A Concert movie that changed me

Elvis in Alabama

But a no-show at the Iron Bowl

Yesterday I kept thinking about how much I’d love to talk to my parents, to hear their voices and tell them so many things, like how they’ll soon be great-grandparents, and how well they raised us. And how much I just miss them. We all know that death is final, but sometimes it hits even harder just how final, final can be.

So after feeling this need, I finally realized that a likely cause or motivator was that yesterday was their wedding anniversary. It would have been 69 years. My mother died in 2018, my father in 2000. So they were married for 48 years. Not bad, even though there were definitely rough patches, and the last eight months of my Dad’s life were increasingly filled with dementia.

So last night my wife and I toasted them with a lovely Chardonnay, and at my wife’s request, I told stories of their meeting and then whatever random memories flooded through me. I put on an Elvis Presley album, a live recording of songs from the circle of his comeback special on NBC in 1968.

“That’s appropriate,” my wife said. “Did both of your parents like Elvis?”

“Mom loved him, and though he wasn’t Dad’s style, he did admit that Elvis was King, which from a man who loved Dixieland and Big Band music the best, and generally disliked rock and roll, that was something.”

We talked about my parents’ musical tastes a bit more and the albums they’d buy, from Al Hirt and Pete Fountain, to Sinatra, Guy Lombardo, Bert Kaempfert, Benny Goodman, and Herb Alpert.

“We didn’t have any Elvis records, though, because Dad wasn’t going to spend his money on Elvis, as much as he might have respected him.”

I started thinking then of how my mother came to love, adore, nearly worship Elvis. We had watched Elvis movies on TV whenever they came on, from Spinout to Flaming Star. I loved them all, and while my parents watched with me, they found most of this work to be rather silly, preferring masterworks like Camelot and Lawrence of Arabia, My Fair Lady, and Red River.

So as I remembered, I thought of that late November Saturday in 1970 when I convinced my mother to take my brother and me to the Alabama Theater in downtown Birmingham to see the newest Elvis film — a concert film called Elvis: That’s the Way it Is. This was the height of Elvis’s comeback to stardom, following one of his biggest hits, “Suspicious Minds.” Not many, or any, of my peers liked Elvis, but his voice and style were never far from my sensibilities, somehow.

The weirder part of my request to go to the movie was that this Saturday was also the afternoon of the annual Alabama-Auburn football game, the Iron Bowl, played every year, in those days, in Birmingham, a so-called neutral site. I suppose the game wasn’t on TV that year, and my Dad had a single pass. Today, I’d have to at least listen on the radio if I couldn’t see the game, but at age 14, maybe I thought there were better things to do that have my teenage ear stuck into a transistor device.

Or maybe I just feared the inevitable. Auburn was better than Alabama that year, mainly because of their future Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback, Pat Sullivan. Alabama had already lost four games, and even I had bet a dollar against my beloved Tide. So watching a movie on the big screen seemed a viable and desirable option.

What I couldn’t have known, and what my mother at least didn’t expect, was how good this concert film would be. She thought it was going to be another silly Elvis as hero narrative, which in the best way, it actually was, because Elvis was never more heroic that on stage in front of his adoring fans, singing all the songs that won our hearts and both soothed us and encouraged many of us to throes of rapture and ecstasy.

My mother, for instance, was never the same after this concert film. It was almost like being there, and if you’ve never experienced a 70 mm concert film in a show palace of a theater, I can’t describe for you adequately what you’ve missed.

I’ll link the record here, or rather a favorite song, but even then, listening through this medium can’t do the show justice. Not even close.

He covers some pretty major hits on this film/record like “I Just Can’t Help Believin’, “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” and “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me.” And no, I don’t feel “square” for mentioning these and how much I love them.

My very favorite songs from the record, though, are “I Lost You” and “The Next Step Is Love.” So sue me for being so schmaltzy. Can’t help it.

Whatever I felt, though, my mother and brother went beyond nuts, using every cent they had thereafter to buy more and more Elvis records, which I had no problem with, of course. For Christmas that year, as I related to my wife last night, I got the soundtrack to That’s the Way It Is. I played it constantly.

But crap, somehow over the years, it escaped me, or I lost it, or traded it, or maybe it got caught in that crate of my brother’s albums that was taken from my mother’s garage by other hands than ours. I’m glad it’s available here, and if I want to spend $58, I can get a vinyl copy again. Hhhhm.

Many of the songs I love feature those beautiful backing vocals and an orchestration that marked Elvis’s later sound, before things got a little too crazy and sad.

And as I told my wife all of this, one of my mother’s favorite Elvis songs began playing on the album I had cued up for us:

“Memories.”

It was almost too much.

Oh, and the football game? Alabama put up a valiant fight, leading 17–0 at one point. When we exited the theater, still hearing Elvis in our memories, we saw a parking attendant going wild. Auburn had just tied the game, and as we listened on the drive home, the lead see-sawed — Alabama seemingly taking the lead for good on a Scott Hunter to George Ranager TD pass and then 2-point conversion — until Auburn finally won, 33–28.

So sad, but in that funny way of life, better than expected, too.

Dad was upset as usual, but all in all, it had been a pretty thrilling day.

As my wife hugged me after all our stories and wine, I kept thinking that I’d like to share these memories with those I love.

And so…

Thank you to Pierce McIntyre, Penelope Mayfield, and everyone at Plethora of Pop. Any Elvis fans out there? Steven Hale, David Acaster, Chris Zappa, Rui Alves, If Ever You’re Listening, Danielle Loewen, Paul Combs?

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