What a lovely way to burn
When it was broadcast from the Honolulu International Center on January 14, 1973, Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite marked several milestones in the entertainment industry—for Elvis, for telecommunications, and for the notion of audience reach. The HIC Arena, filled with six thousand Hawaii fans, was transformed into a giant television studio, with camera crews capturing the hour-long spectacle and telecasting it over the air, across borders, and into the homes of nearly forty nations. An estimated 1.5 billion people across the world witnessed a jumpsuited, sweaty Elvis croon the standards that had fueled his stardom, and they followed his sequined hips as they jerked and gyrated to his rowdier rock 'n' roll tunes. One Honolulu Star Bulletin reporter asked his readers to ponder what it all meant: “Think about it: Three out of every seven persons in this planet would see the same man, the same event, the same music!”
When the cameras rolled at 12:30 am—the witchy hour meant to accommodate Asian audiences—there was only darkness. Then came the rising horns of the 2001: Space Odyssey fanfare. As the lights lifted, they revealed a large stage with a protruding platform, ceiling-high black scrim, and a series of mirrors and lights framing the stage. Elvis strutted into view in a white jumpsuit made of gabardine stretch fabric and featuring a Napoleonic collar, bell bottoms, and a rhinestoned American eagle motif repeated on the chest, back, arms, and collar. Presley’s set list was twenty-five songs long, including Kui Lee’s I’ll Remember You, and closed with “Can’t Help Falling in Love with You.”
Presley had been on a break from live shows throughout most of the 60s, focusing instead on movies. He returned in 1968 with the NBC television special, Elvis. In the coming years, leading up to 1973’s Aloha from Hawaii, he went to work, putting out From Elvis in Memphis in 1969, taking up a concert residency at the International Hotel in Las Vegas, and in 1970, embarking on a US tour for the first time in thirteen years. He released three more albums in 1972 and paired them with a fifteen-city tour that became the subject of the Golden Globe-winning documentary, Elvis on Tour, and in June of that year, took the eleventh spot on the Billboard Hot 100 with Elvis: As Recorded at Madison Square Garden.
Just a few years earlier, in the summer of 1969, the world had witnessed a televised event unlike any other. Through grayscale static, 650 million viewers watched a pair of men in thick suits, their faces obscured by solar shields, descend a ladder to a dusty lunar surface. Their movements were slow and labored, and when the first of them proclaimed the great achievement for all of mankind, he spoke in popped and scratched audio, the words crumbling as quickly as they were spoken.
Fahrenheit or Centigrade
The Star Bulletin reporter, who’d prodded his readers to think more deeply about Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite, answered his own call later in the article.
“The Presley concert may well be the door to a worldwide consciousness among the masses of entirely different countries,” he wrote. “People who laugh, cry, or are entertained together are drawn closer to one another. Barriers melt. Understanding skyrockets.”