TO WHERE I AM NOW

On the 7th June 1982, 38 years ago, Priscilla Presley opened Graceland to the public. Olivia stumbled over this fact today and it immediately reminded me of my two visits there. Once with the ex band when we got some kind of private tour in the eighties or early nineties and once Olivia and I went there as we were staying about 3 hours away and thought it might be an interesting way to spend the day. Mostly, Elvis is a generational thing, too early in the history of R’n’R for the sixties kids and ancient history for the seventies kids despite his influence, charisma and talent. Elvis the Pelvis, you know the story about him only being filmed from above the waist because his gyrations were considered too sexually provocative. If the world then only knew about twerking.

 
Of course Elvis’ light shone long after his heyday and still shines brightly today, he is a bona fide icon. When I was at Graceland the first time I wanted to leave with a memento and chose to go to the shop where they had a large selection of 7 inch singles. I bought a copy of The Edge Of Reality which I’d seen a clip of somewhere and immediately liked in song and lyric and performance. Whenever I mentioned it to anybody they didn’t seem to know it. Of course all Elvis fans would, but generally people know Hound Dog, Jailhouse Rock, All Shook Up, Suspicious Minds, Heartbreak Hotel, In The Ghetto, Love Me Tender and into the seventies maybe Burning Love, An American Trilogy, I Just Can’t Help Believin’. When you think about Elvis for a second and not as a fan you can still name the songs, know the tunes, see the image. That’s why he was an icon – he transcended.

At the house, we were shown the legendary room with all the televisions. Everything in the front room was brown, the colour of the day. We asked could we go upstairs, but no, that was out of bounds and the place where he died one terrible night in 1977, a shadow of his former self, he was just 42 years old. When Olivia and I visited the house it had changed drastically from my earlier visit. Commercialized beyond taste it was $69 each to get in. There were a whole lot of local girls as staff. One drove the little bus, one sat on the plane, they were located at key spots to keep an eye on things. I mentioned The Beatles to the first one, “We have The Beatles, you have Elvis” I said, just making conversation. “Who?”, she said. So I asked every girl in the place, all but one said, “Who?”. The one that said she’d heard of The Beatles said she thought they were American.

New generations, different cultures, when you think about it, why would they know who The Beatles were? They would never have been exposed to them. Perhaps someone out there would be horrified to know that I didn’t know the name of some of the pre-war US presidents. Calvin Coolidge anyone? I suppose we are doomed to accept that the next generations are more likely interested in now than then. The balance between the past and what you can learn and the future and what you need to shake off so you can grow is something we all need to learn.

Studio today was prepping songs for the AA album which usually means that we take a demo and Dare puts it onto the computer and we try to bang it into shape arrangement wise. We look at drum patterns, parts, vocal melodies and Dare with his lightning fast fingers moves all these things around until we have a framework to work with for me to play guitars and bass and for Eddie to play drums. It’s a lot of work before you even start. Unlike the Space Summit album where I co-wrote the songs with Jed, these songs are all written by Ahad although there’s no bass on them and the drums are rough sketches of the real thing. Ahad sings and plays guitar on the demos and does a great job considering he’s working in the kitchen with a computer or an iPad. It’s our job to turn these demo songs into a real record and Ahad will come here to sing when we have the backing tracks ready and presuming that the quarantine laws don’t interrupt that process. We are going to be busy.

Music today has leapt great distances. I started with the two Gong albums from the mid-seventies, Shamal and Gazeuse!, both released in 1976. It became apparent that there was going to be different versions of this band as the commune that bore them had seen lots of different members. These albums were a transition between the original Daevid Allen’s Gong and the more fusion inspired Pierre Moerlen’s Gong of the late seventies. I’ve always really liked these two records and often play them together. A very different beast to the earlier Gong albums that are also great but in a different way. Sadly Pierre Moerlen died too early in 2005 at the age of 52. The legend that was Daevid Allen died in 2015 aged 77. The Gong legend continues with yet another incarnation led by Kavus Torabi on guitar and vocals. I can highly recommend the current band having seen them live a couple of times, once at Loreley, Germany, and once in Liverpool and having bought their last two albums, Rejoice! I’m Dead! (2016) and The Universe Also Collapses (2019). I saw Daevid Allen live once at a small venue in Glastonbury when I lived nearby, he was, let’s say, cosmic.

So, from Gong to Elvis! It’s never been done before. Early on in Elvis’ career he started acting and King Creole was apparently one of his favourite roles. It was his fourth film and also starred Walter Matthau and Carolyn Sue Jones who all you people that remember a group called The Beatles will also remember a TV series called The Addams family, she was Morticia and if you thought Elvis’ hips were memorable you probably also remember Morticia’s shuffle. King Creole reached No.2 on the Billboard charts in 1958, the soundtrack song Hard Headed Woman reached No.1.

Last album of the night is “Presley, the all time greatest hits”. It’s a double album released in 1987 with 45 songs that I bought in Oxfam for £1.00. What can you say about Elvis that hasn’t been said? An amazing and original performer with a unique voice who somehow lost his way. But even if he did come from an era before I was born, if it wasn’t for Elvis (and The Beatles) I might have been a successful businessman by now, how awful.

Song Of The Day is Beatles And The Stones, written by Guy Chadwick from The House Of Love. It’s a duet with Norwegian singer Marte Heggelund from 2008. Marte is coincidentally turning 40 today – two of her two sets of twins are also having a birthday today. I remember we went on Norwegian TV and sang it live at 7AM! Ha ha.

 

Beatles And The Stones

Look at him shouting out
Loud as thunder out at sea
He wants a bomb
So do we
A bomb from the sky
Is the perfect crime
Shoulder on shoulder and heat
The Beatles and the Stones
Sucked the marrow out of bone
Put the V in Vietnam
The Beatles and the Stones
Made it good to be alone
To be alone
Look at me, proud of being
Proud of being seventeen
Locking in the pocket a smile
Soft from the school
Cut by the rule
Oh I’m dazed and I’m dazed and I’m dazed
The Beatles and the Stones
Sucked the marrow out of bone
Put the V in Vietnam
The Beatles and the Stones
Made it good to be alone
To be alone
The Beatles and the Stones
Sucked the marrow out of bone
Put the V in Vietnam
The Beatles and the Stones
Made it good to be alone
To be alone
To be alone
To be alone
(Alone, alone, alone, alone, alone)
To be alone…

(Chadwick)
The House Of Love (1990)