This was the breathless report from a local reporter
in Lincoln NE thirty years ago this afternoon, which
is where I was living when Elvis' death was reported.
I was both shocked and saddened by the news,
especially when it was reported he had died of a
drug overdose. I didn't know that much about his
personal life, although musician friends had reported
that he lived as much on the edge as the Rolling
Stones, and I knew that he was tremendously
overweight but didn't know why. *The* pop singer
of my youth was gone, and he wasn't much over
40 when he died. What a waste.

Elvis had burst into my consciousness at age ten,
some twenty years before his death, surprisingly
enough first coming to my attention because of
exceptionally critical remarks about him by my
mother. Mom was trying to discourage my nine
year old sister from becoming enamoured of either
Elvis or his music, which she said very racist
things about. Of course, I had just earned enough
money to own my own radio, and I listened to Elvis,
Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Haley and Chuck Berry on the
Canadian radio station from Windsor (CKLW) that
I could get a better signal from than the
Kennedy-owned WXYZ somewhere in Detroit.

I admit that Elvis wasn't one of my favorites, but
I always was willing to acknowledge his immense
influence on the burgeoning rock and roll scene,
although within two years of discovering him I had
begun to listen to soul music, which I think I liked
better in those days. Over the years, he obviously
produced a great deal of music, and I probably
heard most of it. His personal travails never hit me
much, or I didn't pay much attention to his various
adventures, but he always seemed like a lonely
guy. Colonel Tom Parker kept him on a tight leash,
and made both of them a lot of money, but he didn't
seem to have friends in the same way that Johnny
Cash, Pete Seeger, Willie Nelson, the Beatles, Joan
Baez, Roy Orbison, Ray Charles or Bob Dylan did -
he seemed a man who had to buy companionship.

So, when I heard the news of his passing on a
steamy August day in east Lincoln, I realized that
an icon of an era had "left the building," and way
too young. Too many good musicians and
entertainers from that era bit the dust from "living
fast and dying young," and maybe that's the way
they would have chosen if they could have, but
both the music world and themselves lost out
because of their wild disregard for themselves.

Now thirty years have passed, and many others
have been "stars" since Elvis' day, but there was
something about the man they called "the pelvis"
that was unique, both in style and his choices of
what to record. We as an audience really lost out
when the word came down that "Elvis has left
the building." VMS
Note: Written Thu, 16 Aug 2007 19:01:32

Cross reference to Eulogies