ELVIS DIED” BOB DYLAN
to pursue. When asked would he have been willing to tackle the epic Jimmy Webb ballad “MacArthur Park” (in the charts at the time sung by actor Richard Harris), Presley replied a sincere, enthusiastic “yes”. Elated, Binder took this admission as an explicit indication of the show’s ultimate artistic objective, even if Elvis himself kept it for one of the Comeback Special’s more bizarre in-jokes: mimicking Webb’s song during recording in a falsetto evocative of
“Tiptoe Thru The Tulips” freak Tiny Tim.
The second turning point in the Binder-Presley partnership occurred during a now mythical impromptu daytime stroll down Sunset Strip.
In a further bid to convince Elvis just how far his reputation had slipped, Binder persuaded the reluctant singer to walk with him, unprotected in broad daylight, fi nally stopping outside the Strip’s Classic Cat go-go bar. Hesitantly expecting public pandemonium, Elvis instead found himself just another face in the crowd, unrecognised and shoved out of the way. Presley was human enough to joke about the incident but suffi ciently disturbed by the humiliation of a career in crisis this experiment suggested to seek help. If Elvis knew he needed saving, he also recognised the unique lifeline now offered by his new confi dante.
W
hile Parker, Singer and NBC were obliviously banking on a bog standard Santa’s grotto affair, Binder, musical producer Bones Howe and writers Alan Blye and Chris Beard began shaping a far more radical showcase.They decided, instead, on a programme celebrating Elvis’ roots: blending gospel, rockabilly and powerhouse ballads with funky production numbers culminating in the elaborate “Guitar Man” pop-operetta. The chosen songs would be a reassessment of Elvis’ 14-year discography, overlooking obvious million sellers such as “It’s Now Or Never” in favour of hitherto neglected movie songs (Lieber & Stoller’s “Little Egypt”
from 1964’s Roustabout, “Let Yourself Go” from the recent Speedway) and less obvious hits (the lush “It Hurts Me”, which had actually been the B-side to “Kissin’ Cousins”) and new material fresh to the Presley repertoire. Even the planned ten-minute gospel sequence, wherein he could have easily wallowed in the Sunday school sobriety of “Crying In The Chapel”, would instead become a superbly overplayed orgy in the Church of Elvis with the scarlet-clad King hamming up the salvation pastiche
“Saved” among a chorus line of demonically-possessed dancing freaks.
Apeshit best describes Parker’s initial reaction.
The further revelation that, as far as Binder was concerned, there were to be no Christmas songs provoked further outrage while the proposal that the show should end not with Parker’s favoured
“Silent Night” but the specially commissioned
“If I Can Dream” – a humanitarian anthem embracing the civil rights crusade of the recently assassinated Martin Luther King – added insult to pig-headed injury.
In the end, against all the odds Binder just about got his way. The inclusion of “Blue Christmas” in the original broadcast (later substituted for the far superior cover of Rufus Thomas’ “Tiger Man”) was his only contractual concession. That, and the censoring of the sassy “Let Yourself Go”, cut due to its camp, if inoffensive, brothel scenario. The fact that Elvis avoided all such artistic battles, ego clashes and general shit dodging for Binder to deal with alone
Elvis with NBC producer Steve Binder (right) A pensive Elvis in
rehearsals for the Comeback Special
The iconic – and much-imitated image of the Comeback Special
U N C U T L E G E N D S104|
goes a long way in explaining the shameful abuse of talent that so frequently blemished his career.
Having spent an eternity mute to the Colonel’s management, The King was quite content to say nothing and let the producer fi ght his corner.
The material and vague shooting script decided, the production itself began at NBC’s Burbank Studios in June 1968, marked by a launch party where everybody, even the star himself, was forced to wear introductory name tags. In another stroke of genius on Binder’s part, he reunited Elvis with Scotty Moore and DJ Fontana, the original musicians of his earliest Sun and RCA recordings. With “general fl unky” Charlie Hodge conspicuously thrown in for moral support, the ‘boxing ring’ performance (as it became known on account of its square, raised platform in the round) would become the show’s distinguishing highlight. Ad-libbed anecdotes of the good old days, off-the-cuff Southern wisecracks, furious hoe-down assaults on “That’s All Right”
and “Heartbreak Hotel”, seeing Elvis not just pose with his guitar but actually playing, actually rocking and rolling was to witness a great master at work.
Leering, wincing and sweating his soul out on “One Night”, a whole generation suddenly remembered what they’d been so sorely missing.
But it, too, was an accident, a spontaneous last minute addition provoked by similar rockabilly tomfoolery Binder had witnessed in the dressing rooms where Elvis and his Memphis rent-a-crowd took up temporary residence during recording.
Originally, the producer had asked for cameras to be allowed backstage, a suggestion Elvis violently objected to. Considering the more sordid activities on the NBC lot this was perhaps understandable. The naive producer had seen the jamming but not the shameless whoring and high-living, a succession of girls smuggled in for the sustenance of Elvis’ ego. (Wife Priscilla and baby Lisa Marie were out of sight and out of mind.)
Instead, the intimacy of these private acoustic shindigs were to be recreated under more orthodox conditions in front of a studio audience. A prophetic blueprint for the entire ‘Unplugged’ genre, the ‘boxing ring’ sessions possessed a purity second only to the original Sun recordings themselves. Still, the ever unscrupulous Colonel Parker came close to sabotaging its fi nal inclusion in the show by failing to distribute satisfactory ticket quantities prior to the evening of scheduled performance. A severely panic-stricken Binder only just managed to pull together a convincingly packed studio by desperately ringing friends, relatives and dragging patrons from a nearby diner to fi ll the empty seats of what would ironically be one of the fi nest concerts of Elvis’ career. With two separate sessions to be recorded that day, Binder had no choice but to rotate the same punters around for the second show so as to fool the cameras into portraying a separate crowd. A shrewd move, though one probably subconsciously infl uenced by Parker, who had choreographed one of the Special’s previous live recordings to ensure the rows closest to Elvis were made up of the most attractive girls in the audience.
The fi gure-hugging black leather suit Elvis wore for the majority of the show was another inspired move on Binder’s and costume designer Bill Belew’s part. By 1968, the leather rebel image was considered something of a cliché, exhausted nearly a decade earlier by Gene Vincent and British rocker Vince Taylor. To see Elvis in similar attire, however, was to turn tradition on its head. A healthy reminder of what Binder saw as Elvis’ “basic, sadistic quality”, the suit exploited an admittedly hackneyed rock’n’roll dress code to recast Elvis as a subversive, fetishist prince of darkness.
The desired effect remains one of the most enduring visions of Elvis. Nevertheless, come the eventual live recording, the black leather sex god had fretted himself into a hyper-ventilating, gibbering wreck, so physically ill with stage fright he resolutely refused to face the crowd until Binder half begged, half booted him out on to the sound stage. Watching the show today, as Elvis fi rst enters like a gladiator from the past into the harsh arena of the present, he appears noticeably self-conscious. It takes a few numbers before he fi nally awakes to the hysteria of his own stage presence, toying with the words of
“Love Me Tender” (“you have made my life a wreck…
uh… complete”) and raising his mic-stand like a harpoon, yelling “Moby Dick!” On the outside basking in his own legend, on the inside Elvis was baking in his own leathery Turkish bath, ending his performance so dehydrated he had to be aided back into his dressing room in a state of near collapse.
However gruelling a process for Elvis, the Comeback Special was to mark the completion of a
personal rite of passage from idol in exile to re-instated pop monarch.
Closing the show with “If I Can Dream” (so heavy with emotion he recorded its studio take in a darkened recording booth while writhing on the fl oor in a foetal position) Presley made a sincere vow never again to sing a song or make a movie he didn’t believe in.
S
inger Presents Elvis aired on December 3, 1968 (boasting a higher audience share of women aged between 18 and 49 than any other programme that year). The following day The New York Times’ Jon Landau noted: “There is something magical about watching a man who has lost himself, fi nd his way home. He sang with the kind of power people no longer expect from rock’n’roll performers. And while most of the songs were ten or 12 years old, he performed them as freshly as though they were written yesterday.”A month after the broadcast Elvis stoked the rediscovered fi re it had ignited in American Studios, Memphis and recorded many of his greatest moments, among them “Suspicious Minds” which rewarded him with his fi rst US Number One in seven years that November – by which time he’d already returned to live performance in Las Vegas.
The neutered, hellish, hula-dancing puppet of the Hollywood movies was dead. Not before time, The King Of Rock’n’Roll had returned.
A
mong the most notorious, and weirdest, incidents in Elvis’ remarkable life occurred on December 21, 1970: the day he turned up at the White House demanding to see President Richard Nixon with the ulterior motive of being given a Federal Agents’ police badge.Two days earlier he’d stormed out of Graceland after an argument with his father about Elvis’
overspending in the run up to Christmas. To the concern of the Memphis Mafia, whose duty it was to guard his every move, he boarded a plane to Washington DC by himself after deciding that he desperately needed to see the President.
Dressed in a purple crushed-velvet suit with matching cape and a cane, he looked less like The King Of Rock’n’Roll than he did Count Dracula. In fact he barely looked like Elvis at all, having consumed so much chocolate that his face had ballooned in an allergic reaction.
Nevertheless, Elvis was unwavering in his mission, penning his now infamous introductory letter to Nixon in which he begged to be made an undercover agent in order to tackle “drug culture and the Hippie elements”. In spite of the absurdity of the request, he was duly granted a meeting with Nixon, who listened to his concerns over drugs, anti-Americanism and the negative influence of The Beatles before nodding: “I think we can get you a badge.”
And so, The King returned to Graceland with the Bureau Of Narcotics And Dangerous Drugs badge he so desired: a badge that gave this 35-year-old chemical timebomb, whose every waking hour was ruled by the ritual abuse of prescription drugs, permission to carry any substance upon his person, from Aspirin to angel dust, legal or otherwise.
Nice one, Nixon. SIMON GODDARD
President meets Presley, December 21, 1970
GETTY, ©ELVIS PRESLEY ENTERPRISES INC., JAT PUBLISHING/JOESPH A TUNZI
ELVIS PRESLEY
1 RCA
May 1969
Chips Moman
1 13 Wearin’ That Loved On Look
Only The Strong Survive I’ll Hold You in My Heart (Till I Can Hold You in My Arms)
FROM ELVIS IN MEMPHIS
American Studios, Memphis
Long Black Limousine It Keeps Right On A-Hurtin’
I’m Movin’ On Power Of My Love
Gentle On My Mind After Loving You
True Love Travels On A Gravel Road Any Day Now
In The Ghetto
D
espite the revitalising effect of the Comeback Special, Elvis Presley was deeply out of step with rock fashion in the late ’60s.The rising counter culture, The Beatles and the new wave of politically charged
singer-songwriters had rendered the singer’s toothless party rockers and goofy Hollywood star vehicles virtually redundant.
Between the last gasp of his woeful fi lm career and his fi rst Las Vegas residency, Elvis was scheduled for a routine recording session
in Nashville. His regular studio producer Felton Jarvis and his stable of songwriters were duly notifi ed. But then Presley took an unusually
independent step, cancelling Nashville and booking time at a small local studio recommended by Memphis Mafi a stalwart
George Klein. In a rare act of defi ance against manager Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis began calling the shots.
Run by Lincoln ‘Chips’ Moman, a no-nonsense producer who had been involved in founding the legendary R&B label Stax,
American Studios was a small operation with a big reputation. In the 18 months before the Elvis sessions, it had turned
out dozens of hits for the likes of Dusty Springfi eld, Wilson Pickett and Dionne Warwick. Hence Moman’s seasoned
in-house players were nonplussed when a nervous Presley arrived with his entourage on January 13, 1969, especially
as they had postponed a Neil Diamond session to accommodate The King.
Presley’s minders were similarly unimpressed when Moman began directing Elvis in the studio, defying his sycophantic courtiers and demanding multiple takes. When an ugly tussle over producing and writing credits almost scuppered the sessions altogether, the producer told Parker where he could stick his $25,000 fee. But, crucially, Presley had overriding faith in Moman, and two sessions duly went ahead in January and February. Elvis put his foot down. Musically, it was the smartest decision he ever made.
His fi rst recordings in his hometown since his fabled Sun Studio work 14 years before marked a bold departure from his usual stable of producers, musicians, songwriters and arrangers. Indeed, the Memphis sessions arguably spawned Presley’s fi rst and only truly adult album, steeped in soulful self-doubt and emotional complexity. As a married father in his mid 30s, Elvis is addressing grown-up concerns, from adultery to social injustice to single parenthood.
The result is an epic nocturama of defeat and deceit, almost every track coloured by loss and longing. In the velvet-lined waltz “I’ll Hold You In My Heart (Till I Can Hold You In My Arms)”, Presley’s mighty voice becomes a faraway yodel of impossible yearning. On stoical sermons like “True Love Travels On A Gravel Road”, borne aloft by lush strings, or “It Keeps Right On A-Hurtin’”, pain is an ever-present fact of life. The grown-up Elvis is coming to realise that you might check out of Heartbreak Hotel, but you can never really leave.
It may be a conspiracy theory too far, but it is hard not to hear Presley’s own untimely death foreshadowed in the spooked, gospel-infused cautionary tale “Long Black Limousine”, the fi rst track