What must it have been like to be there when Elvis burst upon the scene?  I know what it was like in Kells,  Co. Meath.  I think I was in high babies at the time.  Those bleak mornings in the school yard were taken up with discussions about the latest episode of Champion The Wonder Horse.  Television was still a novelty then so    only a few of us had witnessed some riotous footage of the emerging Hillbilly Cat.

It was electrifying.  "Helvis Presley?",  "No! Elvis Presley"  "What kind of name is that?  It's not a bit like Olohan,  O'Rourke,  Mulvaney or McGovern."  It didn't  matter that our chums didn't understand.  We knew there was something there for us.  We'd  seen that man shaking.  We'd heard those people screaming.

It's 1977 and Paul Verner, the man who's now lighting engineer with The Pogues, is on the phone.  He sounds choked.  He's ringing to tell me the news.  Elvis is dead.  My girlfriend is more affected by the news then I am.  Not even playing those wonderful records very loud can ease the sense of loss.  This comes as a double shock    to me.  You see much as I enjoyed Elvis, I had latched on to The Beatles and John Lennon as role models I could relate to.  Elvis had seemed far too exotic, too remote, too adult for me.  

A couple of years later Paul and I went to Memphis with Horslips.  Graceland was been renovated at the time     but we got to meet Uncle Vester.  Once again I began to grapple with the daunting complexity of the Elvis myth.

Final illumination came in  '86.  One Sunday afternoon in London, while passing a high street  bar, I was attracted by the sound of rock'n'roll.  Inside an Elvis get-together was in full swing  Although there was no  drink being served at that hour, I hung around, enthralled by that  voice.  An attractive young women, with callipers on her leg, invited me to buy some tickets for an Elvis raffle.  I explained I couldn't stay.  "Once you  find Elvis,"  she said.  "You never leave."

Six hours later she came back to tell me I hadn't won a prize.  But, you know, in a way I had.  A bit like St. Paul on the road to Damascus, I experienced a zen-like moment of enlightenment.  Those people, the music, that voice...Finally I was home.  I knew Elvis.  I was born again