The Virtual Rambler

Number twelve: 24^th December 2010

ELVIS

After a few years of generating teenage excitement , the first wave of 1950s rock and roll seemed to run out of momentum. There had been widespread antipathy towards its unruly originators among the old guard of the music industry , who gradually replaced them with blander , easily-manipulated teen-idols. Little Richard took up with God , Chuck Berry was in jail , Jerry Lee Lewis in disgrace. Had the early days of the music conjured up its crop of innovators , as some authors produce a first and isolated novel of great promise , after which the spell was broken ? None of them followed a more baneful trajectory than Elvis. The days when each of his records was an automatic ‘classic’ were long gone by the time he was drafted into the army in 1958. Then there were the banal films that succeeded each other in dashing Elvis’s aspiration to be taken seriously as an actor , as they gradually eroded the reserves of tolerance built up by his earlier recordings. The sharp-dressed kid of Sun studios lapsed by degrees into the fringed white jump-suits , the spangled cloaks and $10,000 dollar gladiator belts he wore for his annual Vegas shows that replaced the films in the Elvis brand revenue stream. The king’s Memphis mansion became a hillbilly cathedral of vulgar opulence : green-lit simulated waterfalls , black suede walls and purple sinks. Inside there was karate instruction , there were books on parapsychology , streams of prescription drugs and compliant young nymphets . . . . and the money just kept on pouring in.

Once the ball was rolling , the Colonel saw that Elvis himself , with all his moods and misgivings , could largely be left in Graceland with the ‘Memphis Mafia’ catering to their paymaster’s adolescent ideas on how to have fun. After his death , critics rushed to print in asking where it all went wrong. One obvious scapegoat ⁽¹⁾ was that philistine huckster-manager who passed himself off as ‘Colonel Parker’. It was he who subjected the compliant king to those lucrative but fifth-rate films and then to the money-spinning Vegas deals. Gradually Elvis , like so many who followed in his footsteps , became a parody of himself. Those who achieve fame at an early age are notorious for their arrested development and Elvis certainly spared himself the trouble of reaching any sort of maturity. He felt he was part of God’s plan. The last trail he unwittingly blazed was that of the posthumous Star memoir filled with details of abuse and excess. For Elvis , the drug-taking culture of the 1960s was anathema ; his own pharmaceutical regime was a medicinal rather than hedonistic daily cocktail of uppers , downers and pain-killers that closely resembled the Fuhrer’s prescriptions in his bunker. .

It has been written that the fascination Elvis generated resided in the realities that showed through the illusions. Behind the illusion of wealth lurked the psyche of poverty. The illusion of success and the pinch of ridicule. The illusion of complete control and the reality of inner chaos. Nothing changed the franchise when the sweaty , disaffected Elvis died aged just 42. His tribute ghosts bump and grind on all over the globe , the cash registers keep on ringing. He remains the paradigm for being blown off course by the accompanying fame that a successful singer inherits. The dubious manager , the huge echoing mansion , the slow crumbling turn inwards , the scattering of original friends , the addictive fall into drugs , the retinue of payrolled yes-men and the painful evaporation of quality in the work he did occasionally manage. Meanwhile , we’re all a gonna raise a fuss , we’re a gonna raise a profit. An integral part of the advertising industry’s portfolio became a rocking soundtrack adopted for products as subversive as deodorants and bank accounts. Elvis , who loved his mother and country in equal measure , would be gratified in hillbilly heaven by his pivotal role in transforming some dance music for the kids into a billion dollar marketing tool. Despite that , and despite all the pretentious prose of cultural analysts and rock critics , despite the scurrilous muck-raking retrospectives , there remains our response to those early Sun recordings of the mid-50s. There’s still Good Rockin’ Tonight.

Wig.

⁽¹⁾ In the Mosaic ritual of the Day of Atonement , one of two goats that was chosen by lot to be sent alive into the wilderness , the sins of the people having been symbolically laid upon it , while the other was sacrificed in a manner pleasing to the Deity.

Archive

Virtual rambler #1 – Posturing, 9^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #2 – Managerialism, 17^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #3 – Nostalgia, 27^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #4 – The Alpha Male, 13^th April 2010
Virtual rambler #5 – General Elections, 3^rd May 2010
Virtual rambler #6 – The Leisure Industry, 15^th May 2010
Virtual rambler #7 – Guide to The World Cup, 15^th June 2010
Virtual rambler #8 – Human Nature, 12^th July 2010
Virtual rambler #9 – Communities, 13^th August 2010
Virtual rambler #10 – Worlds Apart, 6^th October 2010
Virtual rambler #11 – Dawdling, 22^nd November 2010
Virtual rambler #12 – ELVIS, 24^th December 2010
Virtual rambler #13 – Transience, 4^th February 2011
Virtual rambler #14 – Regional Accents, 15^th April 2011
Virtual rambler #15 – The Afterlife, 21^st July 2011
Virtual rambler #16 – Bizspeak, 27^th August 2011
Virtual rambler #17 – Night Walks, 3^rd October 2011
Virtual rambler #18 – Bob Dylan and Charles Dickens, 8^th November 2011
Virtual rambler #19 – Another Nutty Professor, 16^th December 2011
Virtual rambler #20 – Customer Choice, 16^th January 2012
Virtual rambler #21 – Wearing Shorts, 18^th February 2012
Virtual rambler #22 – A Brief History of Progress, 17^th March 2012
Virtual rambler #23 – The Myth of Sisyphus, 16^th April 2012
Virtual rambler #24 – Natural History, 20^th May 2012
Virtual rambler #25 – European Self Importance, 26^th June 2012
Virtual rambler #26 – Sweet Dreams, 25^th July 2012
Virtual rambler #27 – Excess, 17^th August 2012
Virtual rambler #28 – In Denial, 20^th September 2012
Virtual rambler #29 – The Way, 21^st October 2012
Virtual rambler #30 – On Rambling, 14^th November 2012
Virtual rambler #31 – Gazing Into The Abyss, 18^th December 2012
Virtual rambler #32 – Intellectual Gloom, 25^th January 2013
Virtual rambler #33 – Great Human Achievements, 20^th February 2013
Virtual rambler #34 – Autobiography, 20^th March 2013
Virtual rambler #35 – Your Good Health, 21^st April 2013
Virtual rambler #36 – Deconstruction, 20^th May 2013
Virtual rambler #37 – My Home Town, 19^th June 2013
Virtual rambler #38 – Ancient History, 21^st July 2013
Virtual rambler #39 – Possessions, 20^th August 2013
Virtual rambler #40 – Sporting Stoics, 20^th September 2013
Virtual rambler #41 – Free Time, 20^th October 2013
Virtual rambler #42 – Ewan Don't Allow, 20^th November 2013
Virtual rambler #43 – A Literary Nexus, 20^th December 2013
Virtual rambler #44 – Taking Liberties, 16^th January 2014
Virtual rambler #45 – More or Less, 20^th February 2014
Virtual rambler #46 – Under Control, 20^th March 2014
Virtual rambler #47 – Waiting, 20^th April 2014
Virtual rambler #48 – They Rose Without Trace, 20^th May 2014
Virtual rambler #49 – Bigger Impression , Smaller Footprint, 20^th June 2014
Virtual rambler #50 – Terpsichorean Instrumentations, 18^th July 2014
Virtual rambler #51 – Socially Mediated, 19^th August 2014
Virtual rambler #52 – Rambling Into The Sunset, 20^th September 2014