Elvis Lights Up Las Vegas

News flash of the Fifties: Elvis is performing again. He’ll appear in Las Vegas for a month (divided up into two two-week gigs) at the International Hotel, starting January 26th and February 23rd. The following is an account of Elvis’ Las Vegas opening, after almost a decade away from live performance, last summer.

Elvis was supernatural, his own resurrection, at the Showroom Internationale in Las Vegas last August. Everyone complained that Las Vegas was a bad choice, but you only have to look at the old color publicity photos of Elvis to know why it was the only possible place for him to make his debut after nine years of hibernation: The iconic, frontal image, completely symmetrical, stares out of the glossy blue background. The glaring eyes, the surly mouth, the texture of the face completely airbrushed out, the hair jet black with blue metallic streaks — these are superhuman attributes. It is the disembodied face of Krishna, Christ, Mao, where the image dominates the reality. The adherence to this formula has been so dogmatic that until recently you were in danger of a lawsuit from the Colonel if you used a photo of Elvis that was not the officially sanctioned publicity handout.

As you drove in from the airport, the giant neon billboard for the Showroom Internationale flashed ELVIS NOW (IN PERSON) in 20-foot letters of solid light. In person, in the flesh; the word, the voice, the image, made flesh. The distinction has to be made, for Elvis has been invisible for nine years.

Like the Temptation of Saint Anthony, Las Vegas bristles with absurdities; it reeks of unreality. Its suddenness in the desert is a thirst-demented prospector’s hallucination; the neon totems on the Strip pumping liquid light into the brain like pulsating neurons, the endless chrome dispensers of fate in the casinos and the total absence of time (there are no clocks in Las Vegas).

Even the room you are staying in is wildly improbable; the color TV on its Renaissance stand, an octagonal quattrocento breakfast table under a fake Renoir. From a distance of five feet everything seems to be made of some incredibly ancient worm-eaten wood. In fact, it’s not even wood.

It’s just the ultimate transubstantiation, some synthetic substance that can be excreted into any conceivable shape. It’s obvious — Las Vegas is the only place for the materialization of a Hollywood divinity, the reentry of the celluloid image into the real world.

Even Elvis seemed to find his reincarnation hard to believe. Mumbling, “Whass that, whass that?” He suddenly interrupted one of his long monologues like a speed flash — “Oh, it’s okay, it’s me, it’s me!” And it was hard to believe as the curtain finally went up for the third time on Elvis. His head hung down, legs braced for his defiant stance and an acoustic guitar symbolically slung around his neck.

Waaal, it’s one for the money, two for the show,
Three to get ready, now go cat go …

Wham! Right into “Blue Suede Shoes” before you have time to take in the whole scene. You are out of control, breathlessly slippin’ and slidin’ backwards, faster and faster into the past. An incredible rush, and it flashes at you all the faster because Elvis is singing it at almost twice the speed of the old single, so that it lasts in all about a minute and a quarter. As soon as it’s over he tears into another hard rocker from his first RCA album:

Well, said I got a woman way ‘cross town
She’s good to me, oh yeah …

And the Sweet Inspirations echo “she’s good to me,” pumping back that gospel rhythm like a piston.

He pauses a moment and for the first time you can take everything in. Elvis is wearing a blue karate jump suit with a long karate belt. His bell bottoms have bright red satin vents and he’s wearing a red and white scarf around his neck. His black pointed boots have studs on the toes and heels. His hair is cut in a short Beatle fringe at the front but he’s still wearing the Presley sideburns. Behind him is a six-piece band from Memphis and behind them a 25-piece orchestra silhouetted by glowing backdrop lighting that oozes through a syrupy range of chartreuse, cerise and aquamarine. To his right are the Sweet Inspirations, a soul group that preceded him with some insipid versions of show tunes. Behind them, Elvis’ own backup group, the Imperials, neatly dressed in blazers.

Elvis speaks. “Viva Las Vegas,” he says, laughing; “no, man, that’s one number I ain’t gonna do” — unexpectedly revealing his attitude to the 12 years of schlock movies. “Welcome to the Showroom Internationale, ladies and gentlemen. This is somethin’ else, ain’t it? Lookin’ ’round at all them decorations, funky angels hangin’ from the ceilin’ … tell ya there ain’t nothin’ like a funky angel, boy.” Presiding over the gigantic dining room and its 2000 paying guests are a giant 20-foot pair of papier-mâché statues representing Marie Antoinette and Louis XIV, holding a lace handkerchief the size of a tablecloth, and from the ceiling hang a pair of gargantuan cherubs exchanging a length of cream satin material. Above the stage there’s a dumpy coat of arms, strictly from Walt Disney. Funky.