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I’ve been thinking a lot about Elvis, and how the past really is a foreign country.
With Baz Luhrmann’s concert film EPiC: Elvis Presley In Concert now hitting three streaming services and still showing in the odd cinema, it seemed a good time to check the old guy out, see if he still holds up...
Firstly, cards on the table: I’m not a great Elvis-lover. The 1950s stuff was sensational, the later bands were sensational, but for me his material was always basically aimed at teenagers. A grown man singing “I'm a hunk a hunk of burning love” leaves me cold.
I hated Baz Luhrmann’s previous Elvis film with Austin Butler. This is different. It’s basically Elvis talking and band footage – rehearsals, goofing, shows – which has received Peter Jackson’s wonder-treatment and looks absolutely pristine.
Knew how to work
The bulk of footage is from an early 1970s Las Vegas residency. Musicians take note: Elvis’ residencies there, and there were many, were 28 days without a break, two shows a day, no days off. The man knew how to work.
What do we learn? Mainly things we know already. He could sure sing, and he was a magnetic, dynamic stage performer. And a better guitarist than credited. And his band, his huge band, were the best. The music remastering here is stunning – like the recent update of The Beatles Anthology documentaries it leaps out of the speakers and hits you right in the chest.
Elvis Presley performing in Las Vegas, f rom the documentary Elvis - That's The Way It Is. Photo / Supplied
But it’s the choice of that music that gives me pause. This was the early 1970s, Elvis was still in his thirties, and it was one of the most creative musical periods the world has ever known. And Elvis is singing covers of Beatles’ songs and Simon and Garfunkel songs like some middle-of-the-road lounge singer.
Past than future
That’s kinda what he is here. A very commanding one, with charisma to boot, but still...
And that’s what makes this seem so very old, from a foreign past. While The Stones et al were touring, making vital music, Elvis was playing to the Frank Sinatra crowd, more past than future even 50 years ago.
It’s hard not to compare it with a recent Paul McCartney documentary, Man On The Run, which examines exactly the same era from the Beatles split through personal and musical rebuilding to the creation of Wings a few years later. McCartney is striving for relevance in a world where all he knows is The Beatles, trying to forge a new artistic path.
The story closes with the massive success of Wings’ Band On The Run, though the film casts no light on why the bass is out of tune on that album’s title track.
Foreign country
Elvis’ story finished before the band Wings ended – he didn’t even see out the 1970s. But what keeps popping into my mind is that McCartney was only seven years younger than Elvis. In 2026 he’s just released a new single, while the past that Elvis inhabited seems every day a more foreign country.
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