DEAR doubting Thomas,
Allegro. Maestro. Montego. OK. Having exhausted my classical lexicon,
I'll say that it's 15 years since I first saw Elvis, 50 yards across the
road atop the long-gone Apollo in a sticky-floored dancehall named
Satellite City.
The new-wavefulness was terrific. If you'd told me then that Elvis
would wind up being backed by a string quartet doing an epistolatory
song-cycle inspired by a Veronese academic's replies to a dead imaginary
woman, I'd have been epistolatingly speechless, pal.
Last night's show, the first live unveiling of The Juliet Letters, was
thus part of a brave artistic move, with Elvis open to copping it from
both sides of the unrock/non-classical divide.
Two biker-jacketed rock traditionalists next to me lasted seven songs.
No catchy choruses.
Classicists perhaps winced at Elvis's palpable lack of vocal range and
his penchant for the sub-operatic quaver.
Me? Along with almost everyone else I reckoned it utterly splendid, so
gripping that no-one could have complained about the absence of more
familiar songs from Elvis's rock canon.
The quartet sawed and swooped, jauntily expressive one moment, driven
the next.
Elvis emoted like a good 'un.
Top tune? I Almost Had a Weakness, wheeled out as a second triumphant
encore, after Scarlet Ribbons and before Kurt Weill's Lost in the Stars.
I must away to play the Juliet LP anew.
PS: I've not gone completely soft; if Sting tried anything like this,
I'd hate it.
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