Elvis: Long live the KingBy Matthew Martin| September 17, 2015 Music Blogs Previous Page THAT’S THE WAY IT IS: Revived to a half-life Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party. YouTube privacy policy If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh. Accept YouTube Content “That’s the Way it is” is more than another Elvis movie. It is more than an Elvis documentary. It is a soundtrack (one of Elvis’s best), part studio-recording and part-live on stage. It is a media experiment (combining Elvis’s leading-man persona and his music artist persona into a more “real world” feature). It is a filmed examination of the planning, rehearsing and performing of a Las Vegas show (at a time when such shows from top-music acts were rare). And it is—in hindsight—a look at Elvis at the beginning of the end. He is lean, focused, creatively motivated and eager to embrace the new challenge that awaits him. After this, he would be none of those things. The documentary movie follows Elvis as he signs a deal to be the lead attraction of the “International Hotel” in Las Vegas (later “the Hilton”). His 1968-1969 comeback gave him the opportunity to be taken seriously as an artist once more, but instead of returning to Chips Moman, he returned to the lesser producing talents of Felton Jarvis. Jarvis had been the producer on Elvis’s albums starting in the mid-’60s. Whereas Moman stood up to Elvis and demanded the singer take the work seriously, Jarvis frequently “settled” and allowed Presley to dictate the pace of the recording sessions. The song-selection (with the exception of a brilliant country album released in 1971) was noticeably lesser compared to Moman’s Memphis-based recordings, with many of the songs recorded by Jarvis in 1970 being throw-away filler barely worthy of release. Still, this was a brief window of time when Elvis’s passion for singing was as strong as it had been since 1960. He could have made the material work if his focus had been given entirely to it. It wasn’t, however. Instead of working in the studio throughout the day and relaxing at night, Elvis’s Las Vegas commitments required concerts from 8pm until well into the next morning. His nights became days and his days became nights. To cope, Presley turned to uppers in the evening and downers in the day, the beginnings of a drug addiction that would eventually claim his life. The look that would come to define his 1970’s “character” is solidified here. Sure he had the high collars in the ’68 special, but that was a full-body leather suit. Here the suit is pure white, 100% cotton, with bits of dangling bling, added for good measure. He gyrates to the beat of his background band in a mixture of karate moves and what can only be described as “unbridled wiggling.” Most think of “Elvis in the 70’s” as an overweight, out of breath singer, squeezed into embarrassing white jumpsuits, but the slender sight of Elvis in 1970 should squash that misconception (for at least part of the decade). “That’s the Way it Is” shows a singer in peak form, belting out then-modern pop songs with perfect command of his audience. Elvis was back in the spotlight he had vacated for a decade in favor of half-baked movies. Unfortunately, it was a revival with a cost. This was the beginning of the beginning of the end. ELVIS ON TOUR: The parade of hangers-on Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party. YouTube privacy policy If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh. Accept YouTube Content Only two years later and it’s striking how different Elvis looks. Is he still slender? Yes but there’s a…puffiness to him. You can see it in the neck and under the eyes. His speech in the interview segments is more slurred than those featured in the 1968 or the 1970 specials. His outfits are more outlandish, with bright primary colors, jewels of varying sizes plastered all over him, a cape—a literal cape—draped over his shoulders (a feature that would only last a couple of years as fans kept grabbing the thing, and once almost dragged him down into the mob). His hair is bigger, his theatrics are bolder and his stage presence is grander (1972 would feature the first usage of the intro song so synonymous with an Elvis concert: Also Sprach Zarathustra). Gone is much of the banter that made the 1970 shows so enjoyable. Gone also is the strong, almost gravelly, baritone that defined his first Las Vegas run. In its place is a very rehearsed performance, with a lead voice that sounds strong in the ballads and newer material but bored and rushed when covering the older song selections. When motivated—as in the concert at Madison Square Garden—he could electrify. Other times he was reading lyrics from the podium and barely engaged. The most striking part of the “Elvis on Tour” documentary is what is going on the background, or more specifically “who” is going on. The whole gang is featured: Red West, Sonny West, Billy Smith, Jerry Schilling, Charlie Hodge and Joe Esposito. Not included is Radio DJ and frequent Elvis Radio (the SiriusXM channel) contributor, George Klein, who was totally Elvis’s best friend for real ya’ll, trust him he’ll tell you so. They were the bestest of friends, honest. These guys aren’t painted in a bad light in the movie, but they are ever-present. You see them singing back up, following behind him backstage, talking much but saying little. These are the enablers. These are the yes men. These are the—as Elvis’s dad called them—“parasites” who leeched Elvis’s money, fame and success for whatever they could. As Presley fell deeper into prescription drug addiction these were the spaghetti-spined nobodies who never spoke up, never challenged him to find treatment. He was the gravy train and they had to keep it rolling. 1972 was a critical year in Elvis’s final decade. He was divorced from his wife, which—despite his numerous (perhaps “nightly”) affairs—devastated him. He returned to New York for a four-show event (his only live concerts in the capital of the media world), recorded a #1 hit (Burning Love) and signed a deal to take a trip to Hawaii for what would be his most famous concert of them all. But 1972 was also the hear when, documented for all to see, the cracks in the armor of the king began to show. Elvis was not in good health, and would not get any better as the years rolled on.
