Looking back, I realize this was a busy weekend in June 1972.

I remembered that I had seen the King.

And that I lost (or tossed) my virginity.

I just forgot the particulars.

The collective cultural energy building up was from the littered streets, the cracks in the sidewalk, the “are you talkin’ to me?” and “I’m walking here” and fuck-you attitude of survivors that perhaps has always been the backbone of the city. Holly Golightly had retreated to the wings and Patti Smith was about to take center stage.

I must have sensed this changing of the guard when I purchased a ticket to see Elvis at Madison Square Garden. I probably should see him before he dies, I thought, already shelving and archiving a cultural icon who represented so much of the America I grew up in. I went by myself partly because no one I knew was interested. But mostly because—I realized even then—I feel most comfortable when alone in a crowd. I sat in five dollar nosebleed seats behind the stage, never really connecting with The King on that sold-out afternoon. For all these years I assumed that I had seen “fat Elvis” on the ebb. While perusing a forty year-old scrapbook, a yellowed New York Post review fell out and I read to discover that this was his first live appearance in New York since the 1950s, and one of his finest. I wish I had felt it at the time. — Hell’s Kitchen and Couture Dreams

It was a great show that Elvis Presley put on at the Garden last night, this cornball express, this John Wayne of music, this heavyweight champion in a game that his successors don’t play anymore —Alfred G. Aronowitz

copyright Sharon Watts