Elvis Presley would be 90 today
January 8, 2025 Elvis Aaron Presley, born in Tupelo on January 8, 1935 – the only survivor of a twin birth – and died in Memphis on August 16, 1977, would have been ninety years old. A milestone, that of turning ninety, which is, however, precluded to most rock stars, perhaps also due to Neil Young’s postulate – “it’s better to burn out than fade away”.
Presley didn’t even get halfway to that goal, but this anniversary leads us to some considerations on how much the “king of rock’n roll” left us in terms of artistic legacy.
If the myth of the Beatles is already fading among today’s teenagers, let alone that of Elvis who – especially in Italy – was often considered like an ephemeral comet with an incomprehensible parabola, divided as he was between music, cinema, stardom and a private life undermined by insecurities and excesses.
“Perhaps it cannot be said that Elvis was the inventor of rock and roll” I wrote a few decades ago, “but it is certain that he was its most brilliant interpreter – Presley is the very essence of rock”.
And indeed for all historians and fans there is a world before and a world after Presley, his advent being destined to change not only the musical but the social and cultural panorama; a change that occurred through his songs, his style, his way of interpreting them.
At a now sidereal distance not only from the birth but also from the death of Presely – in rock decades are measured in eons – what remains of his myth today? How can we still listen to recordings so old that they could soon end up in the public domain (the rights to the masters expire 70 years after they were first released)?
Perhaps, to act as a bridge between prehistory and today and to demonstrate how the legend has remained alive, the songs more or less openly inspired by the character can come to our aid sporadically: for example “Crazy little thing called love” by Queen or “Tupelo” by Nick Cave (a rocker who mentioned the King of rock’n roll several times in his songs), or the declared, affectionate references by artists like Springsteen or McCartney.
But even more, it was cinematography that continued to explore the myth of this artist, so present in the memory and elusive in allowing us to enter into his own story and above all into the reasons (if there ever were any) of an inexorable self-destructive process – moreover common to many stars of our music, from Jimi Hendrix to Janis Joplin, from Tim Buckley to Kurt Cobain and beyond.
Already a couple of years ago Baz Luhrmann’s film “Elvis” had opened the door to a reinterpretation of Presley’s life and work. But the analyzes don’t end there: here are the very recent documentary works by Nick Randall, “The last days of Elvis Presley”, and above all by Jason Hehir, “Return of the king, the fall and rise of Elvis Presley”. Yes that’s right: the fall and riseNot the rise and fall (the film can be seen on Netflix).
This last film focuses on what can be considered Presley’s artistic peak, that is, the “Comeback special”, the television show broadcast by NBC on December 3, 1968, which marked his return to the musical scene after a long period of Hollywood exile; a period which – if it was good for the artist’s pockets and for his popularity among the female public – risked decreeing his declassification from the great history of rock.
That return was followed by at least five years of excellent records and splendid performances – never any outside the United States – and then by a period of steep decline, the sunset avenue that would lead him to the end, not only of his artistic career but of his own life.
And therefore reopening his songbook, starting from the first, fundamental recordings of the late fifties to arrive precisely at the years of the return and the “Memphis record” and then to some phenomenal concerts, will allow us to savor again, on this celebratory date, not only the vocal qualities of an extraordinary singer, but his personality, his sensitivity in knowing how to deal with every musical genre (even too many) on an interpretative level.
Of course, the Elvis that we like most is the one from his origins: like him, no one had ever known how to merge and spread musical genres previously belonging to the culture of whites and that of blacks but in a segregated manner, both in the compositional moment and in the of enjoyment – blues, country, gospel, bluegrass; the Elvis we like best is the one who re-emerges, unexpectedly, still young but more mature, in the Comeback special ring, resplendent in a black leather suit. And seeing him again today punching destiny, never so fit, never so vibrant, never so eager for revenge, still excites us. It still reminds us why – all our lives – we have loved and listened to rock and roll.
Claudio Buja, President of Universal Music Publishing Ricordi and Elvis Presley enthusiast, wrote the first Italian biography of Elvis Presley in 1988 (in the photo below)
