It’s 30 years since Elvis Presley died and though I hate to admit my age I do remember
what I did that day despite my youth (yeah I was -10 of course) and it’s quite a mundane snapshot of a cross section in time. I went out on my bike to…the newsagent (remember I loved magazines and had several reserved on subscription at the newsagent). I hated to go and claim them actually as the Scottish proprietor would vet all reserved items and sarcastically take the mickey mercilessly in a way I found embarrassingly patronising.
I remember seeing the headline outside the newsagent ‘The King Is Dead’ and ignorantly puzzling at a loss of royalty that I wasn’t aware of. I wasn’t ignorant of Elvis but would not have connected ‘the King’ title to his name.
I spent the day with a friend whom I actually stayed in contact with until around 10 years ago until for various personal reasons on both sides we each became somewhat estranged.I remember watching the evening news which contained a lengthy look back over Presley’s life and the reaction in America. In Britain we were at the height of punk rock so my view of the event was probably filtered via this.
I don’t disregard Presley and his place in the birth of rock and roll and knew many older than myself (I had a lot of much older friends at one period in my life) who were dedicated fans and continued to mourn his passing whilst celebrating the legacy of his music.
4 Comments
August 16, 2007 at 7:38 am
Ah yes… I was playing cricket with my neighbour’s kids when I heard.
August 16, 2007 at 7:38 am
Funnily enough, I do not remember where I was or what I was doing when the news of Elvis’s death was announced. I knew who he was, of course, but didn’t rate him highly. I am slightly intrigued by how captivated people still are by him. That’s charisma, I guess.
It’s the same with the Beatles: they have some jolly tunes and a youthful appeal but why they evoke such slavish adoration is beyond me.
Nothing succeeds like success, I suppose.
August 16, 2007 at 7:53 am
Hello ST-I think my memory is a general one about how we remember what we were doing on days when big news broke such as when JFK was shot(though I wasn’t around for that) when the space shuttle exploded, Lockerbie, death of Diana, September 11 etc as the magnitude of these events seems to crystalise our memories around the time of these events. The Beatles, I always thought also seem to be part of a nostalgia for a time (the 60’s) but music does have a big impact in some peoples lives too.
August 18, 2007 at 12:35 am
I was taking my baby out of the bathtub. The tv was on in the room, the news was finished, and this was the sort of last bit of information given at the end of the news, as if it was really quite unimportant. But I remember the moment, the exact moment, very clearly in my mind. I felt sad because I knew he had been abused by everyone his whole life.
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