ELVIS 30 years on

The 30th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley got a lot of press because the Big E still maintains the kind of popularity he enjoyed throughout his performing career. The only time I ever received hate mail at Public News was when I wrote that Elvis was the king because he had died on the throne. Another American icon, Groucho Marx, died three days after Elvis but his influence, great as it was on comedy, didn't include rock and roll. Of course somebody may yet cover a rocking version of "Lydia the Tattooed Lady" to great effect.

Elvis stories seem to revolve around the porcelain chair. In the recent French film Mon meilleur ami (My Best Friend) the taxi driver character mentions that Elvis' last words were: "I'm going to read in the bathroom." A story I've never been able to shake from my mind was a tale of how Mac Davis broke into the music industry. Davis waited in the bathroom at a recording studio where Elvis was laying down some tracks. When E came in to occupy a stall, Davis, patiently waiting, went into the adjoining stall and slipped a piece of paper along the floor into the next cubicle. On that missive was the music to a song Davis had penned named In the Ghetto. This story is probably not true, especially considering that Davis had written other songs that E recorded before In the Ghetto (Memories for one) but that's the way Peter Gabriel related said tale at the New Music Seminar (a forerunner to SXSW) in the the summer of 1985. As the film proverb goes, when the legend becomes true print the legend. You have to say this for Elvis, and it can't be stated for the majority of musicians who've achieved recorded fame - his hits were as big and profound at the end of his career as at the beginning.