He told us that cause similar to that worn by the strange entity that I had encountered in the cold licks to scatter whom had been used by priests conducting funerals land centuries ago as part of my work as a priest today I frequently conduct. Was it I'm not a funeral pretty strong ago that I had encountered in the Catacomb Was he aware of what I only did and curious about the differences between oh. We can only gain. Line often Thorp the producer was Paul Arnold. B.b.c. Radio 4 extra early when. It's 3 o'clock and Elvis is in the building next then we've drama 10 guests are invited to an island by a person none of them knows very well an anonymous voice accuses them of having murdered someone Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None is it for and after that we've a special program from the beyond today podcast teen they take a look back at the last decade in signed at $530.00. 9 archive on 4 which was 1st broadcast in January 20th teen the writer Paul Morley presents a parallel story of Elvis and America from the vantage point of the king's finest hour in 1968 in Elvis Presley comeback special. It's on the bush I fight your heart. We're already quite. Aware of the House Ways the dollar down Thank you. Very. Working here on the upstate. That's for you. We. Are Here we go. They want to see. Why if the comeback special was so magnificent and so explosive in the hearts of so many Why didn't it stick with the seductions just too great was the kernel just too powerful there's no real way to tell what was going on in his thinking he was on a slippery slope of losing him self and so even a wonderful moment of clarity like the comeback special is short lived and of course wasn't it also so for America. To listen to see. Because it was in 1988 it was the lunar new year the Tet the decisive offensive of the war I think what American made me think is that they want to kill me. But right now are we going to tackle the summer very possibly very rare the Kerry side that one already heard. Today. Pretty girl. Who I Am Good morning Carol Tommie Smith and John column 2 great American Negro sprinters get the back possibly as they receive the medal event on wishing gun in their. A 100 yards away. No generation of Americans has possessed more power and wealth Yes No generation of Americans as such fit for the future. I would not buy satellite or a report from Memphis Tennessee. But overall thank you please know we're going to make up and out of nowhere it seemed or out of some kind of exile the man who was crowned king dramatically made an unexpected public appearance you know with no more time than I got in this part is hard to get really into it. On television obviously so that he could reach full of his subjects live from Hollywood the capital of fantasy the American Dream was he back to save himself back to save the nation will simply offer hope and comfort intends turbulent times for a long time Jack I'm trying. For a while to effect a management technique. I don't even know we're going to train it for talent so I thought what became known as the $68.00 comeback special is a vital component in the myth of Elvis Presley goodnight. Without this radiant sign that he was still the charged and corrupted Elvis of the 1950 s. Alive with himself and the bright future of America the myth of Elvis would not have been as complete donor drama. Who more embodies the American dream than Elvis Presley and if Elvis is the American dream then what does Elvis's rise and fall mean what filmmaker using Recchi has devoted his career to examining the properties and perils of the American dream and how it was doomed to fail to turn into a nightmare. For his latest film The King he drove Elvis's old Rolls Royce around America a classic road trip to test the states of the nation and summon up what's left of the king a journey deep into Miss and where it can distort reality I grew up in their seventy's when Elvis is lost and dissolute So the Elvis of Memphis years that beautiful heart throb he's a piece of nostalgia he's something hanging on the wall of a vintage store but I was in those vintage stores and I was dressing like Elvis there are embarrassing photographs of me in high school with a pompadour and I think it was me at a time growing up in the seventy's and into the eighty's trying to reach back to what felt like a bluer sky America not the Reagan America that was crushing down on the dream and crushing down on our sense of what was possible so reaching back felt like a rosier time but then as I grew older of course I started to understand that there's mythology everywhere you look I mean the American dream itself was a myth it wasn't available to everybody it was available to white guys like Alice it wasn't available to black people to women to so many people and so as I grew older Elvis transmogrified from this horrid ornament of nostalgia for me to something that made me question my own a stone and think about the contemporary challenges that the country faces in the way in which Elvis in many ways reminds us of the long journey that we're on the unfinished business of the American dream. With us mail because I was born. I was in a town was on the Mall. I'm assuming this happens. Southeast portion of the United States and that's a matter of fact you know where. I just call myself the u.s. Maybe. It's you know Pete Earley son. By 968 there were. Community helped inspire that long overtaken Elvis is any kind of vital innovative presence the coolest had become the coolest original heat turned right down or he'd been tamed by his in the toys manager Colonel Tom Parker who treated his boys a cash cow if not circus act and was not interested in the art of Pop only the money. The Colonel's original idea for the t.v. Special was to produce a then typical mainstream prying time audience attracting star showcase a nice simple very profitable pheasant ace and all the family of Elvis singing nicely chosen Christmas songs which he could do in his sleep and often seemed to have more time. To present something stirred inside Elvis have some longed for straight instant and for once he disobey the ruinous kernel he remembered himself and where he had come from take one all for. Production on the special began at the beginning of 1968 it was recorded in the summer and broadcast in December after all it was meant to be a Christmas special. You know there are more guys who are they and that thing more ammunition for cargo right now than there are. Gun and they're going to and then. The Bucks special trainings this tumultuous year and although it was all about Elvis it provides a window into a period of American unease and unrest in the middle of national disruption Elvis and the special can be read as an anomalous and delightful moment of certainty. That I was. I was born in Nashville Tennessee in 1938. And I lived during a period of legal segregation in the south Mary Frances Berry is a historian and former chair of the u.s. Commission on Civil Rights in 1988 she was in law school she'd grown up not a 1000000 miles away from Elvis in Nashville Tennessee same place perhaps but in many ways a very different world in every aspect of your life there was supposed to be separation I remember going to a diner like the crystal diner where they sell inexpensive hamburgers you could go in there or any place that served whites and you could stand at the end of the counter or go through the back door and you could order and you could wait for whatever it is you wanted and when it was made you could pick it up and go stay outside and eat it you couldn't go into the restaurant and sit down if as a child you tried to do something like that your parent would say you not supposed to do that you can't do that you're going to get us in trouble. Yes we will discuss the problems of the mammoth sanitation department if with these gentlemen here if and when you really go back to work immediately I mean you at the beginning of 1968 Elvis Presley was in l.a. Back at home in Memphis the streets around his Graceland refuge were becoming filthy the base went on collected protesting poverty wages and dangerous working conditions the city sanitation workers were on strike. The city didn't recognize the union and greeted the strikers with force and images of pickets as marching with black outs because I am a man will broadcast around the world it wasn't simply a strike for higher wages. It was part of the struggle the dignity status equal opportunity to the rights to the medical need for. The economic sufferings of the Senate Asian workers in Memphis and the fact that the job was and still is very dangerous and there were even case of sanitation workers who were caught up in the machinery killed and in the segregated society in which we lived for so long the people who worked at those jobs in southern cities were mainly black will and no matter how you dress it up and terms of whether or not a union can organize it's still racism for at the heart of racism is the idea that a man is not a man. Oh. Oh yeah it's all sugar. One and man. Should have one in there use. Some muscle bones are wrong for me I mention all the men and all the fuzzy treat a friend same mind wot as a boat coming. I'm all shook up. That was what are your plans now that you are about to leave the army. The 1st thing I plan to do naturally is to go home . And Minister and on the picture. Yeah paramount to us. To picture the 20th Century Fox The Colonel apparently decided that Elvis joined the Army in 1958 at the height of his powers even though he hadn't been drafted it was as much one of the Colonel's stunts as anything going to plenty of publicity and making Elvis seem a good decent boy rather than a wild one who scared the grownups with just a little physical movement and a very dangerous tendency to sound like a black man and dress like a homosexual. There were no tolls and without that kind of performance where really he was most at home he almost ceased to exist certainly as any kind of groundbreaking artist pocket created an apparently accessible Elvis by making him actually inaccessible this body of mine that's just that girl and a lot so. Colonel Parker saw that you could make Elvis into merchandise you could make him into a 1000000 endless sequels you could make him into all the b. Movies you want because Colonel Parker was in the business of Elvis incorporated he was not in the business of Elvis the artist Elvis the authentic glimpse of the depth of the American story that I'm profitable that's just great for the tombstone I'm afraid of her hair is planning a European tour sometime in 60 or 610 yes maybe in 61 I'm not saying yes or no that's not my end of the business. Managers the managers and. But I would like to very much channel to fix. Things. While Linda Johnson was a proud man on March the 31st he announced more of a look partial bombing hold. I shall not see. And I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your brother looking for ways. Taken with. Elvis Presley never did. He never performed outside of America he never got to do what he wanted to do the Colonel was in control by whatever method. G.i. Blues Flaming Star wild in the country Blue Hawaii follow that dream Kid Galahad girls girls girls films from a paper thin Freak Zone laser Leaks ploy to current popular trends moving out the actual intensity of one of the world's great idols between leaving the Army in 1960 and the comeback special in 1968 Elvis Presley starred in 24 films these out of time Elvis films created a novel of ludicrous space for Elvis to frivolously carry on being Elvis representing America as a place of fantasy and dreams. Take a trip down to find you'll. Be making. The right Luke songs closely monitors the crazy twists and turns of American culture with a shrewd eye of an outsider. Born in Belgium he made his own young journey from Europe to America in the years when Elvis was in the army Elvis may not have traveled but his image said in the days. Back in Belgium we lived next door to a family of 12 children the eldest was 15 years older than me and he was the only one of the kids who had a private bedroom and it was completely plastered floor to ceiling with pictures of Elvis and so Elvis became just completely bound up with this eldest brother of the valves and put pass fail Belgium and what about his music I mean when you could put the idea of Elvis together in your life how how how he impacted upon you well I do I did go see one of his movies this is much later this is 6364 I went to a local movie house in the New Jersey town where we lived and saw fun in Acapulco on a double The Bob Hope sleeping here. And you know it was a pool light of a nest and I forgot about it the minute I walked out of the theater but I got into big trouble at home because my mother always suspected anything she didn't know for sure that wasn't storing the Trop Family singers she was sure we had to be pornography so Elvis you know was and interesting territory probably a work of the devil. Oh everybody this is I was honest I'm especially proud of all my friends and Great Britain are all to be able to bring you the kind of for foreign pictures that you are right thanks from the bottom of the arc from. Some My best wishes for your health from after all it. Was burglarized. Saying Jim is Celeron he was visiting over there. Are like 2 are alike 2 or wish to The Beatles. Much continued success. As well as the other recording artist and I. Think you. Wouldn't need to do. It. In the way women are some only a. Human with energy. I. Could. Be a minister maybe I did it one man pleasures my behavior. He stands up to Colonel Parker who has become affectively a father figure to him running every every aspect of his existence and he demands that it be the way that he wants it and the way he wants it is to go back to the original band go back to the original songs try to reconnect with that which once made him so extraordinary and enduring and as such it sent a huge message to the entirety of America we're talking about the Vietnam timeframe we're talking about the dissolution of the civil rights movement and so the country is in this soul searching Who are we place not very different from Elvis when you might have counted the country itself out and just thought it is going to go anywhere from here and then out he steps onto national television and he inspires everybody to think that you can go back to your roots you can go back to the original key that was so winning and won the hearts of so many. Good evening yesterday at the end of a turbulent week in American politics Senator Robert Kennedy announced that he was running for the Democratic nomination for president it was a move that liberal Democrats had been urging kind of thing to make for months as their frustration with President Johnson's conduct of the Vietnam War mounted I think it's just a moment and he completely reliant on military power in Southeast Asia was a major mistake I think that we can do better in Southeast Asia I can think we can cut down on the killing. 40 people to go to. The center of the village. Or town of Kalak came over and said you know what they were. But ordinary. I don't think you want to secure want to want to go to. You can't get. Back up into do you. Know you don't restructure shorter assured mark for collection to this group. And you killed how many and that are all just for the area and are you going to kill me you came from the from those who were. Killed about 1015 are men women and children. And babies and. You. See. The director of the Elvis Presley 68 special was the experienced Steve binned immediately before working with Elvis he had made a t.v. Special for another Stahl of the 1960 s. But you look the program simply called to choose. The guest on not program was how he Belafonte. Has generated its own absurd controversy it was the 1st time in what we consider prime time where a white person and a black person actually touched on the air and it was one of the 2 was an anti-war songs taking place during the Vietnam War and it created a national news incident actually an international one with Newsweek and Time magazine picking up on it that touch on the hand incidentally wasn't just a white hand on a black hand it was a white female hand on a black male hand and that touches the deepest sensibilities of racists think. I got a call from Bob Think over who was the n.b.c. Executive producer who said I read about your butt to a Clark heard Belafonte incident and decided based on your age maybe you and others could hit it off you seem to be a rebel he's a rebel and you know I'd like to put you guys together and talk about doing this special ready channel for. Security. The 2 o'clock television program was both cost to America on April the 2nd 1968 the next day a Pulitzer back in Elvis's hometown of men face the striking sanitation workers received an important visit to highlight that cools. The window. It was the noise of April the 3rd night in 68 in Memphis Tennessee a strike by the city's black dustman had been dragging on the city all thought it is met the nonviolent protest with a sullen and stubborn resistance Martin Luther King came to Memphis to add his weight to the dustman struggle somewhere where. The freedom. Still with. Us. Tonight. I was on the campus at the University of Michigan where I was in law school historian Mary Frances Berry and I had come from a summer of being in Vietnam and seeing all kinds of horrific things and it was Martin speech at Riverside Church in 1967 that let me finally to go and see for myself in Vietnam and I had spent months not only being in law school but going around the state speaking to audiences about the need to get out of Vietnam. Actually we were sitting on a bench out set the law school and there were some people dressed up as Indians from a social group at the university who were having some kind of exhibit a conference or something and they were yelling and screaming and someone came and told us that he had been assassinated Dr Martin Luther King were shot and killed on the balcony of his motel in Memphis apparently by a white man with a rifle the governor of Tennessee quickly declared a curfew one called in National Guardsmen to keep order from looting has been a. Bit of a light hearted let me know we're all out. Today the world is weekend give special expanded coverage to America at war with itself in a moment we'll be going over live to New York and Washington we look into the progression of the American Negro from slave to rebel Charles wheel is in our Washington studio general piece and you knew we had riots in major cities Washington d.c. Every city people were just furious and there were some white people there were many who were sympathetic but there were some who were heard to say things like Martin get what he deserved We heard someone say that when in line in the law school some people were talking and saying to each other well you just get what he deserved you know I mean he had men going around creating trouble one also had to pay tribute to the church and the negro organization. People in the street like like chunks of ice. I gather the President Johnson's plans talk with King a few must learn certain Surely there will be massive security problems and any attendance by the president at the funeral yes this I think makes it doubtful whether you will in fact go I think that what Senator Robert Kennedy is it is going I think one must be a little bit. I don't if they have morning I think truth requires one to say that not all Americans are mourning Martin Luther King it is primarily I think an attempt to show the negro that white America cares but I don't think one can assume that all white American I really would like to 2nd that travelling about the last few days one has come across an awful lot of witching tof White who takes the point of view that Dr King got what he does is horrible to say this time and keep reaching people and I bought a rifle the other day and 500 rounds of ammunition I tend to find. What is dumbest supposed to be an informal. Incredibly obscene saying the article are. Supposed to be an informal thing it says you're. Supposed to talk about his 1st record. And when he met these guys for the 1st time when things started happening. And a bit about touching hands with body. Touching a body with hands excuse me old. Man. And he had Sullivan Show shooting from the waist down and. Unloaded Well obviously since I had no. Any way. I'd like uniters to John Kiran stayed with me. You know about 14 years ago we we met or made a record the 1st time 14 years ago. And it's funny things actually you know young guy like going we're going to we ride down in Freeport we're gonna. Call it quite an hour we now have a government exam over exactly what kind of music we think. We call it concrete music what we're going to conquer the right guy to do it. Was. We were in a car. But . Let's. Say. Well face amazing and create a world of his own which was soon in a different reality from the contested challenge than challenging America it belonged to an emerged from the music the early Elvis songs came out of American darkness from mysterious ignored even reviled places Elvis lit it up and lift himself up not so much cynically appropriating raging black creativity and distrusted outside Innes but introducing it as an enthusiastic an expert to an America and beyond that had absolutely no idea that there was such rhythms so drawing such rudeness and paradoxically considering the margins whether music existed such freedom. That's agin. It all started with the excitement of the news it. And then the exciting way he moved and then how he would be remembered. Now you just like Raise up your lip or move your hips a little bit and instantly everyone knows what exactly you're doing many remember Elvis by becoming him inhabiting him a letting him possess them some do it because there is no high quite like imagining you can sing like Elvis not only it seems so easy that least from the casual Vegas end of things some do it because they can play at the wonderful Imperial excesses of true fame without the actual risks and some do it to reveal less favored Elvis the early God like pop star not so much living the dream is inventing it all the later absurdist defeated it somehow still riveting tongue in cheek self polity. Greg wowhead is a performance artist who staged a different kind of recreation responding to a work of art with a work of found a leak creation and analysis of Elvis's comeback special I was originally interested in impersonators and tribute artists and of course you can't really think about that without the glaringly loud thing about Elvis impersonators and for ages I didn't want to do that you know anything to do with Elvis I just thought that says everything's been done and I was never really that interested in Elvis anyway but I did go to this of a stylist of all imports call. As kind of what you think it'd be like an Elvis tribute. Yes Best of all and everywhere you go there's people doing various levels of Elvis impersonation people are selling all kinds of Elvis stuff in the streets you know like the plastic hair that you wear the hat any kind of Elvis thing and then one night there was a kind of more serious show and they awarded different categories for different Elvis's l.v.i. The best fifty's of a best Welsh scheme Elvis best seventy's Elvis and that's actually where I 1st heard about the comeback such because one entire category of Elvis at that festival was the comeback special Elvis. I didn't want you want to come back special until much later and actually having never been that interested in of us before I loved the comeback special is 33 in it and that's also the age that I was at the time is a combination of like being interested in the comeback special and what that was in the trajectory of all this what that was a moment what it was to access it through the video and all the off cuts and all the editing around that all these things are really interesting to me about what that moment was and what the event was and it does became more interesting to me then who Elvis actually in quotes was and it really became this way of me exploring something really personal to me actually which was at that time I was getting to grips in a different way with being a queer man and exploring things around my identity how I want to people to see me how I felt within myself and so the comeback special became about what identity is and how you see yourself how you want other people to see you what it is to be like a person. In standing there trying to say in some way this is who I am see me in this way. About the about the new music of today everything has improved over the last 10 or 12 years sun has improved the musicians have improved. The engineers have improved and. The overall size is much better I think today. But it also basically from gospel music or rhythm and blues and that's why I actually got my. Style of singing from was. Rhythm blues and gospel mixed with Country and Western and. That's about it maybe it's all I can say. At the. End of the man. He's going to have a gun I got to point out at the moment I hope to get the gun out of it and. Be very careful I have begun to get a gun get. Their way from a guy barely. Get it but I had. A break it. Was a howling jungle of cries and obscenity some flying limbs and 2 enormous men Roosevelt Grier the football player and right for Johnson I guess the Olympic champion piling on to a pair of blue jeans I was ahead on the floor streaming blood and somebody put a candidate Kennedy boat around it and the blood trickled down like chocolate sauce on an ice cake there were flash lights by now and the but as of Ethel Kennedy turned to send us she was slapping a young man and he was saying Listen lady I'm hurt too and down on the greasy floor was a huddle of clothes and staring out of it the face of Bobby Kennedy. Like the stone face of a child lying on a cathedral to him. I hadn't have no idea of the time of all this already even of the event itself when I had it back into the creamy green genteel dining room I heard somebody cry Kennedy shot and heard a girl moan No no not again. You. Know. This story is now so set in stone and we are so familiar with it because it has been made to seem as though it could only have happened the way it did any of the story with any other beginning or ending would not lead to the same mess. The myth of the beginning is rooted in the belief that before the violating army in the movies there was powerful authenticity and extraordinary idealistic acts of self creation the could only happen in America where there was such a collection and collision of nations traditions energies prejudices and inventions and there was one period in which we lived in a neighborhood in which there were some poor whites who lived there and so the kids all played together in that neighborhood everybody was poor and had that in common and white people would go sometimes to a black church where they had a particularly preacher and where the music was good and I remember their church that my mother went to even when I was a small child where white people would come and stand out sad and some would come in and listen to the sermons and the music and everything else and later on when I was a teenager there were clubs where music was played by black artists local people played music and whites who played music too much like what happened when they always would come in and they would play into so a lot of what happened to Elvis and the interactions that he head I think it's a very accurate depiction of what happened out set the bounds of the rigid segregation which was the rule and not the exception. He sings a sincere take on black music when chanted white audiences because it seems the most natural thing in the world not to blot out the source the synthesis gets reduced and diluted by the business the money and the $68.00 special do seem to be a moment when Elvis attempts to recover this authenticity respond. Unselfconscious hybrid of sounds rituals and sensibilities that threatens only those who need to build walls between people seem to be different Elvis is pure preternatural energy taps into difference and gave a singular voice. To such a response to the early discoveries of Elvis because it offered a glimpse from a usually indifferent white straight perspective into a hidden America always there simmering and swaggering and worshiping under the surface at the edge of things but until the 1950 s. In a relatively new country never in any kind of mainstream never a main America usually is so it almost completely secluded America. This is the Carter Family recorded in 1030. Junior Parker 153 strain. And Elvis Presley 955. Kopeks long. Called. Black Friday. But. Did you think you had the instincts of an artist or were they just. Almost animalistic instincts in the way that he kind of conceived the synthesis. Oh I think he had the instance of an artist Luke some would artists is never completely aware of what they're doing but certainly making this bridge between the black artist he heard on the field street and Bill Monroe and the company who were playing just outside town are something that was the work of an artist going on there and what do you think happened to the artist then the artist I don't think he disappeared completely I mean he does reappear in the special 168 for sure he was there but he was beset by problems of all sorts you know psychological the effects of his stardom the cocoon that he was wrapped in the layers of security guards and people bring in drugs he lost connection with his deepest instincts and various times recovered them partially only to lose them again it's a sad story. Frame for a. While this is best friend Jerry shelling talked about when Elvis came out and song like a black person as a young person in Memphis and how daring and how beautiful it was courageous and he said the reason it was so threatening was because those in power Listen to this and they thought to themselves wait a minute. If white kids and black kids start listening to the same music and hanging out at the same clubs they might want to go to the same schools and if they did that Jerry looked to me and said Who's going to pick the cotton. You've got to be one of the most right very thing that I've ever witnessed the My Life one of the most brutal and bloody. Way to then through the protesters I mean you can have you out. I think I'm going to headquarters the black cloud if I . Call it the Olympic gold and bronze medalist had been suspended by the United States and the committee and given 48 hours to leave Mexico like I got. Out of the police but there are 3 things someone I never believe that this is America this is our country why do you think this is happening to your country is wrong I think there is a mood of I blame it on the Vietnamese who together with us trace and of the young black. People to that so many horrible things are coming to a head now I. Never ceases to amaze me baby. A lot of Greg wowhead me creation of the comeback special involved paying close attention to one moment in particular a fleeting gesture that said so much about fame and identity and representation he was into Greg Biggs. He finishes singing the song he's sitting there with his guitar with his band mates around him in the audience there in the round and there's some people sitting on the stage down beside him and one of his band mates stands up and he says you've got a piece of lint on your face there being a time of year there's. A minute. And he comes very close to him and he picks up a piece of lint off of his cheek and then drops it beside him and there's a woman there on the stage and she catches the little piece of lint that's come off valves his face and if you watch her she then folds a little piece of lint up in a handkerchief and she puts it in her hand back. And then he just sort of starts laughing a little bit it could be about like what is happening like this woman just took this bill and kept it and he says never ceases to amaze you. Never ceases to amaze me baby you never ceases to amaze me baby it took me a few goes watching the comebacks Bush before I even noticed that I was part of why I really liked about it something in the intimacy of the relationship between him and his band mate in that moment it was like so physically close and then the thing about image and celebrity and person and about how this woman kept this piece of lint that came off the series because it was all of us you know is something that she was going to hang on to and he's She just right there front of it you know and it's been such a weird thing to do when you consider just like 2 people and someone gets a piece like this on his face and he keeps it forever but it makes sense because it's like Elvis of course you would keep anything that touched him you know it's like this comes as magical thing. That comes to. Him and where we're going on the road for me you really want to marry I forgot the lyrics. You know we see in that t.v. Special all the in-between stuff we see and like wiping the sweat. Starting a song and then messing up and forgetting the words and have him start over and some of those moments are kept in what was broadcast so on the one hand it's authentic on the other hand it's served up for us to read as authentic. Was just. When he does the comeback special he has taken the world into his own hands and he understands cognitive clearly the value of that which was most authentic about him and he is overcoming the enormous obstacles of concentrated finance and all those vested interests that are betting on him to reach back into the days when he was close to black people when he was a vehicle for black music and what does he wear that night black leather is not a mistake it's not some confusion Elvis knows that the white sequined life that has lured him away from his origins is not a life of higher authenticity it's a life of higher commercial ality and at the risk of all that he he goes back to black he does the authentic thing and I think that's where you see the man himself electing authenticity rather than just being authentic by accident so I think there's a lot more that's knowing about Elvis's position in his own midst then we you know we might sometimes consider that he's very aware by then certain in 1968 of the power of his own myth he's brilliant and helpless. The following program is brought to you in living color on n.b.c. . Singer presents Elvis starring Elvis Presley in his 1st t.v. Special is 1st present a performance on t.v. In nearly 10 years brought to you by singer maker of the world's finest sewing machines and other fine products for home and industry what's new for tomorrow is that singer today there must be a. Burning pride of. Some. God to be purchased by a higher. Than a sky. Blue. What began at the start of the year it was recorded in the summer in the non Christmas special was bought custom the 3rd of December to strong ratings although it wasn't yet known as the comeback special. It would lead to his Vegas rain weather will have to come to him and him and the hungry fans a needy sanctifying mythmakers could idolize an idealized into the heart's content because whatever happened have a low he went however fake however dead he had shown he could go this high this real this alive as though you couldn't be one without the other you could make him who else the starting point for all sorts of speculations about the idea of America itself I run the risk of idealising the young Elvis and The Young America I mean you know to say that we corrupted this pure unlovely experiment which the slavery that we had the genocide of the Native American the suppression of women's voting rights the I mean this has not been a Rose Garden that then got poisoned this was a complex thing from the start but it had a glimmer because the complex in it was the same as Europe what was new and different here were some vaulting ambitions about personal dignity. human rights and the possibilities of manna those were a sliver but they were something and it was those that got hijacked those that got imposed upon by the unchecked capitalism that's come to take over our national life asked see it as a puck recy the nation has never really come to grips with the any quality and the racism and white supremacy that exists in the nation and there are obvious examples all around us if you see a black student studying at the university who are they are a student sitting at a table you call the police on them because you think they shouldn't be there or you think this some question about whether these should be there or they come in and of star books sit down you think they're some you know problem with them being there or you do were a woman did to me just recently one i went to voted a polling place and mile neighborhood where of live for years and she said to me is our walked up by you sure you live in this neighborhood which i found a strange of curious question acid yes do where i have or a long time she said well you sure this is your a polling place you know this may now be or a polling place it was obviously a presumption on her part that that neighborhood was not the kind of neighborhood that people like me could live a and and so she felt the right to challenge me and this is 2000 a.t.v. And things like that happen to people a black people all the time and so i think that there is this this dissonance between reality and the values that are are and spells to which still knees remitting I think what you're experiencing in 1968 is such a convulsion the question of whether progress such as the civil rights movement in the antiwar protests and the exposure of so much that had corroded America for so long of whether that kind of progress and that kind of future war would materialize or whether we would be dragged back down into the darkness from which the assassin's bullets came with go this way will that go that way I think 2018 is probably a similar time and I think there you have Elvis this canary singing from the coal mine and in a sense providing the soundtrack. But it's a soundtrack with a question mark over it because it says will it be like this or will it be like that will it be dressed in black leather and reaching back to an authentic connectivity and a genuine effort of human togetherness or will that be one of exploitation and the natural division that exploitation requires. These were the voices of 1968 the year that ended with a space triumph that few would have predicted at the start an American man to journey round the moon man was laying claim these nearest space park now very side people on both sides. Were night. I've got the car that's why I'm not making any claims but I'm going to want to this is just the beginning this is going to go on just like it did before for days and days and days and they're going to need a National Guard is not finished that. There has never been a better time to start living the American dream b.b.c. Radio news. At 7 o'clock on Wednesday the 17th of August Elvis Presley the man once known as the king of rock n roll for the following of millions has died he was 42 President was found unconscious at his home in Memphis Tennessee he died soon afterwards in hospital a doctor who carried out North Topsail gave the cause of death as heart failure. Began so pure and ended so impure Elvis opening up his world and then shutting it down always on the edge between a radiant sanity and a divorce madness because it couldn't be any other way and in the end however it manifested. Self with sun kissed 968 specialness or voided Vegas downfall even after he died the performance continued he was built in the image of America and in turn America becomes built in His image however hopeless things seem there is always hope because once Elvis came back the short moment of the comeback special and the extinguishing of that flame. So quickly after back into a set of Vegas glamorous shallow addiction based show this couldn't be a more poetic way of understanding how we have now found ourselves with for example a fraudulent rapacious casino magnate in the oval office overseeing the gutting of so much that one would hold dear in the American dream and yet. You know it ain't over. So soon. It may be that out of the ashes of this awful tragedy. That a new dawn can bright. Depends on each of us. That may be that the prophecy that Dr King once made may come true when he said we now stand at the midnight De Barge systems but I see a new dawn coming. And I thank you very much. Hi this is it I was personally. There are a lot of people ask questions about the kind of things all are sort of. Ours are all the chat. Maybe markets will bring. This kind of talk never question. The mind. But I guess I was just passed over. Because I haven't met the girl yet but I will. Cry out for. Her wherever she may be I'm no matter where I am. From no matter where I am. Going to work I am. The matter where I am. Familiar with . The Elvis Presley comeback special was presented by poll Morley The producer was Martin Williams next week flex on her life and career as revealed in the b.b.c. Archives in conversation with John Wilson from local radio shifts to the frontline of international crises in meeting myself coming back on this weekend's poetry extra we'll be finding out about the most tortured of poets how refighting light who was gay schizophrenia experimenting of drugs incarcerated amid a complex Jewish heritage. To learn more about finites life and his exciting poems join me down for my selection from the B.B.C.'s poaching archive poetry extra every Sunday at 5 on b.b.c. Radio 4 extra. It's 4 o'clock we've an Agatha Christie detective story with ita detective next month we find out who dunnit will join the beyond today. They've mixed together memorable moments from the 20 tends to tell the story of the day big news events. Take us from Tahrir Square to the. Pics beyond today is at 530. 2 a remote island where the past is about to catch up with 10 unsuspecting guests. Magnificent fun cause this is not a sign customs place it's a fortress very impressive this is the moat and this is the key and these are the soldiers inside when you do full use my book no they don't want to drop or take you just. Need to March out of battle that you know they have to stay inside. That scab . Coastal. Zone they're scared of make. It now it was silly anyway you know kid stuff I want to swim out to the right I know I. Can I missed I don't. Know what I could have done it just now was true of kissing my step brother was not getting to go with Mr Hamilton until was chemistry mountain the rock this close the can I. And then there were no by Agatha Christie. To try to find joy Wilkinson. A. Nice thing about it. That is I've learned it well and that now departed but for calling reading or. Recall a. Good Captain Phillips Lombard last minute is ever cool as you like strolling down. These cool lions and tigers and men with machetes so he won't break a sweat for trying this here the 12 foot it turns out was a slightly young man what's implied that size but out of the Day of Judgment is very close close to you maybe you didn't watch every Friday. In the corner of a 1st class smoke.
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