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Celebrity template
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Elvis Presley created the blue print for the twentieth century icon
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WE LIVE in a creatively sterile age. In the times of reality television, it does not take much to garner 15 seconds in the spotlight. Celebrity is plastic and one would be hard-pressed to think of an original character.
John McEnroe screamed at umpires, stamped his racket and swore at opponents not to garner TRP but because that was the way he was. Steve McQueen roared down Sunset Boulevard at one in the morning with the silencer off not to catch the morning headlines but because he enjoyed speed.
And Kishore Kumar insisted on kachori and rabri before singing while Ashok Kumar painted in the nude not to make a big time statement but because that was the way they were.
Elvis Lives, a documentary on Elvis Presley traced the genesis of celebrity from the man who in rocker Marilyn Manson's words set "the template of a rock star." Presley used the potent and then nascent medium of television to create a star. He wooed and seduced viewers with his raw energy. While at the time there were protests against "Elvis the Pelvis," he sure looks prim against acts like Britney Spears, JLO and the mother of them all Madonna.
When Bruce Springsteen says he took his guitar, "stood in front of the mirror and tried to do an Elvis," he is echoing the sentiments of every musician who followed the King. From the frenzy generated during The Doors concerts to Guns & Roses, everyone wants to be Elvis. In describing Presley as the "Eminem of his time," actor Dennis Hopper has got right in more ways than one. Presley was the first musician who sang "Negro songs with a white voice which borrows in mood and emphasis from the country style modified by popular music," in the words of Sam Phillips of Sun Record where Presley recorded his first numbers. Super Model Naomi Campbell comments, "He wasn't black or white, he was Elvis."
Between 1965 and 1977, Elvis had a total of 106 top 40 hits and also acted in 33 films paving the way for musicians to check out Hollywood - think Madonna, Whitney Houston, JLO, Mariah Carey and most recently the Britney Spears debacle Crossroads.
Irish rocker Bono of U2 in a deconstruction of Elvis comments he was the "original rebel. A blender of blues and gospel sounds." Bono comments that with passing years, Elvis gained weight - not just physically but as a personality and his last years were "almost operatic." The King has been dead sometime now (August 16, 1977) but his legacy and his music most definitely lives on as his obvious from the many cover versions of his songs.
MINI ANTHIKAD-CHHIBBER
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