Elvis died 30 years ago today, and if you don't know this then you must live on the moon. To celebrate the fact that Elvis is still as popular (in fact more so) than he was when he died, I'm going to tell you how I became an 'ELVIS fan'
I was 3 when Elvis died August the 16th 1977 and my mom was heartbroken; She had been an Elvis fan since she was a kid and had cried twice over Elvis in his lifetime. The first time was when Elvis got married to Priscilla and then when Elvis had died.
My mum was probably playing Elvis records since I was a baby, but my first memories of Elvis were of his movies and his first Christmas album; me, and my 2 sisters would play that album a lot (even if it was not Christmas). It was the Camden release and I remember the cover artwork so clear with Elvis in front of a lot of trees with his arms folded. As for the movies I remember them being on BBC 2 (I'm in Scotland) all the time and I always used to watched Blue Hawaii and GI Blues with my mum and even my babysitter at the time, she loved those movies so much and thinking back now, those are very happy memories...Elvis was already a big part of my very young life.
I was never a big fan of music when I was a kid and the very first song I can remember really loving was Making Your Mind by Bucks Fizz in 1982...Elvis music was always being played by my mum, but I was not a fan...Not yet anyway.
When I was at school and I was at a school dance, I would always dance like Elvis...I did not know this at the time though because I was really trying to dance like Shakin' Stevens who was huge at the time in the 80s and who was just being an 80s Elvis using a 50s style...Shaky was cool by this time and Elvis was not (at least for a kid of my age)...I would never admit to even hearing an Elvis song because you would just be laughed at school.
By this time my 2 sisters were Elvis fans...yep they were now fans, who had Elvis pillows and Elvis tapes, when we were on holiday they brought Elvis tapes back with them...By this time though I was what you might call a 'closet fan', There was a few songs on those tapes I really liked, but I had a reputation to uphold as a kid in the 80s and slagging off Elvis was what I had to do if It was called for in a conversation with my mates, and I would even say to my sisters "how can you listen to that rubbish" while I would listen to songs like 'I Slipped I stumbled I fell' in secret on my walkman...Yea, yea...I was a kid and kids will be kids!
I was 15 and pretty much went through school and the rest of my childhood as an Elvis hater…Elvis had been such a big part of my life because of my mum, that by this time I really did not like Elvis...Even those days of sneaking my sisters tapes to listen to a few Elvis songs I liked were long gone...My sisters had not been Elvis fans for a while as they were now huge 'New Kids on the Block' fans...my mom had not been playing Elvis much either for a number of years...Yep, Elvis was a thing of the past for me....BUT!!!! Then it happened...
I was sitting one night (no Elvis pun intended) with my sister Michelle and we were just having a chat and listening to music while mum and dad had a few drinks and they were a bit under the weather...My youngest sister had went to bed and me and Michelle put one of her Elvis tapes on...It was a tape she got from one of her friends years before, but she never listened to it much, If at all, as I have said; Elvis was not somebody she would listen too anymore...Anyway, we put this tape on and we just sat in a dimly lit living room singing these songs and having such a fun time...She laughed at the fact I knew a lot of these songs, and of course it was only now that she knew I had been sneaking those tapes of hers years before...I had not heard this tape though and I was blown away with it...I loved every second of it...This was not the Elvis I had ever heard before? That's because this was Elvis in the 70s and they did not have anything of Elvis in the 70s on tape or LP in my house...
The tape was ' Elvis as Recorded at Madison Square Garden' and that night I had just saw the light of how great Elvis was...I was an instant fan and spent the next year listening to that tape so many times that I wore it out…Really, I broke it and I was devastated...I was 16 now though and working, so I had cash to buy myself some Elvis music, and what better way to do this than to buy a CD player and replace my Madison Square Garden tape with a CD of it...Yep it was Elvis in the 90s and this was 1990, I got a double cd of Elvis Greatest hits and the Madison Square Garden cd...I decided I liked the 70s stuff best and spent the next few months just buying 70s cds like 'ON STAGE'...Sometimes though I would get stuff I thought was 70s (because of the album artwork) and ended up with late 60s...The 68 Comeback Special, Elvis in Person to name but a few and slowly but surely (sorry;P) I got to like a more wide range of Elvis music.
It was not until a few years later though when the Complete 50's Masters came out and my mum got me it for Christmas...It was then that this 70's Elvis fan was just about to be even more blown away...WOW! How could I pass all this stuff by? What else had Elvis recorded? I wanted to hear everything, so I got book after book and I spent a lot of time learning about Elvis, and the more I read, the more fascinated I got and over the course of the 90's I collected a huge collection of Elvis music, I used books like the ‘Elvis Sessions' books by Joseph A. Tunzi to try and get every song Elvis ever sang, no matter how silly the song was, for example, if it was from one of his mid 60's movies...
I wanted them all and I spent time listening to them all over and over until I knew each one word for word...Today there's probably not an Elvis song I don't know every word to...If it's been released, I have it.
I also went back to those Elvis movies I watched as a kid and got them all over time on VHS, the more I heard/saw/read about Elvis the more of a fan I became...No matter what mood I was in there was always an Elvis song to fit it and I think that's why I'm a fan...Elvis just has a way to make you feel good...His voice when he sings, or that cheeky smile in even the most poor of Elvis movies just makes you smile and feel happy.
I love such a wide variety of music now from The Carpenters to Meat Loaf but nobody even comes close to the way Elvis music touches my heart.
30 years since Elvis died and 15 years since I became a fan, Elvis has been part of my life since I was born and always will be until the day I die.
Long live the king!
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