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.
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Archive
Virtual rambler #1 – Posturing, 9th March 2010
Virtual rambler #2 – Managerialism, 17th March 2010
Virtual rambler #3 – Nostalgia, 27th March 2010
Virtual rambler #4 – The Alpha Male, 13th April 2010
Virtual rambler #5 – General Elections, 3rd May 2010
Virtual rambler #6 – The Leisure Industry, 15th May 2010
Virtual rambler #7 – Guide to The World Cup, 15th June 2010
Virtual rambler #8 – Human Nature, 12th July 2010
Virtual rambler #9 – Communities, 13th August 2010
Virtual rambler #10 – Worlds Apart, 6th October 2010
Virtual rambler #11 – Dawdling, 22nd November 2010
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