Sex, Death, and After
I did think to put tax in here and write of Elvis' career long existence in the highest tax bracket.
I did think to sing the immortal Elvis song from "Girl Happy," "He's Your Uncle, Not Your Dad."
Life has two things you can't subtract
- Death and taxes to be exact -
So just pa-pa-patriotically declare
He's your uncle, he's your uncle, not your dad.
But then thought better of it.
'A contemporary spoke of Byron's "magical influence" on people. Mary Shelley said of him, "There was something enchanting in his uses a good deal of oil in it, which makes it look still darker." White skin, dark oiled hair: Elvis Presley. In homage to singer Roy Orbison, Presley dyed his brown-blonde hair black and continued to do so to the end, despite friends' urging to let the natural color return. Presley, a myth-maker, understood the essence of his archetypal beauty.’
‘Byron and Elvis Presley look alike, especially in strong-nosed Greek profile. In Glenarvon, a roman a clef about her affair with Byron, Caroline Lamb says of her heroine’s first glimpse of him, “The proud curl of the upper lip expressed haughtiness and bitter contempt.” ... The Romantic curling lip is aristocratic disdain: Presley is still called “the King,” testimony to the ritual needs of a democratic populace. As revolutionary sexual personae, Byron and Presley had early and late styles: brooding menace, then urbane magnanimity. Their everyday manners were manly and gentle. Presley had a captivating soft-spoken charm. The Byronic hero, says Peter Thorslev, is “invariably courteous toward women.” Byron and Presley were world-shapers, conduits of titanic force, yet they were deeply emotional and sentimental in a feminine sense.’
‘Byron, the Romantic exile, did England a favor. Energy and beauty together are burning, godlike, destructive. Byron created the youth-cult that would sweep Elvis Presley to uncomfortable fame. In our affluent commercial culture, this man of beauty was able to ignore politics and build his empire elsewhere. A ritual function of contemporary popular culture: to parallel and purify government. The modern charismatic personality has access to movies, television, and music, with their enormous reach. Mass media act as a barrier protecting politics, which would otherwise be unbalanced by the entrance of men of epochal narcissistic glamour. Today's Byronic man of beauty is a Presley who dominates the imagination, not a Buckingham who disorders a state.’
-- Camille Paglia, U.S. author and critic, in: Sexual Personae (1990)
A dangerous man indeed.
‘When I was 13, I saw him perform live and I suddenly understood what sex is all about. I was screaming at the top of my lungs.’
Raquel Welch
‘Woman wanted him, men wanted to be him, or just hang out with him.’
Dwayne Johnson as published in wwwgracelandcom
‘Anyways, after his opening show, and a press conference, I spent about fifteen minutes with him, in the hope to take him to bed, but there is a limit to what a woman can say to arouse a man, even for a French woman, especially as his then wife Priscilla was in the proximity. I have yet to see, to this day, a more strikingly beautiful man.’
Catherine Deneuve, in her autobiography "My life behind the camera", recalling the time she met Elvis on August 1, 1969.
Francoise Hardy had the hotel in Las Vegas where she had just seen Elvis perform send a copy of her recording of ‘Loving You’ up to his room. She heard nothing back.
‘My own musical ambitions were born when I was five, watching the Ed Sullivan Show on TV. When Elvis Presley burst on to the screen, singing 'Don't Be Cruel,' I felt my first sexual thrill, though I didn't know what it was at the time.’
Suzi Quatro
‘There’s an unfinished draft that’s been sitting dormant in Treble’s back end about how Elvis Presley’s stillborn brother, Jesse, inspired two of the weirdest and most chilling songs in rock history: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds’ “Tupelo” and Scott Walker‘s “Jesse.” It’s a peculiar bit of trivia, perhaps even just an odd coincidence, that has more to do with the creatively twisted depths of two of the most brilliant songwriters of the past 50 years than anything necessarily relevant to what’s going on now. But it’s still a certain obsession of mine—the fact that there’s not one, but two songs about a weirdly sad and creepy bit of pop culture history. Cave’s take is a dark and stormy punk-blues western, a kind of gothic tall tale with a fascination for the grotesque. But Walker took it further—against an ominous riff that sounds like a mangled and ghostly “Jailhouse Rock,” he connected the death of Elvis’ fraternal twin to the September 11 attacks. That’s a unique talent for horror.
Scott Walker, a visionary architect of the grotesque
‘Eventually, everybody has to die, except Elvis.’ (Dave Berry).
Joan Baez, Elvis Presley Blues:
I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died, the day that he died
I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died, the day that he died
Just a country boy who combed his hair
Put on a shirt his mother made he went on the air
And he shook it like a chorus girl
He shook it like a Harlem queen
He shook it like a midnight rambler, baby
Like you've never seen, never seen, never seen
I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died, the day that he died
I was thinking that night about Elvis
The day that he died, the day that he died
He took it all out of black and white
Grabbed his wands in the other hand and he held on tight
And he shook it like a hurricane
He shook it like to make it break
He shook it like a holy roller, baby
With his soul at stake, soul at stake, soul at stake
I was thinking that night about Elvis
Of the day that he died, the day that he died
I was thinking that night about Elvis
The day that he died, oh the day that he died
He was all alone in a long decline
Thinking how happy John Henry was that he fell down and died
And he shook it and he rang like silver
He shook it and it shine like gold
He shook it and he beat that steam drill, baby
Well, bless my soul, bless my soul
He shook it and he beat that steam drill, baby
Well, bless my soul, bless my soul
Joan Baez, Elvis Presley Blues
"I don't know why she had to go so young. But it made me think about death. I don't feel I'll live a long life. That's why I have to get what I can from every day."
Elvis talking about his mother Gladys
‘When Elvis Presley died, he left a worldwide legion of music fans in mourning. It was no different on Long Island, where he had been scheduled to perform at the Nassau Coliseum a week later. As many as 700 fans had camped out overnight to buy tickets to the concert, which sold out quickly. On Aug. 22, the night the concert had been scheduled, over 5,000 fans gathered in the Coliseum parking lot for an impromptu tribute to Elvis that lasted two hours. Of the 16,700 tickets that had been sold, only 1,250 were returned for refund....’
Michael Alexander, quoting an Editor's note of a Newsday story originally published on Aug. 17, 1977.
“Elvis Presley’s death deprives our country of a part of itself. He was unique, irreplaceable. More than twenty years ago, he burst upon the scene with an impact that was unprecedented and will probably never be equaled. His music and his personality, fusing the styles of white country and black rhythm and blues, permanently changed the face of American popular culture. His following was immense. And he was a symbol to people the world over of the vitality, rebelliousness and good humor of this country.”
- President Jimmy Carter, his official statement following Elvis' death in 1977
"You only pass through this life once; you don't come back for an encore."
Elvis
Elvis is Dead And I Don't Feel So Good Myself
Lewis Grizzard, from his 1984 book of the same title.
‘It really puts perspective on things, though, doesn’t it?’
Words spoken by fictional character Nigel Tufnel to his bandmate, David St. Hubbins as they both face Elvis' grave in the 1984 movie "This is Spinal Tap"
‘Some of those we have lost in 2019ː Elvis Presley (singer, actor, 84), perpetrator of the finest prank in history and of two of the best comeback concerts ever seen…’
British comedian̪ Andy Zaltzman's zany interpretation of what would have happened if Elvis had not died in 1977 but in 2019, as published in the iNews The Essential Daily Briefing Register for December 25, 2018.
But as you and I both know, Elvis is still alive:
‘When one studies the properties of atoms one found that the reality is far stranger than anybody would have invented in the form of fiction. Particles really do have the possibility of, in some sense, being in more than one place at one time. Thus, and essentially, anything that can happen does happen in one of the alternatives which means that superimposed on top of the Universe that we know of, is an alternative universe where Elvis Presley is still alive. This idea was so uncomfortable that for decades scientists dismissed it, but in time parallel universes would make a spectacular comeback. This time they'd be different, they'd be even stranger than Elvis being alive. There's an old proverb that says: be careful what you wish for in case your wish comes true. The most fervent wish of physics has long been that it could find a single elegant theory which would sum up everything in our Universe. It was this dream which would lead unwittingly to the rediscovery of parallel universes. It's a dream which has driven the work of almost every physicist.’
Alan Guth, physicist at MIT, and narrator Dilly Barlow, as extracted from the BBC-TWO documentary "Parallel Universes" originally shown Thursday 14 February 2002
"Then I can sit on my back porch at Graceland and remember the good ol' days."
Elvis
‘What Presley and Parker didn't understand was the revolution Elvis had created. He had overthrown the empire of nice; now the outlaw was in. Later pop stars, like Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, didn't sanitize themselves for the mass culture. They knew they were the mass culture, and they did films only as a lark. They had seen what indenture to the old Hollywood dream had done to Elvis: a bunch of B movies that betrayed his revolutionary promise, neutered the sneering sexuality of his early live performances. His top-of-the-charts ballads might have enlarged his audience, but these anodyne musical comedies served to demonstrate his irrelevance in a fickle pop culture. The white-hot star at 21 was an anachronism before he was 30.
That's why modern Elvis fans ignore most of his 31 Hollywood movies, except for the 1957 Jailhouse Rock (with its wild and crazy production number for the title song) and the 1964 Viva Las Vegas (where the feral Ann-Margret compels him to unleash some of the old animal urges). Today his most popular DVD titles are the ones that show him in unbridled action: the documentary This Is Elvis and the concert film Elvis: That's the Way It Is. They also allow the faithful to plunge more deeply into the sacred mystery that is St. Elvis.
When Presley gave up movies in the late 60s, and hit Vegas, he reverted to balladeer form: reprising his rock hits but concentrating on the passionate crooning of songs made famous by people like Crosby ("White Christmas") and Sinatra ("My Way"), finally outing himself as rock's first — maybe last — romantic. Sequins and strutting aside, Elvis had become the singers he grew up listening to. Only fatter.
But Bing's name doesn't get 37,300,000 links on Yahoo. Frank's fans don't gather by the thousands at his home on the anniversary of his death to hold a candlelight vigil. They were just great singers and movie stars. Elvis alone rules the kingdom, with the power of his myth, and the glory of a billion dollars in endlessly renewable merchandise.’
Richard Corliss, Elvis: The Last Romantic, Time, Aug. 15, 2007
“There are several unbelievable things about Elvis, but the most incredible is his staying power in a world where meteoric careers fade like shooting stars.”
- "Newsweek," August 11, 1969, Review of Elvis’ Las Vegas engagement
‘Elvis Presley, you can't define him in a couple of sentences, but he was a country boy and he was very respectful.’
Jerry Leiber
He was a country boy in a mystical way. James Brown put it this way:
‘Elvis and I were friends for a long time, for twenty years. And he told me, he’d ride around Memphis around the streets he’d come up in, all alone at night. Ride around on his motorcycle when he was sure the rest of the world was asleep, just kind of hauntin’ them places he hung around in as a kid. He was a country boy.’
‘It’s just that in stating simply just who Elvis was, an ordinary human being like you and I, you come to realize just how extraordinary he actually was. Like Steve Binder, director of the 1968 NBC/TV Special said: ‘I never put anybody I worked with on a pedestal, yet the first time I saw him, I was awed .. It was like a god walking in towards me...’ (exclusive for The King's court, on February 6, 2010, as well as in an interview with Vanity Fair published on August 17, 2018).
The more you explain the magic and the mystery, the more extraordinary Elvis becomes; the more you strip the myth down to human size, the more his qualities come to be magnified. Maybe, after all, Elvis was, still is, and always will remain an icon.
“I still think about what a great guy he was,” his guitarist from 1969 to 1977 Jamnes Burton says of his memories of the man the rest of us have only ever known from afar. “He was an incredible person to work with, and was always concerned if you were happy or if everything was OK. And if something wasn’t right, he would make it right. That’s how I remember him, and it’s a great memory, I think.”
Linda Thompson words describing her time with Elvis make for fitting last words:
'I can only reiterate the positive, and that would be that he was an incredibly generous human being, very loyal friend, very loving man, very funny, he loved to laugh, loved living, loved people - and there was a downside too. There was the self-destructive side, the bad temper, self-absorbed, and all the things that come with an ego of that magnitude, but there were so many wonderful things about Elvis that life with him was never dull.'
And then there’s Elvis, singing ‘For Ol Times Sake,’ recorded at Stax in 1973:
Here I stand like an open book
Is there something here you might have overlooked
'Cause it would be a shame if you should leave
And find that freedom ain't what you thought it would be
The years we had were not all bad
In fact I know the good outweighed the bad