From 1969: “Along with other refugees from the cultural revolution, armed with long hair, giant sunglasses, and artificial euphoriants, I set out to dig Babylon,” Ellen Willis writes. “Garish is beautiful.”
Las Vegas is more like Hollywood than Hollywood, because the money is changing hands right out front. Committed to veneer as an art form, over-thirty and relentlessly white in essence, if not always in packaging, Vegas is the antithesis of the cultural revolution.
When I heard that Presley had accepted an engagement at the new International Hotel in Las Vegas and was to give his first concert in nine years, I knew the confrontation had to be interesting. Elvis was at once old money and young money, sellout and folk hero. How would he play it? In his television special last winter, he wore a leather jacket and wiggled his hips. But then he recorded “In the Ghetto,” which was weak on beat and strong on slush. It was a No.
The opening took place in the Showroom Internationale, a two-thousand-seat nightclub whose sublimely irrelevant décor included relief carvings of Greek temples and winged gods and goddesses, and whose menu that night consisted of such tasty items as Aloyau Roti à l’Anglaise Périgourdine and Pointes d’Asperges au Beurre. The audience was 99.
We had to sit through the Sweet Inspirations—a great black gospel-rock group that persists in wasting its talent singing “Alfie”—and one of those unmentionable comedians. Then Presley came on, and immediately shook up all my expectations and preconceived categories. There was a new man out there. A grown man in black bell-bottoms, tunic, and neckerchief, devoid of pout and baby fat, skinny, sexy, totally alert, nervous but smiling easily. For some reason, he had dyed his hair black.
If Elvis continues to perform—he says he wants to—and “Suspicious Minds” is as big a hit as it should be, he could have a significant impact on pop music in the coming months. It remains to be seen whether he can transcend either his grand-old-man image or the Hal Wallis years, but he seems to want to try. I wonder if Colonel Parker approves.
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