Sometimes the thought of Elvis Presley gives me cold sweats. I remember my early youth in the fifties as a time of being caught between two great energy forces. The first was the Atomic Bomb, which ironically I first learned about from the Ed Sullivan show. One Sunday Eisenhower Eve the Toast of the Town presented a cartoon which depicted nuclear holocaust. In the beginning, the helpless people in suburban homes look to the lone plane which carries THE BOMB through ever-darkening skies. They’ve been expecting it. “In the end,” the godly-voiced announcer proclaims, “there is only a flame. And then the flame goes out.” Cut back to Ed, fielding applause. Adults were around to fill kids in on those particulars which the cartoon neglected. There are Madmen, see, and these Madmen, all of whom (it was assumed) were living in Russia at the time, have a button, see, and all they have to do is press the button and that’s the ballgame. People have little to do except build Fallout Shelters in the whole drama which reduces the planet to a flame. Nice thoughts to fall off to dreamland with for a decade. Can’t fall asleep while that plane’s overhead.

The second great energy force was introduced to most of the world over the Sullivan show, too: Elvis. He was the life force in an age that promised doom.. Adults figured kids would tire of Elvis the way they had tired of Superman and Davy Crockett. But they were wrong. There was a difference. Superman was a fictional character played by a very vulnerable human named George Reeves. Davey Crockett lived and died at the Alamo. Fess Parker pretended to die at the Alamo as the real Davey Crockett and came back to race riverboats as the legend of Davey Crockett, but it really didn’t make it. Elvis, on the other hand, was the king of Rock and Roll. King of the Teenagers. Chosen son of the God of Rock. And all of this was very real. RCA had a slogan for Elvis that proved it: “50 Million Fans Can’t Be Wrong.”

Just how big is Elvis? Who knows? Like THE BOMB, his potential has never been tested. The reason there were Beatles is because John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and maybe even Richard Starkey wanted to be Elvis, but realized it would take a combined effort to appear as strong as the King. John Lennon said, “We’re more popular now than Jesus,” but never claimed they were as big as Elvis. Which is why the thought of Elvis Presley scares me. This generation paid for Elvis with our faith, screams and pennies just like the previous generation paid for THE BOMB with faith, votes and taxes. And sixteen years later, we’re just as powerless in the face of our phenomenon as they are with theirs.

What if Elvis were to understand that a statement from The Crowd by Gustave Le Bon in 1895 that “To know the art of impressing the imagination of crowds is to know at the same time the art of governing them” goes double in this century?

Oral Roberts must want him. Nobody would pick up Pat Boone, Conway Twitty, Johnny Mathis, Jimmy Rodgers, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans and not have designs on Elvis. I wouldn’t put it past Billy Graham to sin for him. And I have solid information that Nixon made a play for him. This is reliable information, solid stuff, as genuine as his 24 gold records and the million dollar check he receives for a week’s work in Las Vegas.

It seems the good German who arranges the White House concerts for the President and his guests managed to travel the many channels that only in rare instances lead to Colonel Tom Parker’s phone line. Once connected, he delivered what he considered the most privileged invitation. President Nixon requests Mr. Presley to perform. The Colonel did a little quick figuring and then told the man that Elvis would consider it an honor. For the President, Elvis’s fee beyond traveling expenses and accommodations for his entire orchestra and back up group wouldbe $25,000. The good German gasped.

“Col. Parker, nobody gets paid for playing for the President.”

“Well, I don’t know much about that, son,” the Colonel responded abruptly, “but there’s one thing I do know. Nobody asks Elvis Presley to play for nothing.”

In November, the King came to Boston for the first time since 1956. 15,000 tickets starting at $10 were sold out quicker than you could sing, “The best things in life are free but you can keep ’em for the birds and bees.” This is what it was like.

The parking attendant and his buddy, if in fact either of them were actually employed to run the lot, wore shrewd smiles. This was their night to be slick and clean up. They controlled prime real estate a block from Elvis’ Garden. They’d been turning profitable deals all night, as testified to by a lot jam-packed with Lincolns, Caddies and Olds 86s, a disproportionate number bearing out-of-state plates. We pulled our VW over toward the pair. Brett Maverick spoke for himself and Brother Bart.

“How much is it worth?” he asked with an uncontrollable grin undercutting his slyness.

“Well, I don’t know,” I played the hick confidently. “How much does it cost?”

“How much is it worth?” he repeated, this time without the grin so that I might better understand the name of the game.

“I don’t know,” I tried the dumber than dumb approach. “You tell me how much it costs.”

“There is no price,” he shot back, abruptly ending our negotiation with a philosophical absolute, and directing me back into traffic. I spent the rest of the evening refusing to believe that anything existed that didn’t have a price, even Elvis, but at the same time realizing that the answer to the question, “How much is it worth?” was beyond my powers of estimation.

Three distinct crowds cluttered the Garden’s lobby. One was moving in swiftly, one was retreating slowly, one seemed to make no directional movements at all. The three crowds were very different in appearance; the only dominating characteristic they all shared was the color of their skin. White. The first crowd ran for the entrance doors as if scared the boat would leave without them if they arrived late. Their faces showed the distressed signs of a number of boats missed in the past. They were dressed up, but not stylishly. Ties and jackets that don’t get seen much except maybe around small offices, dresses and outfits that don’t get out of the house much and hair that had been done that afternoon. A number of kids got carried along with this crowd, showing a great deal of gay anticipation considering they were out to see a 36 year old contemporary of mom and dad. Of the three, this crowd responded the most favorably, although hesitatingly, to the opera-glass peddler standing at the entrance ramp. “Opera glasses! See Elvis close up!” How much is it worth?

The retreating group was the oddest: the street hippies. They seemed to have a symbolic reason for being there. The fact that they were leaving the Garden instead of entering strengthened the symbolism. Did they figure they had a better chance crashing this gig than they had for Led Zeppelin, and then upon arriving decide that the hassle wasn’t worth it? Had they come speculating on spare change possibilities? Or had they been living under the grandstands since the recent Santana concert, surviving a few cold nights with the Bruins and a few hot ones with the Celts, but finally deciding that this new breed of exotic sports fan was too much? I don’t know why this crowd was there, just that they fled back into the night.

The third group was non-directional. The swinger set. They just swung and hung by the bar. They were beautiful by one standard, grotesque by another. Their dress encompassed ' petty bourgeois elegance crossed with a strain of mafioso dapper. Some knee-boot, polkadot, hot-pant outfits fit, others didn’t. Some of these women must have been in the front lines the day Elvis was crowned King of the Teenagers, on line the day he was declared King of the movie box office, and supporters of his present stance as King of Vegas. To some of the men, it must have been their , first night in the Garden without having a bet down. There is nothing to speculate on. Tom just collects the antes, has been collecting them unchallenged for seventeen years. 15,000 imaginations showed up to be impressed in whatever manner Elvis saw fit.

The Sweet Inspirations, who started out as Aretha Franklin’s back up group, but now go everywhere that Elvis goes, opened the show. This group used to contain Aretha’s two younger sisters, Erma and Estelle. Estelle Franklin was notable in the middle of the line, but she was flanked with two women who looked much too. sultry to be siblings of the royal matriarch of Soul. Myrna Smith was on the left, and the woman on the right who made you most cognizant of the fuscia flyaway hot pant suits that all three wore bore a name that sounded like Sylvia Chuckwagon and a look like Princess Azura of Flash Gordon fame. Although their numbers were predicatable (their own “Sweet Inspiration,” and popular cover stuff like “Proud Mary” and “Love the One You’re With”), their finesse, style and natural talent puts them in a class with La Belle as the best current incarnation of what used to be a rock and roll staple: the female trio. Their closing number was pure showbiz, “We belong together. We would be LOST without one another.” Kisses and exit and then, Good Lord! What is that standing over in a dim corner stage spotlight saying: “The Sweet Inspirations, let’s hear it for them, the Sweet Inspirations! That was beautiful girls!”

I’m not sure who was serving as M.C. for the show, but he weighed 300 pounds, much of it centered above the neck, where a head the size and shape of a medicine ball was topped with a slick sheet of black hair and (I believe) the entire contents of a Vitalis bottle. An eyebrow pencil mustache separated his nose from his lip. He sounded like Ed Herlihy talking from the grave. “And now we are proud to present” — the frantic gasping of 15,000 breaths — “the comedy star of the show: Jackie Cahane.” Big letdown.

So this guy with a blue-gray New Day-dyed hippie wig wearing a white Ramar of 42nd Street safari suit, staggered on stage as if laughing at the joke he just told himself on the way up, and with a delivery that sounded like Barry Fitzgerald, with a hangover, announced to the Garden audience, “I feel like Derek Sanderson in the Penalty Box.” His material went downhill from there. He warmed up to the Boston audience with a few jokes about Philadelphia. “In Philadelphia, they’re so square they think Lawrence Welk is a hippie,” I can’t imagine how he warmed up to the Philadelphia audience the night before.

Regardless of the fact that there was hardly a black face in the audience, Cahane was sophisticated to lay off the nigger jokes and settled for offending women and gays. “Oh those women’s lib fanatics in their orthopedic hot pants . . . And the gay liberation, they wapt everyone to try it their way. Well, I say if the Lord wanted things that way, the Garden of Eden would have been occupied by Adam and Freddie.”

Cahane found his greatest fans to be two rotund Boston cops stationed at the side of the stage. When Cahane said he had been to a movie that was rated “Double X: Nobody admitted,” the cop who looked the most like character actor Harold Stone began to shake like blue jello. On “It’s better to be hot and bothered than satisfied and worried,” gold buttons were almost popping off his uniform from bellyquakes. After “It wasn’t the apple in the tree it was the pair on the ground,” he began to look as if he would have to be relieved from duty.

Cahane played his next gag right at Sergeant Harold Stone of Boylston Street. “Ah the Boston Police. I love ’em” (thicker than ever on the Barry Fitzgerald). “You officers are the best that money can buy.” Sgt. Stone began to keel over but caught himself in time to ask his partner to explain that one, as 15,000 people made raspberries at him.

Jackie Cahane was well received by the people in the balcony who couldn’t see all the saliva streaming down the front of his suit, much less get hit by any. The morbid Vitalis Giant came back to get some applause for the comedy star and sell some Elvis goods. “The Elvis souvenir books that we told you about earlier are all sold out. However there is an unlimited supply of Elvis posters on sale in the lobby for two dollars. We will now have intermission. Time to get something to eat or drink from the canteen and then back again for the second part of our show. May we have the houselights, please. Intermission* May we have the houselights, please.”

During Intermission, five tall men in white fringed jumpsuits, so beautiful they must have been made from the hide of a vanishing animal, appeared with their instruments. This is Elvis’ back-up band, not to be confused with Elvis’ orchestra under the direction of Joe Greccio, who did a fine job behind the Sweet Inspirations and sat stonefaced during what for them must have been the umpteenth exposure to Jackie Cahane’s dynamite monologue. The most recognizable member of the backup band is lead guitarist James Burton, best remembered for playing behind Rick Nelson at the world’s longest lasting high school dance for about five years, not counting reruns at Ozzie-and-Harrietville High. By the time of his long over-due graduation, he had become one of the most respected studio players from Nashville to Memphis. Like the Sweet Inspirations, he’s been with Elvis since the first Vegas date.

The second most recognizable figure is Charlie Hodge, an acoustic guitar player, who as Elvis’ constant companion played predominate role in Dennis Saunder’s documentary Elvis. The film portrayed Hodge as an everpresent Sancho Panza to Elvis. I found it interesting during the portion of the show in which Elvis introduced his sidemen that he referred to Hodge not as a musician, but as “the guy who gives me scarves and water.”

The Sweet Inspirations came back on stage dressed this time in black leathers. Along with a fourth girl (Kathy Westmoreland, to hit Elvis’ high notes) and three boys plus an extremely tall gent who looked like Hollywood typecasting for Howard Hughes (who was there to hit Elvis’ low notes), they make up the Elvis Choir. They take their place next to the Elvis back-up band and the Elvis Orchestra. Elvis’ two body guards, who look like overbronzed versions of Pat Boone and Fabian respectively, each take a front corner of the stage. There is very little else that needs to be prepared and you can feel it. Then the yellowed spot covers as much of the Vitalis whale as possible as he begins, “Ladies and Gentlemen ...” — something, something, I couldn’t tell because all these uervous, nearly primal screams that had been lying dormant in their bodies for a decade suddenly started to break all around - “ . ..Elvis! uhhhah uh

ahhhhhhhhh.”

At this moment, the combined Elvis Orchestra, band and choir broke into the Monolith Theme from 2001, which is the same theme (projected by a recording over loudspeakers) that heralds the arrival of Grand Funk. We may never know which of the millionaire managers first decided to adopt the musical symbol for the essence of human life as an overture to their star., Col. Tom Parker or his post-Woodstock equivalent Terry Knight. Parker’s with the eight voice falsetto harmony was the grander of the two. Fitting since his star has been shining for a number more light years. Speaking of whom was about to take the stage.

LIGHT. BLINDING LIGHT. Is it the world’s largest strobe light? No, it’s 15,000 Brownie Starflex cameras clicking in succession. It is the world’s largest light show and it doesn’t cost the Col. a penny. Then, rising from the flOurescent thunder, a caped Zorro-like figure appears. And it’s, it’s . . . Who?' God, these lights have made my mind stop. Who? For fifteen, sixteen years, who have I been waiting for? Who? A Greek god. Yes, he looks like a Greek god. ELVIS! With a Prince Valiant haircut but he looks like a Greek god. He looks like . . . ELVIS! Gold, Zorro, with tight, belled pants covered in gold designs, gold stars on black. ELVIS! In the gold belt, with the diamonds and the rubies. .“How much is it worth?” . . . ELVIS! Is that the champion’s belt? Is that the Champion of the World? ELVIS! Is the Muhammed Ali? Is this the Greatest? ELVIS! Fifteen years. Sixteen years. Apollo, Zorro, Beatles, Beatles? IT’S ELVIS FUCKIN’ PRESLEY! IT’S ELVIS FUCKIN’ PRESLEY! Or maybe it is Muhammed Ali.

This man, this Apollo Zorro Elvis man has a lot in common with Muhammed Ali. Beauty? Both have great beauty. Talent? Unquestionably great. Fame? What other two Americans ever created national incidents simply by getting drafted. Ali was the only figure in the sixties who rivaled th^ fame of Elvis in the fifties. They have both survived to the seventies. Their beauty has survived, their talent has survived, their fame has grown. They are separated only by the realities of their professions. And the reality that Ali has always said he couldn’t lose and the Col. has always fixed it so that Elvis couldn’t lose. That’s Show Business.

With a guitar exactly like the kind of guitar you would expect him to let fall over his shoulders, Elvis opened his set with a half-hearted thrown-away version of “That’s All Right Mama.” If he had put as little emotion into this number seventeen years ago at Sun Record Studios as he did last week, he would still be driving a truck today and the whole world would be different.

But what would be the use of writing about Elvis’ performance? That would be like Mr. Wizard trying to explain nuclear fission. The songs that made him famous like “Love Me Tender,” “Heartbreak Hotel,” and “Blue Suede Shoes” he throws away in self-mockery. Doing them seems to break him up; he directs himself to the Sweet Inspirations as much as to the audience. He moves like only Elvis could move, like even Mick .Jagger would not dare-move. His manner is blending of Dean Martin, Olivier’s Hamlet and karate instruction. Without even trying, he has done enough to convince the audience that he has the right to act tired after ten minutes. But for the first half of the show he strains himself not at all. The illusion is created by the effect of his every move being orchestrated.

At one point, I though he was going to do something cosmic. He started “Hound Dog” as a slow facsimile of the original bluesy Big Mama Thornton/ Elmore James version. I figured for sure he was setting up for a tear into the famous frantic Elvis version; instead he quicked iust a step or two with only a whisper of the Elvis sound and threw it away.

He got a little more inspired for his gospel number, “How Great Thou Art,” but even hammed that up. Sixteen years later, with people still passing out because you turn toward their section of the grandstand and it’s hard to take even God seriously. Who knows. Nobody gets to talk to Elvis. Everybody wants to. Forget Rolling Stone. The Col. told Life he could be interviewed for two hours at 50 grand an hour.

Sixteen years later and the big Elvis numbers are “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” and “Funny How Time Slips Away.” These .songs were fantastic, mind you. “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” included the Hamlet stance and the gross display of finger diamonds. How much is it worth?

The number that included the karate exhibition was “Suspicious Minds,” in my opinion the highlight of the program. This song is best suited to the current incarnation of Elvis. It allows the show to present itself as the colossus that it is. The harmonies are transcendental.

I thought “Funny How Time Slips Away”, would be the last number, but he came back with “I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You,” and milked our imaginations for all their worth. Marching, strutting, Apollo the stud prancing around the stage. “I . . . Can’t . Help ...” throwing crimson scarves to the audience which are immediately drenched with fifteen years worth of stored tears, “Falling ... In Love ... ”, ending up as Zorro the American Eagle, cape extended at center stage, “With . . . You,” Elvis Fuckin’ Presley, the God of Machismo. The trick of the century.

“Look at us, turn this way,” shout the grandstanders in the lousy seats, as they have all night. So he parades his goods around the stage, constant applause accompanying the full circle back to center stage, spread eagle again, and then with Sancho Panza on his tail arid the Pat Boone and Fabian lookalikes pulling up the rear, amidst deafening applause the Prince leaves. There is no attempt to bring him back. How could cheers affect Elvis? Encore cheers to him are like spitting in the ocean. Why bother? No more cheers, no more flashbulbs. In the end there is only a flame. And then the flame goes out, unmasking reality. How much is it worth?