Elvis and Las Vegas are permanently linked in popular imagination. And, unlike Liberace, the Rat Pack and other Vegas icons, The King appears ready to make the transition from old Vegas to new. Most importantly, Cirque is currently working on an Elvis show to go in CityCenter. If you are impatient, The Las Vegas Sun today lists a half-dozen Elvis impersonators appearing around town. In fact, at this point, it seems entirely possible that showgirls will be extinct in Vegas before Elvis.
Yet, after an initial and exciting creative burst (check out On Stage, Elvis: In Person, and the bonus material of Vegas shows on the expanded version of That's The Way It Is), Elvis calcified in Vegas. There are bootlegs from his later years at the Hilton that are horrifying as the King's vocal confidence vanishes, his horrid jokes proliferate and, as the sound of a fat man huffing indicates, there are many efforts at karate demonstrations before an audience there to hear songs. If you are curious what it all looked like, there is some brutal video on YouTube.
Yet, Las Vegas is not the same city as when Elvis arrived in the summer of 1969. Elvis approached Vegas as he had his movie career. In Hollywood, by the conventions of the time, he had created dozens of interchangeable and generic films, In a sense, Elvis created a Vegas show that had little in common with rock concerts that were just becoming an established regular touring phenomenon. Bands like the Rolling Stones and Led Zepplin produced huge international tours that featured all original material and a rough-edged approach to songs they made in the studio. Elvis (who never toured Europe) instead worked on creating the standard Vegas show, applying his love of excess (a perfect fit for Vegas), employing a band, orchestra, gospel quartet and choir in a traditional Vegas set made out of hits of the day, a few standards and sped-through takes on a bunch of his earlier hits.
What is amazing is how well the initial results worked. It may seem odd to some now to know that an Elvis set in Vegas was stacked with covers of then hits by John Fogerty, Paul Simon and, of course, Lennon/McCartney. But after a decade of horrid movie soundtrack singing, Elvis initially thrived off the frisson of a younger generation of songwriters. In the world of what-ifs, it is worth considering if Elvis would have stayed as engaged in his music had he continued this habit of raiding the work of contemporary songwriters. One "Bridge over Troubled Water" was enough for Elvis, who felt no need to take a crack at "Sounds of Silence." Nor did success with "Proud Marry" interest Elvis in attempting "Willy & the Poorboys." It is a pity, because unlike Sinatra, who essentially ran out of material suitable to his voice, Elvis simply allowed stasis to overtake his music in Vegas.
Today, when someone like Elton John does a regular Vegas show, it is a more focused and extreme (and shorter) version of Elton John's regular show. When Elvis ventured out of Vegas in the '70s he took the Vegas show along for his excursions to hockey rings around the nation. But Vegas has become a regular stop now on the rock tour circuit that Elvis ignored during his lifetime. Bands who hit the Joint, The House of Blues, Pearl or even the MGM Grand Garden Arena see Vegas as simply another stop. Elvis could never see Vegas that way. In part, he had experience to back him up. Elvis first played Vegas in the '50s and totally bombed with his classic backing musicians—the same that thrilled audiences everywhere else. If Vegas was different than other cities, in many ways his huge commercial success here in the 70s had repercussions for Vegas, as well. Most of the venues rock concerts are now held in were not even opened until 1999. In fact, it wasn't until then that many rock bands were willing to play Vegas, as a result of what I call The Curse of Fat Elvis: a sense that playing Vegas meant that your career as a serious artist was over and instead you now were a nostalgia act. Artists like Bruce Springsteen and Lou Reed, who gained national reputations as touring acts dating back to the '70s, only debuted in Vegas in the past decade.
But like most deeply held myths, Elvis destructing in Vegas is only partially a myth. Outside of the '68 Comeback Special and a few singles such as "Burning Love," the music he recorded during his early years in Vegas was the most vital he would make in the years left to him. Also, in his later years, after he became almost pathologically averse to recording studios, Vegas became the testing ground and even the studio, the only place this deeply troubled man was still able to work. And, if it weren't for Vegas, would Elvis ever have recorded "Proud Marry" or "You've Lost that Loving Feeling," a take on which his voice makes up the difference for an entire Wall of Sound production from Phil Spector?
Tomorrow marks three decades since the death of Elvis Presley. And, while the myths that surround Elvis and Vegas have changed little since the day he died, it is perhaps time to reassess the complex relationship between The King and the city where his image still dominates, in its odd way leaving one of the great singers in history often remembered as the original Britney or Lindsay.