Who Killed Elvis??
The lifeless corpse of Elvis Presley has been discovered! Police are certain of foul play!
Someone has killed Elvis!!
So far there are four prime suspects for the murder:
- His manager Tom Parker
- The Memphis Mafia
- His Young Girl Fans
- The Army
Police are investigating the trail seeking to establish the last time that Elvis was seen alive. They have studied all the evidence in depth.
The Hillbilly Cat was certainly seen present in all his majesty as he bumped, shook and grinded his way through the Milton Berle, Steve Allen and Ed Sullivan shows. He was far from dead. From 1955 to 1958 the Memphis Flash shook up the hormones of young girls with his dynamite act, rockin’ up R&B, shakin’ his greased back hair so it hung over his eyes, flaunting his ducktail, pompadour and long sideburns like the greased up peacock he was, with his flash contrasting jackets, shirts and ties, in vivid pink, white and black, his baggy trousers, gyrating hips, rising up on the balls of his feet like a wild animal on heat, with smouldering eyes and trembling lip. The King of Western Bop was rockin’ up a storm, creating Rockabilly, unleashing a teen revolution and outraging the staid bastions of society.
Back then Elvis stalked the stage like an untamed and highly dangerous beast straight out of the darkest jungle. The sex oozed off him, hung in the air like a funky smog and drove the girls crazy. The look of the feral cat was right out of the black bordellos of New Orleans. The sound the trio made was equally wild. Elvis was alive like no other. The original King of Rockabilly was a phenomenon. The energy poured out of him like an exploding volcano.
But society wanted him dead. He’d been murdered. So who killed him?
1958 was the last time that primal force was seen alive.
It was over. Elvis had left the building. The Hillbilly Cat had been murdered. In his place a glitzy, rhinestone clad Pop Star had replaced that primitive smouldering feral feline. The imposter was tidied up, spangled and neutered. Elvis was dead.
So when had this murder taken place?
The obvious culprit was the Army. Detectives sieved through the full documentary of his induction. They watched closely as the bright glad- rags were peeled off the lithe torso to be replaced with drab khaki as the strutting cock was transformed into a dowdy hen. They studied the footage carefully to see if the barber’s electric shears that snipped off his long greasy locks and docked that ducktail had not slipped to his groin to intentionally relieve him of the source of his sexuality. But there were no balls left among the piles of hair on that floor. Elvis was diminished but still intact. As they led him away for two years of regimentation perhaps it was the routine and drabness that killed the spirit in him? Robbed him of his unique animalism? Had the army killed Elvis?
But no, studying the footage carefully the detectives identified that the murder had started before. There had been a slow poisoning that had already begun to erode the beast before those shears had begun to do their work. This was no sudden act of passion. This was a gradual process. Someone had deliberately dosed that cat, put arsenic in the cream.
Attention turned to the Colonel – Tom Parker – the carnival clown, the spiv who thought only in dollars. With his short-term thinking, film contracts and ‘grab the money and run’ attitude, he wanted the Hillbilly Cat dead. He wasn’t interested in Rockabilly or the uniqueness of the Memphis Flash. He wasn’t interested in any Southern Bop. He knew that controversy restricted the audience. He wanted something tame and mainstream. Elvis was the cash cow. He could settle for the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll done up in a showbiz gold lame suit and barber shop square crooners augmenting the backing with pseudo doo-wop – as if the Jordinaires were ever hip? Was he the murderer? Had he tamed that beast?
But on second viewing of those early shows they could see that the seeds were there before the Colonel had even begun to do his worst. Those first shows were instinctive and natural and the reaction was hysterical and took Elvis by surprise. But then he began reacting to it. He’d play for the screams, orchestrating the moves and exaggerating them for effect. What had been instinctive was now conscious and a parody of what had gone before. He’d become an act. Had those young girls killed Elvis? Had those screams made him self-conscious and divorced him from his primitive inner core? Had it become too easy to excite? Had they made him a parody of himself?
Or was it the Memphis Mafia? That group of his Memphis friends that he had grown up with, who’d know him before he’d made it? The only ones he could trust now everybody wanted a bit of him? He knew they were genuine because they’d liked him for who he was and not for who he’d become? Not for his money. They knew Elvis and did not see dollar signs when they looked at him. They saw the man they had known before the machine took him over. Or did they? Everything had changed. Elvis was now rich beyond belief. Perhaps they did only see dollar signs? Perhaps they were now out for what they could get? Perhaps they, like the Colonel, were busy milking the cash cow that was Elvis? Did they really understand? Did they steer him to safer waters and way from the white-water rapids that had spawned him? Regardless of anything they isolated him. He was locked into a small closed circle, separate from the world. They walled him off. No longer was he free to head off to the black part of town, to sneak in to watch those dynamic black acts that had lit his fire and inspired him. Now he was a prisoner divorced from the seminal energy that had fanned his flames. The Memphis Mafia were all that he had now and they weren’t the brightest stars in the heavens. Had they starved him of oxygen? Had they killed Elvis?
Elvis was dead in 1958. What was seen from then was nothing more than a puppet, a zombie going through the motions. The original spark of creative genius, atavistic energy and primitive sexuality had been doused.
The detectives studied the later footage; the crass films, the trite pop, the lurid showbiz costumes, big ballads and orchestrated extravaganzas, even the staged and highly rated come back,
and saw that Elvis had been murdered. This puppet masquerading, larger than life, with the massive spectacle of performance was an empty shell, a caricature, a comic book construction. Elvis was dead long before.
By the time 1977 found him slumped in the toilet he’d been rotting for nearly twenty years. They buried the corpse but the killing had taken place many years before and the killers were never brought to justice.
Excellent post. You may be right on 1958.
It was right for me Jennie. I liked the revolutionary Elvis. The Pop Star was OK but not a patch.
Agreed. As you said, his early performances were natural.
I often find that with people who get famous. What was natural becomes unnatural. They play to the audience instead of expressing their own selves.
What a sublimely daft thing to say – I often find that with people who get famous. What was natural becomes unnatural. They play to the audience instead of expressing their own selves.-
So you don’t think that Elvis had any awareness of what his stage character represented?
He had to flip that switch to get there. He had to dress up to get there. He had to take drugs to get there. He didn’t wake up each morning as “Elvis Presley The Rock ‘n Roll Star” and he had to act that part and it was relentless for him and painfully so, too.
It was exactly that immature and mindless level of fan’s expectation that killed him.
You obviously haven’t read the article or understood what I was saying. Yes it was the expectation, the exploitation and the demands.
By 1958 Elvis had been killed as a creative force.
I’m a big Elvis fan, all my life, and saw this post and it annoyed me enough to warrant correction.
Putting it this way having seen a few other posts, what you’re trying to do it stick him in aspic, suspended in timeline `58 forever more.
Same as expecting The Fall’s Mark E. Smith to be singing “It’s The New Thing” in the same manner in 2017 as he had originally in 1978. It’s not going to happen.
I did read the article. Obviously I read it! Though honestly didn’t enjoy it much and thought it was very negative, tabloidish and quite a bit of it was simply untrue.
Some of the imagery had been wholly plucked from the pen of the fraudster Albert Goldman.
It’s not what you’ve said – it’s nothing more than a point by point list available on Wikipedia – but the manner in how you’ve said it – it’s all too smart ass rhetorical.
It’s cheap and nasty and reeks of rank low-end cowboy jingoist sensationalist journalism. I hated it from beginning to end.
As for “society wanted him dead” – it could not be further from the truth.
Elvis was the founder cornerstone of the concept of the “Teenage Dollar”, a concept never before imagined or so much as touched upon. Anyone can get a general idea of the value of all that represented. A whole new world was opened up.
Even the act of putting him in the army was a commercial concern. Army towns make money and good for incoming investment. The matter that he went to Germany wasn’t important because Germany was a very safe destination, but his sheer presence in the army enticed ease of home-based recruitment.
Well no, I didn’t misunderstand. I think what you misunderstand is that Elvis couldn’t maintain that Elvis `58 thing. He wasn’t that guy anymore regardless.
As for killed as a creative force? Really? A dozen or so big hit movies can’t be considered as any form of creativity at all? A few a them were massive world-wide and re-wrote the rule book for music based films and that’s worth nothing?
Surely to be at the forefront of a new entertainment medium (you don’t have to like it) is worth something in terms of creativity?
Did it damage his commercial value? No! not a bit. Elvis sold even more records whilst in the movies. He recorded a whole wide range of song types and developed his musical palette and broadened his horizons.
What about his recordings he made immediately after his last film, in 1969?
Weren’t they creative? They certainly weren’t sugary pap like Wooden Heart.
Some of these recordings were absolutely brilliant and still top populist polls to this day.
As for this idea that Elvis was locked into some kind of small circle and walled off, is so totally untrue. Elvis continued to go where and when as he pleased and stayed all over America in all sorts of places, cheap motels or expensive hotels, on his own whim on his own terms and he did this all the time outwith performance engagements. He certainly didn’t sit in Graceland all day with this coterie of hired friends as is so solemnly believed by too many who’ve read too much trash and probably believed that fraudster Albert Goldman.
I’m sorry but this entire piece is a terrible injustice, a lie and not necessary.
There were no killers.
Elvis killed himself slowly over time due to a very heavy pharmaceutical multiple drug addiction with what were all legally prescribed drugs, consumed with the obligatory copious quantities of hard liquor. Elvis was just another casualty of an entire national culture with legal drug and alcohol addiction, only these massed multitudes of other people who die the same death each and every year never get a mention. The music, the image, or anything to do with “Elvis Presley The Rock ‘n Roll Star” had long been depleted simply due to common place addiction.
His diet and lifestyle were acute participants in his demise.
None of your props of delusion as cited above had anything to do with it.
Least of all the Jordanaires (not Jordinaires) of which it’s a bit trite to question their “hipness”, as at least they could sing very well and that was all they were engaged to do. It was simply a matter of courtesy that they received credit on all these records as was customary back in these days. Could anybody closely associated with Elvis ever have been considered “hip”?
Had Elvis died through illegal drugs, he would have been criticised as a Junkie.
He didn’t, so still gets to wear the halo forever.
It’s like John Lennon. The masses loved the “She Loves You” John, but weren’t quite so taken with the “Cold Turkey” John, and definitely confused and confounded with the “Woman Is The Nigger Of The World” John.
There’s a job waiting for you at The Sun. Tell them Elvis sent you.
Still trolling Andrew??
Que? still trolling who?
The name’s Gordon Buchanan, just as it says on the tin.
I’m still livid over your cheap shot “society wanted him dead” jive, man, I never read such crap.
Elvis – as you have chosen to be both rude and pedantic and totally missed the gist of the post – a la classic Andrew – I shall explain it to you.
1. I love the Elvis of the Sun years and early RCA up to 1958 when he was natural, highly creative and highly original (though he did base his image on black R&B artists). He had original style.
2. I do not love the later years when he ceased to be creative and original and produced pop, gospel and pop-based Rock ‘n’ Roll. I did like some of the stuff he produced but it was not of the same calibre as the Sun and early RCA stuff.
3. I think his films were tripe – trite, badly acted, aimed at teenage girls and full of poor quality songs.
4. I think his later glitzy showbiz costumes that he had designed for him were utter crap as was his stage act. He did not do anything creative – they were designed for him.
5. While I would have given anything to see Elvis in 1954 with Scotty and Bill as a trio, or even as a quartet with DJ, but I wouldn’t be greatly bothered about seeing his later stuff at all.
6. Adding the gospel-based white Jordanaires with their unhip pseudo doo-wop was just terrible. They should have got the real thing and got the black guys to do it. It would have looked, felt and sounded fifty times better.
7. My post was a limited look at some of the elements that led to the transformation of Elvis from the Hillbilly Cat to a Glitzy Nashville Pop Star. Partly it was management pushing him for a quick buck and more mainstream appeal, partly it was that he lost the naturalness of his act, became self-conscious and a parody of himself for the teenage girls, partly it was his induction into the army and partly it was being cut off from his ordinary life and closeted with the Memphis Mafia. (No he did not have the freedom he’d had before he was famous and there were few that he actually could trust and those guys were not the brightest bunch)
8. My post was not meant to be taken literally in such a pedantic manner. He wasn’t dead in 1958. But that creativity and originality was. That is what I was illustrating.
Now – I haven’t bothered to read Albert Goldman, and I don’t expect people to be frozen in time. I just expect them to be good. Dylan was brilliant when he changed from acoustic protest to go electric (then later became patchy and mediocre). Mark E. Smith was consistently great throughout. Elvis started brilliantly and then became mediocre. I know what I like and what I don’t and I don’t give a shit how popular it was.
No I don’t expect people to be brilliant forever – few ever are – but I can lament the loss of that brilliance. In Elvis, to me, it died in 1958 and was rarely glimpsed again. I did not like what he became.
You are wrong. Yes the establishment did want him dead. In 1959 they set about tackling Rock ‘n’ Roll which they considered a bad influence on youth. They set up the payola prosecutions, shut down radio playing Rock ‘n’ Roll and imprisoned Alan Freed.
Elvis was in the army, Little Richard into religion, Jerry Lee Lewis hounded out because of his teenage bride, Chuck Berry in prison, Buddy Holly dead, Gene Vincent badly injured, and the rest of them could not get played on TV or radio. We ended up with Elvis Pop stuff, Tommy Roe, Bobby Vee, Bobby Rydell and trite cleaned up kids in suits.
Now I’m sorry you did not understand or agree but tough. If you choose to be rude and pedantic about stuff perhaps it is you who should be writing for the Sun – tell them Andrew sent you. They are a bunch of mealy-mouthed bastards – you’ll get along fine.