He Would Have Been 70 Today :(
He Would Have Been 70 Today :-(
He would have been 70 today, had he lived :(
Yes, today, January 8, 2005, Elvis Aaron Presly, "Elvis," would be celebrating his 70th birthday. Wow, hard to imagine The King Of Rock 'N Roll turning 70. What would he be doing with himself? Would he still be overindulging in the pleasures of cars, carnality, and cuisine, or would he as so many well-to-do members of the entertainment world have done have moved on to the "spiritual" riches of personal yogic guidance at the very unmaterialistic price of $500/hour with equally-priced nonmaterialistic incense and crystals to boot? Would he have been involved in last year's Presidential race as so many fat celebrities were? ...hmmm, would he even be President by now??? Music, no doubt, but what genre? Old time rock 'n roll or that post-grunge, hip-to-be-square old-timer hooks up with Gen-X/Gen-Y newbie to hear what comes of it? Would he--could he--still be swinging those hips??? With contemporary pharmacology, yes, age 70 is no longer much of an issue. As the old-timer retorted back to me when I was razzing him about the decline/disappearance of whatever meager performance skills he may have at one time had, "Kid, after Viagra, we're all equal." True, and he had a bigger wallet. So the drugs of today could keep Elvis swinging that pelvis...but, could any of us really imagine Elvis Presley taking drugs?????
(wait--scratch that last line)
Well, all of the above is speculation--we will truly never know 'til Kingdom come [maybe there's a pun in there]. As the rhymster says, "Of all sad words of tongue and pen/None are sadder than 'What might have been.'" His death in August 1977 prevented him from reaching even his 43rd birthday, much less his 70th, and all we have right now is speculation.
Well, no, not really. In fact, no, not at all, that's not true, not true at all, we have more than just mere speculation, FAR more than merely that. We have memories, memories, tons and tons and tons of great memories of him as a person and a persona and that always-refreshing still-extant recorded work product of dozens and dozens and dozens of first-rate popular songs (and a 1968 TV special, too--we can forget about the movies). Yes, memories, and a permanent place in our collective American culture and history. Wow, what a legacy he has left us!!!! What a huge mark he has left on our lives and on our radio stations!!!!! A truly remarkable achievement in the all-so-brief span of a human lifetime, in his case far too brief.
My personal testament to Elvis Aaron Presley b. Jan. 8, 1935 --d. August 16, 1977 will begin with that element of persona, the personality he presented out to us and that we projected back onto him. That's because that's how I knew him first, as a persona, a personality who was just kind of out there somewhere and who showed up on the radio or on TV or in the news from time to time. He was just another celebrity to me, not even as big (not nearly as big) as some other ones of my early years. Tacky, very tacky, corny almost, and well over the hill by the time I first knew of him. That's all--no big deal, I really didn't think or know much about him.
It was only after his death that all of the news items that came out about him made me realize that the surface appearance of tackiness and corniness was merely the cover for a real, true-to-his-being type of tackiness and corniness that the public version of which was merely a small-scale model. The Cadillacs, the personal rentals of amusement parks, the velvet suits, all were the tackiness of his (and our) cultural milieu at their peak. Has it ever been exceeded? No, many have tried but none, NONE have come close. Not anywhere NEAR Elvis, nowhere close, forget even trying. He was and is THE King of this domain, if no other.
Of course, we cannot leave this point without mentioning the drugs. Wow, could that man take the drugs!!!!! Whew, what a superstar!!!! I mean, I take drugs, every day, and what I take I take a lot of, but I can control it and when I feel like I might be taking too much I just drink tea or pop instead of coffee (decaffeinated in all forms, but I don't lie and tell myself that there still isn't a lot of caffeine in decaf). While maybe five or six cups/glasses of decaf coffee or tea a day might be something I have to watch, Elvis was in a league of his own. What I heard was that he was up to 100 prescription drugs per day by the time he died. Makes me and my five or six cups of drugs per day look like I'm completely dry. Furthermore, while I don't really put a whole lot of thought into whether I'm drinking coffee or tea and if so how much of it I drink (I just drink it when I'm thirsty), Elvis put an amazing amount of thought and work into his drug consumption. Not just the effort that it takes to take 100+ pills per day, but even moreso the effort that he put into getting himself exactly the type of drugs that he wanted. I heard that he had gotten himself a copy of a thick, dictionary-sized book called the Physician's Desk Reference (PDR). It is a compendium of all available prescription drugs and what conditions and symptoms they can be used to treat. Apparently Elvis would read and study it, memorize the symptoms of the conditions for which his desired drugs were prescribed, then go to his doctor and say "Doc, it hurts when I go like this..." BINGO!!!! His doc would dial up those symptoms, see that drug such-and-such was available for it, and in came the drugs!!!!! All his hard work paid off.
It would really be unjust to this greatest-American-persona of his genre--and to the person behind it and to those who loved him and knew him well--to leave this topic without mentioning the greatest achievement of his persona, the crowning glory of this BY WAY FAR greatest American icon of his genre, the few brief moments and that one great photo that says it all about this persona. Yes, you all know what I'm talking about. It was that day in December 1970 or thereabouts when he, Elvis Aaron Presley, real man and mythical persona all simultaneously in one, in Washington, DC, our nation's great and good capital, drove up unannounced to the White House, the home and office of the President Of The United States, went up to the entrance, and asked to see the United States President. How could anyone refuse to meet with a King? Of course he could meet with the President, who is the President to refuse a King? (Richard Nixon is who it was, and for those of you who might not know, no, he did not refuse a King). With all that must have been going on in President Nixon's office at that moment, all of the coverups and coup plannings and wage and price controls and the war in Vietnam and the planning for the 1972 re-election and the geostrategic arms control negotiations and the collapse of the lira, the Italian currency (well, Nixon didn't care much about that), with all of that to worry him, the President Of The United States, Richard Nixon, took time out to meet with a King. There is that all-so-famous photo of the two of them, standing side-by-side in the Oval Office, smiling and shaking hands, Richard Nixon in his uniform a business suit and tie and Elvis Presley in his King's gowns some god-awful (leather?) body jumpsuit that was just SOOOOO tacky, there they are, side by side, smiling and shaking hands, a King and a President. Elvis walks into the Oval Office with his pistols, who's going to stop him?, were they loaded or who really cares?, Nixon covers over the coverup papers on his desk to greet the visitor, wow, what it must have been like to have been there!!!!!!! President Nixon even gave him a badge and deputized Elvis Aaron Presley as a Federal Special Agent to investigate and enforce United States laws regarding--you guessed it, drugs! Does anyone out there in Blogosphere know how to put pictures onto these Blogs??? I'd really like to put a copy of that right here, right at this spot, so web readers can see for themselves the sheer and sublime majesty of that moment, that photograph of all that those two men ('s personas) stood for at that time. I would like to put that photo right here and put a caption underneath it, a caption that would just read, "America." No, that would not capture all that that word means, nor can any single picture do so and fastidious critics of picture-captioning might insist on "America 1970" but even then there would be no signs of hippies, wars, or ghettos (but one can see the Brady Bunch in it), but to those two men, in that undated photo the date of which is immediately apparent to anyone who sees it, to those two men at that time, what else could you say but just, "America." To think that some people still diss Richard Nixon for inviting Ray Conniff to perform in the White House, to think that some people think that Elvis Presley lacked good sense, hey dudes, look at that picture.
(this is from the website http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/elvis/elnix.html :
"Of all the requests made each year to the National Archives for reproductions of photographs and documents, one item has been requested more than any other. That item, more requested than the Bill of Rights or even the Constitution of the United States, is the photograph of Elvis Presley and Richard M. Nixon shaking hands on the occasion of Presley's visit to the White House.")
So that's the persona that I grew up with. That is the Elvis Presley I learned as a child and teenager. Funny how thse things you learn at those early ages stay with you for years and years, and you accept them uncritically as if they were permanent facts of the world. You can doubt the existence of God, but such simple facts that you learn as a child are simply true. Takes a while to un-learn them, if indeed you are lucky enough to do that!!!! I was one who was so lucky.
Turns out, I learned, that there was another side of Elvis. There was more to him than just tacky suits, drug use, Cadillacs, more than just "America." Found out later on that he (and his persona, too, but he) had been a singer as well. That was a real revelation!!!!!! What a wakeup call!!!!! It was so stunning to me, so important in my understanding of Elvis Presley Man And Myth, that if I tell the story of "America" I have to tell the story of the unlearning of merely "America" and the learning of this at-the-time strange and news-to-me side of this King. I don't think that any story of Elvis can be told without mentioning that he was a singer too !!!!!!! It hit me one night, late at night, several years after graduating from college (no, you don't learn everything there is to know in college, and I missed this one), 3:30am or so, some freinds were in from the West Coast for Christmas week. A late-night munchie run had me seated in the back seat while my friend and his designated-driver younger sister ("Little Sister"!!!! -- just hit me now---no, that wasn't it), who had the local oldies station on the radio. They're both musical. I'm seated right in front of the speaker. It isn't on very loud, nor too quiet--just right. On comes "All Shook Up." I start to go along with it, in the parody-like sense that so many do when Elvis comes on. Then as I'm doing that, I realize, it hits me, I un-learn so much of what I had thought to be true--this is good!!!! He is a good singer!!!!! I mean, no he is not, but he is!!!!! What is in that song? Virtually nothing!!!! A piano, a bass, and a voice (Elvis is the one playing that voice instrument). What do they create? A virtual mini-orchestra, with drums & percussion, a rhythm section, a melody section such as it is, a full-blown song. Beginning to end no breaks except for an occasional VERY-well-timed one to allow for a grunt. HELLO !!!!!!!! And, this is Elvis!!!! There's no "America" in there, there're no cameras recording the event like many musicians do today in the studio, there's just this Elvis singer already a pretty big legend but no one knows anything about what's goin' down in the studio over there. He wore tacky suits and also made good songs--how many can do both????
Of course, after this revelation, I realized that there were other Elvis songs. Ones that I had heard hundreds of times before, but "Love Me Tender" and "Jailhouse Rock" and "Hound Dog" and "Little Sister" sound so much better when you listen to them. I had always liked his later songs (earlier, too), "Kentucky Rain" and "In The Ghetto" and "Suspicious Minds" (his last #1 song and the one he had the most input into), but after I learned what I had learned I could hear even more in them. Elvis The Singer !!!!!! What a revelation !!!!!!!! I am so glad that I learned something about that person(a), the other one I knew about wasn't really all that much to waste time on.
So, to me, this is he. This is what Elvis Presley means to me, at least right now, at least 'til I learn (or un-learn) more. Not that I care to do so all that much, but if a TV show comes on about him & if nothing else is going on, I'd watch it. Maybe learn something more, maybe not. To me, he's Elvis Aaron Presley, "America," and Elvis Aaron Presley, singer. Man & Myth all rolled into one. (also husband & father & friend & whatever else but I know nothing of that person(a))
The King Of Rock 'N Roll. Usually shortened to just "The King." I used to think I knew which one was more accurate, but now I'm not so sure. For now I'll just call him" The King" and if someone gives me that look like "and the rest of his title?" I'll quickly recover and add on "Of Rock 'N Roll." Whatever. The King
With all of that, it's easy to see whay so many people believe that he is still alive. I mean, he is still alive, The King Lives, in terms of having achieved--in memories--a certain kind of "immortality" of the kind that Egyptian pharoahs (Kings) like King Tut have achieved in their elegant tombs. He is not alive in a bodily sense, though, and that is why we are saddened on his "would have been" birthday. Yes, yes, there are from time to time reports that he is living, but all of them have proved to be false. The latest one involves the fact that he, Elvis Presley d.o.b. 01/08/1935, voted in the Washington State Governor's race, but the fact of having voted in the 2004 Washington State Governor's race is rather specious evidence to use to prove that someone is in fact alive. No, Elvis is not living today as he once was, but that doesn't mean we can't celebrate his life on his birthday. We can speculate on what he might be doing today but, no, screw that, let's just celebrate what he did when he was alive (and do something about that voting problem out there alongside Puget Sound, guys--Richard Nixon didn't become President just so he could get his picture taken alongside The King he also did it so that we could live in a country where elections couldn't be fixed. Get that straightened up for "America," ok???)
Had he lived, he would have been 70 today. May he rest in peace. May we remember his life and his work.
copyright 2005 J. G. Yoest
He would have been 70 today, had he lived :(
Yes, today, January 8, 2005, Elvis Aaron Presly, "Elvis," would be celebrating his 70th birthday. Wow, hard to imagine The King Of Rock 'N Roll turning 70. What would he be doing with himself? Would he still be overindulging in the pleasures of cars, carnality, and cuisine, or would he as so many well-to-do members of the entertainment world have done have moved on to the "spiritual" riches of personal yogic guidance at the very unmaterialistic price of $500/hour with equally-priced nonmaterialistic incense and crystals to boot? Would he have been involved in last year's Presidential race as so many fat celebrities were? ...hmmm, would he even be President by now??? Music, no doubt, but what genre? Old time rock 'n roll or that post-grunge, hip-to-be-square old-timer hooks up with Gen-X/Gen-Y newbie to hear what comes of it? Would he--could he--still be swinging those hips??? With contemporary pharmacology, yes, age 70 is no longer much of an issue. As the old-timer retorted back to me when I was razzing him about the decline/disappearance of whatever meager performance skills he may have at one time had, "Kid, after Viagra, we're all equal." True, and he had a bigger wallet. So the drugs of today could keep Elvis swinging that pelvis...but, could any of us really imagine Elvis Presley taking drugs?????
(wait--scratch that last line)
Well, all of the above is speculation--we will truly never know 'til Kingdom come [maybe there's a pun in there]. As the rhymster says, "Of all sad words of tongue and pen/None are sadder than 'What might have been.'" His death in August 1977 prevented him from reaching even his 43rd birthday, much less his 70th, and all we have right now is speculation.
Well, no, not really. In fact, no, not at all, that's not true, not true at all, we have more than just mere speculation, FAR more than merely that. We have memories, memories, tons and tons and tons of great memories of him as a person and a persona and that always-refreshing still-extant recorded work product of dozens and dozens and dozens of first-rate popular songs (and a 1968 TV special, too--we can forget about the movies). Yes, memories, and a permanent place in our collective American culture and history. Wow, what a legacy he has left us!!!! What a huge mark he has left on our lives and on our radio stations!!!!! A truly remarkable achievement in the all-so-brief span of a human lifetime, in his case far too brief.
My personal testament to Elvis Aaron Presley b. Jan. 8, 1935 --d. August 16, 1977 will begin with that element of persona, the personality he presented out to us and that we projected back onto him. That's because that's how I knew him first, as a persona, a personality who was just kind of out there somewhere and who showed up on the radio or on TV or in the news from time to time. He was just another celebrity to me, not even as big (not nearly as big) as some other ones of my early years. Tacky, very tacky, corny almost, and well over the hill by the time I first knew of him. That's all--no big deal, I really didn't think or know much about him.
It was only after his death that all of the news items that came out about him made me realize that the surface appearance of tackiness and corniness was merely the cover for a real, true-to-his-being type of tackiness and corniness that the public version of which was merely a small-scale model. The Cadillacs, the personal rentals of amusement parks, the velvet suits, all were the tackiness of his (and our) cultural milieu at their peak. Has it ever been exceeded? No, many have tried but none, NONE have come close. Not anywhere NEAR Elvis, nowhere close, forget even trying. He was and is THE King of this domain, if no other.
Of course, we cannot leave this point without mentioning the drugs. Wow, could that man take the drugs!!!!! Whew, what a superstar!!!! I mean, I take drugs, every day, and what I take I take a lot of, but I can control it and when I feel like I might be taking too much I just drink tea or pop instead of coffee (decaffeinated in all forms, but I don't lie and tell myself that there still isn't a lot of caffeine in decaf). While maybe five or six cups/glasses of decaf coffee or tea a day might be something I have to watch, Elvis was in a league of his own. What I heard was that he was up to 100 prescription drugs per day by the time he died. Makes me and my five or six cups of drugs per day look like I'm completely dry. Furthermore, while I don't really put a whole lot of thought into whether I'm drinking coffee or tea and if so how much of it I drink (I just drink it when I'm thirsty), Elvis put an amazing amount of thought and work into his drug consumption. Not just the effort that it takes to take 100+ pills per day, but even moreso the effort that he put into getting himself exactly the type of drugs that he wanted. I heard that he had gotten himself a copy of a thick, dictionary-sized book called the Physician's Desk Reference (PDR). It is a compendium of all available prescription drugs and what conditions and symptoms they can be used to treat. Apparently Elvis would read and study it, memorize the symptoms of the conditions for which his desired drugs were prescribed, then go to his doctor and say "Doc, it hurts when I go like this..." BINGO!!!! His doc would dial up those symptoms, see that drug such-and-such was available for it, and in came the drugs!!!!! All his hard work paid off.
It would really be unjust to this greatest-American-persona of his genre--and to the person behind it and to those who loved him and knew him well--to leave this topic without mentioning the greatest achievement of his persona, the crowning glory of this BY WAY FAR greatest American icon of his genre, the few brief moments and that one great photo that says it all about this persona. Yes, you all know what I'm talking about. It was that day in December 1970 or thereabouts when he, Elvis Aaron Presley, real man and mythical persona all simultaneously in one, in Washington, DC, our nation's great and good capital, drove up unannounced to the White House, the home and office of the President Of The United States, went up to the entrance, and asked to see the United States President. How could anyone refuse to meet with a King? Of course he could meet with the President, who is the President to refuse a King? (Richard Nixon is who it was, and for those of you who might not know, no, he did not refuse a King). With all that must have been going on in President Nixon's office at that moment, all of the coverups and coup plannings and wage and price controls and the war in Vietnam and the planning for the 1972 re-election and the geostrategic arms control negotiations and the collapse of the lira, the Italian currency (well, Nixon didn't care much about that), with all of that to worry him, the President Of The United States, Richard Nixon, took time out to meet with a King. There is that all-so-famous photo of the two of them, standing side-by-side in the Oval Office, smiling and shaking hands, Richard Nixon in his uniform a business suit and tie and Elvis Presley in his King's gowns some god-awful (leather?) body jumpsuit that was just SOOOOO tacky, there they are, side by side, smiling and shaking hands, a King and a President. Elvis walks into the Oval Office with his pistols, who's going to stop him?, were they loaded or who really cares?, Nixon covers over the coverup papers on his desk to greet the visitor, wow, what it must have been like to have been there!!!!!!! President Nixon even gave him a badge and deputized Elvis Aaron Presley as a Federal Special Agent to investigate and enforce United States laws regarding--you guessed it, drugs! Does anyone out there in Blogosphere know how to put pictures onto these Blogs??? I'd really like to put a copy of that right here, right at this spot, so web readers can see for themselves the sheer and sublime majesty of that moment, that photograph of all that those two men ('s personas) stood for at that time. I would like to put that photo right here and put a caption underneath it, a caption that would just read, "America." No, that would not capture all that that word means, nor can any single picture do so and fastidious critics of picture-captioning might insist on "America 1970" but even then there would be no signs of hippies, wars, or ghettos (but one can see the Brady Bunch in it), but to those two men, in that undated photo the date of which is immediately apparent to anyone who sees it, to those two men at that time, what else could you say but just, "America." To think that some people still diss Richard Nixon for inviting Ray Conniff to perform in the White House, to think that some people think that Elvis Presley lacked good sense, hey dudes, look at that picture.
(this is from the website http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/elvis/elnix.html :
"Of all the requests made each year to the National Archives for reproductions of photographs and documents, one item has been requested more than any other. That item, more requested than the Bill of Rights or even the Constitution of the United States, is the photograph of Elvis Presley and Richard M. Nixon shaking hands on the occasion of Presley's visit to the White House.")
So that's the persona that I grew up with. That is the Elvis Presley I learned as a child and teenager. Funny how thse things you learn at those early ages stay with you for years and years, and you accept them uncritically as if they were permanent facts of the world. You can doubt the existence of God, but such simple facts that you learn as a child are simply true. Takes a while to un-learn them, if indeed you are lucky enough to do that!!!! I was one who was so lucky.
Turns out, I learned, that there was another side of Elvis. There was more to him than just tacky suits, drug use, Cadillacs, more than just "America." Found out later on that he (and his persona, too, but he) had been a singer as well. That was a real revelation!!!!!! What a wakeup call!!!!! It was so stunning to me, so important in my understanding of Elvis Presley Man And Myth, that if I tell the story of "America" I have to tell the story of the unlearning of merely "America" and the learning of this at-the-time strange and news-to-me side of this King. I don't think that any story of Elvis can be told without mentioning that he was a singer too !!!!!!! It hit me one night, late at night, several years after graduating from college (no, you don't learn everything there is to know in college, and I missed this one), 3:30am or so, some freinds were in from the West Coast for Christmas week. A late-night munchie run had me seated in the back seat while my friend and his designated-driver younger sister ("Little Sister"!!!! -- just hit me now---no, that wasn't it), who had the local oldies station on the radio. They're both musical. I'm seated right in front of the speaker. It isn't on very loud, nor too quiet--just right. On comes "All Shook Up." I start to go along with it, in the parody-like sense that so many do when Elvis comes on. Then as I'm doing that, I realize, it hits me, I un-learn so much of what I had thought to be true--this is good!!!! He is a good singer!!!!! I mean, no he is not, but he is!!!!! What is in that song? Virtually nothing!!!! A piano, a bass, and a voice (Elvis is the one playing that voice instrument). What do they create? A virtual mini-orchestra, with drums & percussion, a rhythm section, a melody section such as it is, a full-blown song. Beginning to end no breaks except for an occasional VERY-well-timed one to allow for a grunt. HELLO !!!!!!!! And, this is Elvis!!!! There's no "America" in there, there're no cameras recording the event like many musicians do today in the studio, there's just this Elvis singer already a pretty big legend but no one knows anything about what's goin' down in the studio over there. He wore tacky suits and also made good songs--how many can do both????
Of course, after this revelation, I realized that there were other Elvis songs. Ones that I had heard hundreds of times before, but "Love Me Tender" and "Jailhouse Rock" and "Hound Dog" and "Little Sister" sound so much better when you listen to them. I had always liked his later songs (earlier, too), "Kentucky Rain" and "In The Ghetto" and "Suspicious Minds" (his last #1 song and the one he had the most input into), but after I learned what I had learned I could hear even more in them. Elvis The Singer !!!!!! What a revelation !!!!!!!! I am so glad that I learned something about that person(a), the other one I knew about wasn't really all that much to waste time on.
So, to me, this is he. This is what Elvis Presley means to me, at least right now, at least 'til I learn (or un-learn) more. Not that I care to do so all that much, but if a TV show comes on about him & if nothing else is going on, I'd watch it. Maybe learn something more, maybe not. To me, he's Elvis Aaron Presley, "America," and Elvis Aaron Presley, singer. Man & Myth all rolled into one. (also husband & father & friend & whatever else but I know nothing of that person(a))
The King Of Rock 'N Roll. Usually shortened to just "The King." I used to think I knew which one was more accurate, but now I'm not so sure. For now I'll just call him" The King" and if someone gives me that look like "and the rest of his title?" I'll quickly recover and add on "Of Rock 'N Roll." Whatever. The King
With all of that, it's easy to see whay so many people believe that he is still alive. I mean, he is still alive, The King Lives, in terms of having achieved--in memories--a certain kind of "immortality" of the kind that Egyptian pharoahs (Kings) like King Tut have achieved in their elegant tombs. He is not alive in a bodily sense, though, and that is why we are saddened on his "would have been" birthday. Yes, yes, there are from time to time reports that he is living, but all of them have proved to be false. The latest one involves the fact that he, Elvis Presley d.o.b. 01/08/1935, voted in the Washington State Governor's race, but the fact of having voted in the 2004 Washington State Governor's race is rather specious evidence to use to prove that someone is in fact alive. No, Elvis is not living today as he once was, but that doesn't mean we can't celebrate his life on his birthday. We can speculate on what he might be doing today but, no, screw that, let's just celebrate what he did when he was alive (and do something about that voting problem out there alongside Puget Sound, guys--Richard Nixon didn't become President just so he could get his picture taken alongside The King he also did it so that we could live in a country where elections couldn't be fixed. Get that straightened up for "America," ok???)
Had he lived, he would have been 70 today. May he rest in peace. May we remember his life and his work.
copyright 2005 J. G. Yoest
posted by Greg Yoest at 11:12 AM
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