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#1230605 2020-01-09 1:48 AM
Joined: May 2003
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Officially "too old for this shit"
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Officially "too old for this shit"
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Elvis would’ve been 85 today

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brutally Kamphausened
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I still remember when Elvis died in 1977. Back then I was like... who? I was 14 when Elvis' death hit the national news.

At that time, Elvis had faded to obscurity and was less hip and popular. It wasn't until the 1980's that he resurged in popularity, and like Marilyn Monroe, went from an out-of-favor actor and musician to an eternal iconic classic.

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Officially "too old for this shit"
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I’m surprised to hear you didn’t know who he was. I’m about your age and I knew exactly who he was. Seem like most of the kids in my grade did as well.

While he wasn’t the musical powerhouse he had been, even in the 70s he was a huge star. Just a few years before he died his aloha from Hawaii TV special became the most watched TV broadcast of all time, with over a billion viewers (it may have been surpassed since then). There was also the fact that at the time he died America was right in the middle of the whole 50s revival fad with Grease, Happy Days and ShaNaNa, all of which featured his music (or covers thereof).

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brutally Kamphausened
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At that age, I didn't know who Elvis was.

I like his movies, I like his music... NOW.
But at that time I just hadn't been exposed to his work. Even at the news of his death and overviews of his life, I saw him as an overweight guy who wore rhinestone costumes in Las Vegas, desperately trying to reclaim a fraction of his former glory, with obvious substance abuse problems.

It wasn't until a decade later that I began to see movies and videos that showed Elvis in ihis prime. I may have heard Elvis' music on Happy Days, but was unaware it was his.

Like I said, I similarly had no idea who Marilyn Monroe was until Madonna started exploiting her image in the mid-1980's in her videos.

As discussed in another topic, Elvis' Christmas album is one of my favorites. But in 1977, up till then I'd just had no exposure to his work.

One Christmas, I think 2004, I gave my mom a hardcover photo-book of Elvis, that she loves. She's told me many times she thought he was the handsomest guy she'd ever seen, the reason I thought to give it to her as a gift.

I also recorded a 1-hour documentary 5 years back, "Elvis at 80", a retrospective of his life and legacy at that point in time.







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