Forty years ago in July, eight years before his death, Elvis Presley began a stand of 57 shows at the International Hotel in Las Vegas, a concert run that restored the King to a throne he'd spent most of the previous decade abdicating.
Yet, the image of Elvis in Vegas is largely misunderstood; over time, it's become a tableau of ersatz entertainment, a signifier for everything that went wrong with Presley, a distillation of what any self-respecting critic of rock & roll disdains.
Chris Isaak
