Outback Elvis

by John Connell

  Eddie Youngblood was back, and the price of his show, once again a highlight, had gone up to $16. Lonnie Lee – a physical link to 1956 – was on at the Parkes Citizens and Services Club, with his version of Elvis. Hanley’s Funeral Parlour, in its model Graceland mansion, was still on the itinerary and one festival stall promised a steady supply of ‘Elvis’s favourite food’: banana and peanut butter sandwiches. Few other attempts at authenticity were apparent. The program was much the same. Saturday afternoon offered a tribute concert to Elvis by the Ezy Jammin’ Musos Club of Parkes. The coach tour now took in the radio telescope – the first tentative marriage of Elvis and the Dish – and moved on to the Bogan Gate Railway Station Arts and Craft shop for morning tea (‘Devonshire teas available’), while Forbes got into the swing of things by offering train rides and a guided walk around the town. Sunday lasted longer; the E.J. Musos were back on stage at the Hotel Parkes at 4 pm to round it off.

  Aspirations for the potential ‘Elvis capital’ now had less tentative local roots. The Post was cautiously optimistic: ‘Eventually it is hoped the festival will grow into something with the same annual support as the Jazz Triduum in June and the Country Music Spectacular in September– October’. It was still somewhat sedate – enjoyable and fun, but scarcely the raucous, exuberant, multicoloured carnival it was to become.

  Regional television stations and the print media in Newcastle, Sydney and Wollongong had all taken an interest. Beforehand, Michael Greenwood predictably again hailed it a success: ‘The event will provide substantial tourism value for Parkes, in terms of publicity and in cold, hard revenue. The revival could well become a role model for other interest groups keen to promote their festival’. Put another way, as the Post did, ‘the Elvis Revival will represent an ideal launch for a packed 1994 program’ which would bring to Parkes the NSW Country Diving titles, the NSW Local Government Touch Football titles and a lightning visit, barely an hour long, from Prince Charles.

  Another year on and the festival had scarcely changed. In its third year a more successful street parade, with 35 entrants, produced the Champion-Post headline ‘Elvis Festival Sweet Music to Parkes’, while it was claimed that interest had spread to New Zealand. The festival achieved its first record, dutifully sent off to the Guinness Book of Records, when fans danced non-stop to Elvis for six hours. It was earnestly hoped that one day it would be as successful as the Tamworth Country Music Festival, already drawing in many thousands of visitors. Hope was necessary; at the same time food parcels were being dropped to besieged farmers, floods temporarily having taken the place of drought and bushfires. The Post was supporting a drought appeal campaign: ‘Farmers Take Plight to People – Rural Economy on Verge of Collapse’. Farmers were blocking the Newell Highway as part of the state-wide Operation Dust Storm, in protest over the lack of drought relief. Parkes needed positive festival news. The Post , supportive as ever, proclaimed Eddie Youngblood’s special ‘King’s 60th birthday show’ to be ‘the biggest Elvis show ever seen’. That was undeniably true, for Parkes.

  Elvii: the next generation. Street parade, 2007

  Robbie Begg

  Chewbacca Elvis. Overheard in the crowd: ‘He’s got a real identity crisis, that fella.’ Street parade, 2016

  John Connell

  In 1975 Elvis purchased an aeroplane, refurbished it in his own idiosyncratic style at great cost, and rechristened it the Lisa Marie. It is now on display in Memphis. For those far from Memphis, Parkes has its own, rather more modest Lisa Marie

  John Connell

  Out of nowhere comes Elvis. A blue Elvis breaks from the group during the parade, 2015

  Jen Li

  Meanwhile, winning the look-alike competition for two years running and being increasingly recognised around town played a pivotal role in influencing Steve Lennox to take on the King’s name:

  I prefer Elvis to Neville, me original first name. After the first two years of competition here in the look-alikes – I won that in ’93, ’94 – and walking up the street … you hear people yell out across the street at ya, ‘G’day, Elvis’ and that. And I said, ‘Ya know, that would be an idea’. So I put it to me mother, asked her permission, and she said, ‘You go ahead and do with it what you want. It’s your name’. And I said, ‘Thank you very much’. That’s when I decided I’d share my name with the great King. Paid $75 and had it legally changed.

  But Elvis Lennox kept his surname, and a Ballarat man who, two decades earlier, had become Elvis Aaron Presley remained the only one in Australia. Ironically, after becoming Elvis, Lennox immediately lost the look-alike competition to a seven-year-old from Cobar.

  As the festival settled in at suburban Kelly Reserve, a commemorative Elvis Wall was constructed there in time for the third festival in 1995, with accompanying wrought iron gates (embossed with the opening notes from ‘Love Me Tender’). Brigitte and the Invaders, having swept in all the way from Bathurst, played what was described as ‘1960s mix music’. (Brigitte later went into ‘indie rock ’n’ roll with a dark edge and defiant punk attitude’.) The festival structure was much as ever, though Michael Hanley had been killed in a car crash and Forbes forgotten as Parkes took control.

  Some 600 people were said to have been there on the Saturday, and entrants for the look-alike and sound-alike competitions had soared into double figures. Busloads were reported to have come from ‘most parts of the state’. Eddie Youngblood was described in the Post as being ‘unable to return’; in his words, after providing his services for the first two festivals for free, since he thought the concept ‘so fantastic’, he had finally asked for a fee and never heard from the Revival Committee again. In his place, the New Australian Elvis Show featured Adam Sutherland at the Leagues Club. David Cazalet, a third prominent Elvis tribute artist, was on at the Parkes Services Club. Two tribute artists was a triumph for Parkes. Cazalet had come from a successful six months in Japan, had played in Las Vegas and was well known in south-east Asia. To the Post he was ‘one of the finest Elvis impersonators in the world’. The festival had gone international, but Brigitte brought it down to earth, while David Cazalet’s matinee concert at midday on Sunday also featured Miss Shari and Miss Lesley the clowns, and Kenny the koala. Cazalet never returned.

  The casual displays of memorabilia had coalesced into what was generously described as a ‘museum’, established upstairs at Gracelands, more formally displaying what several of the Festival Committee owned. Most of the items – around 240 in total, and many original – came from the collection of the Steels: album covers, a coke bottle from Graceland, Elvis number plates, a white Elvis suit and even a parking ticket from the shadows of Graceland. All this was boosted by the collection of a couple from Wagga Wagga, which included 80 plates that had cost $9000 alongside clocks, number plates, figurines and records. (They were discouraged from bringing the rest of a collection that included 2500 salt and pepper shakers, 200 teapots, 100 Buddhas, 400 egg cups and 100 elephants: ‘It is our life, it is all priceless to us’.) On the floats and in the look-alike and sound-alike competitions Elvis jumpsuits were beginning to be more evident. The festival took on annual movie themes – Blue Hawaii and Jailhouse Rock were early choices – but the jumpsuits were straight out of Las Vegas.

  What Now, What Next, Where To

  The locals remained unenthusiastic, while festival visitors from outside Parkes were somewhat disenchanted with the lack of organised activity, since there was little for them to do outside the official events. Some suggested that if Parkes could not do the festival properly then it should be developed in the Hunter Valley instead. The Post editorialised ‘Will the king reign here for much longer?’, and emphasised that it brought thousands of dollars’ worth of publicity to the town while pondering the ‘real tragedy’ that locals did not appear to enjoy the festival. It wondered why that was so when there were probably more local rock ’n’ rollers than country music fans: ‘There is the potential here for something really big’. But the festival was plodding
along, stuck in a groove of its own making. The Post was boosting it, the Tourism Office was occasionally optimistic, but numbers seemed to be barely increasing and little changed from year to year.

  As the festival, now promoted as a ‘A Weekend of nostalgia in Australia’s future Rock & Roll capital’, moved into its fourth and fifth years, its program stayed much the same. Festival organisation was still enthusiastically amateur, run by people with no formal training in promotion and finance, or what is now known as ‘event management’. Entrepreneurial skills might have been limited, but as in many other towns where everyone knows everyone else, or claims to, favours were sought, people helped out and social bonds were a key asset in making it work. Some businesses promoted and sponsored the festival; the Post, through Roel ten Cate, was always a committed advocate; parade numbers seemed to be growing; but a sense of stagnation prevailed. Might there be a more attractive format? The performances and competitions, while clearly successful, seemed somewhat repetitive. What would take the festival to new heights? ‘It’s Now or Never’ was a recurrent Champion-Post headline in a town where ‘Only Fools Rush In’ seemed a majority perspective.

  At the fifth festival in 1997 Roustabout was the theme, Adam Sutherland was back and Elvis Lennox’s mum proclaimed ‘Adam could put his boots under her bed, anytime, no worries’. More people were dressing up and Elvis jumpsuits were becoming more fashionable, or at least more visible. A small group of eight rugby-playing Boars slipped into some very cheap jumpsuits for the first time and began to paint the town red – or perhaps white, since that was the favoured jumpsuit colour. It was also the year that Steve Lennox went to Memphis and gathered materials that would feature in the future Elvis Lennox Private Collection.

  A year later the festival was declared the biggest yet, and more rugby players were jumpsuited; the rugby club was ‘set to better last year’s performance with 12 members donning Elvis costumes’. But developing and maintaining momentum was not easy. In 2000 no parade occurred, since numbers had fallen, and some activities were shifted out to the more marginal showground. There was, however, a U Beaut Ute competition. By now competitors in the Hunter Valley were running a festival modelled on the Parkes festival, attracting larger crowds and calling Maitland ‘Australia’s Elvis Heartland’. The already limited local support seemed to be waning and Forbes was now in competition, with the Forbes Jazz Festival taking place on the same weekend. A ‘Let’s Revive the Elvis Revival’ theme emerged. In 2001 the parade was back but the festival had been shifted to a later date in January, to coincide with Australia Day and the visit of a delegation from Parkes’ sister city, Coventry in the UK. It barely survived such changes and, with competition from Maitland, the end seemed ominously close.

  The festival remained stuck in its groove. After a decade it still started in Gracelands on Friday night, with a dinner and annual movie theme, perhaps Speedway or Flaming Star , the usual competitions, and quite possibly many of the same diners and dinners. The market stalls, competitions and performances took over Kelly Reserve throughout Saturday. Only rare buskers and the street parade really took the festival into the town centre. The Revival Committee, which had struggled for years to make it work, experienced various degrees of frustration and despondency. One bitterly disappointed committee member noted: ‘We have a really good thing going here but five people cannot do it’. The festival could have collapsed at any time.

  Despite intermittent support from the Tourism Office, the town was not riveted by Elvis. The festival generated little income and businesses saw no point extending their opening hours. The Revival Committee secretary, Robyn Fury, wrote in anguish to the Post:

  What have we got to do to get the business community behind it? They don’t have to like the festival, but they are the ones who benefit and a little bit of effort by showing some interest would make it ever so much more enjoyable for visitors … It doesn’t take much, perhaps a little music in the store, staff getting dressed up, a bit of decoration in the window … it would all add to the atmosphere.

  But it was out of season. Public servants and many others chose this time to avoid the searing heat and holiday on the cooler coast. Some simply ignored or turned their back on the festival. One service station voiced its opposition by displaying the message ‘Elvis is dead’ on their billboard. It was derided as utterly inappropriate and quite ridiculous. Some objected to what they saw as a tawdry celebration of American popular culture, others to noise and drunkenness, often more imaginary than real. Parkes ignored the festival in its tourist brochures, preferring to advertise itself as the town with the Dish, and as a prominent regional centre of commerce. Struggling towns can be conservative, holding on to past certainties. Plenty of suspicious minds remained opposed or uninterested.

  Without the Steels and Elvis Lennox, and enthusiastic support from Roel ten Cate and the Parkes Champion-Post , the Elvis Festival would never have been conceived, let alone survived, but it took rather more support from Parkes before it eventually made it. While the editor of the Post and the Revival Committee secretary were bemoaning its fate and fearing the end, and as the new millennium arrived, inspiration came from new directions. The Boars from the Rugby Club, a new Tourism Officer and the national media all contributed – both accidentally and by design – to launch the festival onto a trajectory of unprecedented success.

  Crap Elvis, aka Matt Hale, 2010

  Jen Li

  Mark Andrew offers a much more authentic Elvis

  Denise Yates

  Parkes’ own sheep-farming Elvis tribute artist, Barry Green

  Steve Ostini

  John Connell

  ‘We’re making this Elvis unique to Parkes. He’s not just any Elvis that could be found anywhere – he’s the Parkes Elvis.’

  3

  THE BOOM YEARS

  After its first decade, the Elvis Festival seemed staid and predictable. Its repetitive structure failed to let imaginations wander, or make return visits worthwhile. That might have been expected in a small town, where there were more than enough critics and few committed supporters. To thrive, it needed more than a dash of inspiration and creativity and a means of capturing a larger market. In the second half of the 1990s, changes were happening, but not in a form that anyone could have predicted. It took a few rugby players to turn the festival into something else.

  In 1997 eight rugby-playing bachelors purchased cheap jumpsuits from Sydney and let the fun begin. Their philosophy was simple: dress up, goof about, drink, flirt. Wayne Osborne, a veteran of the rugby Elvises, recalled: ‘We like to expose our Elvis ability, because deep down everyone wants to be the King. Once you’ve donned the King suit you can do no wrong. It’s a licence to be an idiot’. Indeed, as the Sydney Morning Herald recorded – so establishing the direction for future Festival media coverage – ‘They meet their public on the Saturday morning through a gruelling schedule that includes all the town’s hotels plus a wig-wetting dip in a nearby pool’. Playing Elvis had arrived, and the rugby players upped the ante. Rather than the $30 suits that had served them well for a couple of years, in 1999 they lashed out and drove down to Sydney for $70 deluxe costumes: ‘We’re willing to pay an extra $35 to have our meat and potatoes comfortable’. The idea was to wear suits that were three sizes too small, absolutely not take them off over the course of the weekend and be the last man standing.

  It proved fortunate that the core of the Parkes Rugby Club saw the festival as an occasion for riotous fun. Even luckier that they took the right option. As the wife of one player accurately observed: ‘Rugby clubs either dress up or get nude. Fortunately for Parkes they chose to dress up’. Dressing up demanded jumpsuits from the Vegas years, and marked the start of the streets of Parkes being decorated by late-model Elvises, better known locally as Elvii. Their girlfriends, not to be left out, followed by becoming Priscillas. It was as good a reason as any to have a well-lubricated, weekend-long party.

  The rugby boys’ participation from the sidelin
es was not entirely welcome. Elvis Lennox, who had proudly worn the first jumpsuit in Parkes, but in serious competition, had his doubts:

  I can take a bit of joking, but rubbish Elvis and you’d better not step in front of me. When the Elvises start getting a few under their belts they start dropping zippers and half stripping. It’s all in fun, but there is a limit.

  He fought back. The rigours of their gruelling pub schedule had somehow prevented the Elvii making it to the look-alike competition. In a return to form, Elvis Lennox, in a grey jumpsuit, won it again. Still, the competition was increasing. The winner of the next look-alike contest, a hotelier from South Australia, wore one of his seven Elvis suits (jacket and rings from Las Vegas, glasses from Memphis, hair from Seattle, shirt from Denver … pants and shoes from Adelaide).

  So successful was the intervention of the Boars that Anne Steel began to talk of ‘my rugby boys’ and sought to find Priscillas for those without them. Meanwhile, the Parkes Shire Council hired a new tourism coordinator. A fresh-faced graduate of the University of Western Sydney, in her first real job, Kelly Atkinson (later Hendry) arrived in 2001. She didn’t expect to stay, though she liked country people and had sought a regional position where she could ‘make a difference’. She would never have predicted that she’d end up marrying, staying put and becoming an unassuming heroine of the Elvis story. In her early days she dutifully wore city suits and heels and carried a briefcase; she quickly learned to loosen up. After discovering the festival, Kelly started attending Elvis meetings in 2002, and the Tourism Office began to provide support for the Elvis Revival Inc. Committee, especially in marketing and sponsorship. Fourteen years later, the present mayor, Ken Keith, recalled her as ‘fresh out of uni, bubbly and full of ideas’. She brought professionalism, if not experience, but many of the Revival Committee initially looked askance, unsure about a recent young woman graduate, a city girl, and her new world of computers and internet marketing.