Island of Lightning Read Free Page A

times are hard. The ‘footfall’ in Porthcawl, we’re told, has declined dramatically. It seems that people are waiting for our first Tesco to open.
    For the first Elvis festival we had taken our rare pink vinyl double album from 1978 – eighteen number ones and gatefold cover – to display in Sussed . Truthfully, it had rarely been played. Unlistenables included ‘Love Me Tender’, ‘Don’t Cry Daddy’, ‘Crying in the Chapel’. Mawkish, self-pitying, self-loathing.
    That’s why the best Elvis YouTubes show him drunk or overcome by absurdity. The highlight occurs when he heckles one of his backing singers. She misunderstands the purpose of his music, delivering an operetta-style performance. Sometimes, Elvis is saying, this is all… ridiculous .
    And eight hundred and thirty seven Las Vegas concerts? Elvis’s schedule seems preposterous but these days audiences for a single festival can be larger than his combined Vegas crowd. I was there when the Rolling Stones played Knebworth, August 21, 1976. They descended from a helicopter at 2 a.m., each an Orpheus with electric lyre, hair in spikes, tottering on Cuban heels.
    The band faced down an audience estimated at half a million. Surely, they must have believed, they had been delivered into hell. When dawn broke, the scenes were apocalyptic. Knebworth, Woodstock, Isle of Wight? They were our generation’s Waterloo. Or our Passchendaele. What a terrifying thought.
    I admit I used to hate Elvis Presley. Didn’t go to art school, did he? Wasn’t in a group, was he? Importantly, he didn’t write his own material, although he helped with early arrangements. Instead, he joined the army and was manipulated as a cash-cow by cynical management. John Lennon, who owed him so much (“before Elvis there was nothing”) said joining up had castrated Elvis.
    Yet I’ve changed. I still dislike most Elvis music, but the early raw rock and the late dramatic flourish are fine, the former because of reworkings of tunes such as ‘Blue Moon over Kentucky’. These were propelled by a guitar and slapped bass played by Scotty Moore and Bill Black. The unreplicable Sun studio echo also contributed much. But most of those eight hundred songs are overwhelmed by kitsch. Formulaic, they’re downright bad.
    These days Sussed is the last shop in town where you might purchase new literature. Not that anyone does. How do book sellers manage? I’ve no idea. Books are fair trade chocolate in a world of Pound Shop bargain bins. In this town the last real book shop has given up and died. It will reopen as a hairdresser’s, as everywhere else. I’m surprised the owners waited so long.
    With the pink record I’d also taken the biography of Elvis by Albert Goldman. The album must have been noteworthy, as it was immediately stolen. The book was ignored, but then it is a hatchet job, almost literally so. Goldman’s 600 pages have an unpleasant ‘know-better-than-you’ tone. It ends with a graphic account of Elvis’s autopsy, and a list of the drugs present in the body. The complete report has been sealed until 2027, fifty years after Elvis’s death.
    Environmental purists look away now. In an attempt to make money out of the deceased, our idea for the festival was to turn our town centre office, known as ‘The Green Room’, into ‘The Elvis Diner’, offering coffee and sandwiches. We had thought particularly of ‘The Elvis’, assembled from a soft Italian loaf, a pound of peanut butter, several bananas cut lengthways, honey and a bacon garnish.
    We also created a street stall for Sussed products, and played Elvis’s music: scratchy vinyl, as authentic as we could manage. Raul Arieta, who runs the Porthcawl ‘Rock Club’ accompanied the songs, then played alone, R&B becoming freeform jazz. The rest of us danced. I’d like to say jived but