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The five-hour drive from Atlanta to the Grand Ol' Opry in Nashville takes almost twice that in a torrential downpour. The clouds dragging across the sullen grey hills looked like soggy chicken feathers and waterfalls gushed forth over the crags of Lookout Mountain from every impossible direction like a Roger Dean painting for a Yes album cover.
The windshield wipers slapped wildly through the gallons of water flowing across the windshield, keeping a manic beat like a Devo drum track. Tires sloshed through the inches of water that turned the highway into a shallow river. Spray from trucks and sheets of rain made visibility less than zero.
People do crazy things on a pilgrimage to Tennessee to see Elvis. Several GSU students risked their lives Sunday, Jan. 3, to make the insane drive through such heavy weather to see one of the greatest legends in rock.
But this legend is still living. He was to be in the States for just one more night on a three-date mini-tour that took in New York, L.A. and Nashville.
Nashville was the place where this Elvis was to show off his latest metamorphosis, from rock to rockabilly and all the way to twangy gah dayum pedal steel country.
This Elvis was christened Declan McManus in England in 1955. He sings a plaintive melody about Alison, not Priscilla. He is not Eyetalian, has never performed hip thrusts behind his guitar on the Ed Sullivan show that cause the networks to censor everything going on below the waist, has clipped his sideburns right at the ear instead of wearing them like bristly black spears across his jowls, and in black glasses, Elvis Costello looks like the reincarnation of Buddy Holly.
Elvis Costello decided to play at Opryland perhaps as a statement about his newfound love for the heartbreak of the country blues. He performed a melange of some of the most divorce- and alcohol-ridden tunes that a repertoire of George Jones and Hank and Merle Haggard and company would allow.
Though Elvis did choose Nashville's Opryland, which is a campy and curious mixture of Six Flags and Hee Haw, there was not a single cowboy hat in attendance Sunday night. There were a few Western style shirts worn sincerely, but every string tie and pair of pointy-toed booth were worn as afterthoughts in Nu-wave getups.
The crowd was so uncountry and, in contrast, exotic, that a few lines of description seem necessary. The eclectic mode of dress was flashy to trashy and illuminated an already colorful evening. There were a few navy blazers, Bass Weejuns and buttondown shirts in the new Opry house. And there were navy blue suits galore. However, the navy blazer, Weejuns and buttondown were never all together on the same person. One enchanted concertgoer wore a bit of makeup and a dog collar around his neck to complement his navy blazer. The Bass weejuns were the bottom of a human exclamation point; that is, they were on the feet of the lanky and angular crew-cut sax player and front man for the innovative Atlanta band the incredible Throbs. Buttondown shirts were usually frayed and shredded and spangled with concert buttons. The audience seemed to thumb its collective nose at the preppie look, and the few Izod and add-a-bead wearers seemed adrift in a multicolored sea of leather, feathers, baggy and flimsy or spandex or leopard motif. The navy blue suit was faithfully worn with the sleeves pushed up and the skinny tie loosened and the baggy pants too long, usually atop sneakers. The true believers, of course, wore hi-top basketball sneaks or low-slung dancing shoes with their suits. These shoes had to be red, or the wearer lost important points as an Elvis '80s fashion plate.
Elvis Costello and the Attractions walked onstage as soon as the house lights dimmed, with a minimum of fanfare (unlike this article) and launched into "Accidents Will Happen." The "one-word-test" winning word for Costello onstage is IMMEDIATE. One song jumped right into the next one like a flurry of punches or a sentence with no punctuation. The audience must have forgotten to breathe, or Elvis wouldn't let them come up for air, or both. His attack was varied, with a maximum of contrast between songs, and if anybody really did forget to breathe, he took an intermission, which gave both the band a chance to change into different outfits and the crowd to admire the variety of each other's plumage in the lobby of the Opry house.
The acoustics in the hall are even better than Atlanta's fabulous Fox. And the building itself is immaculate, though I had somehow hoped for an architectural oddity with columns of alabaster, stained glass, and gingerbread around the gables and live oaks draped in Spanish moss on the grounds.
Perhaps Elvis became such a manic performer and prolific songwriter to show to his grammar chums that he was not a nerd. And if the
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