Book Review: Elvis has left the building
Posted: October 30th, 2025, 3:59 pm
The Death of Elvis and the Rise of Punk – I am unsure how there can be a book about punk and Elvis that entirely leaves out Billy Idol. The book would have that The Clash and The Sex Pistols were punk’s The Beatles vs Rolling Stones – with the Ramones, Blondie and Talking Head being the commericalized American end blending back to Davie Bowie and the techno-elctro=glam glitter of Adam and The Ants and even a pre-culture club Boy George.
The punk band Generation X is tossed off as a list of clubs and bands, and while much is made of The Clash’s london calling LP cover vs Elvis Presley’s first album and Sid Vicious buying a gold lame jacket he thought belonged to Elvis.
Billy Idol was in Generation X and he leather ladded up and was the punk of the 80s, bluring that leather and chains heavy metal – line.
Anyway, that is what is bizarrely missing from the book.
What is strangely in the book is the Davie Bowie asked to produce an Elvis session in 1976. Seriously never happened, Elvis was rarely a fan of his fans and generally didn’t appreciate how they incorporated him as an overlay of their own initial artist self.
Elvis and David shared January 8 as a birthday, the lightening bolt of Ziggy Stardust was Elvis’s own TBC and the unreleased Black Star turned Flaming Star was incorporated into Bowie’s final release in 2016, the year of his death. Dylan Jones’ book came out last year and will likely have a Bowie update in any later printings. Flaming Stars are totally comets that like burn out, eh.
Elvis Presley knew his core fans were women, not men. He didn’t sing to the men in the audience, he was about attracting women for the men of his inner circle – the groupie vetting process.
Elvis never learned to read music, he never really wrote a song, although he did legitimately co-write a few in the 1960s, he didn’t follow the crowd in his appearance and he took beatings for it in high school and on the early circuit – he dressed in lurid colours and wore make up and a lot of people thought he was a homosexual, they thought everything about him possible, he conducted orgies more than orchestras.
The All Elvis XXX Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret. He was the first metrosexual punk who the Teddy Boys, the Teds copied.
But Elvis withdrew behind a shield of his Memphis Mafia and a wall of litigation and corporation and paid his humanity to become a brand. The Presley Picture his own movie genre, more than merely being in them. By business standards, no one beat his success, he accounted for the majority of RCA and the various movie studio profits, his Tickle Me saving the venerated United Artists from bankruptcy.
He was so outside the establishment when he started that it wasn’t until he died that people realized how central it had relocated, culture off of it’s Atlas Axis.
He also hid behind a wall of actual establishment – ROTC in high school, Miltiary Service, Military Movies and a law enforcement badge collection from every level of law agency.
I had only one serious quibble and it’s that the book gets the Elvis JC award speech incorrect and given that that is on youtube, that’s really hellalazy.
I rather enjoyed the book, and read it over 2 days, the best part was the aftermath bit, and the explanation of Elvis’ global reach – from inspiring The Beatles out of liverpool, the aforementioned David Bowie, the punk movement in the UK with the following rockbilly revival owing to the movie Grease no mention of The Stray Cats, Billy Idol.
But the triangulation of the UK, to the USA, to the Australia where Elvis’ gold Cadillac toured instead of the man, but his movies and his records sold, to the bonus: Japan’s rockabilly culture – to the 1973 Aloha Special made to broadcast for Japan’s prime time.
That culture ripple and wave, before Elvis, only 1 person had had a million selling record. The music charts were based on radio, disc sales and disc plays on jukeboxes.
They were sorta for music what sports statistics are for jocks.
the 2 major wars that washed across Europe set back their economic diversity and artistic talents fled to where studios still stood. America’s cultural output via Hollywood and Music Radio… markets and niches, traditional arts and fads, extensions of human ability and then adaptive technology- what is a profession becomes the consumer pastime.
before Elvis Presley, no one had heard of being a rock star, now everyone wants to be one. how conformist is that, eh?
To my mind, punk was the angry 70s expression of rockabilly.
the same beats with the opposite message of dancing away one’s blues
rather, scream and smash the night away
a few years ago, I was walking in downtown Vancouver
I heard what I thought was a rockabilly band playing
when I got within 4 blocks, the music beat sounded different and I thought it was a punk band playing
but when I got a block away and close up
it was actually a rapper
so
the beat the beat the beat
the emotional pulse
siss boom bang
what is really astonishing is that when Elvis died on August 16, 1977, in America – NBC, which produced his 68 comeback special and ABC, lead with Elvis at the top of the news and scrambled to do special programing on television, CBC, which had filmed 2 complete concerts did not and they had all the most recent useable footage.
the 1950s invented the idea of The Teenager, a not child but not adult who had money to spend and time to fill. Elvis Presley would have been 81 had he lived. He died at 42. now imagine that no one wrote about him for 70 years since 1977. interesting eh?
