Elvis Candlelight Livestream filled with Too Much Monkey Business!

Many fans were watching the candlelight service on livestream. And from the start, it became a bizarre event!

First, Priscilla Presley referred to it as Elvis’ birthday. OK, one time I get it, we are all getting older, tiredness etc. But she referred to this as his birthday many times to the point, I thought she was going to have the crowd sing Happy Birthday Elvis. I kid you not! Seriously! So bizarre! 

But she did look great as always. All kidding aside, I get it. We all have been there during a big Elvis Week, you’re so tired, you don’t make sense! Priscilla, get some rest! You’re scaring me! 

Next, we get Tom Brown Live from the green screen of the “front lawn”, great to see Tom, ok but that’s where we stayed for most of the night. Tom talking and talking and talking about the wonderful new movie, Elvis. Yes, it’s wonderful but tonight was not about sales pitches or the wonderful movie. The candlelight service was created BY FANS FOR FANS. 

Fans who are watching the livestream are mostly long time dedicated fans. You don’t have to educate us, or sell to us. We have seen the movie numerous times and we love it. And no shade to Tom, that’s what EPE paid him to do, he is doing his job. He sure is a good talker. 

The continuous clips, the impractical joker guy was on for way too long, so boring and not what we want to see. I saw various comments on the livestream feed of complaints. One guy had a great comment, he said Where’s Mickey Mouse? because they had so many clips of people talking about the movie that only Mickey Mouse was missing. Many fans were bored by all the talking and stopped watching the stream. One fan called it a snoozefest.

One thing I have to correct Tom Brown on, he said EPE never shut down the vigil and stopped fans from going up. They tried once. I believe it was the 20th anniversary. The tours were about to start on the morning of the 16th and many fans were still in line to go up and EPE tried to close the line. Two of those fans are very dear friends of mine and they raised hell. EPE was concerned about the tour buses going up the driveway while fans were walking up. So it did happen once. Jack Soden got an earful from my two friends and needless to say, they went up.

So many fans commenting on the talking, Enough of these guys talking, we want to hear Elvis, we want to see the vigil, the fans.

This talking about the movie could have been a special to kick off Elvis Week or the release of the movie. But don’t do this on candlelight night. Save the propaganda. The candlelight is very special, it is highly revered BY fans. Don’t ruin it even if we are only talking about the livestream. That’s where it starts and soon the in person event will change too.

Geez, even The Colonel would no go this far with the propaganda! 

Finally when the talking stops, we fans hope ok now we will see the vigil. 

Nope, livestream ENDED. WTH! Are you kidding me? 

We tune in to experience the candlelight service, we want to hear Elvis singing and watch the fans gathered there to pay their respects to Elvis. We want to see our friends with their candles. We want to share that special evening, that special connection. We want to experience it. It’s an emotional connection, an experience we share with our fellow fans. We lost that tonight for the first time ever. 

If anything, all that talking, talking, and more talking and clips could have been shown the hour BEFORE the candlelight started. That would have been great! So many fans found this to be tasteless and disrespectful to Elvis and his fans. 

The quality of the livestream has improved tremendously throughout the years. And we fans appreciate the chance to experience this sacred event on line. But please keep it simple, we want to hear ELVIS and see our fellow ELVIS fans. 

And two hours? Come on! EPE used to let this keep streaming the fans going up the driveway and playing the music until at least midnight. It felt like you were there. And it was incredible to watch. 

THAT will sell more tickets, more hotel rooms not tuning into an infomercial. TACKY!

Salesman talkin’ to me, tryin’ to run me up a creek 

Says you can buy it, go on try it, you can pay me next week, ahh 

Too much monkey business, too much monkey business 

Too much monkey business for me to be involved in

Too Much Monkey Bu$ine$$, EPE! 

Not cool! You dropped the ball!

Lisa Marie Presley to save Graceland

So says a tabloid out on news stands now. Lisa Marie Presley is quoted by the tabloid as saying she won’t let her fathers fans down. They claim she is stepping in to save Elvis’ Graceland.
Every Elvis fan knows or expects to hear this. On every big anniversary like this 35th anniversary of Elvis’ death, the tabloids say Graceland is closing etc etc. It sells papers! Yawn….move on!

The King & I by Carrie White

Hollywood hairdresser; author, ‘Upper Cut: Highlights of My Hollywood Life’

 It was 1989. Adam, my son, was 23. His band, Grace Period, was about to play at the Whisky A Go-Go for the first time.

I remembered the big buzz on the Sunset Strip in the early 60s. The Whisky A Go-Go is coming. When? What was a Whisky A Go-Go anyway? Where was it coming from? All I knew was that a guy named Elmer Valentine had seen one in Europe and he was bringing one here. When this club finally did arrive, it didn’t disappoint anyone. Especially me.

Even after I married and had my son, I would get there every chance. I made sure Elmer knew me so I’d never have to wait in line to get to the dance floor. The house bands were sexy and exciting: Love, The Flying Burritos, a scruffy looking guy named Neil Young that sat on the edge of the stage when he played. Then the singer with the best hair, cut by my pal Jay Sebring, and his group The Doors, became the house band. I wanted to be there every night. I literally hung on Jim’s ankle at the foot of the stage, with a Black Russian in my other hand, and danced ’til I had to get home to my baby boy Adam. Now my Adam was going to be on that same stage.

So, of course, my son came to my salon to get a new sharp rock ‘n roll haircut for his big performance. And he wanted his hair dyed black like Elvis.

“Here, Adam,” I said while his color was processing, “you may get a kick out of this.” I handed him my six stapled pages of a story I was writing about an Elvis experience. I walked back to my station to cut my next client.

I was half way through my haircut when my son walked back to me, plastic bag over his hair, black dripping down his sideburns.

“Mom,” he said, “you forgot to write about the part when Elvis gave me a cowboy hat full of quarters at the Hilton and said, ‘Here kid, you can’t play the one-arm bandits in the casino, but you can play them in my room.'”

I stared at my son confused.

“Were you there?”

“Mom! The whole family was there!”

I started laughing. “I guess whenever I was with Elvis, I thought we were alone.”

This was the good-looking right-sized Elvis, the always kind and fun Elvis, the one that liked to show me his new glitter stage jackets, the one that got a big laugh when I tried on the big gold belt given to him by the owner of the Hilton Hotel, his name spelled out on the buckle in emeralds, diamonds, rubies, and sapphires.

Elvis also liked to tell me stories. But there was one story that will be a tattoo on my heart. We were in his Holmby Hills house. I had just finished cutting Elvis’s hair and he told me to stay and finish my drink. He sat on the edge of the bathtub in his dressing room and proceeded to tell me in his deep Southern voice about a song he’d recorded.

“There was this man,” he said. “He was a sick man in a hospital bed. His wife sat by his side, day and night. The man would drift in and out, but every time he opened his eyes, his wife was there, looking back at him with a gentle smile.” I hadn’t seen Elvis so serious before, except when he wanted me to cut his hair like Ricky Nelson, which I talked him out of. Elvis continued, “One night the man woke up in the wee small hours and this was the first time he’d seen his wife had fallen asleep in her chair. He took a note pad and wrote that he felt his life leaving his body and he didn’t want to wake her to say goodbye. Softly as I leave you, he wrote, and his words were later turned into a song, from the note she found on his blanket, when she woke to also find her lifetime love had passed.”

I knew this song, “Softly as I Leave You” by Sinatra, but I had always thought this was about a man sneaking out to be with another woman and didn’t want to hurt his wife’s feelings.

I welled up. I moved over to Elvis and hugged him tight.

“Good night,” I said. This was the last time I saw Elvis. I wished I would have hugged him tighter, longer.

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