Elvis Still Tender To Hounding Fans
By Ron Legro
Milwaukee Sentinel
April 28, 1977

You really couldn't blame Elvis Presley for being distracted Wednesday night.

Aside from 12,000 adoring frantic fans. Presley had to face what seemed like a million candlepower worth of popping camera flashbulbs.

Then there was the usual screaming and clawing in the trenches - er, make that the front rows.

In any case, it took like 42 year old singer about 30 minutes to get untracked, but no one seemed to mind, least of all Presley.

"Now what was I doin'" he asked in the midst of one song, which was inadvertantly interrupted as Presley blessed a horde of worshiping females with sacramental scarves.

Only Presley could get away with stopping the band several minutes into a song and starting over. but then, Presley could probably have fired his band and spent the evening reading from the Milwaukee telephone book.

And all those postures and swiveling hip movements weren't why they came to see Elvis.

"We don't care about his shape," a woman squealed. She has seen Elvis in concert five times and being there with him was all that mattered to her.

"If you want to see all this makeup and screeching stuff you can go to a Kiss concert," said another fan. "Elvis screeches, too, but you can almost understand him."

Another fan explained how she turned down offers to sell her $15 seats for 10 times the price.

The top ticket price was up $2.50 from the last Elvis show here in 1974. In fact, Wednesday's sellout concert reportedly grossed $167,500 wh ich is about five times what RCA originally paid Presley for his first recording contract 10 years ago. It was in his 1972 concert here that were more than 1,000 empty seats, one of the few times a Presley concert did not sell out.

Presley chatted with the audience Wednesday night and his singing sometimes almost seemed an afterthought. But when he finally got down to business with a bit of "Jailhouse Rock," something clicked, the voice projected, and for a moment, he sent his fans back two decades.

Sadly, Presley's concentration seemed to wane periodically. It was as though Presley was as caught up in the same aura of awe and respect that permeated the fans in the Arena.

Courtesy of Francesc Lopez