Bejumpsuited, Chestal hairs breathing free!
Only a fool would choose your earlier, infinitely easier incarnation. Whitebread, Milquetoast, The Elvis of the nostalgic and the weak. Only the absurd little people of this world would squander the opportunity to hear those operatic, monstrously produced rock ballads.
“Suspicious Minds?” Yours.
“In The Ghetto”? Yours.
“Burning Love”? Yours.
The Velvet Painting come to life, the Hunka Hunka himself, the Avatar of Pathos and Bombast and Apotheosis in the Rock n’ Roll era.
The proto-you was consumed, like the newborn Olympians, by your final, monolithic self. The sequins and the rhinestones, the voice and the windmilling arms, the snarl and the jowls.
Crouch down and be counted as one of the mighty.
Hawaiian garlands and flare-bottomed pants. Don the sunglasses of enormous proportions and drown out the bells of history with your snarling baritone.
Who shook hands with Nixon? Who was honorary agent of the FBI? Who shot up television? Who died on the toilet, like a rockstar?
Not that thin, hip-shaking, movie-smarming, army-joiner. No, it was you, legs spread, cape billowing, one arm poised above your head like Michelangelo’s Redeemer.
The Redeemer of Rock!
I salute you, Fat Elvis. I commend you for being more cool, more fun, more awesome, more complicated, more troubled, more outrageous, more doomed, more fat, and more more.
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