ELVIS: ALOHA FROM HAWAII

Earlier this week I watched Elvis: Aloha From Hawaii, a live concert augmented with additional songs, on Sky Arts. It’s been around for years, of course, but I don’t think I’d seen it before, not the whole thing. It took place in January, 1973, before Elvis lost control of his figure, and was a big deal because it was broadcast live via satellite to Asia and Oceania, then Europe. 

In view of this it might be assumed that Elvis would do something special but although he’s absurdly handsome and for the most part does a reasonable job, there’s something strangely routine about his performance. Most of the songs he sings are on the short side, mostly abridged versions of his hits, and he seems in a hurry to get the show over and done with, as if it has interrupted some activity that he would prefer to be doing. His band is superb, especially guitarist James Burton who gets a chance to solo brilliantly on two or three of the quicker R&R songs, but the overall feeling is that Elvis isn’t trying too hard. 

The audience don’t seem to expect more from him and they are undemonstrative, clapping fairly politely at the end of each song but showing little excitement. A few women close to the front or the catwalk become animated when Elvis approaches them, standing up to hand him white handkerchiefs (or perhaps freshly-laundered knickers) with which to mop his brow and he rewards some by tossing them scarves. A lucky few get a kiss on the cheek. When he leaves their immediate vicinity, the women sit down again, politely. As far as I could see, no one in this vast audience rose to their feet at any time during the show – unlike the crowds at pretty much every big rock show I saw in America.

This was clearly a show that Elvis had performed countless times before, and the slightly cheesy karate poses he adopts at the end of each song begin to look
hackneyed after a while, as do his occasional attempts at humour. A comment about his trousers splitting during ‘Suspicious Minds’ simply spoilt any drama that  generated during an otherwise excellent interpretation, adding to a feeling that Elvis treated the show frivolously, almost as public appearance in much the same way as, say, soldiers in red coats march up and down outside Buckingham Palace, with the music secondary to the opportunity simply to see him in person, perhaps to confirm that he’s still alive

Cheesier still were songs, three – all ballads from the movie Blue Hawaii I think – that accompanied the scenes of romancing couples as they traipse around Hawaii’s beauty spots, thus lengthening the film of the show by about 20 minutes, which means the actual concert didn’t last much longer than an hour, about half as long as shows by premier league rock bands of the era. These songs evidently weren’t part of the concert but were tacked on later and appeared designed to promote Hawaii as a tourist destination.

Towards the end, during an instrumental break between songs in the ‘American Trilogy’ medley, Elvis seemed lost in thought, gazing absent-mindedly at the ceiling. Perhaps he was wondering what it all meant, how very little he needed to give of himself to please his fans. It was all over soon after that, a dramatic ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love’ closing the show. He walked off very quickly. “Elvis has left the building,” someone announced before he’d had time to do so. 

To my utmost regret, I never saw Elvis perform live, let alone reviewed him in concert, though my two predecessors as Melody Maker’s US Editor, Roy Hollingworth and Michael Watts, both did. Roy attended a press conference that Elvis and his manager Colonel Tom Parker gave on 9 June 1972, the same day Elvis appeared at Madison Square Garden and described the show as a “fiasco… not very good at all. The audience was as responsive as a lot of doped sheep. Lazy, he had been lazy.”

Our colleague Michael was almost as unimpressed when he reviewed Elvis at Nassau Coliseum out on Long Island the following June. While allowing that Elvis’ voice is “deeper and richer than ever” and none of his songs – Michael lists 11 – are “bummers” which he sings well, he performs them all “mechanically. His act seems to be a whole medley in itself, cutting short on each one, running straight into another. The machine is so well greased it all slips painlessly through the mind. It’s showbusiness without melodrama and that’s the worst.” 

        Like Roy, Michael comments on the relentless hawking of Elvis merchandise, even as the crowds were filing out. “There are full colour posters of Elvis… superb reproductions… only two dollars,” rings in his ears as he left the arena, repeated six times. 

By the time I got to America for my stint as MM’s man there, Elvis had evidently decided to bypass New York. He wasn’t seen there during 1974, ’75 or ’76, though he was back at Nassau Coliseum in July of ’75 which just happened to coincide with my visiting the UK for a few weeks. He performed in smaller cities within an hour’s flight of NY but the press office at RCA Records was unusually uncooperative when I asked (more than once) if it was possible for them to arrange transport for me to see an Elvis show. In contrast, virtually every press officer from every other label laid out the red carpet for me to fly to see anyone anywhere in America, usually the next day with an interview and a night in a hotel thrown in too. Perhaps MM was on a blacklist after Roy and Michael had taken their scalpel to the King Of Rock’Roll. Reading what they wrote this week, I would probably have drawn similar conclusions, perhaps worse as a couple of years down the line Elvis’ concerts were deteriorating fast. 

This might explain why, after I’d left MM but was still living in New York, I somehow got hold of two tickets to see a cancelled Elvis show at Nassau Coliseum that would have taken place in September, 1977, about a month after he died. It was one of about a dozen cancelled shows. 

A month before Elvis died I was in Memphis, tour-managing a group formed by the Muscle Shoals session guitarist Pete Carr and singer Lenny LeBlanc. While there Pete, Lenny and myself went to visit Graceland, just to stand by the gates with the wrought-iron outline of Elvis and look up the drive towards the famous mock Gothic porch and four imposing pillars on either side of the front door. I have every reason to believe that its famous occupant was in residence that day, so this was the closest I ever got to the singer whose records in the 1950s turned me on to rock’n’roll when I was 12 years old. I can’t remember who took our photograph outside the gates – that’s me in the middle, Pete on the left, Lennie on the other side – probably one of their band, or even how I came to have a copy of it but I treasure a print still. About six weeks later Elvis was carried out of Graceland on a stretcher. So I never did get to see him.