Bibek Acharya
When you find yourself in opposition to the current youth, remind yourself that you have simply grown old. A perfect paradigm for this patently evident rule is that Elvis Presley was a hated radical drawing heat while shaking up the stilted state of affairs, and then suddenly, he found himself taking up that selfsame finger-wagging view against his successors. The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll transformed America with his hip-snaking ways, but unfortunately, he wasn’t much of a fan of what his hips had begotten.
The irony of his hatred of the revolutionaries that followed in his wake is profound. As one letter to FBI director J Edgar Hoover from a former Army Intelligence Service officer who had witnessed one of his lewd early shows in 1956, stated: “[Elvis is] a definite danger to the security of the United States,” it uneeringly declared.
The world hadn’t seen anything like him, thus conservatism was the natural response. As the condemning letter continued: “[His] actions and motions were such as to arouse the sexual passions of teenaged youth. One eye-witness described his actions as ‘sexual self-gratification on stage,’ – another as ‘a strip-tease with clothes on’.”
Before troublingly positing: “It is known by psychologists, psychiatrists, and priests that teenaged girls from the age of eleven,” which doesn’t even make them teenagers, evidencing the officer’s twisting of facts, “and boys in their adolescence are easily aroused to sexual indulgence and perversion by certain types of motions and hysteria, – the type that was exhibited at the Presley show. There is also gossip of the Presley Fan Clubs that degenerate into sex orgies.”
It comically concluded: “From eye-witness reports about Presley, I would judge that he may possibly be a drug addict and a sexual pervert.” At least it would be comical if it didn’t happen to be addressed to the head of the FBI who was gearing up to go to war with the left, even if it took a “bloodbath” as Ronald Reagan would later put it.
So, while the infamous letter declaring the King a “pervert” might make for very problematic reading, the fact that Elvis was toured around the FBI headquarters ten days after meeting Richard Nixon in 1970 in the capacity of a firm ally to the secret service shows just how fast the sexual liberation of pop culture unfurled beyond his own liking.
When Elvis was with Nixon, he shared his belief that “the Smothers Brothers, Jane Fonda, and other persons in the entertainment industry of their ilk had poisoned young minds by disparaging the United States in their public statements and unsavoury activities.” It is an unlikely stance from someone once accused of singing “the devil’s music”.
Why was his opinion of Lennon so loathsome? Well, it didn’t help matters that when they first met in the King’s own lounge, Lennon asked what had happened to the old Elvis. Considering that garlanded Graceland star was not struggling to compete with the Fab Four, it was a comment that stung.
So, he later made his grievance official. Lodged in the FBI vault is a 663-page report on “Presley, Elvis A”. Within that, we learn that “he thought the Beatles had been a real force for anti-American spirit.” Furthermore, he was also “of the opinion that the Beatles laid the groundwork for many of the problems we are having with young people by their filthy unkempt appearances and suggestive music.”
That is the measured discourse he conveyed to the authorities, but according to his publicist, if you mentioned John Lennon around him in private, the Kung Fu fighting burger king would “fly into a rage”. However, you can feel his hatred in the logged notes of his meeting with President Nixon. “He said that the Beatles came to this country, made their money, and then returned to England where they promoted an anti-American theme,“ they read, marking perhaps the most infamous case of never meeting your heroes in history.
