August 16, 1977: The man on the radio said, that Elvis Presley has died.
When I wrote a shorter version of this story in German, I have been listening to a lot to some older Bruce Springsteen songs originating from his 1977 and 1978 recording sessions for his fourth album Darkness on the Edge of Town They all hadn’t been used for the original album and were collected in the box set The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story released in 2010.
Bruce Springsteen’s sentimental crooning of “Come On (Let’s Go Tonight)” reminded me of the cold, rainy summer of 1977, when punk broke in the United Kingdom and Elvis Presley, the King of Rock’n’Roll, died on the other side of the Atlantic in Memphis, Tennessee at his Graceland mansion. The protagonist in Bruce Springsteen’s song hears “the man on the radio” saying, that Elvis Presley has died today. Devastating news, not only for him. It kind of shattered my teenage life too.
I still remember the day Elvis Presley died like it happened yesterday. I had listened to the radio in my bedroom when I fell asleep and the gentle sound from the radio escorted my sleep through the night. At the end of that special night I suddenly woke up. I was wide awake and heard the newsreader heralding the terrible news about King Elvis. It was just like in Bruce Springsteen’s song: “Now the man on the radio said that Elvis Presley died…“ What a shock, giving me the creeps.
At first, I wasn’t the biggest Elvis Presley fan at all. As a pop music lover I was raised by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Sweet, Slade, or T. Rex. But then I watched Elvis Presley’s worldwide satellite concert Aloha from Hawaii on our family’s black and white telly. Boy, what a blast! Ignited I searched for further Elvis Presley stuff. I read John Lennon’s saying, that his world changed totally in 1956 with Elvis’ rock’n’roll big bang Heartbreak Hotel and that The Beatles never wouldn’t have been possible without King Elvis. Being a passionate Beatles fan I went to town and searched in a small record shop for a compilation of Elvis’ hits. I bought Elvis Forever, a double LP with Elvis’ most famous songs, “Heartbreak Hotel”, “Blue Suede Shoes”, “Hound Dog”, “Jailhouse Rock”, “In The Ghetto”, “Suspicious Minds” and all that super fantastic stuff.
But when pubrock and punk came along, I had lost track of Presley’s later music and the pictures that showed him getting fat were pitiful. But on the evening after the day Elvis died, I took the train to Linz, a big city nearby, with my best friend. Norbert and I had formed our first band together, named after a famous Elvis song and were deeply moved by his untimely death. We went to a shabby cinema, where we watched f Elvis‘ Wild in the Country, one of the better Hollywood movies he had made, being still in his prime. It wasn’t utterly brilliant, but it did a good job in soothing the loss we felt.
A few weeks later I was in town again digging for new records. In a small, groovy record store I found Elvis Costello’s now famous album debut My Aim is True. A new Elvis had entered the stage. But that is a different story.
Klaus Winningers Beat 