Elvis is in the building
An excerpt from my novella, Jack and Barry, which is out in the UK and USA in June 2023.
Five years later, Barry and Peggy are sitting in the audience of the newly-completed International Hotel in Las Vegas. They’re here, along with some friends from Arizona, to see the opening night of Elvis Presley’s reinvention of his career on stage with a live band and orchestra. The inside of the auditorium is huge, brilliantly illuminated, with more famous names sitting at the luxury stageside tables than even graced the Rat Pack’s shows eight years earlier at the Sands. Elvis is wearing a midnight blue karate tunic designed by Bill Belew just for this show, he’s thin as a knife, his black hair is slick and he moves like nobody else will ever do again. He opens the show with Blue Suede Shoes, runs straight into I Got A Woman, Jailhouse Rock, Don’t Be Cruel.
Barry’s enjoying the show as much as everyone else. The crowd are whooping and hollering from the very first song and the great and the good of American society throw themselves into another great American reincarnation. Elvis is very much in the building.
Midway through the set, Elvis slows the pace down with a medley tribute to the Beatles. He sings Yesterday in that vibrato, baritone voice (‘there’s a shadow hanging over me’) and something triggers inside of Barry. As he has done occasionally over the last five years, he remembers those two days in Paradise Valley after he picked up Jack Kerouac by the side of the road. He never saw Jack again, never got a reply to the one letter he sent enquiring after him. The melancholy sensation afflicts him, and he reaches over to squeeze Peggy’s hand. She’s loving the show and she smiles back at him, then turns to watch Elvis again.
As Yesterday ends, Elvis looks over to his drummer, Ronnie Tutt. He nods at Ronnie, who grins at him and reaches out to quieten the still-ringing cymbals, then begins a loud 4:4 beat on the bass drum as Elvis turns back to the crowd and says:
‘Here’s a new one for y’all.’
As Suspicious Minds begins its inevitable, rampant path to its crescendo, with Ronnie almost destroying the drum kit each time Elvis finishes singing ‘Because I love you so much, baby’ and the horns shriek up into the rafters and Elvis shakes his entire being to Ronnie’s frenzied rolls, Barry can’t think about anything other than Jack Kerouac.
