On not being Elvis

TONIGHT Matthew, to misquote what used to be said on TV’s Stars In Their Eyes, Billy J McGregor will not be Elvis Presley. It’s the king of rock’n’roll’s 75th birthday – or would have been if he hadn’t have died at his Graceland home in 1977 – but the former gas fitter from Bedlington, Northumberland, is taking a night off from being Elvis.

Presley’s widow Priscilla and daughter Lisa Marie will lead the 75th celebrations at his Graceland home, cutting a birthday cake and licensing a range of new Presley memorabilia, including a Jailhouse Rock doll.

Planned, too, are an exhibition of his stage costumes, Elvis iPhone software, a Cirque du Soleil Elvis-themed show, and a concert tour featuring his former bandmates with a video projection of the legend himself.

While others are gearing up to use Presley’s name even more, McGregor is scaling down his appearances with The Elvis Collection, the stage show which also features a ten-strong band and two female singers. Not that this Geordie Elvis is fed up with the King. He talks with pride about performing. “I still love doing it,” he says.

‘THERE’S not a better feeling in the world than getting up on stage and for one-and-a-half hours go through the experience of an Elvis concert with a big live band behind you.

“I’m not bringing The Elvis Collection to an end because I love performing and people still want to come and see it, but I feel the market is being saturated with Elvis tribute shows.”

McGregor and Bedlington schoolpal Alan Wearmouth, now his business partner and musical director of The Elvis Collection, dreamed of making music like Elvis and formed a band in the late Seventies. Then they went their separate ways, before launching The Elvis Collection in 1998 after meeting up again.

The pair have always looked after themselves, rejecting offers from the big companies to manage them. They run Stage Right Productions which not only looks after the interests of their Elvis show, but has promoted other acts, including Petula Clark and shows with Sixties bands including the Tremeloes, Marmalade and Herman’s Hermits.

“Elvis will never go away from me,” says Mc- Gregor. “I started because I was an Elvis fan and believed the way to do it was to recreate the Elvis Presley concert. To do it the way Elvis would, but not to impersonate him.”

That’s one of the things that sets him apart from the hundreds of other Elvis performers – he doesn’t attempt a full-on Presley impersonation.

He has the outfits and the sideburns, but refuses to adopt a fake Memphis accent, feeling “it got cheesy with some guy getting up and speaking with a cod American accent”.

He says he’s not an impersonator, but pays tribute to Elvis. And he feels that he must have done something right because of the repeat bookings, including four dates at Newcastle City Hall.

“I would never sit here and say I sound exactly like Elvis Presley. I believe there was only one Elvis Presley,” he says.

As the 75th birthday celebrations get under way, you can’t help but wonder why Elvis is still such a big star more than three decades after his death. That’s the question everyone asks, says McGregor.

“If you went round your office and said, ‘do you like Elvis Presley?’, people might say, ‘no, he’s a lot of crap’. But if you say, ‘what about Suspicious Minds?’, they might say, ‘that’s not a bad song’.

“You could go round the office and every single person would like an Elvis song if not Elvis himself. He’s become an institution.”

McGregor ticks off Elvis’s career highs: how his music and his look must have seemed weird when he debuted in the Fifties, his 1968 comeback, his movies, playing Madison Square Gardens to thousands of people...

the list goes on and on.

But again McGregor plays down what he does. “I’ve been very fortunate to play some of the most prestigious venues in the UK. There will be guys out there, singing in the local boozer, who can handle an Elvis song as much as I can, but I’ve been lucky enough or good enough to take that step up.

‘I’M one eleventh of the band. There’s only one David Beckham, one Ronaldo, but there are thousands of young kids out there who are as good as David Beckham but who’ll never get the break.”

He performed in 59 shows with The Elvis Collection last year, down on a high of 130. This year, he’ll do fewer. He doesn’t want to get overexposed.

When the TV producers of The World’s Great Elvis competition invited him to take part, he refused. Three times they asked, three times he said no.

“What entertainer would turn down TV?,” he asks, then answers the question himself. “I would”.

Future gigs include the Customs House, South Shields. Just a 450-seat venue but he’s looking forward to it as much as past gigs like the concert at Blenheim Palace where he played to a crowd of 4,500.

He’s aware he can never be Elvis. “An image is one thing and a human being is another. It’s very hard to live up to either.

“One Elvis impersonator has had his teeth done, his eyes done, his eyebrows done. I think that’s going over the top.

“But I’ve lived the dream a lot of people would love to live – to get up on a big stage in front of a big audience and sing Elvis songs. Not many people from Bedlington can say they’ve played Newcastle City Hall four times.”