Elvis collection.

Moody Blue

The placing of this album may seem eccentric. We must be well into 1978 by now, long after Elvis' death in the August of 1977. The list I wrote at the front of the Elvis Special has “Moody Blue” as the last Elvis album I acquired. That cannot be right, and I do have a vague recollection of having overlooked the album as I made the list, adding it to the bottom. With different coloured pens, and differences in handwriting, it is evident that the list was compiled over a period of time. "Moody Blue" is well known as the last album released when Elvis was alive, but I have no doubt that I obtained the album well after 1977. I am also sure that I bought the Sun and the two 1956 collections before I finally got round to “Moody Blue.” They were much better choices and contained much better songs. I knew that at the time. I knew what I was doing. I had much better Elvis albums to be spending my money on than "Moody Blue." In all honesty, I cannot remember obtaining the record at all. There was a lot of Elvis around in the aftermath of his death, and a lot of very good Elvis along with an awful lot of dross and idolatry. (Listen to Danny Mirror singing "I Remember Elvis Presley" and you'll see what I mean). I wanted the good stuff and not more of the fawning fan worship that got Elvis into the mess of his rotten reputation in the first place. We had already heard the singles “Moody Blue” and “Way Down,” and what we had heard of the rest of the album didn't seem to be anywhere near as appealing. Pockets are limited, and whilst “Moody Blue” was Elvis' last album, it didn't seem remotely to be an essential purchase, and certainly not at the price at which it was being sold. There was a lot of cashing in on the new, and somewhat morbid, interest in Elvis. I remember my mother holding forth in the local shops, on the streets with neighbours, and on Radio City, Liverpool, on how the world had gone way overboard in lamenting Elvis' death. One elderly lady in the fruit shop in Greenfield Road, St Helens, said she remembered the hysteria following the death of Rudolf Valentino. In fact, she had participated in it, it turns out. That was actually a good analogy, and it is clear that like good old Rudolf, Elvis had excited the passions of a substantial proportion of the female half of the world. My mother was in denial, if that was the case. She continued to press her formidable case to all who would listen, accusing many of cashing in on Elvis' death. As big as we were as Elvis fans, she was of course right in her assessment. Not that I offered a view one way or the other. I was somewhat reassured by the obvious fact that Elvis was big and important and mattered a great deal to a lot of people in the world. I had yet to come to terms with the fact that he was no longer with us. In fact, I reasoned that very little had changed, seeing as we never saw Elvis anyway, he was always somewhere else. He was still "somewhere else," I reasoned. But there wasn't much chance of us joining in the mourning by rushing out to buy Elvis' last record or any of the others as they flew off the shelves. I think it is to our credit, actually, that we didn't indulge. The only Elvis purchase we made in 1977 was "Elvis in Concert." But we did eventually get round to buying "Moody Blue." I seem to remember it as one of the last acquisitions, adding to the general feeling of weariness on my part in face of a lot of tired and somewhat lame Elvis performances. Elvis was no longer exciting us as he had once done, his music was no longer new, and the thrill had gone. “Moody Blue” was very disappointing when we heard it. As “the King,” I was expecting Elvis to have gone out in a blaze of glory.  I'm an old romantic, and reality can strike hard. It was Elvis' last record, and I was expecting big things, an heroic last stand, a rage against the dying of the light. Instead, I got “Moody Blue” and “Way Down,” which we already knew and loved, and then what sounded like a lot of miserable ballads sung in bloated echoey voice. Not so much a sigh as a long tedious groan. As for what my mother said about “Little Darlin'” the first time we listened to the album, I'll just say that I agree with her bluntness and leave it at that. 

What can I say? As loyal as I was in my devotion to Elvis, this was just not music for a teenage boy looking forward to exploring life as it was beginning to get interesting. Frankly, these songs were depressing, all about marital break-ups, separation, and loss. Good grief, I didn't even know what a girl looked like, although I was now convinced that ML had intended to further my education in this direction as we pretended to listen to "Elvis' Gold Records vol 4." I was beginning to be curious and was starting to draw pictures on walls to try and work it all out. That led to a fairly embarrassing moment when I forgot to wipe a particular masterpiece I had drawn off the toilet wall, only to have my mother discover it. She compared it to Leonardo da Vinci, probably because he had no idea about women either. She declared the woman I had drawn to be "unfortunate" for some anatomical reason I couldn't quite fathom. Frankly, the explanations did not make any sense to me. I'm a very visual person. And since I was drawing from imagination, with absolutely no knowledge whatsoever, I don't think I did a bad job at all, actually. Not that I owned up to anything. I'm sure that my bright red face didn't give me away, either. I blame ML for not having the patience to wait until the end of the Elvis record for whatever it was that she'd had in mind. 

I wanted something with more joy, more vitality, from my music than Elvis' later songs of experience (and self-pity) were giving me. It would take a lot of living on my part before I could return to these songs so as to appreciate their true quality and depth. It's Elvis baring his very raw and wounded soul. It left me completely cold at the time. It now moves me to tears. Elvis had brought joy to millions over the years, but when he really needed a friend, there were none to be found.

We decided to give “From Elvis Presley Boulevard” a miss. From the song titles alone it looked like one big sad sack of human misery: "Never Again," "Love Coming Down," "I'll Never Fall in Love Again," "The Bitter they are, the Harder they Fall," "Hurt," "Danny Boy," "The Last Farewell," "Solitaire," "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain." . Poor Elvis. He seemed a world away from the days of "Girl Happy" and "Girls! Girls! Girls!" He'd been there, done it, indulged in all the vices, lost everything in life that was worth having, and was now feeling very sorry for himself. Nobody else was feeling sorry. The prospect of a middle aged drunk singing into his beer at the bar blaming others for his self-authored miseries was not appealing. And I think my interest in the "Elvis Today" album of 1975 went the same way for the same reason. Which was my loss. Because Elvis' versions of "Green Green Grass of Home" and "And I Love You So" possess a heart rending beauty that no other artist could come close to matching. But I'll admit to being biased. We all have our favourites, and Elvis is mine.

Elvis as Recorded at Madison Square Garden

I never much liked this album. In fact, I didn't like it at all. It was one of the last I obtained and I hardly played it. I can't remember purchasing it, and wonder if it was a Christmas present. I don't recall having any great desire for it, either. There was little new and exciting here. I was very cold on this album from the first time I heard it. It was boring, frankly. Yes, this is Elvis as big as the whole picture, but it was empty. The large scale merely magnified the hollowness in the Elvis of the seventies. Elvis had taken it as far as it could go and was now merely just inflating his inner emptiness. That may seem a harsh assessment, but there was something substantial missing in Elvis' world. No matter how big and powerful he looked at the level of image, things were not right in his life and his music. The album wasn't cheap, either, as I remember. Elvis' performance in New York was a big event and therefore hugely important, and came with a high price tag (certainly high in relation to my limited budget). So I bought this album with high expectations, and the record didn't remotely measure up. I didn't think much of the performances of the hits. The concert bored me, frankly. I had the feeling I had heard it all before. I wanted Elvis to knock my socks off, and send all rivals flying. It didn't happen. Elvis sounded bored to me. He evidently had nothing left to prove; there was no edge to his voice, except for the odd exception. Tracks like "Never Been to Spain" are very very good. But I'd heard better versions of the ballads and big numbers, too. And the performances sounded forced and rushed, unnaturally so. I think it was this that really put me off at the time. My instincts were to be proven right when, years later, it was revealed that manager Tom Parker had had the songs on the album sped up so that he could squeeze extra tracks in on which he had secured publishing. Something typically cheap and tawdry like that. I think I can date my waning interest in buying Elvis to this album. I've heard the afternoon and evening shows since, properly mastered, and Elvis is in good form, with tracks like “Never Been to Spain,” “Polk Salad Annie” and “The Impossible Dream” exceptional. I just didn't get it at the time. 

I was tiring of Elvis, new horizons were beckoning. In 1974 I had nagged my mother to buy "Killer Queen" by Queen. I retained an interest through my Elvis obsession, and watched as Queen went from strength to strength. Queen's "Now I'm Here" hit number 10 on the UK pop charts in 1975, beating Elvis' fantastic "Promised Land" out at number 11. The baton was being handed over. It took a little time, but "Bohemian Rhapsody," "Somebody to Love," "We are the Champions," "We Will Rock You" confirmed to me that Queen was where the excitement now was. It was 1978, and I distinctly remember Queen doing "Fat Bottomed Girls" on Top of the Pops. The title alone ... the mind boggles. We watched Freddie Mercury strutting around in his black and white leotard, and I distinctly remember my disapproving mother saying "I think you've got to have something wrong with you to get on these days." I remember thinking that, actually, I quite like this. I didn't say anything. Just as I said nothing about "Bicycle Race" and its video. I was silently thrilled. It was exciting and amusing. In the course of the next year I would openly declare my interest in Queen, and acquire "A Day at the Races," "News of the World," and "Sheer Heart Attack." I would buy "A Night at the Opera" on holiday in the Lake District, instead of the usual Elvis. That was a hefty investment. Come Christmas time, it would be Queen rather than Elvis too. The King is dead, long live the Queen!

Elvis NBC TV Special

Whisper it, but I didn't rave to anything like the same extent over the '68 TV Special as others did. I thought the performances ragged, with Elvis' normally smooth, velvety voice sounding like a rather gruff growl and roar. Of course, that's what the critics loved about the performances. I was less keen at the time. I did appreciate the fact that critics rated Elvis here in 1968 as so good on his 'comeback' as to have reclaimed his crown. But as much as I liked the idea, I didn't quite like the music. It took me years to appreciate the performances offered here. Elvis was actually in fine fettle, raw and raucous, the old rocker rocking the house as only he could. I still say that he would go on to become a much more polished performer. Which may not be that much of a good thing. 

I did immediately appreciate “If I Can Dream” as one of Elvis' very best songs and performances. From the very first time I heard this song I knew it to be a very great song. I never wavered in that view. I remember wanting it to be played as a birthday request for my Nin on Liverpool's Radio City. Something jolly was chosen instead. This will have everybody crying, I was told. I maintain it was a good choice on my part. I had good taste. 

It's possible that this was my 1978 Christmas present. I remember it being cold and dark in the front room when I listened to it for the first time. I just don't remember it that way. In fact, I am sure that I received this album some time early in 1979. The fact that I cannot remember my annual Elvis Christmas present suggests that my interest was waning or that my desires had been satiated or simply that there was no Elvis Christmas present. The latter seems more than likely. This was the Christmas that I received a guitar as a present, along with a Bert Weedon "Play in a Day" book. It took me what seemed like years to learn the first song in the book, and I retain a loathing of "Bobby Shafto" to this day. I never did learn to play the guitar, and I never did fulfill all my promise to become the new Elvis, but I comb my hair in the same fashion and admire my immense (imaginary) quiff to this day.

Aloha from Hawaii Via Satellite

As with the Madison Square Garden album, I didn't warm to this double album at all. It was another big event, the 1973 Hawaii concert that went out to over one billion people, part of the Elvis conquers the world series, and therefore of immense historic importance. We got the message that "ELVIS" was BIG BIG BIG: it's just that I thought that there was something bloated and empty about the performance, that the substance was being blown up to make it BIG. There was something going on here that I was too young to really understand. I would have been thirteen or so when I bought this in 1978. I just didn't care for Elvis' performances of the rock material, they just seemed dull, perfunctory, and second-rate to me, and in no way comparable to his original performances of the same material. I didn't see the point. It wasn't Elvis at anything like his best. I was listening more and more to Queen by this time, and that band could really rock the house! Elvis? He was at his best here on the ballads. I'll stand by that view. And I'm now at an age when I can appreciate the immensity of those ballad performances (“It's Over,” “What Now My Love,” “You Gave Me a Mountain,” “I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry,” “An American Trilogy.”) The performances are exemplary. No one could touch Elvis in this kind of form. Not even close. It's just not obvious material for a thirteen year old boy. I was being introduced to some strong, grown-up material here, and it would stand me in good stead in years to come. But it wasn't what I wanted at this stage in my young life. My interest in Elvis thus continued to wane. I'd heard his great and revolutionary stuff. I was now hearing the songs of pomp and circumstance followed by the material charting his decline and fall. It made for painful listening for young ears. 

As a double album, this was a substantial investment on my part. Remember that although the Aloha concert was from 1973, for some reason it was only shown for the first time in the UK in 1978. So it was a big current event here, and the double album came at a high price. This one had to be ordered by catalogue and paid for by installments. It was a big event when it arrived. Expectations were high. I just remember that the album seemed a whole lot more impressive in hand and in eye than it was in ear. But I was thirteen. I'm pretty sure that this was obtained some time early in 1979. The world was getting livelier by the month. I would turn fourteen later in the year. There's a clash going on here between an older Elvis at the end of his journey and me getting old enough in order to embark on mine. Elvis and I were out of kilter. Looking back, it is clear why I never got round to buying "Elvis as Recorded in Memphis" from 1974. I had seen the album in the shops, and was intrigued by a cover that didn't for once have a picture of Elvis on the front. But there just seemed to be far too many concert albums to choose from, and the New York and Hawaii shows were the real biggies. So "Memphis" was never a priority, and as a result of being bored with the concert albums I did buy, I never got round to it. 

"Aloha" was also the album on which my brother bailed out and made his break with Elvis clear. In saving money with the next Elvis purchase in mind, I had always soberly counted on my brother's money being pooled with my own. My brother, of course, had no say in such accountancy. I learned that I had a very great talent and even greater inclination for the art of spending other people's money for the common good. My brother, I learned, was starting to things differently, making it clear that his view of the good was at variance with mine. He had kept his scepticism low key enough in the past for me to be able to totally ignore him, but this time he revealed a treachery and betrayal so total as to be impossible to ignore. Frankly, he refused to hand over his cash, leaving me well short of making a purchase. My initial reaction of incomprehension gave way in time to outrage and high-pitched vocal abuse. It made no difference. He proceeded to announce his intentions to invest his money in some album or other by The Eagles. He was also developing what I considered to be an unhealthy interest in the Electric Light Orchestra. There was rebellion underway in Elvis' kingdom and there was nothing I could do by way of persuasion and violence to stop it. At least I kept the royal theme in going from “The King” to “Queen.” 

Elvis in Demand

If the end was indeed nigh for Elvis, then he went out on quite a high with "Elvis in Demand." The sun was shining, and it was staying lighter longer. It would soon be the summer of '79. The world was changing and so was I. I was nearly fourteen, entering the fourth form, my penultimate year at school. All grown up. Nearly. Not. This album reveals a discerning taste and judgement on the part of my good self. There were always too many Elvis albums available in the shops, and far too many inexpensively priced 'bargains' tempting you to waste your money and lower your impression of Elvis in the process. I had negotiated all the pitfalls, and survived the odd fall. And I had come out of it all as a person with taste. I knew a good Elvis song when I heard it. I knew when Elvis was good and interested, and I knew when he was bad and lazy. "Elvis in Demand" was an excellent choice. This was a high priced album of Elvis tracks that, in the main, had been ignored over the years, but which are an assortment of undiscovered classics, gems, understated masterpieces, and strong performances that deserved a much wider audience than they had hitherto received. My very first Elvis album had been “Separate Ways,” containing the left overs and scraps of Elvis' career rather than the hits and gold records. This was fairly similar in that these songs were not well known. But they could never be described as scraps and leftovers. Frankly, this album could be issued as most other artists' 'best of' collection, should said artists be of sufficiently high quality. Some of the tracks I already had. But the ones I didn't have simply blew me away: “Suspicion,” “Hi Heel Sneakers,” “It's a  Long Lonely Highway,” “Summer Kisses,” and the undubbed version of “It Hurts Me,” even more powerful without the vocal backing. It's ironic that my brother bailed out on Elvis at this time to become in course of time a huge Bob Dylan. This final purchase contains Elvis' sublime rendition of Dylan's “Tomorrow is a Long Time,” Dylan's favourite version of all the many versions of one of his songs by other artists. It is indeed sublime. For many years I rated it Elvis' greatest ever song. Now I realize that such a claim is nonsense, since Elvis has at least one hundred candidates. But what a way to end my Elvis collecting! With Elvis' best ever song!

The album also contains “It's Only Love,” a neglected classic from 1971 whose obvious hit potential would become clear a couple of years later in 1981 when it went to number 3 on the UK charts. There had been a time when such success would have excited me immensely. I used to follow Elvis' progress up the charts, always being disappointed when, somehow, he failed to reach the number one spot where he rightfully belonged. By 1981, the event passed with little interest. I noted it and was pleased, but didn't make much mention of it. I was now a diehard Queen fan, pushing the claims of "The Game" on my punk loving school friends. That's where the fun and excitement was. My punk friends hated Queen with a vengeance. I still loved Elvis. It's just that I found out that, for the most part, he excited no interest among my peers and was considered something of a relic and an irrelevance, even a joke. He didn't even have annoyance value. So I didn't say much at all about Elvis. There was no point mentioning him, because no-one was bothered. There was a hard core of about half a dozen of us who were mad keen Elvis fans. I chatted with them and we cheered each other up with the reassurance that Elvis still mattered. But we kept it to ourselves, since no-one else was remotely bothered. What does it matter what we think of people? What does it matter what we think of pop stars? It's not important and it doesn't matter. Which is why I've spent a few thousand words on my memories of Elvis...  

"Elvis in Demand" was a good way to end the first phase of my Elvis collecting. I was now saving up my money to buy Queen albums, asking for Queen at Christmas and on my birthday instead of "the King." Queen's "Live Killers" for 1979 was my first Christmas without Elvis. The year after it was Queen's "Flash" and "Jazz" (minus the much desired poster - my mother had confiscated it, as did the mothers of all my school friends who also had this album - outrageous, a deprivation, a denial of a perfectly natural curiosity, I say, merely a form of education, in the absence of ML, ample girl as she was). In the meantime I was using my pocket money to buy every Queen album issued. I caught up quickly. By 1982 I had the lot. On holiday in the Lake District, I bought "A Night at the Opera." The shop owner played me "The Prophet's Song" in the shop as I made my purchase. The time and energy I had once invested in Elvis was now going into Queen. I had no time and money to spare for Elvis. 

This wasn't quite the end for Elvis, though. My auntie and uncle had been on holiday, the Isle of Man I seem to remember (which made me wonder if there was an Isle of Woman out there somewhere). They brought me back an Elvis album. Which was very good of them, and much appreciated. The last Elvis album of my youth was thus the aptly titled “Please Don't Stop Loving Me.” Fittingly, it was also the last of those 'budget' albums that were issued throughout the seventies, released in 1979. With "Separate Ways" I had come in with a budget album, and I now left Elvis with the last of those albums. Somehow along the way I had never quite got round to "Almost in Love" and "Let's Be Friends," budget albums that were always available, of exactly the same quality as the other budget albums I had. I didn't get them simply because I didn't like the titles, it made the music seem soppy. As it was, I obtained nearly all the tracks on "Almost in Love" from other albums, although the absence of "Charro!" was a big omission. I also had more than half of the tracks on "Let's Be Friends." In making decisions with respect to purchasing strategy, I was forever weighing up the money available against the tracks I didn't have and tracks I already had. Your main consideration was not the price of the album as such but the price in relation to the number of tracks on the album you didn't have, which was a different thing entirely. Albums which looked like good deals could actually be very poor value for money given the number of duplicates. The problem, of course, was the shoddy and exploitative way in which Elvis' music had been released from the first, a strategy devised to ensure that fans kept on buying the same songs over and again. I lost count of how many times I had "Teddy Bear," "Hound Dog," "Don't Be Cruel." I did try counting, but the effect was debilitating - I started to think that I had been a fool and had been throwing my money away.

My Elvis collecting began with a budget album bought by my mother and ended with a budget album bought by my auntie, her sister.

Please Don't Stop Loving Me

This made for a very strange listening experience at the time. It's not that the songs are bad but that they just do not cohere. It's as if Elvis' music was being broken up and repackaged by cloth-eared puppets on stilts. In all seriousness, it ought to have been obvious to even the most slow-witted of dimwits out there that songs like “Come Along,” “Shout it Out,” and “Petunia the Gardener's Daughter” work only in a film context, if they are considered to work at all. It should also have been more than obvious that the days of the Elvis film songs were long over, having come to an ignominious end more than a decade earlier. The films had almost dragged Elvis into oblivion. It's the reason I love the film "Stay Away, Joe," a film so unbelievably bad that it is impossible to draw the conclusion that Elvis was treating Hollywood with all the contempt with which Hollywood had treated Elvis - and that is an awful lot. It was utterly senseless to keep dragging up the film material. But no, somebody out there was still trying to squeeze every last cent out of the abomination of desolation that was the Elvis film. It was also clear that those in charge of packaging Elvis' songs could care less. They couldn't be bothered and, by this stage, neither could I. Elvis himselvis was dead and so was in no position to care one way or the other. It was over, it didn't matter any more, there was no changes to be effected: Elvis was gone and was never coming back. This is how things end. I was appreciating that other options existed and that this kind of Elvis 'product,' the way that inferior material detracted from better material, had become merely tedious. It no longer mattered to set the record straight. The Elvis world was a tasteless joke and if Elvis fans were being treated as cretins that was because, for the most part, that's exactly what they must have been to have kept on consuming this dreck. I'm sure Elvis' management did far more to derail Elvis and the cultural revolution he inaugurated than any and all of his detractors put together. I remember the album issued just after Elvis' death, "Elvis Sings for Children and Grownups Too." Heaven help us! It had "Old MacDonald" on there again, sitting proudly in the middle of miscellaneous other rubbish. The album should have been called "Elvis Sings for Children and Morons Too." Complete drivel. Although my mother loved "Big Boots." (At certain points, I learned to just give up and give way).

I was past all of this. I didn't need to keep apologising for Elvis, it was much more fun doing the same thing for Queen and their frequent lapses of taste. The difference is that I greatly enjoyed Queen's often alarming judgments, buttressed as they were by stunning tracks and, well, shall we say challenging humour. In contrast with Queen, Elvis' lapses in taste were tawdry and predictable, driven by mere "business." Put Queen's “Bicycle Race” and “Fat Bottomed Girls” and the poster none of us were allowed to see alongside Elvis' “Petunia the Gardener's Daughter” and "Queenie Wahine's Papaya" and you will see immediately what I mean. Unless there is some truth in the suggestion that that latter song has a double meaning that has slipped completely undetected under the radar. It makes sense. Why else would anyone write a tongue-twisting song about fruit as excruciatingly awful as that one? As I said, I was thirteen coming on fourteen. I was looking for something more than cultural embarrassment. Actually, I didn't mind embarrassment, so long as it was about something interesting.

That said, I cannot help but feel sorry for Elvis. It needn't have come to any of this nonsense. With "Please Don't Stop Loving Me" we were being given a Frankenstein's monster, stitching together decent material from the film “Frankie and Johnny” (two of the ballads are actually very good and I was glad to have them, "Beginner's Luck" in particular) with obvious screen fodder from that film (utterly ephemeral, of no lasting significance in Elvis' career, of absolutely no interest to the world) and adding, without rhyme or reason, good material from 1969. I'll say it again, fine tracks like “Change of Habit,” “Edge of Reality,” “Clean up your own Backyard,” and “Rubberneckin'” should all have gone on the one “U.S. Male” type album (see my comments earlier). That would have been coherent and cogent, a consistent statement concerning the Elvis circa 1968/69. Instead, the Elvis management were hell bent on stretching everything they had as far as it would go until something snapped, in the end merely having the tracks negating each other on grab-bag cheapo albums that made no sense whatsoever. The strategy had no discernible purpose other than making another quick buck. These people were not businessmen, they were hucksters, filling their boots for so long as they could. The something that snapped at this point was my almost infinite patience born of a love for Elvis' music. Elvis himself had snapped a lot earlier. The fans were treated as idiots to be continuously milked, and by now I was responding to the much better offers that were out there in the world. If my pockets were to be continually emptied, they would be emptied by those offering something good in return, and not by the cheap chancers, merchants, parasites, exploiters, and miscreants who infested the Elvis world. 

I'll stand by my view that “Clean Up your own Backyard” is a classic awaiting discovery by the public at large. I said this at the time. It's a fantastic slice of blue-eyed soul, and more than redeems this last budget album on its own. My reasoning here was kind of vindicated in 2002 when “A Little Less Conversation” was rediscovered and re-released, to prove my main point – a neglected film song that sunk without trace in 1968 resurfaced to become a global number one smash in 2002. “Conversation” is good, but “Backyard” is miles better.

And that was that for my Elvis collection. Looking back, that's actually not a bad collection at all for a young boy with precious little money in the economically challenged 1970's. There are some glaring omissions. Years later, expatiating at length, for the umpteenth time, as to why Elvis Presley was utterly appalling, I would point out that the irony that despite buying so many Elvis albums in the 1970s, we somehow managed to miss what was very probably his best one – the “Elvis in Memphis” album of American Sound material from 1969. “Elvis is Back” also has a claim to being Elvis' best album, and this one was also missed. As to why I missed them, I can only say that I have no recollection of them being available in the shops. You didn't see them. I'm prepared to stand by this view, but as critically acclaimed as these albums are, I don't think that they were anywhere near as popular as other Elvis albums, and so you tended not to see them in the shops. The same goes for “Something for Everybody” and “Pot Luck.” You would see them represented on the back of other albums, but you wouldn't see them in the shops. I distinctly remember thinking precisely that thought with respect to "Something for Everybody." I have a good memory, particular with respect to things in which I have a keen interest. I knew Elvis' gospel albums were highly rated, but you would never see these in the shops either. And I wasn't really interested in religious material, either, it just didn't seem right. As for “Elvis Country” from 1970, this one I do distinctly remember being available - the cover with its photo of Elvis as a baby put me off. I never saw “Elvis Now” and “Fool,” or maybe I did it's just that these Elvis albums, all seemingly titled “Elvis” with a picture of Elvis in a jumpsuit on the cover, had become a blur, with there being no reason to choose one rather than another. And a choice had to be made, I couldn't afford to buy them all. “Elvis Today” I remember as a non-event. I heard some of the tracks on the radio and they made little impression, Elvis singing a lot of old songs we knew best in other, very recent, versions. The public ignored the album, and so did I. It passed the world by, and I carried on past it like it hadn't happened. It was Elvis sounding very old to me, and I wasn't interested. A lot of the film soundtracks were missing but, having seen most of the films, and having made tapes of their songs when they were on TV, I was not inclined to think that much of a loss. I did love the "Jailhouse Rock" songs, but there was no "Jailhouse Rock" album to go along with "Loving You" and "King Creole." The absence of "Treat Me Nice," "Baby I Don't Care," "Don't Leave Me Now," "I Want to Be Free" and "Young and Beautiful" were massive omissions from my collection. I couldn't see where they were available, though. None of the other film soundtracks seemed to be anything like essential purchases on a par with the purchases I had already made. In fact, they seemed indistinguishable and interchangeable: "Girls! Girls! Girls!," "Fun in Acapulco," "It Happened at the World's Fair," "Roustabout," "Girl Happy," "Paradise Hawaiian Style," "Kissin' Cousins," "Clambake" etc. etc. etc. There were too many of them to buy, but there was no reason to choose one over the other. So I chose none of them. 

My collecting, it is evident, was fairly random and haphazard to begin with, leading me with a problem of avoiding duplicates ever after. In time, a strategy emerged, and by 1978 I was buying in accordance with a clear conscious purpose. The "Forty Greatest" album from 1974 was very much the cornerstone of my collection, giving me most of Elvis' best songs in one place. It was a hugely popular double album in the 1970s, so you can see why we went for it. That said, if I was to do it all again, in a rational and calculating way, I would have advised that we go to straight to the "Worldwide 50 Gold Award Hits vol 1" and its counterpart "The Other Sides - Elvis Worldwide Gold Award Hits," two four album sets from 1971 containing 50 hit singles and Gold Records in each. I picked these up a few years later, and they really do the job. A casual Elvis fan needs no more Elvis, the rest of us can venture forth from here and explore the rest of the catalogue in whatever wild and whacky way they like. Of course, had we bought these box sets, the great impetus/madness that impelled us to buy the albums from which these songs came would have been lacking. Why buy "Loving You" and "King Creole" when you have the hits and B-sides from these albums? The Elvis world, you learn, is impossible. You simply have to have it all, quite a challenge when you have little money. I had fun collecting the way I did it. I was doomed to buy too many of the same songs whilst missing out completely on essential others. It was unavoidable. Like collecting football stickers. A rational strategy would have been cold and clinical, boring, and wouldn't have solved the problem either - Elvis was an artist designed to forever get away. Plus, as four album box sets, these albums were prohibitive. You look at the price and you know immediately that they are unattainable. At which point I say that I either didn't see them in the shops or had quickly learned not to see what I could not afford. 

I never considered the gospel albums. I knew they were highly rated as being among Elvis' greatest ever vocal performances, but I wasn't comfortable with the idea of religious music. "His Hand in Mine" and "How Great Thou Art" I now know to be among Elvis' best albums. "He Touched Me" also earned him a Grammy award. If you don't have Elvis singing gospel, you don't have Elvis. It's all academic though, since I never saw these albums in the shops. They would have been in the high price category, too, taking them out of my reach. The budget album "You'll Never Walk Alone" was available and within reach, but I could never quite express a desire to have a religious record. My deputy head played it to our R.E. class at school, and I quite enjoyed the experience, particularly the fact my class mates didn't object. I never did get round to buying it, though. I never saw "Elvis Sings the Wonderful World of Christmas." I don't think I even knew of its existence. 

“On Stage” was the one I really wanted, and still have no idea why I didn't get it instead of "Madison Square Garden" and "Hawaii." Quite often, the album you were tracking down went missing in the shops just as you turned up ready and able to make the purchase, leaving you having to opt for a second or third choice. “Polk Salad Annie” I knew to be immense. We had taped it from the radio, and were desperate to have it on record. “The Wonder of You,” “Proud Mary,” “Walk a Mile in My Shoes,” “Let it be Me” were awesome performances from this album. I can't say exactly why I missed out here, it would have made a great counterpart to "That's The Way It Is," which I loved. I don't actually remember seeing it too often. I did see "Love Letters from Elvis," and ran a mile from its soppy cover and concept. I do remember seeing Elvis Recorded in Memphis from 1974, but also remember other albums competing for my miserable few pennies. I am disinclined to plead poverty, though, because that is not a bad Elvis collection at all. It's far from everything Elvis did, but it's a lot. Ask my poor dad, he was a jazzer who had to listen to it all over the years! And I think of my poor mother, who was the origin of it all. She was a huge Elvis fan, but had nothing of an Elvis collection. I seem to remember he mentioning that she did once have a lot of the singles, but that they get lost, scattered and damaged. She was careless, she admitted, even leaving singles out in the sun. She had nothing of her own. So I considered myself truly blessed and very spoiled. It was a good collection that we all enjoyed over the years.

That was that for Elvis for me for a long, long time. In the 1980's it was about as unhip and uncool to like Elvis as unhip and uncool could be. True, it was never hip and cool to like my new favourites Queen either, but Freddie, Brian, Roger and even the quiet John were big beasts who could more than look after themselves. They were in control of their own career, and determined their own course. They had a conceit and arrogance which made it clear they didn't give a damn what critics thought of them, and that fans shouldn't give a damn about detractors either. I liked that. I was tired of forever having to defend Elvis. And Queen had the talent to match the rather exalted value they placed on themselves and their music. Good luck to them, I thought, if only Elvis had cultivated such a side, swept his idiotic management out of the way and trounced his critics. Each member of Queen wrote a number one smash hit. It didn't matter what the critics thought with respect to Queen. Queen were obviously fantastic and, unlike a lot of others, I didn't need Live Aid in 1985 to confirm that obvious truth to me. With Elvis, the issue always seemed to be in doubt. He let himself down but, more than that, he allowed others to let him down. Those who ought to have been working for him were really working for their own interests against him – from film producers to RCA to his miscreant manager/parasite/crook Tom Parker – undermining Elvis' artistic and creative ambitions in the process. It's a sad old story, and I think we are entitled to see it as a tragedy. It could have all been so much better than it was, with Elvis longer lived, happier and more fulfilled than he was. 

In the 1980's you couldn't move for tales of Elvis the cultural appropriator, the plastic pop phony, the racist, the grinning idiot of the sun'n'fun films, the pervert, the inadequate, the big inflated blimp, and worse. I heard it all and came to believe most of it. There was some satisfaction in joining in and giving voice to the charges, as if relieving myself of the guilt and shame of having once been an Elvis fanatic. There's nothing worse than a former believer who has come to see through all the lies and was hell bent on revealing the horrible truth to the world. I pressed the charge sheet against Elvis so long and so often, though, that it became apparent that Elvis must still have held some attraction to me. If he was as bad as others claimed him to be, and as I kept saying he was, then there really was no need to keep labouring the point. Labouring the point merely made it clear that what was being measured here was not how bad Elvis was but how much he had come to disappoint all those who had felt entitled to expect so much more from him. Our expectations were so high, of course, because at core Elvis Presley was actually supremely gifted and capable of inciting and fulfilling our every musical dream. That he got some way but not the whole way explains the fanaticism of adherents and the viciousness of detractors. Elvis made an awful lot of great music. Amazingly, it could have been so much better. And so there is a neurotic fascination with the bad music and films he made, and the bad concerts he gave. That's part of the story, but not the main part.

In my world Elvis had reigned long and, for the most part, well. He had been exciting, entertaining and joyous in the main, enough to keep a young boy royally entertained, and his sad songs were soulful, moving, and meaningful. I remember when “My Boy” was  his new single in 1975. I was at a friends house when it came on Top of the Pops. A big voiced, dramatic ballad, my friend looked at me and shook his head saying it was “no good,” let's go and play football. And I went out to play football. I didn't have the nerve to say that I actually liked the song even then, feeling it as something of a guilty pleasure. It was deep and dramatic, and something of that education into balladry stayed with me. It stood me in good stead for later years, when my footballing days would be over. Elvis sang with deep soul, and I always knew it. And I no longer feel any guilt in declaring such songs to be exceptional. 

As Queen took over, the King was put away in a cupboard, there to remain until some time in the 1990s when I started to remember the odd Elvis song that I had once loved and which radio never played - "Loving Arms," "Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues," "Let's Forget About the Stars," "How the Web Was Woven." BBC Radio 1 also incited my renewed interest in Elvis. I heard Anne Nightingale play "Long Black Limousine" some time in the early 1990s and was blown away. I didn't have it and had never heard it before. It was powerful, gritty, and soulful. It made it crystal clear that Elvis was an exceptional artist. It's on the "Elvis in Memphis" album. I heard Johnny Walker play "Stand By Me," and was blown away. I didn't have it and had never heard it. It's on the "How Great Thou Art" album, for which Elvis won his first Grammy. I heard Nicky Campbell play "The Girl of My Best Friend." Just stunning. It's from "Elvis is Back." I didn't have it ... I thought I had heard the best of Elvis. I  now realized that I hadn't. As good as Elvis had once seemed to me, it was now evident that he was so much better than that. It was clear that Elvis was actually a whole lot better than the critics were allowing. It was time for me to come to investigate in greater depth. The dominant view of Elvis at this time was that of a plastic, second-rate, phony who was a cultural appropriator who cheapened the music he got second hand for mere commercial gain. I subscribed to that view for a long, long time, and used my knowledge to lead the attack. The more I argued, the more I realized one crucial thing - that view was and is total unexpurgated rubbish from first to last. I knew better and now berate myself for lacking the guts to take on the cool craven cowardly critics who speak from ignorance and prejudice. To hell with white liberal guilt trips! And to hell with folk purists who love folk music but draw the line at real folk! It's garbage, all of it, and I may return to the question in light of the downright lies Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull has recently been spreading on Elvis as a fat drug addled oaf forgetting his words in concert in 1970 (or I may just ignore it, reasoning that if people are too stupid to see the truth of such questions for themselves, then there's no hope anyway, just enjoy yourself along life's way as best you can and let others fester in their stupidity and prejudice). Elvis as fat, ugly, and "showbiz" says Ian Anderson, Elvis as a good looking boy and, well, showbiz, says Frank Zappa. It's obvious that both consider Elvis pop and therefore bad. Not so. Sinatra was pop, Crosby was pop, Beatles were pop etc. Some of us like pop, some of us don't. I'll take pop of this quality over the Zappas and Andersons of the world any day, and so would most other people. I'll stand corrected on this, but Elvis to the best of my knowledge never made a public statement denigrating other artists and other kinds of music, saying openly that there was room for all. If only others would leave people to do and enjoy whatever it is they do and enjoy, the world would be much more at ease with itself. For my part I have an active dislike of those who disdain and denigrate "pop," presenting whatever it is that they do as more real, pure, artistic and authentic, aiming for a minority audience of men and women of discerning taste, and yet feel the need to keep coming back to sneer at mere pop and showbusiness. They are po-faced ayatollahs of taste, two-bit bigots with an inflated sense of their own importance. If they really were so great and good, then they would really have no need to keep coming back to sneer. Talk about self-loathing and insecurity! It's not just Elvis who has suffered at the hands of such folk, but other favourite acts of mine like Queen and The Beatles. Just spare me this self-identity of art over against pop and showbusiness, and lose the claims of superiority. Bach you lot most assuredly are not! I'll leave it there, lest anyone get the impression that such critics are of any importance. I do think pathetic drivel should be checked, though. Stop hopping and mugging for attention, Catweelze, get on the good foot, both of them, and take a hike! (Anderson's claims on Elvis in August 1970 are a downright lie, I can state that openly and clearly with no fear of contradiction. He doesn't like Elvis and pop/showbiz and is so lacking in something that he feels the need to sneer. Enough. I like pop and showbiz and don't feel the need to have to defend it against the likes of insufferably pompous blimps like Anderson).

Music is a sensuous experience not a cerebral one. Singers with great voices are a dime a dozen. You can be impressed by them, but they leave you cold. I don't want to be impressed by a singer, I want to be moved. At his best – and Elvis was at his best a lot more often than critics are prepared to concede – Elvis moved the greatest public any entertainer has ever known with his voice – all ages, nationalities, sexes and ethnicities. Only Crosby and Sinatra are comparable, and they are indeed hugely impressive. It's good company to be in. Elvis is still doing it. So much for Frank Zappa's claim that Elvis' success was down to his good looks. How utterly tedious! Which is it, please, Elvis the pretty boy who made it through good looks alone or Elvis the fat drug addled oaf? My view is that such critics are talking pure unadulterated garbage. It's down to the voice. Obviously.

"He was some kind of man," says Marlene Dietrich to Orson Welles in A Touch of Evil, before asking "what does it matter what you say about people?" What does it matter what anyone says about a pop singer? It's just pop music after all, and not really of any importance in the wider scheme of things at all. And a blinkered bigot is a blinkered bigot, and evidently some people can't help themselves. That has implications well beyond pop music. I don't like the attitude. Some people don't seem able to leave others alone to enjoy whatever it is they enjoy. A lot of harm comes from this. 

If asked, I'd say that Elvis was fresh, lively, and vital at his best, sang beautifully in the main, had a simple, yearning, keening quality that was haunting and moving. I'd say that he did things and sang things that were not remotely worthy of his talent, he could throwaway that talent for the most tawdry and ephemeral of rewards; he could be self-indulgent and overblown; he could also be revolutionary and innovative. He could be plastic and second-rate, he could be deeply soulful. He could be dumb, he could be intelligent. I'd say most of his problems stemmed from a basic passivity and cowardice in face of "business." He possessed some deep psychological flaw which meant that he effectively became the hired hand in his own career. The Elvis world was completely inverted - Elvis was working for his management whereas he should have been insisting that his management work for him. It cost him. And to the extent he took the money and quieted his frustrations, he was complicit. Harsh critics can say that he sold out, I'd temper that by saying that he was sold out. He was in on the rotten deal. He allowed himself to be sold out. But I'd say that along the way he recorded an awful lot of good music, put on a lot of good shows, was entertaining, amusing, and moving in equal measure, delivering music both joyous and melancholic, sang in both sunshine and in shadow, and was always idealistic and life affirming rather than cynical and nihilistic. I'd say that if it does at all matter what we say about a pop singer, then we should remember him this way. A complex and compromised character whose positives far, far outweighed his negatives. 

Rather than worry over the bigoted nonsense that people speak, I should really write a follow-up to the above, detailing my resumption of Elvis collecting in the 1990's. I discovered the vinyl shops in Liverpool and Manchester and set about  completing my Elvis collection. I will have to go from memory when it comes to the order, since I didn't make a list. But I have a good memory. I ended up at well over one hundred Elvis vinyl albums, mind. It may take some time writing up. And once I've finished this second part, I will have to write a third part detailing how I did it all again on CD... Madness. A beautiful madness. Who, really, cares what people who don't like Elvis think about Elvis? Their words matter not a jot.