On December 21, 1970, Elvis Presley, loaded on several prescription narcotics, paid a visit to President Richard M. Nixon at the White House in Washington, D.C. The meeting was initiated by Presley, who wrote Nixon a six-page letter requesting a visit with the President and suggesting that he be made a "Federal Agent-at-Large" in the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.
Nixon, who set the FBI on John Lennon at one point, of course, thought it offered great PR opportunities. And thus the great meeting came to pass.

And then, on August 16, 1977, the King was dead from heart arrest, brought on by obesity and a monumental drug habit. I was working at the Record Factory, a record store in Colma, just south of San Francisco, at the time. The day after the King died, there was a crowd of about thirty people out in front of the store before we opened.

I worked in the back, running a small t-shirt and poster shop for the Bill Graham organization. Of course, none of us in the store were into Elvis, so we were cracking jokes about the fans hovering beyond the locked doors. I am sure that throughout the country, this scene was repeated, as distraught fans gathered outside record shops to buy some music of their fallen god. It was an older crowd, mid-thirties to mid-sixties, perhaps. Working class, salt of the earth types.

I was standing in the back of the shop, perhaps seventy or eighty feet from the entrance. I had a clear view of the whole store.

10 a.m., opening time.

The assistant manager unlocked the doors as the crowd pressed in. The doors blew open as the assembled surged into the store, determined now, focussed, desperate to acqurire a vinyl icon of the Fallen One.

Suddenly, it turned into a stampede. They were running for the Elvis section, and it was every man (and woman) for himself. 

And I remember it like it was yesterday: an elderly woman, perhaps the oldest person in the crowd, was knocked to the ground in the rush, and no one stopped to help her. The mob swarmed over the bins, scrabbling over re-pressings of the Kissin' Cousins soundtrack and Viva Las Vegas. In the frenzy, the woman was forgotten. I am uncertain as to whether or not she managed to get an album for her collection.

Soon, the scavengers had picked the bones of the Elvis bins clean and the fervent dissipated into the Colma morning. Being young, we laughed about the whole thing for days.

The Elvis accolades poured in from all over the world, as expected. When asked for a comment, Sex Pistols lead singer Johnny Rotten said,"His gut hung over rock and roll like a shadow."

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