Elvis (and all that Jazz)

And the motherload of research shows that when people are amazing (or even good) in one area, this tends to transmit to perceptions in other areas (the "halo effect"). Nathan Heflick, Psychology Today, accessed, 20th August, 2017.

When I was 11, I wrote in my diary on the 16th August 1977 that Elvis had died.  It was the only thing I wrote in my diary for the whole of that year such was the impact that his death had: a factoid I felt I would need to remember, because Elvis was only 42 and he was special and talented.   And everyone was shocked.  You could go nowhere without someone talking about this man who had made an impact and who had died too young.  My next door neighbour, Horace, even sang a song in the street in his honour.  It was 'In the Ghetto' and Horace was off  key.

In truth, I don't think Elvis was a celebrity that I had a particular interest in and certainly no crush (I saved that for Captain James T. Kirk, Manolito Montoya and David Starsky) but the waves of pain that rolled around the world reverberated in King's Bench Street.  My street. How could this happen?  What had we contributed to his death?  Where we somehow responsible?  What was this collective grief we all seemed to feel?
Elvis was too young when he died.  He was under enormous pressure and had entered into a kind of pact with the devil.  It is rare for celebrities to reach such momentous heights and impossible for them to sustain.  They get thrown into a place where they exist for their fans in a way that is inhuman and totally unreasonable.  They seem to be infused with mythic status: as though they are not like us mere mortals imbued as they are with an almighty gift that we can barely comprehend. It is nonsense of course - talented or not, they are only human with the same frailties that we all have.

With the benefit of history, I can see how such fame goes in waves - how the exposure Elvis had meant that his real, his ordinary life was limited.  He couldn't nip to the shop in his shorts and buy something without being mobbed.  He lost all sense of freedom. It's tragic.

In my adult years I bought an album of Elvis' that records him on stage.  There is an interaction on it he has with his fans where it is clear that they want more from him than he has to give.  There is sadness in it.  But the fans, all women in this recording, have gone beyond the para-social interaction that we often have with celebrities (and people of our crushes, generally) - "a one-sided, intense relationship we have with" famous people sometimes (Abby Norman on The Mary Sue blog.) On the On Stage album, Elvis draws reference to hotel keys he has received and asks who they belong to.  I imagine that kind of adoration wears thin, eventually if you're essentially a decent, ordinary person with an extraordinary talent.
 
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