(Aug.17-19,2001)
(On Pink BG Color) Written in Japanese
 http://www.biwa.ne.jp/~presley/imode/
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(Aug.17-19,2001)
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BBC News, 16 August, 2001
Koizumi and the King (RealAudio) |
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Many people make compilations of favourite songs but it takes a prime minister to get a nationwide audience for them - which is exactly what is about to happen in Japan.
Junichiro Koizumi's personal selection of favourite Elvis Presley songs is to be launched by a record company on Wednesday as a CD. The BMG Funhouse, Inc record label makes no secret of wanting to cash in on the PM's popularity with "Junichiro Koizumi Presents: My Favourite Elvis Songs". And if the CD does not add to the King of Rock and Roll's already huge popularity in Japan, it may do wonders for his number one fan after a tricky week in politics. Anniversary tribute "The CD wouldn't have been released if Mr Koizumi wasn't the prime minister," BMG Funhouse spokesman Katsumi Miyata admitted. BMG seems to hope that having the prime minister's blessing - the front cover shows a photo of his smiling face - will do wonders for sales. "We are expecting that this Elvis CD would also attract fans of Mr Koizumi," Mr Miyata said. According to one report, Mr Koizumi even found time to write the sleeve-notes for the album, which, the record company said, commemorates the 24th anniversary of Presley's death. The initial run for the 25-track CD, which is to be released only in Japan and will sell for just over $20, is 50,000 units. Bad month for Elvis fans Mr Koizumi has some claim to a special kinship with Elvis - they share the same birthday, 8 January. His love of the King is shared by millions of Japanese, some of whom have been out marking the anniversary of his death on 16 August with renditions of his songs. But the prime minister may have other reasons to be blue this August. A nationwide opinion poll taken as he was preparing to visit the controversial Yasukuni war shrine showed a fall in his government's popularity of 5.1 points. It is a worrying sign for the man who swept to power this year on a tide of public adulation of Presley proportions and who will soon be needing all the support he can get for his reform programme. | |
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24 Years Later, Elvis - And His Band - Still Knockin' 'em Dead
Donnie Snow (The Commercial Appeal) With another Elvis week coming to a close, it's easy to lose sight of, well, the music. But there was a time when it was mostly just about the music, and Elvis - The Concert is the closest reminder we have. The TCB Band's Memphis homecoming drew just shy of 5,000 Thursday night at the Mid-South Coliseum for the interactive performance featuring rolling concert footage of Presley performing with the same members of the band on stage. The crowd, though not as demonstrative as the fans who lined up for Wednesday night's vigil at Graceland, spanned the age spectrum from toddler to great-grandmother, and their fashion statements ranged from typical concert fare of miniskirts and Lycra to nostalgic sideburns and bluejeans. "He's fantastic," said Peter Grattan, in Memphis from London filming a documentary tentatively called 200 Cadillacs, which will focus on the King's generosity. "I passed up Ringo to see this," he said, alluding to Ringo Starr, who was playing at Horseshoe casino. "In a hundred years, this kind of performance will be the norm." The King, looking sweaty and rugged in smashing white jumpsuits, still had enough fire to bring the crowd to its feet a few times during the show. To be fair, it was more likely a powerful performance from the Imperials, who stepped to the front of the stage during the first of the two sets for Elvis's gospel numbers He Touched Me and How Great Thou Art. The Imperials, along with The Sweet Inspirations and the rest of the original TCB Band, haven't been slowed by age any more than the King, although it seemed like Elvis was a little off during his Hawaii set, but that could have been the satellite feed. From C. C. Rider to a heartfelt Can't Help Falling In Love, it didn't seem to matter that for the most part Elvis music has become passe. It certainly didn't matter to Tori Satterfield, 5, clapping along to Hound Dog in between bites of a snow cone. The young fan from Bolivar County, Miss., said - with a mouth full of ice - that she'd liked Elvis all her life and couldn't imagine liking anyone else more. Beyond the hyped-up hoopla, the fanatical fans, the impersonators and the commemorative gifts, Elvis still brings chills to little girls. |
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STILL ALL SHOOK UP!
When Elvis burst onto the scene in 1954, he changed the world forever -- that's why he's still the greatest, whatever his sales figures are, says Mark Edwards
The realm of the King
Elvis Presley's record company, RCA, has proclaimed him the Artiste of the Century (the 20th, obviously); and while admirers of Picasso, Louis Armstrong, Samuel Beckett or Marlon Brando might quibble, if we stick to Presley's own field, there are few who would disagree, chiefly because those who might rank alongside him -- Lennon, Dylan -- have already doffed a deferential cap in the direction of the King.
But RCA's other great claim for Presley -- that he is the biggest-selling artiste of all time, with record sales of well over a billion -- is far more open to dispute. We're going to go into the figures in some depth here, but bear with me because, like the fun and games in Florida in the last American election, the combination of solid number-crunching and breathtaking chutzpah on display is fascinating.
The standard RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) figures for American record sales show that the Beatles are the biggest-selling artistes, having sold 150 m albums. In second place is Garth Brooks, with 100 m sales. In third place come Led Zeppelin. Presley finally makes an appearance in fourth place, with sales of 86.5 m.
While it's hard to pin down a global figure, one formula for top artistes is to extrapolate from American sales, on the basis that they account for about 60 per cent of world sales. Common sense tells us that Garth Brooks's rest-of-the-world sales will not be in proportion to his US tally, so perhaps Presley overtakes him simply through the global nature of his appeal; but this certainly won't see him gaining on British artistes such as the Beatles and Zeppelin.
To explain the discrepancy, RCA uses a mix of arguments, some of which seem entirely plausible, while others leave you wondering if they aren't the same guys who explained to successive British governments that if you closed a hospital and sold the real estate, you could enter that as `increased spending on health'.
First, RCA points out that for much of Presley's career, record sales were not monitored with the statistical rigour that they are now. True -- but also true of the Beatles and Zeppelin. Then, it equally accurately points out that the RIAA figures only encompass albums. It's Presley's singles sales, it stresses, that take him over the billion mark. Given that Zeppelin had a policy not to release singles, this will also take Presley into second place; but given that the Beatles were prolific singles artistes as well, it won't give him the top spot.
To get him there, RCA pulls this out of the bag: the RIAA bases its total only on albums that have reached a clear sales target (eg each time a record wins a gold disc, the RIAA acknowledges it as having 500,000 sales; but a record that hasn't reached gold doesn't get acknowledged). Now, whereas the Beatles' back catalogue has been treated by EMI with reverence, with only a limited number of albums released after the band's split, the Presley catalogue runs into the hundreds. Noting that 200 Presley albums haven't gone gold, RCA opts to give each of them a notional `average' sale of 250,000 copies. And this pushes Presley's total over the Beatles'.
It takes a lot of nerve to base Presley's claim on such dubious maths. But beyond wondering how they've got the cheek to do it, we might also consider why they feel the need to. Why does it matter so much that Presley is the all-time No 1? The truth is that it's important not just to RCA, but also to America, and probably to the whole of the Western world. Because Presley shaped the world we live in. John Lennon's belief that ``before Elvis there was nothing'' is shared by millions of us. We wouldn't recognise or understand the world before Hound Dog. And we know that, like the overquoted flapping of a butterfly's wing that sparks a tidal wave halfway round the world, the flapping of Presley's baggy, pleated trousers as he jiggled his hips on stage on July 30, 1954, supporting Slim Whitman at Overton Park, Memphis, changed everything.
His voice, his music and his moves spoke to a new generation and offered them a new freedom that their parents could never have dreamt of (and were generally appalled by). ``It was like he came along and whispered some dream in everybody's ear,'' Bruce Springsteen once remarked, ``and we all dreamt it.'' Bob Dylan put it like this: ``When I first heard Elvis's voice, I just knew that nobody was going to be my boss. Hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail.''
Kim Gordon, the bassist of art-rockers Sonic Youth, once suggested that at rock concerts people are paying to watch other people being free. Nobody has ever been more free than Elvis in his 1950s heyday.
Meanwhile, Presley's instinctive approach to his singing reinvented music. Those present at his early recording sessions at Sun Studios in Memphis recall that when a take was marred by a technical problem, the producer, Sam Phillips, would ask Presley to run through the song again and just do what he did before. ``What did I do? What did I do?'' was Presley's reply.
But if these early sessions show Presley creating a new music (he didn't `invent' rock 'n' roll, but he breathed life into it), it's the 1956 recording of Hound Dog which shows just how much freedom Presley is offering a new generation of musicians.
Go and find it, put it on. Wait for the guitarist Scotty Moore's second solo. The first one is vibrant, packed with energy and jumps out of the speakers at you; but the second ... what was he thinking? He isn't playing the right notes. He isn't even playing in time. He's just hitting the strings. He's just making noise. Those 16 seconds redefine the vocabulary of music. They contain within them the germ of John Lennon's throat-shredding twist and shout, Jimi Hendrix's guitar sound, the discordant mantras of the Velvet Underground, and the aural shock of everyone from the Pixies to Public Enemy.
No wonder, a contemporary critic wrote that Moore's solos were ``out of control.'' Too right. Presley, Moore and the bassist Bill Black were all way beyond control. They were careering recklessly through the musical rulebook, through racial and gender stereotypes and through all known guidelines on how young people should look and behave; and they took a grateful generation with them.
That the freedom Presley represented went way beyond music was made abundantly clear in the 1992 presidential election. The then-governor Clinton was a longtime Presley fan, and his staff, and soon the press corps, began to refer to him as `Elvis'.
At the time, the race was clearly between George Bush and Ross Perot, and Bush enjoyed making jokes about the supposed Clinton-Elvis connection. With seemingly nothing to lose, Clinton took his saxophone onto the Arsenio Hall Show and blew through Heartbreak Hotel. For many voters this was the turning point in the election. For others, the decisive moment came later in the campaign. Bush continued to denigrate Clinton using Presley references (suggesting that he `wiggled' on key issues such as Presley's hips), until Clinton simply said: ``I don't think Bush would have liked Elvis very much.'' Suddenly, a nation clicked. If Bush was using Presley to insult Clinton, then wasn't he also insulting Elvis? And if he was insulting Elvis, wasn't he also attacking the dream that Elvis represented? This was unforgivable.
Perhaps it was all the more unforgivable because Presley had so clearly lost sight of his own dream. He may have offered freedom to his fans, but he didn't have much himself. After his meteoric rise, Presley's slow decline saw him, in many senses, a prisoner. First, he was trapped into a string of money-making but artistically vacant movies; later he was trapped in a touring schedule that took no mind of his declining health. And, for the majority of his career, he was trapped by an ever-mounting dependency on drugs -- which began (in a separate irony) not in the drug-riddled world of rock 'n' roll, but while Presley was a supposedly clean-cut soldier serving in Germany.
Finally, he was trapped, as so many performers are, by his need for an audience. Throughout his career he was plagued by a nightmare in which his fans had deserted him.
So painful was this that he went to great lengths to avoid going to sleep. This need for the applause never left him, until perhaps a few weeks before his death in August 1977, when, at a show in Alexandria, Louisiana, he forgot the words to Can't Help Falling In Love and -- in an improvisation that Freud would have cherished -- sang Wise Men Know/ When It's Time To Go. |
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Japan's Elvis fans to get a new album of his greats
LOS ANGELES: Japanese fans of Elvis Presley soon will get a compact disc of some of the King's greatest hits, chosen by the nation's number-one Elvis fan himself, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. The disc of songs chosen by Koizumi is set for release today by international music company BMG, but only in Japan. "He's a major Elvis Presley fan and was very enthusiastic about having the opportunity to choose Elvis songs," said Michael Omansky of BMG subsidiary RCA Records. Thursday marks the 24th anniversary of Presley's death on August 16, 1977, at age 42. At the singer's Graceland mansion in Memphis, Tennessee, thousands of fans already have gathered for Elvis Week. "Football fans have the Super Bowl, we have Elvis Week in Memphis," said Todd Morgan of the Presley family-controlled Elvis Presley Enterprises, which owns the late singer's image. For the 26-song CD, expected to have an initial shipment of 100,000 copies starting next week, Koizumi - who took office in April - chose hits including, It's Now Or Never, and Are You Lonesome Tonight. Japan is one of the strongest markets for Presley's songs outside the United States. Presley performed and recorded for 23 years - from 1954 until his death, racking up 51 gold singles, 17 of which topped the US pop music charts. Since then, remebering him has become its own industry. |
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Irish fans campaign for 'The King' airport
By Valerie Robinson (the Irish News) An Irishman is leading a campaign to further immortalise the name of Elvis Aaron Presley forever - by naming an airport after the legendary singer. Dubliner Maurice Colgan, who describes himself as Ireland's biggest Elvis fan is lobbying to have Memphis airport renamed to honour 'The King'. The 59-year-old, who has been a fan of the singer since first hearing his records in 1957, wants Memphis airport, near where Elvis's home Graceland is, named after the singer. Maurice launched his campaign after learning that Liverpool's airport was renamed after Beatle legend John Lennon. Mr Colgan, who retired to Swords after spending much of his adult life in Manchester, said yesterday: "When I discovered that Liverpool had named its airport in honour of John Lennon, I thought it was only fitting that Memphis ought to do the same for Elvis. "Memphis is also continuing to benefit from the fact that Elvis lived there. Around 700,000 people still visit Graceland every year and there are loads of Elvis memorabilia shops in the place. It's about time they gave Elvis recognition for all he's done for them," he said. Mr Colgan has lobbied Tennessee's leading politicians and is in contact with management at Memphis airport. He's even come up with a politically correct solution to possible objections. "I thought that if the airport was renamed 'King Airport' it would keep everybody happy. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis and BB King was a famous Blues singer and, of course, Elvis is 'The King'. So people can take from the name 'King' what they will. "It's a million-to-one chance that the airport will be renamed, but we've gotten a lot of publicity and we're having great fun." Mr Colgan, and his wife Maureen, have a special reason for wanting to pay tribute to Elvis. The couple, who married as teenagers, received kind messages from the singer when Maureen was seriously ill during her second pregnancy in 1961. Mr Colgan said: "Maureen was in hospital suffering from kidney failure and I was very down and depressed after visiting her. I decided to write to Elvis, and it was lovely that he took the time to write back to us at a time when we both needed a boost." |
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Billboard, August 17, 2001
Elvis To 'Perform' In Memphis Tonight Yesterday (Aug. 16) marked the 24th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley. Since that time, hundreds of thousands of fans have marked the annual somber occasion during "Elvis Week" with a candlelight vigil to Presley's gravesite at the Graceland mansion in Memphis. But tonight, many of those same fans may feel as if Presley never left the building at all. "Elvis - The Concert" is a state-of-the-art concert production featuring Presley's original band members from the 1970s, including J.D. Sumner and the Stamps Quartet, the TCB (Taking Care of Business) Band, the Imperials, and musical conductor Joe Guercio. As Elvis "sings" his hits on a large screen above the stage (recordings that were drawn from career-spanning live performances), the musicians play live onstage behind him. And according to Guercio, who worked with Elvis from 1970 to 1977, the show isn't different than any artist currently on tour. "It's phenomenal," he says by phone from Nashville. "It's hard to explain to people, but if you go to any concert today, if you're not sitting on top of the stage, you're watching screens. It's the same vibe. He's alive in the building with this, he really is." The concert initially was partially performed at Graceland in 1994 during Elvis Week and again in 1997. Guercio says that the show needed some fine tuning but, having worked on "Unforgettable," Natalie Cole's Grammy-winning duet with her late father, Nat King Cole, he knew it would work. "It works because of the energy," he says emphatically. "And the energy, the momentum, it's unbelievable. It's bombastic. The thing that people have to understand is that there is no imitator up there. This is the original cast. There is nothing off-Broadway about this show." The show has toured throughout the world and has drawn acclaim throughout, even being named by the Guinness Book of World Records as "the first live tour starring a performer who is no longer living." But it also has seen its share of skeptics, thinking the show is in bad taste or a blatant cash grab. "I would say come to the show," he says. "We played Radio City Music Hall and we had one of those so-called 'wise-ass' interviewers. He asked, 'What do you think Elvis would say to you today if he walked onstage and saw what you were doing?' He'd probably say 'Slow it down, boys.' He's 25 years older!"
According to Presley's official Web site, the Memphis show this evening marks the final performance of "Elvis - The Concert." However, Guercio believes the concert will return next year to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Presley's passing.
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Vernon Presley's Home On The Web
Elvis Presley's fathers house is now open to tour. To find out more click on the headline to visit the web site. |
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Elvis Presley Special Edition 7" RCA Vinyl EP Collection
This lavish box set of eleven 7" EPs is proof of the enduring global popularity of the 'King', featuring reprints of original RCA EPs from all over the world - UK, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Australia, Iran, New Zealand, France, and the USA. All EPs feature original cover art, and contain Elvis classics such as Love Me Tender, Loving You, Teddy Bear, Return To Sender, One Night, Girls! Girls! Girls!, and many more - 48 tracks in all! Comes complete with an Elvis poster and a handsome gold tone box. |
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Thursday, August 16, 2001
Graceland Connection Scottish man falls for Mississippi woman By M. Scott Morris (Tupelo Daily Journal) GLEN --- One year and one day ago, an Elvis fan from Scotland met a lady from Mississippi at Graceland. Yesterday, Brian and Sheila Egan drove to Elvis Week in Memphis as husband and wife to take part in events commemorating the King of Rock 'n' Roll's death Aug. 16, 1977. Matrimony was far from Sheila Egan's mind when a pair of friends convinced her to travel to Graceland last year. "I'd only been away from my husband of 35 years for a period of months," said Sheila Egan, a divorced mother of two. "The last thing I wanted was another man in my life." There was something about the dashing fellow wearing the plaid kilt that caught her eye. "He walked right up and had his kilt on," she said. "Well, I thought, that's different." The two hit it off quicker than you could sing "fools rush in," but Brian Egan, 55, a divorced father of two, had family and friends awaiting him in Dundee, a city on the eastern side of Scotland. "After a month or so of making phone calls and sending cards backwards and forwards, we decided we needed to meet again," he said. That meeting led to another, which led to E. "We went to Graceland and he proposed to me. That was on Jan. 19," said Sheila Egan, a 55-year-old Glen resident. "We were right there where it all started." Brian Egan flew back to Scotland to "tidy things up," leaving his bride-to-be to handle the wedding arrangements. There wasn't much need to consult over a location. Nothing could compete with the wedding chapel at Graceland, where a string of Elvis' love songs play continuously. "It plays throughout the service," he said. "When you say your vows, Elvis is singing in the background." With his two sons serving as best men and her son and daughter in the wedding party, the Elvis-inspired couple from opposite sides of the Atlantic said, "I do," on June 6. Our song "One of my favorite songs is 'I Can't Help Falling in Love with You,'" Sheila Egan said. "That was playing during our dance. It was like a fairy tale, like a dream." The story continues in Glen, where Brian Egan moved after the nuptials. His wife raises miniature dogs - Boston terriers, Yorkshire terriers and others - and he helps with the business. It's been an adjustment. The Mississippi sun can punish a guy from Scotland; Captain D's can't compare to British fish and chips; and real football players don't wear pads. Oh, and there's that whole driving issue. "He scared me to death a few times when he first started driving," she said. He's getting used to driving on the right side of the road, and he's already made a solo trip to Tupelo to visit the Elvis Birthplace. The other adjustments will take time. "I'd always said, 'For the right person, I'd move,'" he said, "but I thought she'd be in Scotland or Britain. I never bet on 4,000 miles away." "It's something special," she said. "You certainly are," he responded. |
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Japan's PM picks favourite Elvis songs for compilation
TOKYO (AP) -- Elvis Presley fans in Japan will soon get to hear a collection of standards picked by the country's wildly popular prime minister. The disc, Junichiro Koizumi Presents: My Favorite Elvis Songs, will hit Japanese record shops Aug. 22, said Katsumi Miyata, a spokesman for BMG Funhouse Inc., a subsidiary for international music company BMG. "The CD wouldn't have been released if Mr. Koizumi wasn't the prime minister," Miyata said. "We are expecting that this Elvis CD would also attract fans of Mr. Koizumi." Since taking office in late April, Koizumi has enjoyed record popularity, with approval ratings as high as 90 per cent. That brought his ruling Liberal Democratic Party a sweeping victory in July parliamentary elections and increased sales at a tiny souvenir shop at party headquarters. The shop is usually packed with people buying Koizumi T-shirts, mugs, hand towels and posters. The record label hopes the Koizumi boom will lead to strong sales. Proceeds of the 2,427-yen CD will go to charity, Miyata said. The 25-song CD, commemorating the 24th anniversary of Presley's death in August 1977, will only be released in Japan and the record company plans an initial shipment of 50,000 discs. It contains such Presley hits as I Want You, I Need You, I Love You; Are You Lonesome Tonight? and It's Now or Never. The CD's front cover shows a photo of a smiling Koizumi -- with his trademark wavy, long hair -- next to Elvis. In a statement sent in May, Koizumi wrote: "My birthday is Jan. 8, the same as Elvis. It's one of the things I'm so proud of." |
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