Barker came on board Bluestone Productions a few months ago because he was so impressed by the enthusiasm of the show’s creator, Tony Macri. “Tony’s tenacity and his ferocious commitment was incredible. His honesty and his passion to get this project up was incredible but he’d never produced a show in his life. I do it for a living so I thought I’d better step in before he got into trouble.”
Barker insists this show offers something different from anything Elvis fans will have seen before, You Tube footage notwithstanding. “It’s such an original idea, to create a concert from go to woe. It’s not an impersonation,” he reiterates. “It’s a reminiscence. Elvis died a couple of weeks after these concerts. With an impersonation or with other tribute shows, they pack in the good bits. In the Rapid City 77 show (in South Dakota) he stopped the show on stage because he thought the musicians were out of time. He’s completely out of it; he was in a cloud. It’s incredibly sad.” The show is faithful to the events of the actual occasion, including snippets of inaudible mumbling and the moment when Elvis halted the musicians. But why would Elvis fans want to see The King resurrected at the lowest point in his career? You get the whole story, a sense of who he was, according to Barker. “It doesn’t put Elvis in a bad light,” he says. “When you hear the ballads, it’s eerie. It is how his life was and you see how he still had ‘that’ quality. It’s miles away from the usual tribute show, very far from the usual casino type night with an Elvis impersonator. There are some comedy capers but there’s also the tragedy. It allows you to see the demise of Elvis’ personality; it’s a great tribute to Elvis.”
With such a faithful re-creation, attention to authentic detail is paramount. “The band are in the same costumes, there’s all the brass, fans running down to the stage, the presence of security, the Los Angeles Police Department,” continues Barker. “We chose the Dallas Brooks Hall because it’s quite like the venue of the Rapid City show.” Dallas Brooks Hall is due to close next year; Elvis in Concert may well be its last big show. The performance includes a souvenir photo opportunity for punters, posing against a replica of a wall at Graceland decorated with personal messages, and an exhibition of Elvis memorabilia.
Barker says that Tony Franks, who performs Elvis, has an original quality that the producers were looking for. “It took six months of auditioning to find him. He’s just right for the role.” Interestingly, Franks isn’t an Elvis impersonator by trade. “He’s a local musician. He’s been playing music, drumming, doing vocals for many years, keeping the rhythm. He’s ready to do it, he loves it; he’s very confident. He’s quite remarkable. And they are beautiful songs. There are about 40 songs in the show, the short little vignettes telling a story in about a minute and a half, the genre you see replicated in a lot of movies of the time.” There have, predictably, been some issues with publishers and the Elvis Presley Estate in securing permission to perform all of the songs from the 1977 concert but Barker is quick to point out how helpful APRA (the Australasian Performing Rights Association) has been throughout. “It’s a wonderful organisation. They’ve been dealing with the publishers overseas. The Elvis Estate is very complicated.”
Co-ordinating the 50 or so people involved in the production, including a sixteen piece orchestra and ten backing vocalists, has been taxing but Barker has had the pleasure of seeing his producer friend’s enthusiasm for the work catch on with everyone else on board.
“The more and more the musicians got involved, the more they could see the potential of the show. “Tony had done so much work prior to me coming on board. Just getting my head in his head took a little while, getting into Tony’s vision of an intricate detailed replica of a show. The show represents the tragedy underlying the whole thing; that’s one of its charms – its originality.”
Is Barker an Elvis fan himself? “Not especially. But he’s just as important now as he ever was. He is ever-present. He just keeps coming back.”
BY LIZA DEZFOULI
