Elvis is adored in California, for his melodies and his appearance. The audience in Santa Barbara's mock Spanish theatre is at least half teenage high school: some are dressed up like it was Hallowe'en — new wave is fancy dress music here. Armed Forces is Top 20, the tour sold out.
Nowadays, of course, Elvis gives a show. First time on the West Coast, November 1977, he was nervous and uneasy and all the tension of his music profited by his inexperience. Sweaty palms, visible shivers, sudden violence. Neuroses and temper on his sleeve.
Tonight he and the Attractions are smothered in adulation, the crowd on their feet from the opening "Goon Squad." Despite his terminal distrust, Elvis is tempted by flattery. A pity, because he is at his best fighting an audience's complacency — if he doesn't storm off in a fit of pique.
Armed Forces is excellent, the new act less so. What used to be a thriller has become melodrama, emotional titillation, perfectly orchestrated by a lightshow that tells you what to feel and when. Imitations of unease spotlight in red against a backdrop. Touring as much as he has, Elvis must realise he can't walk the edge every night.
Now he's distanced himself, turned menace into an act. Unlike the album, the tour is a military exercise, blanks for bullets, shows of just over half an hour up and down California.
Elvis gigs used to be like reading his diary and getting caught in the act; he needed to confess and threaten — but he didn't like it — you for seeing his weakness. Tonight, from "(I Don't want To Go To) Chelsea" on, all the unease is in the Attractions' music, Steve Naive's organ is peeping and poking then swirling like fog, Bruce's bass pointing out the tunes and the drums stuttering and running on top like an unbalanced heartbeat. Elvis works around the last two albums, acting out the songs — "Green Shirt" in particular, hands scraping through the spike top in mock hysteria, Costello trapped in lights like the stars in prison uniform on the Band On The Run cover.
But it's all peculiarly polite and friendly. The standard showpiece, "Watching The Detectives" closes after "Lipstick Vogue," stopping and starting and drifting off into intentionally dangerous places, but somehow there's no danger, it's a professional career.
Popularity turns anger into petulance — it must be hard to be unloved and menacing before an ecstatic crowd. "Pump It Up" is the perfunctory encore and though the crowd stays on and on, they're only watching the roadies at work. Another day, another dollar.
Lipservice is probably the only way to survive such constant touring and urgency and risks aren't available on order every night. But no one has written better than Elvis about the subversion and handcuffing of anger.
It gets harder to bite the hand that overfeeds you and as for me, well, sometimes it takes more than a little finger to blow you away.
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