Elvis:
The Man Behind the Music

The year 2005 contains two major anniversaries in american popular music. It marks 50 years since 1955, when rock ’n’ roll first conquered the pop singles chart, and also what would have been the seventieth birthday of Elvis Presley (who was so young when he made his initial breakthrough that his father had to co-sign his first contract with RCA Records for him). For Elvis, the timing was perfect. However, in terms of my own appreciation of both occurrences, the timing was completely off.

My father was born the same year as Elvis Aron Presley, and I came along a season or so after the King returned from the Army. My dad was slightly too old to be part of the demographic that made Elvis a superstar, and I was too young to get it. When I was first starting to notice pop music, in the 1970s, it was in a fallow period. I was caught between disco and punk, and neither appealed to me. Rock ’n’ roll was music that my parents’ generation liked. It meant the Stones, the Dead, Hendrix, Dylan, and other figures whose attraction still remains beyond my comprehension. (To this day the only records I have by them are LPs from my late dad’s collection.)

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