Today’s the day

I like music. I like music almost as much as I like film. I used to love music way more than I do now, but that changed somewhere along the line.

But I can pinpoint the exact day that I first became interested in music beyond listening to theme tunes of kids' TV shows.

It was 16 August 1977, 30 years ago today. I'm sure you don't need to ask how it is that I can be so accurate with such a seemingly arbitrary moment in my life story. I'm sure you all know that when something happens that is as momentous as Elvis dying, it can have an influence on the mind of a 7-year-old boy.

It was on the radio, I seem to remember. I also seem to recall the doorstep of my house and telling my then-28-year-old mum that "her boyfriend" had died. (This was a mistake on my part, since "her boyfriend" was Alvin Stardust, but Elvis and Alvin sound the same to a music-ignorant 7-year-old, I guess.)

Then there was the realization that my dad, who had quite recently turned 30, had a bunch of Elvis records. Well, naturally, my younger brother and I had to listen to hear what all the fuss was about. There were singles, albums, and EPs for our aural pleasure, but mostly the early stuff. Indeed I don't recall there being any movie soundtracks in his collection, apart from an EP from the film King Creole. The only later records were perhaps the "Suspicious Minds" single and the hugely exciting Elvis NBC-TV Special album.

I remember my dad saying something weird one time when I was listening to that latter album: "No one sounds more like Elvis than Elvis does on that record." I didn't really get it at the time, but it's something that's become even truer through the past three decades. With all the pretenders to Elvis's crown, and despite all the shit that the man himself had been through with crappy films and bad management, when he got on that stage in 1968 to record what everyone expected to be a paltry showcase of a has-been, something magical happened. It's not for nothing that that performance has ever since been known as "The '68 Comeback Special".

Elvis was back, and he was sounding more like Elvis -- the real Elvis of the early days -- than he ever had before. And more like Elvis than anyone who had tried to usurp him in the meantime. He was The King, and suddenly a new generation of kids brought up on The Beatles, Rolling Stones, and the Vietnam war were getting a glimpse of his greatness.