While he is often referenced in stories of this place, Jack Kerouac never made it to Las Vegas.
I suppose it's because Vegas is so often a goal—or at least a crucial stopover—on some mythic road trip, and road trips are automatically the province of the man who made On the Road more than a book or state of transit, but an end unto itself.
However, you'd think all the times he and Neal Cassady made that mad hot-car dash from New York City to Mexico to California, from when he began making notes in 1948 (the year the Thunderbird Hotel opened) to the 20-day spree during which he wrote it in 1951 (Binion's Horseshoe opens), and its eventual publishing in 1957 (the Tropicana), he'd have found a way to work a Sin City moment into On the Road.
After all, we got wine, speed and whores here too, pal. Little light on the poetry readings, though ...
Still, one can only wonder what the man who called for "fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars" would've thought of miles of neon bursting and sizzling at twilight, or of landscapes that change even as you stand still. But just like we'll never get to hear Frank Sinatra sing Tom Waits or read F. Scott Fitzgerald on Edie Sedgwick, we'll never see what Jack Kerouac might have written about Las Vegas.
However, a form of Kerouac reliquary is passing through the streets, as his original manuscript for On the Road hits town this weekend. All 120, single-spaced feet—Kerouac pasted together a dozen 10-foot rolls of paper—will be on display at the Rainbow Library starting March 24. The unorthodox form of the manuscript was supposedly because Jack didn't want to stop even to change the paper in his typewriter, but it's also reminiscent of the white line down the highways he eulogized.
But even more celebrated than the highways were the cars that streamed down it; whether bought, borrowed, stolen or hitched for the hour, Kerouac praised the many fishtailed vehicles that carried him through the night. So it's fitting that, as the word hits town, so does its vessel, in the form of hundreds of pre-Kennedy cars atop the Gold Coast parking garage—all easily described in his terms as "a beautiful big car, the last of the old-style limousines, black, with a big elongated body and whitewall tires and probably bulletproof windows." Yes children, the Viva Las Vegas rockabilly convention is descending upon us for the eighth year, a celebration of rigorously retro style, substance and the firm belief that the only worthy culture was that created between 1950 (Desert Inn) and 1964 (Lady Luck).
If Kerouac made it not the destination, but the journey that mattered, greasers' auto obsessions take another step back and make it not the trip, but how you take it. Never mind that your '58 Buick never makes it out of the garage—check out that triple-tone paint job and those yards of chrome.
While Viva Las Vegas is referred to as a "convention," there's no official organization—like the American Rockabilly Organization or the Alliance for the Advancement of Sideburns or the North American Marlon Brando Lookalike Association—sponsoring it. Which I suppose means that, with no invitations extended or credentials expected, anyone could spend Wednesday night procuring a Little Richard T-shirt, a sleeve-full of ink and a '55 Olds and roll up Thursday morning as a full-blooded member of the tribe. But when things are kept informal, there are no tedious presentations like, "C'mon Everybody: Karl Marx, Eddie Cochran and the Post-War Proletariat Dialectic" or "Pomade and You!" and everyone can get down to the real business of hanging out by a pool, drinking, listening to several dozen bands (all of which will feature a stand-up bassist), drinking and buying the occasional gearshift knob, sundress or round of drinks. Argue all you want with the idea of a personal aesthetic as a way of life—who isn't happier seeing a dozen Betty Pages playing roulette or guys in Mexican wrestler masks playing surf guitar? Which may be why rockabilly style endures through the British teddy boys of the '60s, Grease and Happy Days in the '70s, the new wave quiffs of the '80s ... let's just say that in the year 2181, be it a paradise of world peace and hovercrafts or a post-apocalyptic wasteland, one thing we can be certain of is that there will be guys with sideburns and leather jackets, driving tricked-out hot rods and listening to Elvis.
It's mainly that Elvis connection that draws the rockabilly crowd to Las Vegas. If they wanted vintage architecture, they'd have been better off in Kansas City or Detroit and virtually any major city in the U.S. offers more bands and venues. It could be the abundance of the same dice and playing cards that decorate greaser biceps and Zippos, but more likely it's this town's status as the King's domain that makes it a pilgrimage for the faithful. Thus, their annual powwow is named for the flick in which Presley cavorts amidst neon and showgirls, sings, dances, shoots craps and falls in a swimming pool, but never loses sight of his real mission: to get his car fixed.
Of course, what makes Viva Las Vegas everyone's favorite Elvis movie isn't so much Presley himself, or even those great shots of a post-Bugsy, pre-Hilton Flamingo, but the leading lady, Ann-Margret. The film made her the only performer who made people take their eyes off of Elvis. Even he can't stop staring at her, and their on-screen chemistry is such that you wonder how they got through a single shot without having to clear the set.
Her performance in Viva alone would've cemented her status as a Las Vegas icon, but she's also been a hit in the showrooms—the Dunes, Sahara, Riv', Caesars, Hilton, Aladdin—since her debut here 45 years ago. As part of the continuing confluence of Atomic-era events, she's bringing her act to the Stardust this weekend. I just hope she's prepared to look out into the Wayne Newton Theater and see a hallucinatory-level concentration of hair-greased and black-T-shirted conventioneer Elvii.
A muse to both Elvis Presley and Keith Moon, the film that brings Ann-Margret in line with both beatniks and greasers was Kitten With a Whip, a 1964 (Silver Nugget—what, you thought I forgot?) movie that was part Freudian psychodrama and part B-movie trash. In it, she runs away from home and turns up in a politician's house. A poetry-spouting, disaffected counterculture youth in the package of an auto-obsessed Mamie Van Doren bad girl, Ann-Margret turns out to have escaped from juvenile hall, moving up from stabbings and arson to blackmail, larceny and assault, spurred on by her determination to get her hands on her victim's senatorial luxury model car. Off on a binge to Tijuana, not even really wanting to go there but needing to go somewhere, she and the rest of her antisocial buddies wind up in a deus ex machina wreck. The crash may have killed them, but the feeling of your hands around the wheel and that white line flying by kept them alive—something we may have found out in 1951, but never tire of learning just once more.