![]() ![]() "Inside the Garden, excitement turned to awe. She listed a few of Elvis’s good-natured, tongue-in-cheek responses to questions, and then moved on to the pre-concert atmosphere that evening. Also conspicuous in the background was the “big-bellied, straw-hatted, cigar-carrying” Colonel Parker. The press conference in the hotel ballroom was “jammed with freaks, little skinny girls, fat men in hippie clothes, lots of leather jackets and inane questions,” Chase noted. The evening show appeared in 1972 on the LP “Elvis: As Recorded at Madison Square Garden,” but the 2:30 show was not released until 20 years after Elvis’s death under the title, “Elvis: An Afternoon in the Garden.” Chris Chase attended Elvis’s afternoon press conference and evening show on June 9 prior to writing her article. Presley closed out his three-day run in the city with an 8:30 show on June 11.īoth June 10 shows were recorded and later released by RCA. The following day there were two more shows at 2:30 and an 8:30. Elvis began his run at the Garden on June 9, 1972, with a press conference at 4 p.m. At the time of Elvis’s appearance there, the Garden was considered the country’s most prominent performance venue due to its huge revenue generating power and its location in the most prestigious entertainment market in the U.S. ![]() While most reporters of that era in Presley’s career limited their appraisal of his stage show to descriptions of jumpsuits, song titles, and souvenir scarves, Chase’s piece in the Times’ June 18, 1972, edition is reminiscent of the colorful and imaginative Presley reviews produced by journalists in the fifties.Īmong the 230 tour stops Elvis made in the seventies, only his 1973 satellite broadcast show in Honolulu can compare in significance with his Madison Square Garden performances. ![]() Although Chase’s was just one of hundreds of Presley concert reviews that appeared in local newspapers in the 1970s, it was, in this writer’s estimation, far and away the best of them all. That’s how New York Times writer Chris Chase gently set the scene in the opening of her 1972 article about Elvis Presley’s first concert appearance in America’s largest city. They kept moving toward the arena, their excitement so palpable it seemed to cut through the muggy twilight." There were cops on horses and cops on foot, and vendors with brown paper bags containing Elvis T-shirts circulated among the ticket-holders. The sidewalks around Madison Square Garden teemed with kids and toothless old men hawking Elvis pennants, Elvis posters, albums of Elvis pictures. ![]() "On Friday night, June 9, an air of shabby carnival hung over Seventh Avenue. ![]()
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