“…the image is one thing and the human being is another…it’s very hard to live up to an image.”

Things to do when you’re the best man at a wedding:

- Arrive armed to the teeth, encrusted in diamonds, and clad head to toe in crushed black velvet.

- Carry a great big fucking flashlight.

You know, kind of like Elvis Presley did for Sonny West on December 28, 1970. You can’t fake that sort of thing. You can’t classify that as pretentious or ostentatious. Weird? Sure – but definitely not obnoxious. Not when you’re Elvis at the height of your powers and everybody else in the world, quite simply, isn’t.

Elvis’ Captain Marvel-meets-Shaft phase is inarguably one of the most rewarding times in American musical, cultural, and sartorial history. And that is how we here at BTRNR choose to remember him, 32 years on. The Elvis-as-God era kicked off of course with the ’68 Comeback Special, cruised through the ’69 & ’70 Vegas stands, and criss-crossed the country from late ’70 through the summer of ’72. By late ’72, the drugs really started to take hold, resulting in spotty performances and the famous expansion of girth. E got it together one last time for the “Aloha From Hawaii” special in January ’73 and then, once that challenge had been met, the slide began in earnest. But for those first four years… man. Normal people just aren’t like that.

So take a minute today to remember the strange boy from Tupelo who grew up to, among other things, bang Ann-Margret and drop by the White House on a whim to give the President Of The United States a gun.

You know – things that normal people just don’t do.

“Trouble/Guitar Man” – Burbank, CA, June 20-23, 1968: