A FAN’S NOTES

An Eyemaxful of Elvis

Elvis is alive!

Or somewhat more objectively, the King finally receives his silver screen crown. Australian filmmaker Baz Luhrmann, director of the 2022 atomic biopic Elvis, has graced rockers worldwide with EPiC, Elvis Presley in concert. And somewhat more subjectively, it’s fucking fantastic.

You looking for trouble? Look right in my IMAX face. (Oh, my boy, curl your upper lip.)

What is it with film directors from Down Under and rock ‘n’ roll? Utilizing lost then found audio and video footage, Luhrmann has reimagined both Elvis: That’s the Way It Is (1970) and Elvis on Tour (1972). EPiC is revisionist cinema by an admiring auteur. It is Peter Jackson transforming Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s Let It Be into Get Back in the way Martin Scorsese expanded D.A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back into No Direction Home. Fresh eyes and attitude incorporating discards, celluloid frames swept up from the cutting room floor.

The Elvis songs I heard growing up blared through the speaker grille of the green plastic A.M. radio in the kitchen. Schmaltz and schlock my mom tolerated even though Presley was no Sinatra or Engelbert Humperdinck. And anyway, my big sister had far more interesting music in her pink bedroom; Capitol and Apple Corps. pressings of the Beatles. And he died young, when rock still ruled and punk was on the rise, a doughy caricature out of frame in American Graffiti.

Elvis was problematic at the end of his life. He was (relatively) old for a rocker whereas my second-generation heroes were destined to remain perennially young and glamorous. Ageless: Pete Townshend and Peter Gabriel wouldn’t go bald; David Gilmour wouldn’t conceal his paunch behind a guitar. These guys would never play the oldies circuit, state fairs and casinos. Not in my generation. I never imagined immortality would constitute a band morphing into a brand. When Elvis died, nobody really knew what to make of an aged pioneer. His determination to keep working was somehow undignified. We all know better now.

RCA released The Sun Sessions CD in 1987. I bought it after reading a beyond five-star review in Rolling Stone. The cover is a staid and classic portrait, a high school yearbook photo; hand-tinted with hints of natural blond in his hair. A beautiful boy. The music, notably “Trying to Get to You”, “Mystery Train” and “Baby, Let’s Play House” stoned me to my soul. I’d bought it in part because any decent music library demands some Elvis. But what really blew me away was the revelation that for any revolution, cultural shift or boost in progress, there’s never a single crucible because somehow different people in different places unfailingly tap into the zeitgeist at the same time; a mystical, collective singularity. Elvis was as tuned in as Chuck Berry, Johnny Burnette, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Ike Turner and Little Richard.

The Presley discography is mainly a morassic quagmire of shitty B-movie soundtracks, shoddy repackages and indifferent live albums. A crying shame. Beyond a couple of stunning compilations (The Top Ten Hits or Elv1s), there are by my count just six Elvis records that matter. I’ve no idea how his early Sun sides are sold nowadays, but you need them. You really, really do. Honest. Trust me. Elvis Presley, his first RCA release, was a long player, 33 and 1/3. I believe that record shook up the business. Young people wanted depth and would pay more for it; the drib and drab of a 45 wasn’t enough: the LP became the cornerstone of popular music. If you can’t picture its cover, there’s no point in me mentioning the Clash’s London Calling sleeve homage. The minor tragedy is that you may now skip ahead from the late 50s all the way to 1969’s From Elvis in Memphis.

There are three live albums too and unsurprisingly, they’re all from the same moment in time. On Stage and In Concert were both released in 1970. These are the Las Vegas shows that EPiC concentrates on. To me, Vegas in that glitzy showbiz era of Wayne Newton and the Rat Pack was about as uncool as it could get, baby. Who knew the city would devolve further into bloated American excess grotesque? And get hip. Elvis performed two and sometimes three shows per day. Each one had to be as fresh and even better than the previous. Elvis neither drank nor smoked. In the film he says he needs five or six hours to unwind after work. Aw, Christ. The viewer knows what’s coming: uppers, downers and more pills in between to take the edge off.

The third live album is Tiger Man, a posthumous release whose cover to my eyes suggests Lou Reed’s Transformer (I think too much). It is the complete second show of the black leather sequence of the ’68 Comeback Special. If you consider what the Beatles and Rolling Stones were concocting for the British Broadcasting Corporation around that time (it's possible both bands enjoyed illicit drugs), The Magical Mystery Tour and Rock and Roll Circus respectively, the white bread mores American network television inflicted on its talent is almost biblical in a satanic way: cheese into smegma. Elvis rose above most of it. Handsome, healthy and fit, armoured by a charming sense of humour, he found his mojo again in the concert settings. Like all of EPiC, that portion of the broadcast is utterly compelling.

Fittingly, EPiC opens with “Tiger Man”: I’m the King of the Jungle/They call me the Tiger Man… Watch out! There’s more to come. Elvis is svelte, still in his thirties. His fringed jumpsuit, especially the high collar, is ridiculous, but Jagger, Bowie and Freddie Mercury dressed funny too. Lemmy from Motorhead once said concertgoers don’t want to see the boy next door up on stage, they’re expecting someone from another planet. That’s the way it is.

EPiC depicts a rejuvenated Elvis in context. There is a slim and unobtrusive underlying narrative to the film and it is universal: frustration and regret – themes of half the popular songs ever written. Elvis in a voiceover says he wants to tour Great Britain, Europe and even Japan. “I’ve never even played New York (City).” The International Hotel on Paradise Road seems a sour compromise. No escape from a trap. “Never Been to Spain” by Hoyt Axton is one of my favourite songs. I must’ve heard it first on the radio or possibly The Midnight Special because if Helen Reddy wasn’t on, Three Dog Night was. The lyrics entrance me. They’re not nihilistic yet nowhere is the destination. The movie’s most poignant moment is when the band, led by James Burton, launches into this one with Elvis at full throttle. He means it, man.

EPiC is exhilarating. Luhrmann carefully crafted “The Wonder of You” and the addictive taste is bittersweet. God, the response overseas would’ve pushed Elvis out of what quickly became a rut. Exiting the theatre I thought about Springsteen writing “Fire” for Elvis and Bowie reputedly writing “Golden Years” for him (!?). And I thought about producer Rick Rubin stripping down Johnny Cash (and even Neil Diamond – the “Jewish Elvis” in dated entertainment press parlance). Oh, well. That’s the way it was then; that’s the way it is now. No point crying in the parking lot. Dry those tears from your eyes.                  

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. Sunset Oasis Confidential is still out there languishing in multiple formats. Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer. Of Course You Did is still in print. Collect the set!