As we’re both Capricorns (my birthday being yesterday, thank you Facebook friends), I thought I’d observe The King’s own natal day with a few reminiscences.
- The day Elvis died (16 August 1977) I was in Paris, crashing in the 4th arrondissement apartment of a reporter on the old Paris Metro, the English-language weekly newspaper I used to hawk on the streets just like Jean Seberg did with the Herald Tribune in Breathless. Radio Luxembourg was playing Elvis tunes all day. How come? I asked my reporter friend. Didn’t you hear? Elvis just died, he said, and I laughed. Rich, famous and only forty-four! Had to be a joke.
- In an earlier post I mentioned that Michael and I were part of the family dinner Stephen threw at Balthazar in Soho to celebrate his debut as a poet. His brothers and their families were there and so were Peter Sarsgaard and Maggie (very pregnant), Naomi Foner, Devourer of Men’s Souls, and Naomi’s Aunt Frieda—you know, the elderly relative with the apartment in the Battery the Gyllenhaals had to check on after 9/11. It was such an impressively huge bash I asked Peter if there was anything that would bring out his family in such large numbers. “Elvis,” he answered, in odd non sequitur. “He was a Melungeon, you know.” Which is the first time I ever heard the word.
- Favorite Elvis tune: “Jailhouse Rock”.
- Favorite Elvis movie: Viva Las Vegas.
As we’re both Capricorns (my birthday being yesterday, thank you Facebook friends), I thought I’d observe The King’s own natal day with a few reminiscences.