The King of Kings embarked on an endless tour 44 years ago, on August 16, 1977, without informing any fans of the date of his return to blessed Graceland.
On that inconceivably hot day, even by the standards of Memphis, the phrase Elvis Has Left the Building acquired its final, gloomy and prophetic meaning: he is gone and everyone should come to terms with it.
Meanwhile, you can see and hear him hourly and everywhere.
What they sung belongs to eternity, and no one is given to know whether the name of Elvis and what he did for the inner freedom of each of us, despite the fleetingness and fragility of human life, will ever be forgotten.
Action in the moment is a particle of the flow of universal energy.
An action referred to in time is an opportunity to consider the past and evaluate the influence that was exerted by the effort of the will of one person on the seemingly impossible - on the course of history.
Today is the story of one of the greatest sessions of Elvis Aaron Presley, a session of gloomy calm, held in January-February 1969 in Memphis.
***
In 1968, his life came to a close.
Twice in the last four years, he almost died on the set of films that had become terribly sick of him.
Every time I was on the verge of death.
A hair's breadth from falling into the abyss.
What saved him?
What gods did he pray to?
And where did you get the strength not to put an end to yourself?
The 1968 leather show cut off the madness of operetta cinema, which destroyed eight years of life.
He was again free of contracts.
He almost belonged to himself, but was not yet ready to return from oblivion.
To return, he needed a sound - frantic and furious.
As always.
As in previous years.
He longed to speak to his loyal subjects.
With those who, despising their oblivion of the scene, invariably remained by their side.
He dreamed of shouting to them: “I am with you!
I remember you!
Even if I die, I can be resurrected !!! "
That year, that wonderful year, when Lisa Marie was born, who became the center of his personal universe, he was obsessed with the idea of returning, she absorbed him without a trace.
As if in delirium, he rushed from hope to despair.
He needed new albums.
Something completely incredible.
It could not be Nashville, where he felt as if he was hidden in an indestructible bastion, where every studio musician was able to pick up his mood, where he did not have to think about trifles and where, finally, he sounded and sounded more than good.
No.
It couldn't be Nashville.
It could only be Memphis.
The city where he first recorded at Sun Studios with Sam Phillips.
The city that he managed to conquer once, having escaped from the hopeless darkness of a beggarly childhood in Tupelo.
The city to which he returned after the army, retaining both the throne and the crown.
True, Memphis, this cruel despot - the guardian of the gates of the South, took from him Gladys, his mother, the closest person in the entire immense hostile world ...
But that was a completely different story ...
Elvis was looking for a way out of the impenetrable darkness of the labyrinth, or pretended to be looking for it, over and over again breaking damp matches that did not want to light up, afraid to admit to himself: the decision had long been made and there was no point in denying the obvious future, no matter how disastrous or promising it turned out to be.
Elvis was going to be strong again.
Stubborn.
And persistent.
Not paying attention to the pricks and giggles behind his back.
Just like in the beginning.
In 1954.
In those days when there was nothing yet ...
In January 1969, he went to American Sound Studio, where the incredibly confident Lincoln Chips Moman reigned supreme, having assembled an assault squad of studio musicians who could turn winter into summer.
Guitarists Reggie Young, Tommy Cogbill, Michael Lynch, keyboardists Bobby Emons and Bobby Wood, and drummer Gene Chrisman.
They were all devoted to Moman, like the deity of the place.
Here Elvis was a stranger, and he had to accept.
At least for a while, for within these limits his magic was powerless.
He was only one of many under the vaults of American Sound Studio.
And he had to pass a real test in order to take possession of the talisman of good luck.
At different times, a variety of people recorded here - Wilson Picket, Dusty Springfield, Dionne Warwick.
Now it was for him, crowned with a crown and almost lost his kingdom.
So he thought, sitting in a huge chair in the middle of the dark and majestic Graceland.
Biting the tip of a cigar.
With a glass of whiskey in hand.
Completely alone.
Without the retinue and the adored Priscilla, occupied by baby Lisa Marie.
So he thought.
But that was not quite the case.
For the true child of the South cannot be rejected by the South.
Your own will not become a stranger in your own home.
So.
On January 13, 1969, with a bad cold, nerves and completely out of sorts, Elvis arrived in Mooman's domain, where no one looked at him like a king - the usual restrained curiosity of people looking at an overseas curiosity.
Chips Moman himself, who looked at the ranks and regalia of Elvis with the utmost indifference, seemed to give true, albeit secret, pleasure to anticipate again and again how he would mockingly seek from the king of rock 'n' roll a furious, painfully piercing sound ...
Chips Moman wanted more than just hits.
He longed for an explosion, even a nuclear one.
And he wanted to spit on the consequences, reputation and other nonsense.
Elvis felt ashamed of a boy.
But it was too late to retreat, and there was nowhere to go.
They began with the Long Black Limousine, the tragic story of a young girl returning to her homeland in a luxurious and extravagant car without a name, in a hearse of her own funeral procession, and everyone - but most of all Elvis himself, nervous and extremely tense - understood for whom exactly the warning funeral bell tolls ...
For Elvis, for his manner of performance, and in general for his lifestyle, this session was unusually static, muffled, as if hidden from the eyes of an outsider by heavy and dark curtains.
Slowly, with amazing, manic tenacity, Elvis and Moman had to move from one potentially explosive thing to another, and now all the studio musicians, pricked up their ears, were waiting for a breakthrough.
They waited to overcome the sound barrier.
Overcoming the invisible wall that separates the king from the kingdom.
Elvis did his best.
It was similar to the first recordings of 1954-1955.
It was like his first performances, when none of the musicians accompanying him could imagine what the next second a guy with a greasy cook would throw out on stage.
He sang with his eyes closed.
Sweating.
Without stopping for a minute.
More and more mastering the voice hoarse from colds and nervous strain.
That evening, that night, they managed to take the first of the frightening heights - the furiously insane Wearin 'That Loved-On Look, and none of those present had any doubts: they are creating the Present.
That will outlive them all and stand the test of time.
The second day of the session was complicated by Elvis's noticeably intensified cold and his even greater desire to sing, no matter what. The high temperature seemed to whip up the ever-increasing nervous intensity of Presley, literally living the material. He was the hero of every song. These were his personal losses and victories. His personal unbearable pain, hatred, love, faith and his personal cold despair. And if on the first day they went home at five in the morning, then the second day ended almost at half past eight.
In the studio, Mohman did not have a real recording booth for the vocalist, and Elvis sang from behind a sound-absorbing partition with a window.
He was as if on stage - in full view of everyone and at the same time completely alone.
He continuously performed his incredible steps, he was ready to jump off his place and gallop around the studio, he emitted an almost perceptible radiation - all that incredible charge of energy that had been accumulating in him for years until he belonged to himself.
Memphis resurrected Elvis.
He accepted it and brought it back to the world.
And Elvis went for a walk in this new world, working the strongest in style and spirit I'm Movin 'on.
It was only when Moman realized that Elvis was practically another studio musician that he calmed down: the session was in his hands.
He managed to find the right nerve, and he and Elvis felt each other.
Let the harvest of the first two days be small.
However, it was enough to understand: the range of Presley's musical perception is still huge.
And, as before, everything he touched became tangibly alive and heartfelt.
Elvis performed rock, blues and ballads with the same brilliance.
Everything evoked in him an instant, vivid and clear emotional reaction, as soon as he heard the first sounds of the next demo.
We feel it today.
Look, here he is soaring above himself in You'll Think Of Me.
Right now, rejecting the past, he tells us over and over again the simplest love stories, as if they were stories about the beginning of all time.
When there was nothing.
Nothing but the sun and the sky.
Nobody.
None other than the first two destined for each other.
To choose.
He always had to choose.
Between staying and leaving.
And who knows, who knows what awaited him around the new turn of the road ...
The third day of the session, despite Elvis's persistent admonitions, it was decided to devote to recording instrumental tracks, and Elvis himself was asked to take a break for a couple of days - to restore his voice and cure a cold.
Reluctantly agreeing, he retired to Graceland and, finding no rest, sat for hours at the piano, tasting everything planned for recording.
Moman was pleased - he was not deceived in Elvis.
It was luck.
Undoubted and great luck.
And there was an incredible aroma of success, money, fame and eternity in the air.
Elvis returned to the studio on the following Monday, joining in on exactly the same note on which they parted. The thing intended for recording that day, meanwhile, was not at all simple. In The Ghetto, written by Mac Davis, was essentially a highly social song of protest, subtly veiled as a parable. Elvis has already had tremendous success on the television show of his return from total oblivion, performing the hit If I Can Dream - a poignant one that tells about another, about the best possible world. And yet it was a song about a dream. On the contrary, the thing Davis proposed this time spoke of a hideous reality.
Between nine o'clock Monday night and early Tuesday morning, they did twenty-three takes for the song, each of which could easily claim platinum mastery.
And a thousand times right Peter Guralnik, who said in his monumental book - Elvis' autobiography The Last Train to Memphis: stay indifferent.
You would be captivated by the incredible purity and sincerity of his voice.
You simply could not, would not want to remain indifferent. "
If you close your eyes, if you turn away from the hustle and bustle of the day, if you are left alone with the music and voice of Elvis in In The Ghetto ...
You will feel chills.
Ice snowflakes on my face.
Even on the hottest day.
You won't know what it is.
But you will be sure of one thing: the story told to you is the pure truth.
One of the incredible successes of those days was the presence in the studio of thirty-nine-year-old Roy Hamilton, whose figure was very high in Elvis's personal pantheon of gods.
Elvis, more than once inspired by Roy's manner and style of singing, sincerely asked permission to attend his sessions and even gave him one of the songs selected for recording.
And again I was not mistaken, because Angelica performed by Hamilton is a perfect cut diamond.
Yes, it suited Elvis more than.
She was exactly for him in voice and figure.
The more valuable is the gift.
The more sincerity and purity in him.
And it is all the sadder to remember that Hamilton will leave only six months later, in July 1969, having suddenly died from a cerebral hemorrhage ...
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The next night, the last one planned for the January part of the session, was truly its peak.
Beginning recording just after midnight, Elvis performed the incredibly passionate version of Without Love, a 1957 rhythm and blues hit, tinged with Presley's fierce sixties tone.
What are we without love?
Without love, there is nothing for us in this world ...
After a short break, Elvis decided to accompany himself on the piano. He seemed to be pondering something, as if making the right inner decision. The musicians, quite accustomed to Elvis and the oddities of his behavior, spoke quietly and joked. All of a sudden, Elvis started singing I'll Hold You In My Heart by Eddie Arnold. Over and over again he repeated not even a line - the first words of the song, and the musicians, struck by his incredible tenacity, picked up the rhythm and turned on. This is magic. Magic. It is almost a church mass. And this is a passionate plea for the impossible, the desired. Every time I hear this thing, my heart skips a beat. But Chips Momman might not have turned on the recording ...
At about four o'clock in the morning, during that incredibly tense night session, they began their ascent to the main peak, to what Moman dreamed of long before Elvis came to the studio, to what appeared to Moman one of the autumn days as an inspiration, as a revelation from above.
They began recording Suspicious Minds - a majestic hymn to oppressive doubts and fierce love, an anthem to all those who stood and stand on the very edge, who are struck in the very heart.
According to Moman, in his deepest conviction, in the whole world, only Elvis, with his rustic ingenuity and southern passion, a monstrous mixture of childish religiosity and boyish bravado, could convey that abyss of despair that opens up to each of us when doubts embrace a soul filled with suffering and we In vain we seek in the eyes of our beloved the answer to the same unchanging question for centuries: are you mine, do you belong to me?
We can't go on together
With suspicious minds
And we can't build our dreams
On suspicious minds ...
Elvis next showed up at Mohman's studio on February 17 to record the next thirteen compositions over the next six days.
One of the true peaks of the first February night was After Loving You.
We see that Elvis is now completely at ease.
In exceptional singing form.
In shock.
He's almost at home.
And I am almost sure of my ever-increasing strength.
Before us is the new Presley.
A new King gaining his kingdom.
Moman was triumphant.
Unwittingly, he invented, together with Elvis, created an incredible new style, combining the solemn holiness of religious chants and the furious spirit of modern soul, the purity of rural landscapes and the gloomy detachment of big cities.
It was impossible to replicate such success, impossible, but Lincoln Chips Moman did not strive for this.
The greatest reward for him was to know: it was he who managed to give a new sound to the king of rock and roll, seemingly already forever reposed in the established canon once and for all.
It was a victory, their common cruel and merciless victory, and I think Moman knew that they could not repeat such a success.
I guess they both knew that.
It happens in life.
As long as we can, we can rush along the highway, and it seems to us: another moment, a few more kilometers - and we are at our goal.
But what is the goal?
Happiness?
What is it for each of us? ..
In the winter of 1969, two guys from Memphis were fortunate enough to pull off the show business highway to the side of the road.
On a simple country road
Roll up without turning over and without losing yourself.
For this alone it is worth saying thank you to them.
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Elvis was a staunch mystic.
No one would ever have been able to get from him even a somewhat materialistic outlook on life.
Born without any chance of success, he conquered the whole world.
Or almost all.
And his only resource has always been and remains faith.
Belief in the impossible.
His isoteric library consisted of over six thousand volumes.
Did he read them?
Some yes.
And more than once.
After all, he was a seeker - that is what the people closest to him called him.
Was it a secret for him that with all his incredible luck there would be no fourth coming?
His first triumph of the fifties, his return from the army at the turn of the sixties - and here's another chance, now for the third time on the stage.
1969 in Las Vegas.
And before that, in the same 1969, at American Sound Studio.
Elvis liked to repeat: "My philosophy is simple - I need to love someone, wait for something and do something."
He received what he wanted and disposed of the gifts as best he could, as best he could.
With all the strength of your heart.
You can disagree with this.
You can try to take his throne.
It's empty!
Elvis left the building!
Right now...
However, that's enough about the gloomy calm session.
Listen to good music.
Choose your path.
And be happy.
For everything is changeable in our world.
And only love will abide in him forever.
Oh let our love survive
Or dry the tears from your eyes
Let's don't let a good thing die
When honey, you know
I've never lied to you ...
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.