Outback Elvis

by John Connell

  Almost as far from Memphis as it is possible to get, Parkes has become a distant and dynamic outlier of the global Elvis empire.

  The accreditation of the festival by Elvis Presley Enterprises brought a new layer of professionalism, but also formality, and it even acquired a suffix: the Parkes Elvis™ Festival. Fear of offending Elvis Presley Enterprises meant that more ‘frivolous’ and irreverent activities, such as the Elvis versus Elvis rugby match, went ahead, but outside the formal program. Only fliers posted on trees and lamp posts indicated its existence. There were subtle shifts. More visitors went to the King’s Castle than the Elvis Lennox Private Collection. Sydney middlemen, well connected in the global ETA circuit, contracted the tribute artists. Aging Uniting Church volunteers were no longer able to cope with the demands of the huge crowds, and the Gospel Service shifted to the park. Volunteers became harder to get, with a growing sense that ‘the council can do it’. Tensions were sometimes not far from the surface, very familiar on so many festival committees, where ‘succession planning’ seems to be little more than the shift of power, authority, knowledge and wisdom – if rarely enthusiasm – away from those who founded an event primarily for pleasure. Other forms of regulation, whether from the state roads authority (RMS), the police or Elvis Presley Enterprises, merely increased these tensions.

  Alan Payne, still organising the parade portfolio at the age of 82, was chafing at new regulations imposed by the state roads authority and the council, which prevented people sitting on the tops of convertible Cadillacs, ‘though they only go at five miles an hour’. The Tourism Office now had to meet KPIs (key performance indicators) devised by Destination NSW – a valuable source of festival funding – and had developed their own goals such as ‘to maintain current audiences and develop new audiences to ensure the sustainability of the festival’. Elvis Revival Inc. simply wanted to stage yet another enjoyable Elvis event. Steve ‘Elvis’ Lennox argued: ‘The Festival is for the town, not for the council; it’s for everyone and we started it’. However Festival ownership and direction was debated, resolved and directed, as councillor Michael Greenwood put it, there was always going to be some uncertainty, indecision and division about how best to use the ‘bikkies in the barrel’ that the festival brought in.

  Overall, the onus was shifting to the council, and the mayor, Ken Keith, had acquired a distinctive extra duty. As he put it, while seeing off the Elvis Express:

  Thirty-two years ago, when I got involved in local government, I had no concept at all that I’d ever have to wear an Elvis outfit, but when you work for Parkes’ public sector, learning all the words to ‘Hound Dog’ is almost part of the job description. It becomes part of the mayoral office; you’ve got to dress up as part of the theme.

  In his youth a Beatles fan, the mayor now recognised the error of his ways. His predecessor, Robert Wilson, had purchased his white jumpsuit in America: ‘The suit really stands out from my conservative wardrobe of suits and farm gear’. As the festival gained wider acceptance, many locals went more than the extra mile, and long country miles were invaluable. Two volunteers, Bob and Elvy, were in their eighties but insisted on being involved. After living on a farm 40 kilometres outside Parkes they had retired into town and, then in their seventies, had signed up for home hosting as soon as it began: ‘We like meeting new people’. It was from Bob that we first heard the words: ‘If it’s good for Parkes, we’ll be in it’. Bob meeted and greeted as Elvis and when the Elvis Express rolled out he was usually one of the last still in costume. In between he worked as a parade steward. Elvy, meanwhile, kept Vinnies in business. Mostly behind the scenes, quietly but enthusiastically, they ensured that they did their invaluable bit.

  The King is dead, long live the King

  He’s just an icon but we don’t want to let him die. It’s thirty-eight years since he’s been gone. I just said to someone last night, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to have a little window into the future where you go – oh, not fifty years … but a hundred years after he’s gone, [and] have a look; it’ll still be happening.’ (The Ghost of Elvis, Parkes, 2015)

  Three decades after his death, an American academic asked ‘Why is Elvis on Burkina Faso postage stamps?’: a reasonable question since quite definitely Elvis had never been there, could never have heard of it (as the country was Upper Volta in his days), while, on the edge of the inhospitable Sahara, surely its residents could never have heard of him. That might have been so, but in an impoverished African state where even stamp sales brought in useful income, clever marketing strategies were crucial – and Elvis stamps sold. From Palau to Tanzania, Papua New Guinea to Grenada and St Vincent to Zaire, Elvis has made it on to series of bestselling stamps. No realm of popular culture has escaped his influence. Andy Warhol’s painting of Elvis Presley sold for US$82 million in 2014. The objective of the video game Grand Theft Auto 2 was to simultaneously kill groups of Elvis impersonators who roamed the streets of the city. Elvis Presley was even enrolled to vote in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea in the 2007 elections. More than 500 books have been written about him, including Elvis for Dummies, while A Rough Guide to Elvis suggests that he has acquired the status of a nation. After the White House, Graceland is the best-known and most visited house in America. To the ever-enthusiastic cultural commentator Greil Marcus:

  Elvis Presley is a supreme figure in American life, one whose presence, no matter how banal or predictable, brooks no real comparisons ... The cultural range of his music has expanded to the point where it includes not only the hits of the day, but also patriotic recitals, pure country gospel, and really dirty blues ... Elvis has emerged as a great artist, a great rocker, a great purveyor of schlock, a great heart throb, a great bore, a great symbol of potency, a great ham, a great nice person, and, yes, a great American.

  Speaking in Parkes, United States Consul-General Hugo Llorens has been no less effusive:

  Elvis is alive and well in Parkes because of his remarkable musical accomplishments of the 1950s which produced a unique and distinctive blend of Afro-American influenced rhythm and blues, traditional country and gospel music, classical pop, and the newly exploding rock and roll music, of which Elvis would become the first acclaimed royalty, the first undisputed King. That and his looks, dress, unparalleled charisma, the unique tonality and range of his voice, his energy and pulsating rhythm, and his magnetic ability to communicate through his live, record, radio and film performances all combined to make him a bigger-than-life persona. He also rode the tide of the civil rights movement and by beautifully blending black and white music was a progressive force in advancing civil rights in my country. His is a story that is very relevant to Americans and Australians. He was a working-class figure of humble origins, embodying the dream of climbing up the ladder.

  Indisputably an American hero, but with acute Australian parallels, and a cultural icon of the 20th century, he was the most famous singer in the world, and visible throughout it, much more in death than in life. Elvis was part of collective pop culture consciousness. In the age of vinyl he was the King. Decades after his death, where in the world – except Burkina Faso – do people of a certain age not know that Heartbreak Hotel was down at the end of Lonely Street, or where they were and what they were doing when they heard he had died? While 1977, the year of his death, marked the punk insurrection, his career simply continued, even if the rags-to-riches story, from the wooden shack in Tupelo to the Graceland mansion in Memphis, had finally ended. More than any of his musical predecessors he could ignite love, passion and ultimately memories.

  Elvis was a working-class truck driver made good, a man who loved his Mom and did his bit as a GI for his country – but he was also strikingly handsome, with a multicultural look before the word was invented. Though he never composed songs and his guitar playing was rudimentary, he could certainly sing and the magic came through the mellifluous delivery. Ironically, the visual version of Elvis that is so often remembered is the latter-day jumpsuited Vegas Elvis – not t
he handsome young GI or cowboy-booted roustabout – and, in Parkes at least, though the music may be from earlier days, that image dominates absolutely.

  In many ways, life has not much changed in Parkes in the quarter of a century since its iconic festival began in 1993. Like just about everywhere else in Australia, it has mobile phone shops, bearded baristas, and pub bistros selling gluten-free meals. Out in the surrounding paddocks, auto-steer tractors, guided by GPS, are replacing manual John Deeres. Stand for a moment in the newsagents on the edge of the main street, and realise that at its core Parkes remains a country town. Utes park in parallel ranks, trays facing the kerb, and their owners, in Akubras, stride in. Stacks of The Land, higher than any other pile, are gradually depleted. A slightly different clientele purchases copies of Country Life, Country Style and horse-breeding magazines. In slightly smaller piles, but to a metropolitan resident wondrous in their diversity, are a vast range of glossy magazines – Aussie Boar Hunters, Bowhunting, Bacon Busters and Australian and New Zealand Handgun, alongside that perennial favourite, Boar It Up Ya (‘the only hunting magazine with grunt’) and the possibly feminist Chicks Smashing Grunters (‘Australia’s First Female Hunting Mag’). Not only is there a relatively elite agricultural scene that breeds merinos and thoroughbred horses (with its own magazine, Bluebloods) and engages in small-scale production of honey, lavender and cheese, but there is also a defiantly blue-collar country evident in souped-up utes with high-powered spotlights, work boots and rugby league jerseys. Politically, Parkes remains an absolute National Party stronghold.

  Even in what passes for downtown – or the central business district, as it is optimistically referred to – agriculture is simply there. The drought is over, at least for now, and the Parkes Show is in its 136th year (with competition for knitted coathangers still fierce), but Parkes has seen better times. Grain silos dominate the skyline but have been disused for a decade. Wheat farms that were once 800 acres and took a team of local men three months to harvest are now 15 000 acres, strip-harvested by giant tractors with 40-foot wide headers, operated by outside contractors who finish in a few days. The infrastructure and community life of many regional centres has slowly disappeared through corner shop, bank, office and store closures. Parkes has been hit not just by bank closures but by online banking and internet shopping. Jobs are no longer there.

  Despite the odds, a country town has been reinvigorated by an event commemorating a dead performer who never visited Australia, let alone Parkes. Unusual and unique creativity, combined with good but fortuitous timing, entrepreneurship and ingenuity, tolerance and a sense of adventure, have all contributed to a rural place at serious risk of stagnation putting itself on the map nationally and globally. Parkes has made its mark, and Elvis has made his mark on Parkes. In the ugly language of marketing, Elvis has given Parkes positive ‘place branding’.

  Parkes has succeeded in defiance of standard assumptions about investment and growth being linked to, and emerging from, a sense of place and identity. Indeed, it has turned these assumptions upside-down. The Festival thrives on repetition as much as innovation, and on passionate but non-musical volunteers, adept tourism officers, council support and the rugby club, rather than local musicians. Uniqueness, open-mindedness, genuine community participation and country hospitality have produced a distinct niche that has seen off attempts to develop similar festivals elsewhere in Australia. Creativity, innovation and enthusiasm are not merely metropolitan phenomena, despite assumptions that ‘best practices’ in arts and culture slowly trickle outwards in watered-down form. Festivals demonstrate that this is untrue, with many small towns like Parkes leading the way, and gaining significant economic, social and cultural benefits.

  ‘Where Elvis and the universe collide’

  The Elvis Festival succeeded despite the scepticism and downright opposition of some of the townsfolk, concerned about the image and status of a respectable town. Some still prefer the Dish, an Australian technological icon, as the appropriate image for a town named after the founder of Australian Federation. The heading above, the subtitle of the Parkes Shire website, neatly combines the two. Both the Dish and Elvis have emerged from obscurity, briefly achieved fame and folly, and gained acceptability. They have combined for the good of Parkes – a harmonious collusion, rather than collision, between star and stars.

  The Dish symbolised the end of the 1960s, and what promised to be the age of human space exploration, but it had lived on that legacy for a long time. It had never been particularly closely integrated into the life of Parkes and residents rarely visited it. But it was crucial to tourism, as a place for a pit stop at the Dish Café (offering Dish Burgers, Meteor Muesli and Space Station Sandwiches) and a momentary learning experience. Symbolically, it first put the town on the map. By 2013 its scientific contribution had slumped; the telescope now operated remotely so that astronomers no longer needed to be there to observe. Their role in Parkes came to an abrupt end.

  Yet the Dish has staged a belated revival. As Star Wars goes into its seventh incarnation, NASA occasionally mentions more missions, Richard Branson speculates on space tourism and trips to Mars are contemplated, all rekindling global interest in space travel, the Dish is to undergo a new upgrade. The Breakthrough Listen Initiative, funded by a Russian billionaire and launched by Stephen Hawking (who coincidentally shares the same birthday as Elvis), is by far the biggest search for alien intelligence ever attempted, although merely in the 100 closest galaxies. If and when the first message from an alien civilisation arrives, it might well be heard in Parkes.

  The new image of Parkes is as important economically as the immediate benefits. Try ringing the Tourist Visitor Information Centre; should you be put on hold you can listen to Elvis. Parkes is now so well known for Elvis in Australia that festival organisers like Kelly Hendry and Katrina Dwyer are regularly consulted by the national media on all manner of Elvis-related matters. Parkes’ identity is no longer only that of a sheep or wheat town, the ‘crossroads of a nation’ or the home of the Dish. It is the place for all things Elvis.

  While the festival continues to thrive, and numbers still appear to be steadily expanding – as Elvis did in his later years – Parkes has never become blasé about success. Experimentation with street closures and pavement business, new formats, new locations and new shows, have created a spontaneous and inclusive festival spirit. Both locals and tourists have questioned the longevity and sustainability of the Elvis Festival; is it a gimmick with a use-by date, a one-joke wonder? Might it be part of what tourism managers call the ‘tourist area life cycle model’, where festival destinations are inevitably destined to stagnate unless they can innovate? One innovation that did not succeed was the town’s attempt to develop a Memories of Elvis weekend in August 2014 to mark the anniversary of Elvis’s death. It included a Candlelight Vigil, modelled on that at Graceland, at the Elvis Wall of Fame. Perhaps August was too cold; perhaps deaths were harder to celebrate than births. Katrina Dwyer suggested it was ‘not quite right, profiting from a time of mourning’. Still, many of the old stagers, notably Elvis Lennox, have sought to revive the event: if it could happen in Memphis, it could happen in Parkes.

  Catchin’ on Fast: creative rural places

  The Elvis Festival demonstrates how a small, relatively remote place with no obvious advantages can stage a festival that succeeds, generates substantial economic benefits, fosters community and gains nationwide attention and publicity. It did so without any legitimate local claim to musical heritage, cultural diversity or an especially attractive setting. Most other festivals tied to individual musical performers try to celebrate a link to that performer – whether birthplace, deathplace, or place of famous recordings. Parkes cannot do that. It has wholly invented this association. The festival represents about as narrow a rationale for an event as can be imagined – the legendary performer is long dead, and festival visitors arrive to see only imitations and impersonations of the original.

  Several ot
her places show that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Wyong had an Elvis festival in 1995; Coffs Harbour made a tentative effort two years later. In 2001 Victor Harbor (South Australia) launched the two-day Festival of the King, which marked the date of Elvis Presley’s death. In Maitland the unused 19th-century jail offered a perfect setting for ‘Jailhouse Rock’. Parkes was again having direct competition for the ‘Elvis market’, though they all proved short-lived. None have succeeded as Parkes has done: it alone has the ‘authentic’ Elvis Festival.

  Other places have, however, had strange successes. In America, Roswell (New Mexico) hosts a UFO Festival, Metropolis (Illinois) is the home of a Superman festival and, once every four years, people born on 29 February can travel to Anthony (Texas), to be a part of its Leap Year Festival. Closer to home, in New South Wales, Boorowa celebrates the Running of the Sheep at its Irish Woolfest, Broken Hill hosts the Broken Heel Festival (a tribute to all things Priscilla, Queen of the Desert), Glenbrook holds the Australian Gnome Convention and Wooli puts on the Australian Goanna Pulling Championships. Food is rarely absent, from the Crookwell Potato Festival to Collector’s Pumpkin Festival. Other musical niches have been globally and nationally celebrated – the Roy Orbison Festival in Wink (Texas) is similarly dedicated to the music of a single dead musician.

  Where Parkes has led others have sought to follow and compete. Both Albury and Port Macquarie have Beatles festivals. Dubbo contemplated a Michael Jackson festival, but it never got underway. Trundle, hitherto known only for having the widest main street in Australia, now has an ABBA festival, another excuse for dressing up. Kandos, not much further from Parkes, is working hard to develop its annual Bob Marley Festival. Nearby Wellington has more recently decided to promote a Music in Between Festival (squeezed in between the Elvis Festival and the Tamworth Country Music Festival) and a precursor to its better known Wellington Boot Ball. Optimism over the festivalisation of Australia is eternal. Curiously, in the Australian festival tribute scene, Australian performers have largely been ignored. A festival in Armidale for local boy Peter Allen, songwriter of ‘I Still Call Australia Home’, died an almost instant death.