A QUARTER CENTURY LATER, ELVIS' DEATH MEANS BITTERSWEET MEMORIES
By JOHN YOUNGREN
As with the death of any run-of-the-mill incredibly popular cultural icon, I can still remember where I was when I heard Elvis Presley died.
It was Aug. 16, 1977, and I was riding with my grandparents, mother and sister to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. My mother, sister and I were flying out to go back home, to Salt Lake City, after spending several weeks visiting my mother's family in Newburgh, N.Y., our summer vacation spot all my childhood life.
What's funny is, it's my mother who's the biggest Elvis fan I know -- still is. She's passionate about the King and his early music, especially before he went away to war and ruled the pre-British Invasion rock and roll scene. And in the '70s, my mother saw the glitzy, Las Vegas version of Elvis in a memorable show at the old Salt Palace in Salt Lake City.
It was, and remains, one of the great nights of her life.
But in August of '77, there we were, making our way to JFK, in the back of my grandfather's Chevrolet Impala -- brown with a white roof. We hit the tollbooth on the George Washington Bridge. There were particularly long lines of cars that day, waiting to get through on a sweltering New York afternoon. As I recall, all these years later, there were newspaper carriers making their way between the rows of cars with special editions of New York afternoon newspapers, news about the King's death blistered across the front.
But we didn't notice any of that until we got to the front of the line and our toll booth attendant, a large man (from what I recall), leaned out and almost literally cried (with a high-pitched voice I still hear in my mind all these years later), "Elvis died!"
And then we drove through and that's all we knew. We fumbled for the radio to hear more. We finally noticed the newspapers with the early bulletin.
My mother began crying in the backseat.
And we caught a plane less than an hour later and took what seemed like a 10-hour trip home, my mother as emotional about the death of one of her idols as she was, on this strange occasion, about saying goodbye to her parents for yet another year.
Strange now to think back on it all, in this day of Internet and cable TV and 24-hour access and USA Today. When we got home, I flipped on our television -- hoping to find news on one of the three local TV stations at my disposal -- and found a late-night documentary, on staid NBC.
The information age had yet to dawn. The celebrity age was not yet here. Other greats had died, of course. Presidents had been shot, Marilyn Monroe committed suicide. But -- though I wasn't particularly a fan at the time -- Elvis touched a nerve that had rarely been nudged; his death seemed to be the first of a new era of cultural voyeurism.
It was Elvis, after all, whose body soon thereafter appeared in his coffin on the cover of the National Enquirer.
It was Elvis, after all, whose autopsy and lifestyle and final days led to scads of "What Happened?"-style documentaries and articles and books, all precursors to later eras, when tabloid TV and Entertainment Tonight would thrive on such tawdriness, perfecting the potion for O.J. and Marv Albert, Princess Diana and Monica Lewinsky.
Elvis was the first time it all came together, arguably. He was always larger than life as it was, so of course he'd be larger in death. His success, renown and accomplishment were parts of the puzzle. His ostentatious living, lifestyle, habits and appetites were others. Though Elvis seems now like kitsch industry, it's important to remember that his fan base was as rabid then -- Graceland may not have been a tourist attraction, but it was the home of the King -- as it is now.
Elvis threw his perspiration-stained scarves into the audience for his female fans to fight over, even when his weight and performance had become bloated and disoriented. By his last year or two, his mannered performance style had lapsed into self-parody. But his name, songs, approach and face had long become part of the national lexicon.
I've grown to appreciate Elvis more over the quarter-century since. I own some of his earlier albums and greatest hits on CD; I admit more than a passing fascination with his life and success, his image and self-destruction. I've read a few biographies and watched those old TV specials with interest, sadness and joy.
The hoopla surrounding the 25th anniversary of Elvis' death is bittersweet, of course. There is nothing happy about the man's death, even in retrospect. And despite our best efforts, we all fall into the journalistic trapping of marking one's death as a way of celebrating their life.
Still, I suppose it's as good an excuse as any. For marking these types of where-were-you-when? occasions is, in many ways, the way we mark the passages of our own lives, whether the moment in question brings back a happy memory -- or a bad.
And for me, in August of 1977, it was spending time with my mother and my grandparents and Newburgh in the summer. Wiffle ball and Thurman Munson's Yankees. Orange soda and coffee cakes. "Star Trek" and my first beer.
These are all people, places and memories I'll always love and never forget. That's what Elvis' death brings back for me.
Even if it was because the man himself had suddenly left the building.
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