Elvis is dead – 16th August 1977

30th Aug 2025 – I was sitting at the dining table in a room that served as my mother’s workspace when it wasn’t occupied by our dining lodgers and me. I spent plenty of time here as my mum worked at her knitting machine.

But on this day, early evening, maybe post-dinner, Paul, our longest serving lodger, ran in from the living room, where our old dial TV/radio was ensconced, proclaiming that “Elvis is dead!” They said he died on the toilet of a heart attack. I sure didn’t want to die on the toilet.

Elvis was in the zeitgeist, but I wasn’t exactly sure why. I had probably seen his movies on TV at some point, but at age 9, I wasn’t yet aware of the sexual revolution that surrounded ‘rock ‘n’ roll’.

The dining room was, however, where I, aged 6, and a similarly aged girl from ‘down the street’, played doctors and nurses, showing each other our private parts. And I specifically recall asking my mum if it was ok for us to show each other our bottoms too. If only our innocence remained.

By this time, mum and I were living with my grandparents in Dorset and hadn’t sold our three-floor end terrace house in Whitehaven, Cumbria. This was probably our first visit back since moving. By the time of my next return, one or two years later, I had discovered Sid Vicious, the Sex Pistols and was processing the anti-‘rock ‘n’ roll’ of punk and Elvis was a sworn enemy, a faker and a part of everything that should be destroyed.

I was still enjoying Elvis’s final single release, ‘Way Down’, at this point though. The song suddenly found itself scaling the charts, showing just how sellable a celebrity death could be.