Elvis and David

Saturday, January 8, 2022

I met Elvis Presley when I was around ten years old. In Beverly Glen, there is a park off the main street where every Saturday Elvis and his Memphis friends would team up to play touch football against, and mostly, the citizens of Beverly Glen Canyon. My father would join these pick-up games occasionally. It seemed to start around 2:00 P.M. I was with my father watching him play football when one of Elvis' buddies came up to me and asked if I wanted to meet Elvis. I said sure, or however, a ten-year-old says 'sure,' and he led me to Elvis as we approached him towards his back. He was sitting on the park bench by himself watching the games, and he was wearing a blue double-breasted jacket with crisp white slacks, a sailor's cap, and wrap-around sunglasses. His friend, who was directly behind Elvis at this point, said to him, "Elvis meet Tosh." Without turning around or looking at me, Elvis stretched his arm and hand towards me, and I put my little hand in his to shake. He didn't say a word nor look at me.

I never met David Bowie, but I did go to his Santa Monica Civic show in October 1972. My father and mother took me, and I must have been around 17 or 18 years old. It was my first time seeing such a 'production' in a rock n' roll show. I was struck by him physically being on stage and the fact that his movements were very stylized and not overly emotional or friendly-like. I went to the Long Beach Arena to see his "Aladdin Sane" show about a year later. Again I was struck by his sense of theater or ability to raise the rock n' roll show into another medium. I had never seen anything like that before. Also, I was with a girl and her girlfriend, and I liked the girl very much. But alas, she never wanted me the same way. So the memory of this show is one of the highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows. The next time I saw him was at his Diamond Dogs show. This was very special because Toni Basil got us tickets for this performance, and we sat next to Steve Allen and his wife Jayne Meadows, who were old friends of Toni's. It was amazing to me that I was sitting with Mr. and Mrs. Allen, which at the time I felt I was on a TV chat show. The last time I saw Bowie was when I worked at a bookstore. He came in and pretty much purchased every new fiction hardcover book on that trip. When he paid for his books, I was physically very close to him, and I noticed the difference between his eyes. One was a different color from the other, and it was kind of breathtakingly beautiful.