Elvis Presley - The King & (the collective) I

Thirty years ago this month, Elvis Presley left the cosmic building on a permanent tour, a Baptist Memorial toe-tag supplanting blue suede shoes as his foot accessory of choice. It was a particularly sad demise, not simply because of Elvis’ relative youth or his worldwide fame or his generally acknowledged status as the first true rock star. Elvis’ death was more than the standard music casualty tragedy because he had already proven his mettle during his 1968 comeback and his death robbed him of the opportunity to do it again.

By 1977, Elvis had become profoundly obese by way of an insatiable Southern appetite and a shadow of his former talent through the auspices of a prescription drug habit that short-circuited his ability to rationally consider the poor life choices he was making. At a tragically crucial moment in history, Elvis was surrounded by sycophants who were valets to his ego rather than tough-talking interventionists who could have saved him, thus allowing him the opportunity to show the world a third time exactly who possessed the right to wear the crown of the King of Rock and Roll.

It should come as no surprise that Elvis Presley wound up richer, more popular, more respected and more widely exposed in the 30 years after his death than in the 23 years he experienced in the public eye while still alive. It should be equally unsurprising that Elvis would also become even more misunderstood, the facts and realities of his life buried under a barrage of half-truths, innuendos and outright lies. After all, Elvis lived in a time when history was deliberately revised on a daily basis, with publicists and agents and managers and execs of every stripe creating a reality that was sanitized for their protection and designed to maximize profits and minimize scandal and controversy.

So then what are we to make of Elvis, the DVD release of the 2005 CBS miniseries? Is it a fanciful concoction intended merely to entertain, like so many of Elvis’ own filmed contrivances of the ’60s, or is it a game attempt to shed some factual light on the early life and budding career of one of the most amazing talents of the 20th century?

Elvis is, in fact, both of these things simultaneously. No three-hour movie is going to be a comprehensive and completely accurate depiction of the life of Elvis Presley, even if it features outstanding performances from an uncanny Jonathan Rhys Meyers in the title role and the versatile Camryn Manheim portraying one of the most intensely complex and strange mother-son relationships in recent memory, not to mention the standard tour de force turned in by Randy Quaid as the loquacious and slightly suspect Colonel Tom Parker. And yet it’s clear from the facts that are presented in the film - even though many have been inflated and recast for dramatic effect - that Elvis’ creators used as their source guide Peter Guralnick’s rigorously researched and blazingly honest Last Train to Memphis, thankfully turning their backs on the late Albert Goldman’s book that shares their movie’s name, a book so callous and egregiously offensive that it has been suggested that its author should be exhumed and forced to experience death a second time as penance.

The reality is that Elvis’ life was both mundane and spectacular, and those twin aspects of the King’s all too brief existence are examined in exhaustive detail in Guralnick’s dual volumes, Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love. While Elvis, the movie, is a vastly entertaining and highly factual representation of its subject’s early years, it almost seems a cheat to stop at his ‘68 comeback special and avoid the train wreck of his tragic third act.

The reality is that Elvis deserves a series, not a constrained made-for-TV movie. If HBO can devote six seasons to the admittedly fascinating comings and goings of a fictional mob boss, why couldn’t they invest the same time and energy toward bringing Guralnick’s whole journalistic accomplishment to life? With a clear beginning, middle and end, it would be easy to establish a five year timeline and tell the Elvis Presley story in vivid and factual detail. Given the fascination that the world still has for its late King, it would be well worth the effort to desensationalize the myths and expand upon the truths, regardless of how ugly some of them may have been.

Several years ago, I interviewed Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher and asked him to clarify reports at the time that he was considering a solo career. He responded, “I don’t mind trying to take the Beatles’ crown as the best band in the world, but do not f*ck with the King: There will not be another Elvis Presley. There’s no point in going solo if you can’t be bigger than Elvis, and you won’t be. So there.”

Gallagher made a good point. Although someone may eventually come along someday and sell more records than Elvis, and perhaps even captivate millions of fans the way Elvis did (and Michael Jackson came tantalizingly close before he derailed his career by confusing monkey bars with singles bars), no one will ever create the kind of furor or inspire the kind of adoration that Elvis Presley began in the relative innocence of the mid ’50s. Elvis’ reign was a perfect storm of naivete and calculation, of chance and manipulation, fueled by a youth movement hungry for something new and an establishment fearful of what that might entail. Into that volatile time stepped an unassuming truck driver from Tupelo, MS, with a guitar and the unassailable opinion that he could alter history if given half a chance. Elvis was absolutely the right man at the right time, a position he maintains 30 years after his untimely death, regardless of the things said and written and portrayed concerning him. In that regard, Noel Gallagher was inalterably correct. No one will ever be bigger than Elvis Presley. So there.

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