We Can't Go On Together

Prof. J on the Burden of The King
The King and I have never been close. I wish this were different. There have been nights, too many nights, when a voice from the speakers purring “Are You Lonesome Tonight,” would have been more welcome than all the red wine in the land. When that staccato guitar and drums in “Jailhouse Rock” could have set me afire. When that impossibly low note on the “I” in “I Can’t Help Falling In Love” could have synced up with my heart and carried me home.

Home is something the King and I share. Memphis was his first, but it was mine for my first eighteen years, and though my hometown is so far away now, seven hundred miles of bad road between me and Beale Street, Memphis will always be the first and the last. There is a rhythm there that can not be found any other place. It’s there that the humidity makes the music stick to the vinyl in ways non-Memphians will never know.

They asked the King what he missed most about Memphis.

His answer: Everything.

We’ve never been close, the King and I, and I think it’s because there was too much of him in my life. This is the burden of Memphis. There is no middle ground. Either you fall under the monarchy or you set sail for the new world.

We’ve never been that close, save for two songs, both from The Memphis Record, his greatest work. There is “In the Ghetto,” where the King sings in that smoky low register of his, his vocals perfectly matching the descending melody. Never mind the song is an attempt to be politically conscious, to point us in new directions, to show us those left behind. Listen instead to the passion in the vocals, and imagine a King before his peasants, even if that King is nothing more than a singer, those peasants little more than adoring fans.

And then there is “Suspicious Minds,” the greatest of all the King’s men. The guitar line crackles, the drums thud, and the horns swoon. And the King is all torn up because his woman, his love, will not trust him. He’s adamant in the verses, passionate in the chorus, and nothing short of broken in the bridge. And when the song starts to end—when the sound engineer decides enough is enough and that no man should put himself through this, and begins the fade out—the King will have none of it. No, the sound engineer brings the guitars, the drums, the horns, the strings, the backup singers, and the King himself all back for a minute more, and we’re caught in a trap all over again.

We’ve never been close, and I wish this was different, especially now, when Death Week has come, when Dead Day has passed, when the time to mourn the loss of the King has returned once again. There will be tourists, more than the normal amount, roaming the streets of downtown Memphis this week. The King’s songs will be on radio stations that never touch his music. The local news will run stories that ask the JFK question: Where were you when you heard the news? And on the night of his death, thousands will stand outside the gates of Graceland, candles in hand, and they will sing his songs. You have to see it to understand it. And if you start to understand, then maybe you and the King will spend a few lonely nights together. Maybe you’ll get the chance I never got.

Some nights, I want things to change. Some nights, I want the King to walk into my room, to sway his hips and toss back the bit of dangling hair from his eyes, and to tell me “That’s all right.” I want him to speak of his favorite restaurants in Memphis, where to hear the best bands, and where he and Priscilla first held hands. I’ll nod my head, smile the way I do when I’m truly pleased and not pretending, and then I’ll close my eyes and dream about what it would be like to be a boy from Memphis in love with the music of the King.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much, indeed.