Elvis wanted something different: a concert to reconnect him with his fans and showcase all the music he loved. Colonel Parker had envisioned a traditional Vegas show, with chorus girls and choreography. So it was fitting that Las Vegas, a town blindsided by the rock revolution, would turn to a megawatt rock ‘n’ roll star as the agent of its reinvention two weeks before Woodstock would take place in upstate New York.Įlvis’s return to the stage in Vegas was a make-or-break career gamble. The younger generation was going to arena concerts, not hanging out in the Sands Hotel lounge. None of the major rock artists of the era - the Stones, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin - wanted anything to do with the city.

The arrival of the Beatles, the rise of the counterculture - all of it was making Vegas look decidedly worn. By the end of the ’60s, however, the golden years were fading fast. At the beginning of the decade, with Sinatra and the Rat Pack riding high, the town was the white-hot center for live entertainment in America. “For many,” wrote Dylan Jones in “Elvis Has Left the Building,” “Vegas Elvis was already Dead Elvis.”īut for that 1969 comeback, and at least a year or two after, Elvis was at his peak as a stage performer, and he created a show that not only revitalized his career, but changed the face of Las Vegas entertainment. Elvis’s Vegas years are mostly recalled as a period of commercial excess and artistic decline: the bombastic shows, the gaudy white jumpsuits, the ballooning weight, the erratic stage behavior, the drugs. This week marks the 50th anniversary of Elvis’s Vegas comeback show, on Ja milestone being celebrated by a new Sony 11-CD boxed set of his ’69 Vegas performances, a reunion concert in Memphis next month and probably some snickers from the rock classicists. But when he finally returned to the stage for the first time in more than eight years, for a four-week engagement at Las Vegas’ new International Hotel, there was no guarantee he could still deliver onstage. A much-praised television comeback special on NBC in December 1968 had put him back on the radar.

When he returned from his two-year hitch in the Army in 1960, the king of rock ’n’ roll essentially retired from live performing, confining himself to making movies (which were growing steadily worse) and recording disposable pop songs (that were no longer reaching the charts).

The 1960s may have been a wildly transformative decade in the history of popular music, but for Elvis Presley it was something of a black hole.

Bring Him Home by Sammy Goode