"Hey--yu-uh!"

"Ho-wo-oh!" "Ho-wo-oh!"

"Huh!" "Huh!"

"HEY HEY HOOH HOOH HEY HEY HOH BABY THAT'S ALL RIGHT!"

Then there was the first time I saw Elvis on Ed Sullivan, the old man, that old dead man walking around with his hands up shouting "Silence! Silence, please!" and that incredible screaming of everyone in the nation, even if they were afraid to do it in front of their parents: "We did it! We did it!"

WELL, I LIKE a lot of the new groups. The Beatles. The Beards, whatever. The musicians are better--Mike Bloomfield, Eric Clapton, Butterfield, Jimi Hendrix. "The studios are better": 12-72 track, incredible microphones, stereo. Stereo wasn't even invented when Elvis first came out. "The engineers are better": Shadow Martin. Phil Spector. Jimmy Miller. George Martin.

This is Elvis surveying his domain, complimenting his children. You done good, chillun. I'm the king, though.

"You know, our music, rocknrollmusic, you know, s'got its roots in gospel, rhythm and blues. That's where it all sprang from." And then the Blossoms--remember the Blossoms? Hullabaloo? --come out and they do "Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Chile," while this incredible black dancer does a dance that everyone in the room likes. They liked a dancer on a TV special. No one likes dancers on TV. They always prance around and mince. These guys were studs, they had the moves. Then the Lieber-Stoller classic "I'm Saved," with Elvis leading the way:

"I used to smoke!" "Smoke!"

"I used to drink!" "Drink!"

"And dance the hootchie-coo!"

At that point I was so turned on I grabbed my girl and asked her: "C'mon, baby, let's go cruising!" Complete insanity. She pushes me away. I put my head next to hers: "Hey, baby, let's make out!"

Oh, who really remembers the good old days? Bicycle chain fights? Beating up the teacher? Ducktail haircuts? The days before everyone walked around alienated, and after that, the days that everyone walked around stoned? Who remembers what it was like to not worry about getting busted? Who can tell me, who can think back and tell me about the days before acid was invented? I know, for a fact, that every single American boy has at one time rolled up the sleeves of his teeshirt to look studlier as he walked downtown; that every chick has snuck up her hems in junior high school so somebody can take a good peek. America! You dumb ass stupid brutal beast! Why did you abandon us? We loved you, we really did, we might even fight in your stupid wars if you hadn't forbidden Elvis. Why didn't you let us have friends with greasy hair? Why? Why couldn't we go meet our friends at the drive-in? Why couldn't we go to Union Hall to see Jonny Dix Why did you wrench us away from the turned-down transistors in our bedrooms? Why? Why? Don't you see what you've done. America You made drugs. You made SDS. You made us follow Leary and Ginsberg and Marcuse. You created Haight-Ashbury, you gave us Dylan, you big creep. Why didn't you let us love you

"WARDEN threw a party in the county jail." Lieber-Stoller. Mike and Jerry. Then practically made Elvis. So many songs: "Hound Dog," "Heartbreak Hotel," "Little Egypt," on and on and on. "Jailhouse Rock," according to Peter Hayes, who anyone who is at all hip in Cambridge should know, or at least heard of, says: 'Jailhouse Rock' is the greatest song ever written." It's true:

Number Forty-Seven say to Number Three