History:
The cape. The opening fanfare. "My Way." The closing admonition "Elvis has left the building." Elvis Presley's final, most notorious live act began to solidify into a ritual during 1971, a time when, not coincidentally, he began to expand his entourage while simultaneously strengthening its walls, all the while alienating both his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, and wife Priscilla -- the two beings on Earth not only predisposed but actually capable of telling The King where to get off.The descent of Elvis starts with the dissolution of his marriage, of course, but it also has something to do with his immersion into life as a Public Figure, a job-turned-lifestyle that demanded worship and rewarded it with monetary, if not actual emotional, generosity -- and sometimes, just his mere presence, if the unraveling of his live performances, which began around this time, are any indication.
Elvis was not a bad person, but he was becoming increasingly isolated and indifferent, creating his bubbleworld as much to keep true, demanding love out as it was to keep loyalty in. Those TCB pendants, which had started as a show of solidarity, were already taking on a talismanic quality; and if Elvis knew he was no god, he certainly had no intention, having conquered the entertainment world, to go back to being ordinary. And it was just this sense of entitlement that would ironically soon begin to slowly suffocate him.
Next... Elvis 1971 timeline
