Previous Page Even though he didn’t like Pasetta’s biggest suggestion of making the stage three-pronged (so that Elvis could walk down a runway and be surrounded by his audience), he went along with it—despite his worry that he would lose his way and fall off—because he wanted to try whatever was necessary to make the show a hit and because he appreciated Pasetta’s candor. To differentiate the show from the one he just finished in New York, Elvis arranged an almost entirely-new set-list. Of the twenty-three songs he performed on the live broadcast, only a third of them had also been featured in Madison Square Garden six months prior. Another third were songs he had played live in the past, but were not frequent numbers. The final third were songs either entirely new recordings or at least had never been recorded live before. Needing an outfit befitting the moment, Elvis called on Bill Belew (who, by this point had designed over a dozen different outfits for Elvis between 1968-1972) to create a look that embodied the spirit of America that he’d be projecting to the world. Belew came back with a suit that is now one of the two most iconic outfits the man ever wore (along with his black leather suit from 1968), called simply “Aloha.” Stark white, with a gem-studded pattern forming an American bald eagle. The eagle is everywhere on the suit: One drapes across his chest, another is on his back. One adorns his cape, while a smaller one sits on the back of his high collar. Smaller ones appear on each bicep, two each on his legs, six encircle his midsection, hidden behind his enormous belt, whereupon four more eagles were placed, and golden stars pepper the outfit everywhere. Silly as it may be to say, the design never goes too far, as some of his 1972 suits did (his gaudy red “burning love” suit is a particular eyesore). Originally a massive, floor-length cape was crafted, with Elvis having the idea that he’d hide behind it (like Dracula?) during the opening “Also Sprach Zarathustra” number, and then drop the cape to reveal…himself in all his glory. The cape proved too heavy and awkward to handle, however, so it scrapped…but not until Belew spent weeks crafting it! A smaller, no less stunning cape was made to replace it, however. The whole costume does exactly what the man wanted: It made Elvis look like a million bucks and not-so-subtly projected the 100% “Americanism” of his super-stardom. The show was originally scheduled for the week before Thanksgiving, but MGM asked Parker to delay the show until the new year, to avoid conflicts with the Elvis On Tour release. Instead, Elvis flew to Hawaii to play a concert series in November and to hold a press conference hyping the now-January event. It was around that time that Elvis and Col. Parker received a letter from a columnist for the Honolulu Advertiser newspaper, who said that since the live special would offer free admittance, and since Elvis had recorded “I’ll Remember You” a few years back, he might think about making the show a “donations-only” event, with proceeds going to the Kui Lee Cancer Fund (the “I’ll Remember You” singer and song-writer had died of cancer in 1966 at age 34). Parker leapt at the chance to show Elvis in a philanthropic light, and with that, the pieces were in place. In the end, the show raised over $75,000. In case of technical difficulties, a full dress rehearsal was filmed with a live audience two days before the concert was set to air, as though it was the January 14th show. Should something go wrong with the live feed, Pasetta would simply switch to the January 13th recording. Despite the intention to make the two shows identical, there are several differences between them. For one thing, there were two “Aloha” suits provided for Elvis by Bill Belew, with one slightly baggier than the other. The rehearsal show featured Elvis wearing the baggier suit, which didn’t fit him nearly as nicely as the other. His hair was also longer, drooping lazily over his eyebrows and hanging sloppily over his sideburns. The two biggest differences are the belt that Elvis “parted with” and the additional songs Elvis decided to sing during the live show. Bill Belew worked tirelessly on the whole outfit, including the belt Elvis wore with it. A thick White strap with several gold chains looping across the bottom and twin American eagles in the front, the belt’s a real work of art. This is probably why Elvis thought it would make a nice gesture to gift to actor friend Jack Lord (from the hit CBS show Hawaii Five-O). Poor Belew had to stay up all night crafting a replacement belt. There’s a running gag here that we’ll return to later. In terms of the music, the rehearsal concert is a little livelier, although he botches the lyrics to “Burning Love” (which was a fear that kept him from performing it at Madison Square Garden), but it would be years before anyone outside of the Honolulu International Center would hear it (RCA would release the Alternate Aloha LP in 1988). Three songs were recorded for the live broadcast that weren’t done in the dress-rehearsal, though two of them were favorites from his 1969-1970 Vegas run, “Johnny B. Goode” and “I Can’t Stop Loving You.” The other additional song is a medley of “Long Tall Sally” and “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin On.” The former was drawn from his 1956 catalog and the latter came from his 1970-1971 country recordings and album (although the famous Jerry Lee Lewis version dates back to 1957). Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party. YouTube privacy policy If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh. Accept YouTube Content The reason for the additional material was due to the rehearsal timing out to only 50 minutes. It wasn’t until the day of the live broadcast that Pasetta received word from his assistant that they were ten minutes short of the time allocated for the broadcast. Panicked, Pasetta made a beeline for Elvis’s dressing room, telling him they needed to do something to stretch things an additional ten minutes. Elvis, calm as a cucumber, said to him “No problem, we’ll sing a few more.” “Where?” Pasetta asked him, bewildered, holding up the script of the night’s activities. Elvis took the pages from him and casually jabbed at spots in between songs, “here, here and here” he said. And just like that, they found their ten minutes. In terms of “new” songs Elvis debuted, there was “Steamroller Blues,” a James Taylor number he wanted to record in the studio a year before. Hearing it live shows how much Elvis could have done with it had he been given the chance to make it a proper record. In fact, the live version here was released as a B-side to the song “Fool” that was recorded in 1972. The “Fool” song flopped and failed even to chart but “Steamroller Blues,” though it was the flip-side song, managed to reach #17 on the Hot100. After being dissatisfied with his studio-version of “My Way” Elvis vowed to make the song work in a live setting. Here he performs it—with the aid of sheet music because the second verse always tripped him up—and proved his instincts right, drawing a huge ovation for his sincere take on the song Sinatra declared “too self-indulgent.” Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party. YouTube privacy policy If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh. Accept YouTube Content Midway through the show, Elvis announced a desire to sing “probably the saddest song I’ve ever heard” which prompted the band to lead him into an old Hank Williams number from 1949, “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” Elvis’s version, as he often did, was packed with much more raw emotion than the simple honky-tonk sound Williams pioneered. Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party. YouTube privacy policy If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh. Accept YouTube Content “What Now My Love” is another Sinatra song, but the differences in his version and Elvis’s are night and day. Sinatra sang the song—whose lyrics tell the story of a man contemplating suicide after losing his love—like a cabaret showman. Elvis sings it like it’s a melodrama, pouring passion into his delivery and making it one of the best performances of the night, and an interpretation infinitely better and more appropriate to the subject matter than Sinatra’s take. Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party. YouTube privacy policy If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh. Accept YouTube Content After introducing his band, Elvis turned to “Welcome to My World,” a mid-60’s country song made famous by Jim Reeves. Elvis’s version is almost identical, but it worked well enough that RCA plucked it from the album years later and gave it the lead on its own record (a hodgepodge collection of various songs from 1957-1973) that unexpectedly went gold. Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party. YouTube privacy policy If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh. Accept YouTube Content Elvis had already been performing “An American Trilogy” for a year when the Aloha concert aired. The master version was recorded and released and promptly died on the charts. But Elvis loved the song and loved performing the song, and with each rendition, he improved upon his previous performance. Many songs from his 1972 set-list were scrapped in prepping for this show (“Proud Mary,” “Never Been to Spain,” “Polk Salad Annie,” “For the Good Times”) but considering Elvis’s desire to put on an American spectacle, there was no way he wasn’t going to play the song. The version he recorded here is the best take the man ever did of the song. Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party. YouTube privacy policy If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh. Accept YouTube Content Remember the belt Belew had to remake for Elvis after he gave the original away to the “Book em Danno” guy? He did it again: While soaking up the cheers of the crowd after “An American Trilogy” Elvis tossed his replacement belt (which looked just as splendid as the original) into the crowd, forcing Belew to make a third belt for Elvis to use during his Las Vegas engagements later in the year. Just before his customary show-closer, “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” Elvis burst into a take on the song that was his last #1 of the 1950s, “Big Hunk O Love.” Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party. YouTube privacy policy If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh. Accept YouTube Content And then, at the end of the show, just for kicks and giggles, Elvis tossed his American-eagle-gem-studded cape into the crowd in a moment of reckless abandon and euphoria (poor Bill Belew worked for weeks on that thing). Elvis took his bow, mouthed “thank you” to the audience, and disappeared behind the curtain. The telecast went off without a hitch, much to the relief of Marty Passeta, Col. Parker, and everyone involved. For all its acclaim, the concert itself was actually one of the weaker ones that Elvis did around that time. The MSG show before it and the big Memphis homecoming show in ’74 would both outclass it. The biggest criticism was how stilted Elvis was throughout. It was as though the hugeness of the moment made him decide to strip away a lot of the playful banter that made his shows so delightful in the first place. This Elvis seems stiff, overly-procedural in the way he moves from one song to the next. If it wasn’t for who he was you might wonder what all the fuss was about and why he was at the center of a TV broadcast that more people watched live than the moon landing. And yet, even if you never had heard of the man and even if you had no idea what you were watching…to see the show is to understand his appeal. It’s such a unique thing; here was a man who never wrote one song all by himself, a man who—by 1973—rarely ever actually played (not just mimed playing) a guitar on stage, but was content to smile while brilliant players like James Burton shredded their way through “Johnny B. Goode.” He stands on stage wearing a giant one-piece bird-emblazoned suit and cape, and slurs his way through country, rockabilly and quasi-opera ballads. Why does it work? It does because the sheer force of his charisma and magnetic charm compels it to work. The show may not have been his best concert, but it was his magnum opus; it was his greatest achievement, and if the record 1.5 billion spectators have anything to say about it, it may remain the single greatest achievement by a solo entertainer in history. Meanwhile, everyone in the United States was watching the Super Bowl.