The thing that people born after a certain year don’t really understand about Elvis is how big a star he was.
I mean, he was the type of person that everyone knew who he was, even those who lived in areas that had never even heard one of his songs.
He was that big.
As the years went on, the hard living that he did to keep up with the pace of being the biggest star in the world took its toll.
You could really tell by the end that things were not going well for him physically. He was overweight, he was addicted to anything that wasn’t nailed down.
However, he could still belt it out when he needed to. Right up until the very end, the man still had pipes for days and talent that would live on until the present day.
Heck, there is a chance that right now as you are reading this my father is either listening to Elvis, watching one of his movies, or talking about him with someone.
One of the things that I love about technology these days is that seems that any video footage that has somehow survived no matter what form it was originally in can be transferred into a digital format and effectively live on forever.
Recently some video footage was unearthed of what I am to understand was the final concert Elvis Presley performed. The footage is of him sitting behind a piano.
He is in rough shape, I mean to be fair, he took pretty damned terrible.
That being said, he belted out what might be the most haunting version of Unchained Melody I have ever heard in my life.
It was later said by folks that were backstage that night that for whatever reason Elvis was in a tremendous amount of pain and by this point late in his life heavily dependent on painkillers.
He somehow made it through the show. There is something to be said for performers who manage to make it through a show no matter what, but as much as I love listening to Elvis it is also a little bit sad.
If only he had been able to get certain things under control and we would have had him longer than we did..