Elvis Has NOT Left The Building: A Novelette [Chapter 5]

[Illustration: Chad Jeepity]

I found the sleeve: American Music, The Blasters, that stark black-and-white cover. “This one’s a straighter shot than Falco. Band out of California, brothers named Alvin. Less art-damage, more just... doing it right.”

“Doin’ what right?”

“Rockabilly. Like it never stopped being 1956.”

He gave the cover a once-over, unimpressed by its plainness after Falco’s chaos. “Awright. Let’s hear it.”

I dropped the needle on “Marie Marie.” Where the Panther Burns record had staggered, this one snapped — tight, driving, a rhythm section that knew exactly where the one was and hit it every time.

Elvis sat up straighter almost immediately. Different reaction than before. This wasn’t disbelief this time, something more like recognition, arriving fast.

“Now that’s the stuff.” He nodded along, no hesitation in finding the beat. “That boy’s not tryin’ to reinvent nothin’. He’s just doin’ it.”

“Doing it well, too. The guitarist’s name is Dave Alvin. Wrote that one himself.”

“Wrote it, huh?” Elvis listened to another few bars, something almost proprietary in his expression, like a man watching somebody else drive a car he used to own. “Sounds like he was in the room at Sun.”

“Funny you say that.” I’d been saving this. “There’s a quote from him, talking about when they cut their first record, some little label out in California, no money, basically a garage. He said, ‘Elvis made his records on Sun. And we’re gonna make a Rollin’ Rock record.’“

Elvis went still.

“He said that?”

“Word for word.”

He didn’t say anything for a second, just looked at the turntable like the record itself had changed shape.

“Wasn’t tryin’ to sound like a legend to him,” he said slowly. “Sam wasn’t a legend when I walked in. Sam was just a fella with a tape machine who’d let you try somethin’.” He shook his head, something moving behind his eyes that wasn’t quite sadness this time, closer to being caught off guard by his own life. “This boy’s tellin’ me he looked at that. Not the jumpsuit. Not the Colonel’s whole circus. Just two guys and a room and no money, tryin’ to catch somethin’ on tape.”

“That’s the part that traveled. Not the fame. The method.”

“The method.” He tested the word. “Huh.”

He sat with that through the rest of the song, quieter than he’d been all afternoon, tapping two fingers against his knee, not performing the beat this time, just marking time while he thought.

When it ended, he looked over at me.

“Play it again.”

I picked the needle back up, set it down at the top of the track again. Elvis didn’t say anything this time, just listened, eyes half-closed, foot going.

When it ended the second time, he let out a long breath, like he’d been holding something in through it.

“Funny thing about that song,” I said. “Barely made a dent here. But a Welsh singer named Shakin’ Stevens covered it the same year, and it went top twenty in the UK.“

Elvis’s eyebrows went up. “Welsh.”

“Welsh. Full quiff, gold lamé, the whole revival package. He was a big star over there, but he never really broke through in the States the same way.”

“Wasn’t just the song he covered,” I added. “Shaky played you. Full stage production called Elvis! in the West End, opened a couple months after you quote-unquote ‘died’.” I smirked. “Three different actors handling different eras of your life.”

Elvis’s face did something complicated. “They put on a whole show about me? While I was s’posedly in the ground?”

“Ran for 18 months. Won awards.”

“Awards.” He shook his head slowly, not quite able to land on whether that was funny or obscene. “Who got the other years?”

“Kid named Tim Whitnall had you young, doing the Sun years, before anybody knew your name. Shaky picked up from there, early RCA through the movie years. And the Vegas years.” I paused, watching for it. “PJ Proby.“

That name landed differently than the others had all day. Elvis actually sat forward.

“Proby.” He said it slowly, like tasting an old flavor. “I know that name.”

“Figured you might.”

“He used to cut demos for me. Movie songs.” Elvis rubbed his jaw, memory visibly surfacing. “They’d record him singin’ it in the mornin’, get it to me on the set, and I’d have to learn the damn thing and sing it myself ‘fore the day was out. Some fella with pipes near as good as mine, doin’ my homework for me so I could go shoot another beach scene.”

“That’s exactly it. Sang demos for a bunch of your soundtrack stuff, early ‘60s.”

“Boy could sing.” Elvis grinned, exaggerating the word’s pronunciation into “sang,” as any Southern wit does. He announced it like a fact he’d never had reason to doubt.

“Always figured he shoulda had his own hit records instead of singin’ mine into a tape machine so I could go pretend to surf,” he continued.

“He did, eventually,” I assured him. “Had a few in the UK. Then he went and played you onstage, jumpsuit years and all.”

Elvis let out a long breath, somewhere between a laugh and something heavier.

“Man used to sing my homework for me,” he said, “and 20 years later he’s up there in a damn jumpsuit, singin’ it as me, in front of a whole theater full of folks who think I’m dead.” He shook his head, something rueful in the grin now. “That’s a hell of a way for a fella’s whole story to fold back in on itself.”

“You want me to say it’s ironic,” I offered, “or do you want me to say it’s kind of beautiful?”

“Both, probably.” Something in his eyes stayed with his thoughts a beat longer than the rest of him did.

“So the fella who wrote ‘Marie Marie,’ playin’ it his own way, in some California garage, don’t get the hit.” Elvis shook his head slowly. “But somebody else takes the same song across an ocean, and it goes Top 20.”

“That’s the business, pretty much. Always has been. But it’s given Dave Alvin mad mailbox money all his life. That counts for something. He’s now the best roadhouse rock ‘n’ roll guitarist and songwriter not named Lonnie Mack.”

“Ain’t that somethin’.” He said it quietly, and I could tell it had landed somewhere it didn’t have to: some old, familiar shape to it, a song’s fate decided by who sang it and where, not by who wrote it or how good the original was. He didn’t say anything more about it, but he didn’t need to. “The world’s a strange machine for handin’ out credit.”

He nodded toward my bag. “Awright. I believe you said you had more.”

I went rummaging, then found

I grinned as I pulled out a sleeve that didn’t look like it belonged with the rest: a black-and-white photo of a guy mid-swing, smashing a bass guitar into a stage, band name stamped across the top, and down the side in hand-lettered pink, the album title in green underneath.

Elvis took it before I’d even finished holding it out. Something changed in his face the second he had it in his hands.

“Now hold on.” He turned it sideways, held it out at arm’s length like he was checking his own reflection in it. “This here’s—” He stopped, started again, quieter. “That’s my design. That’s my album.“

“Close, innit?”

“Close, hell.” He tapped the pink lettering with one finger, tracing it down the side as if to check it was really there. “That’s my ‘56 record. Same everything — pink writin’, green writin’, black and white picture. Just—” He turned it over, looking for something that wasn’t there. “Ain’t me on the front. It’s some boy bustin’ up a guitar instead.”

I smiled. “The band’s called The Clash. English kids, got themselves an NME cartoonist with a rockabilly fetish as an art director, Ray Lowry. He built that sleeve as a straight homage to yours. Wasn’t hiding it, wasn’t an accident.”

“They just took it.” He wasn’t smiling yet, but he wasn’t not smiling either — something caught between offended and flattered, unable yet to settle on one. “Didn’t ask, didn’t say please, just went and used my whole look.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“Huh.” He set the sleeve down on his knee, still looking at it. “1979, I’m barely two years in the ground as far as this ol’ world is concerned, and some English boy’s already standin’ where I stood, wearin’ my clothes.” He shook his head slowly. “World don’t wait long, do it?”

“Never has.” I waved the sleeve in the air. “You wanna hear it, or you wanna keep arguing with the cover?”

That got a real grunt of a laugh out of him. “Put it on.”

I dropped the needle. The guitar came in first, a runaway riff, three chords driving too fast for their own good, drums right on its heels. Then the voice, sneering and half-shouted, tore into some story about a girl and a Cadillac.

Elvis listened maybe ten seconds before his eyebrows went up. Another twenty, and his mouth started twitching like he was fighting something back.

Then the line came, the girl telling the singer off, and telling him exactly where he could put his opinion of her new car.

Elvis came off the couch. “Now hold on — did he just say what I think he said?” He looked at me like I’d personally let something ugly into the house. “Why’s he singin’ about balls? Lord have mercy.” He shook his head, equal parts scandalized and delighted, like a preacher who couldn’t help but enjoy the sermon he was condemning. “Damn, I tol’ ya — these punk rockers is too nasty for their own good!”

“Wait for it,” I said. “Guitar player’s about to give you something.”

He did wait, arms crossed, doing his level best to look unimpressed. But his foot was already going, heel tapping the floor in perfect time, and the closer the song got to the end, the less he bothered hiding it.

When it stopped, he sat there a second, arms still crossed, like he hadn’t decided yet whether to admit anything.

“That boy on guitar,” he said finally, grudgingly, “he’s playin’ it like Scotty used to play it behind me. Same kinda meanness in it.” He paused, eventually giving me that Presley half-grin again. “That rocked!“

“Funny you say that. Song’s not even theirs originally. English rockabilly cat named Vince Taylor cut it first, back in ‘59. Flip side of a single, went nowhere in England. The Clash just found it in a pile of records and figured it deserved better.”

“Vince Taylor.” Elvis turned the name over. “Don’t know him.”

“You wouldn’t. But he grew up on you. Moved to America as a kid, came up on your records same as everybody else his age, then went back to England and reinvented himself off what he’d learned. Even talked in a fake American accent! Some say he’s half the reason Bowie invented Ziggy Stardust.”

Elvis sat with that a second, something working behind his eyes. He had the same look he’d had over the Alvin quote, that private math of tracing a line back to himself and finding it went further than he’d figured.

“So it’s my sound,” he said slowly, “wearin’ my picture, comin’ back around through some fella in England who never even met me, gettin’ filthy about a Cadillac the whole way.” He shook his head, but he was grinning now, not fighting it. “Boy. That’s about the most rock ‘n’ roll thing I ever heard, and I’m mad about it and I ain’t mad about it, both at once.”

I chuckled. “Welcome to the family business.”

He set the sleeve down carefully, like it mattered now in a way it hadn’t a minute ago. “Awright. What else you got?”

“Last one,” I declared, digging out a sleeve with a lurid, half-collapsing cover, featuring a band photo that looked like it belonged on a drive-in movie poster instead of an album. “This one’s gonna need some explaining first.”

“Awright.” Elvis eyed the cover warily. “Explain.”

“Band called The Cramps. The singer went by Lux Interior. I’ve been calling him ‘Iggy Presley’ for about 20 years now, in print, and it’s stuck.”

That got a real laugh. “Iggy Presley. Like that boy Iggy Pop?”

“Yeah, because that’s what he was,” I beamed, happy he’d heard of The Other King Of Rock ‘n’ Roll. “Lux took your hip-shake, your sneer, your whole physical vocabulary, and ran it through a horror movie. Onstage he’d strip down to nothing, climb the PA, do things with a microphone stand I’m not gonna describe to a man I just met.”

“You just met me this mornin’, and you’re already tellin’ me about another man’s microphone stand.” Elvis shook his head, grinning despite himself, chuckling. “Awright, put it on.”

“One more thing first. This track’s off an early EP, Gravest Hits. Cut right here in Memphis — Ardent Studios, 1977. The producer was Alex Chilton.”

Elvis’s eyebrows went up. “Chilton again.”

“Second time today.”

“Man really did get around.”

“He wasn’t done with this band, either. A little later, he took ‘em to record their first full album at Phillips Recording, Sam Phillips’s place in the years after Sun.”

That landed harder than the Ardent detail had. Elvis went quiet a second. “Chilton took ‘em to Sam’s?“

“Right where you started.”

“Huh.” He shook his head slowly, something working behind his eyes. “Everybody keeps windin’ up back at Sam’s door, one way or another. Even the ones who never met him.”

“The building’s still standing. Somebody’s always finding a reason to walk back in.”

He gestured at the turntable, done sitting with that thought for now, but not quite finished with it either. “Play it, then.”

“One more thing before I do. This song’s a cover, older than The Cramps themselves. Cat named Jack Scott cut it first, back in ‘59. Scott was Presley-damaged too, by the way. Sneering, sullen, even wrote his own stuff. The Cramps took his song and ran it through a meat grinder.”

I dropped the needle on “The Way I Walk.” Ivy’s guitar came in first, warped, submerged, like it was being played underwater by something that resented the water. Then Lux’s voice arrived, all quiver and threat, less singing than a barely-controlled leer.

Elvis’s eyebrows climbed steadily through the first verse.

“Well.” He said it slowly. “That’s... a choice.”

“Told you it’d need explaining.”

“No, I mean—” He tilted his head, actually listening now instead of just reacting. “That’s my strut. That’s exactly my strut, from the Sun days. Just—” He searched for it, hand moving in the air like he was trying to grab the word physically. “Wrong. On purpose. Like a funhouse mirror.”

“That’s about the best description anybody’s ever given me.”

“Everything’s the same shape,” he said slowly, “but somebody stretched it till it turned mean.” He almost laughed, but there was something unsettled underneath it. “It’s still rock ‘n’ roll. It’s just rock ‘n’ roll that wants to bite ya.”

“Now do you hear it?”

“Son, I heard it the second that guitar came in.” He shook his head, something equal parts delighted and rattled crossing his face. “Didn’t expect to feel spooked by a fella imitatin’ me, is all.”

“Not exactly an imitation,” I chuckled. “More like someone taking you and doing the Silly Putty thing.”

It was getting late. Neither of us had noticed the light changing in the TV room, no windows to tell us, just the run of records marking the hours instead of a clock.

Elvis stretched, the first real sign all day that his body remembered it had limits. “Reckon that’s enough education for one day.”

“I could keep going. I brought more.”

“I know you did.” A tired grin. “Save some for next time.”

Next time. I didn’t ask what that meant. Wasn’t going to be the one who broke this.

He walked me out through the kitchen — same avocado refrigerator, same counter where the bread had sat that morning, bag long since put away by someone I never saw come through. At the door, he stuck his hand out, and I shook it, and it felt exactly as ordinary as shaking anybody’s hand, which felt like the strangest part of the whole day.

“Thank you,” I said. “For all of it.”

“Thank you for comin’ with an open mind, ‘stead of a list of questions you already had the answers to.”

I got about halfway to the car before I turned around. He was still standing in the doorway, watching me go, hands in his pockets, looking for a second like every photo of him from every era at once.

“Elvis.”

“Yeah?”

“I never did get an answer. On whether you’re really—”

“Ask me again next time.”

That was it. That was all he was going to give me, and driving away from Graceland in whatever car had been arranged for me — I never did catch a look at the driver’s face — I realized I didn’t need the other answer anymore. Every time somebody drops a needle on “Baby, Let’s Play House,” and that hiccup comes tumbling out of the speakers. Every time some kid with more attitude than technique plugs in and decides the distortion’s staying. Every time somebody, somewhere, is too impatient to wait for anybody to give them an “okay” sign —

He’s there. Doesn’t matter what year it is, or which Memphis building he’s standing in, or whether the man himself is flesh or memory or 50 years of us all still arguing with his records.

Elvis Presley never really left the building. He just stopped needing to be seen in it.

-30-

And yes, I know that right about now, Presley’s protesting: “Dammit, Tim! Why you gotta be as nasty as that Johnny Rotten?!” But I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that The Tim “Napalm” Stegall Substack’s Fourth Birthday Subscription Sale is still going on. Take 20% off all paid subscriptions. Annual subs, normally $52, are now $41.60! Monthly subscribers? You get 20% off too, down from the usual $7/month to $5.60! And you pay the discounted rate for life! Mash the button while you still can!

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