Colonel schrieb: Habe ich noch nie gesehen...der junge "Boss" mit Elvis Shirt
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40 YEARS AGO TODAY: "YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO DIE"
On this date in 1977, Elvis Presley died far too young at 42. His death did nothing, of course, to stop his enormous and enduring cultural significance, influence and meaning. It was, however, the final, tragic result of an unnecessary decline — a process that enabled Presley to deny himself a long, rewarding life. It also denied his worldwide multigenerational audience many more years of great music and performances.
On the day that the sad news reverberated around the planet, Bruce Springsteen was in New Jersey. He was scheduled to leave the next day for a photo-shoot journey through the Utah and Nevada deserts with photographer Eric Meola.
Certainly Meola, who shot the 1975 Born to Run album cover featuring Springsteen sporting a Presley fan-club button on his guitar strap, already knew what a major Elvis fan Bruce was. Therefore it wasn't surprising that, as Meola recently related to us, Springsteen seriously considered not making the trip in the wake of Presley's death. Fortunately, Eric helped to persuade Bruce to go anyway, resulting in some of the most iconic and beautiful Springsteen photographs ever taken. Check out Meola's recent Facebook essay about how their time in the desert also led to Springsteen's creation of "The Promised Land," a song deeply connected to Chuck Berry's classic "Promised Land." In the mid-1970s Elvis covered Berry's "Promised Land;" it is one of Presley's greatest later records.
While Meola and Springsteen were out west, writer Dave Marsh contacted Springsteen by telephone to get his comments on Elvis' passing for Rolling Stone's special memorial issue. "I could not imagine that guy dying," Springsteen, then in his late 20s, told Marsh. "He was so incredibly important to me, to go on and do what I want to do. When I heard the news it was like somebody took a piece out of me. He was not primitive, like people think. He was an artist and he was into being an artist. Of course, he was also into rockin' his ass, but that was part of it. Onstage, he encompassed everything — he was laughing at the world, and he was laughing at himself, but at the same time, he was dead serious. To me, he was as big as the whole country itself, as big as the whole dream. He just embodied the essence of it, and he was in mortal combat with the thing. It was horrible and, at the same time, it was fantastic."
Within a month or so of Presley's passing Meola also shot some stunning photos of Bruce wearing a t-shirt with an Elvis image on it, while Springsteen rode his motorcycle near his home in Holmdel, NJ. Backstreets is honored that Eric Meola has allowed us to share these untouched photographs on this special anniversary date.
The shirt Bruce wore in these photos actually was a souvenir from the first location of the legendary Providence, RI rock club Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel, incorporating imagery from the 1956 picture sleeve for Elvis' Heartbreak Hotel EP. Click here and here to see images of punk rock legends Johnny Ramone and Joe Strummer also sporting Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel shirts. (Some additional photos of Strummer wearing his Lupo's shirt can be found here and here.)
Over the four decades following Elvis's death, Springsteen often has commented publicly about it. Onstage talk about "how it was that somebody who seemed like such a big winner could lose so bad in the end" occurred frequently during Bruce's concerts in the 1980s. Eventually, he even released two recordings about the tragedy: "Come On (Let's Go Tonight)" (recorded shortly after Elvis' death and available on The Promise box set) and "Johnny Bye-Bye" (released B-side version recorded in 1983 and later available on the Tracks box set).
Just last year, Springsteen again offered his insight on Presley's early demise and so many others like it. This time, however, he did it from the perspective of a mature, lifelong artist approaching his 70s, writing in his autobiography Born to Run:
"The heart of rock will always remain a primal world of action. The music revives itself over and over again in that form, primitive rockabilly, punk, hard soul and early rap. Integrating the world of thought and reflection with the world of primitive action is not a necessary skill for making great rock 'n' roll. Many of the music's most glorious moments feel as though they were birthed in an explosion of raw talent and creative instinct (some of them even were!). But... if you want to burn bright, hard and long, you will need to depend upon more than your initial instincts. You will need to develop some craft and a creative intelligence that will lead you farther when things get dicey. That's what'll help you make crucial sense and powerful music as time passes, giving you the skills that may also keep you alive, creatively and physically... Now, some guys' five minutes are worth other guys' fifty years, and while burning out in one brilliant supernova will send record sales through the roof, leave you living fast, dying young, leaving a beautiful corpse, there is something to be said for living. Personally, I like my gods old, grizzled and here. I'll take Dylan; the pirate raiding party of the Stones; the hope-I-get-very-old-before-I-die, present live power of the Who; a fat, still-mesmerizing-until-his-death Brando — they all suit me over the alternative. I would've liked to have seen that last Michael Jackson show, a seventy-year-old Elvis reinventing and relishing in his talents, where Jimi Hendrix might've next taken the electric guitar, Keith Moon, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and all the others whose untimely deaths and lost talents stole something from the music I love, living on, enjoying the blessings of their gifts and their audience's regard. Aging is scary but fascinating, and great talent morphs in strange and often enlightening ways. Plus, to those you've received so much from, so much joy, knowledge and inspiration, you wish life, happiness and peace. These aren't easy to come by."
Amen, hallelujah and rest in peace, Elvis.
- August 16, 2017 - Shawn Poole reporting - photographs by Eric Meola
Bruce Springsteen
