The Day the Music Died

And why Elvis lives forever

I’ll never forget the day Elvis died on August 16, 1977. A lonely 12-year-old, I had tickets to see him exactly five days later at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum on Long Island. (This was before every event venue was named for banks or snacks.) I had saved up $9 from my paper route and was so excited I couldn’t sleep.

That afternoon, I walked in to hushed tones in my home. I knew something was wrong.

“Aunt Lois called and said Elvis Presley died,” my older sister said. My parents advised calm. They turned on the AM radio to 1010 WINS, the local news station. After commercials, the announcer’s voice came on: “Twist of hips, crown on head…” I didn’t need to hear any more.

That night, I watched a hastily produced Elvis special on television. As the song “Memories” played in the finale with a picture of a 1960s-era Elvis on screen, I bowed before the black-and-white television and vowed, “I will never, ever let them forget you.”

The snobs could laugh, but it was a scene that played out all across America and, I suspect, the world. It united a Jewish kid from Queens, New York, with a elderly lady in Biloxi, Mississippi, as only Elvis could.

Bob Dylan told in an interviewer that after the man’s death, “I went over my whole life. I went…