Brian Setzer live at Salzburg, 2006. Creative Commons.

By Troy M. Meier

With his overwrought pompadour rocking and his signature Gretsch hollow-body guitar twanging away, Brian Setzer arrived on the U.S. pop music scene with a vengeance in the early 1980s. Up to that point, American audiences were OK with reruns of Laverne & Shirley and Happy Days—all benign depictions of a clichéd 1950s heartland America. But when Setzer and his band began getting primetime MTV rotation, an illusion was shattered and a trio of tattooed rockers—who made The Fonz look like a momma’s boy—was introduced into the homes of millions of U.S. teens in the form of the Stray Cats.

In 1980 the Cats strutted their way from their native Long Island, New York, where they received only ho-hum attention, over to England, where Setzer and the boys created a flurry of excitement among an already-thriving Teddy-boy and punk rock scene. Welsh hit-producer Dave Edmunds took them under his wing, and within months they were rubbing elbows with stars and climbing the record charts. The clincher was an opening spot on a Rolling Stones U.S. tour.

Soon, the Stray Cats became a household word in music circles, and Brian Setzer was enthralling the guitar world with scorching new takes on riffs he seemingly pulled out of the graveyard. He became admired and respected as a real technical dynamo.

In the middle 1990s the Brian Setzer Orchestra tapped into a fledgling revival of the swing genre that shot him on yet another meteoric rise—this time with the approval of the mainstream music industry—culminating in a success story resulting in multiple Grammy Awards and other industry accolades for his CD Dirty Boogie. Since then he’s continued to tour and pump out critically acclaimed CDs with his seventeen-piece rocking band. He records for motion picture soundtracks and has become a holiday favorite, with his Christmas CDs—threatening to replace Harry Connick Jr. as the torchbearer for that revered honor.

But through the years, Brian Setzer has been known to show a softer, more contemplative, spiritual component to his art as well. We wanted to find out where the raucous meets the redeemed.

Troy M. Meier: You’ve tackled at least two genres—rockabilly and swing—once thought to be dead-ends musically, and you seem to have reinvented both of them. What does that say about you as a musician?

Brian Setzer: That I like to recycle? [Laughs] It’s funny because I know people say that about me. The rockabilly thing…paralleled punk to me, and it shook up that whole kind of established, performed music at the time. So I was almost maybe a little over-qualified for it since I did read and write music. In the original days, I think those rockabilly guys came out of the hills and plugged in and played.

I understand the rockabilly thing, but how’d that translate into a full-blown orchestra?

That sound, watching the old Johnny Carson Tonight Show, always intrigued me. I thought, “Imagine if I could play my song, ‘Rock This Town’ with a big band behind it.” So I had thought of that a long time ago and eventually had the nerve to try it. It’s been fourteen years now. So that’s kind of how all that started. Also, I liked the themes. I kind of like jumpin’ around.

Who is your biggest influence?

The one who had the whole package, the guy had the whole thing was Eddie Cochran. I didn’t know how well he played guitar, I didn’t know about his songs, but I remember seeing that record cover. He had that hair slicked back, and I said, “I want to look like that guy.” That guy looks so cool. For some reason, I related to that, and not to the kind of hippy styles that were popular. I mean, that’s what it was in the late 60s and early 70s. You know, everybody had long hair and earth shoes, and I was going to school with slicked back hair and motorcycle boots. I was just instantly attracted to that look.

Did you get hassled in high school when your taste in musical style started to change and go against the grain?

Not so much in high school, but after high school, yeah. There were people calling me names out of their car because I had a funny hair cut. I still get that when I go home. I turn around and think, “Wait a minute. I’m forty-eight years old. I have a grown son. You can’t call me that!”

Was that part of the impetus in the early days to go to Great Britain? Or was that purely musical?

The real impetus for me to go was the picture on the cover of the NME [British magazine New Music Express]. We used to buy it at the local record store, and there was a picture of a guy on the front with a coif, a pompadour, and an earring. Do you know what it was like to have an earring in 1979? Guys didn’t wear them or have tattoos. We saw a picture of this guy and said, “Someone like us exists somewhere else, and it’s in England. That’s where we have to go.” So that was really the motive for going.

Your latest CD is called Wolfgang’s Big Night Out. My kids have already danced to it in the backyard.

Well, that’s cool. That’s a good test.

Musically, it seems like a whole heck of a lot to tackle. What was your motivation to do a whole CD of classical compositions?

I basically got pestered into it. Well, here’s what happened. I sat down and started playing The Blue Danube. I said, “Well, that’s kind of neat.” So I went to downtown Minneapolis where I recorded my three guitars, and I played it back for my wife, and she said, “It’s really cool. You have to play this for Dave, your manager.” So I played it. That was the first mistake. He said, “Oh, you gotta write the chart. You gotta sit down and write, finish the song.” So I thought to myself, I’ve got to just pull the parts of The Blue Danube that I like. So I sat down with my guy, Mark Jones, and we wrote a chart, and that sort of got the ball rolling. I thought, “Wait a minute, this is pretty darn cool. I gotta do another one,” and that’s where Frank Comstock came in. That’s where the ball started rolling.

Who is Frank Comstock?

I don’t know what to say about Frank Comstock. I mean, he’s eighty-four years old, and when he goes, you will not hear that kind of chart writing anymore. I mean, he’s like the last guy. He writes those old school incredible big band charts that nobody can really write. I can’t come close to it. So I approached him. He wrote the “Nutcracker Suite” for Les Brown in 1957 that we covered [on one of our Christmas CDs]. I said to my manager, I can’t write twelve charts. It will take me a year. It’s just too much work. I said, Can you contact Frank Comstock and see if, A, he’s still alive, and, B, if he even knows who I am or if he’d be interested? So fast forward a bit and I get the guy on the phone and he says, “Oh, I haven’t written one of these things in years.” The Adam-12 theme was the last thing he wrote.

Unbelievable.

He wrote the theme to the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon also. He said, “I haven’t written anything in forty years. I don’t know if I can do it.” I said, “Well, here’s Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. If you want to have a little fun, pull it apart.” So he calls me back in about three days and says, “It’s done. I’m going to send you the score.” So then I scored another one, and Frank said, “Give me another song.” I said, “Well, let me see…How about Mozart?” Four or five days was all it took. In a couple of weeks another one comes. I said, now we’ve got to call a rehearsal and see if this is any good because I don’t want to keep writing if this isn’t going to work. But when I heard Frank’s charts back, I said, “Oh my God!” I think it’s fantastic, I don’t know what people are going to think, to be honest with you, but then I let the horse out of the barn, and he was asking me to give him another one. Then he had ideas of songs he wanted to write. So by the time we finished, he had written six or seven, and I had written six or seven.

That’s got to be a career highlight for you as a musician.

I gotta tell you, planning these charts was probably the most complex thing I’ve ever done. I mean, it really swings. It’s amazing because everybody knows these songs. They’re hits already. If I could make these things new, and make them swing and put a little of my Gretsch in there, it’s gonna be fun.

Do you think it is important that this music get rediscovered in some sort of way?

It is. I like to say that I do things strictly for fun and because it bends my ear musically, but this is pretty cool. If your thirteen-year-old daughter starts singing “Hall of the Mountain King,” and they will discover that this song is two hundred years old, and that this is good music, that’s pretty important isn’t it?

There are some in the roots music scene who didn’t like what you did with the music—that you strayed too far afield. Any reaction to that?

I’ve learned a lot of people don’t want you to do that. A lot of people want you to stay in that little box, especially in these circles. In these rockabilly circles, you get these people—I guess you’d call them purists. You’ve gotta use 12 gauge strings through a crummy old guitar and cuff those jeans one-and-three-quarter inches. There’s a lot of people who don’t want you to take those chances. I’ve discovered that. That’s never been me since the beginning. I’ve always just taken the rockabilly thing and used it as a springboard and have just jumped in different directions with it. I think that the rockabilly scene is really stale. That’s gone nowhere, you know, that’s just stayed in its little area because people don’t want it to be…they don’t want it to expand. They don’t want to make something new out of it. They put it in a little glass case. You’ve got to break the glass case, take it out, and have fun with it.

You’ve earned a reputation as a musical and cultural maverick of sorts. When you write, record, and release a beautiful song like “St. Jude,” this seems to fly in the face a little bit of your reputation. Can you elaborate on your patron saint?

Well, thanks. This is kind of my private belief. I can tell you St. Jude, I’ve leaned on him a lot, and he’s helped me out a lot, and I believe in him, and I wrote a song, kind of after 9/11 for St. Jude to help us, and I dedicated the song. It’s a plea, and it’s also a dedication. As a matter of fact, I have a little pin of him in my wallet.

In the song, you say, “It’s something that’s scorned from the left / And abused by the right / It’s something so misunderstood / And ignored in daily life / If you proclaim the mystery of faith / You’ll be absolved from daily strife / Through Him, in Him, and within Him / Springs our eternal life.”

Yeah. That’s a heartfelt song.

Does your spiritual side play a role in your day-to-day decision-making?

You know, I think it does because it’s kind of a guideline for life. It’s kind of a rulebook, you know, a rulebook of good and bad. And I think that when you’re raised with that in your life, it kind of answers a lot of questions that you might have. These are guidelines for good and bad in your life, and that’s just my personal belief, and I find with people who do have spirituality, you don’t see them acting as rude and you see them helping out other people more. I might be wrong, but that’s my personal experience.

Was there some point in your life when things changed for you spiritually?

Well, I grew up going to church. Your dad made you go in those days, you didn’t want to, right, but I think what really kicked it—I can’t really talk about it because it’s too personal—but there were events prior to my dad’s passing that were unexplainable that really shook me up, and there’s no way that you could not believe that there was somebody else out there because it was just too unexplainable, the events that happened prior to my dad’s passing. That was in ’93.

How did that experience affect you?

There’s no way these events right before he died, would have happened. It’s just like if you won the lottery three times in a row, I mean, it was that kind of crazy, and what that proved to me was that there’s something to this, there’s something going on.

What would you do if you weren’t playing music?

I’d be a teacher. I’ve got to be honest with you, I have very little patience, except for teaching. I love teaching kids guitar. That’s what I plan on doing sometime in my life. I love to see kids when they can’t quite put the idea together, and I connect the dots for them, and that lightbulb goes off. I love it. I have patience all day long for that.

Has disaster ever struck the Setzer home?

Disaster? Well, we’ve had our share of ups and downs, but we’ve always pulled out of it. I guess the biggest disaster, you know, is you could say, your parents passing away. My mom’s still around. My dad, he was kind of the rock of the family. When he passed, we said, “What are we gonna do now?”

You’ve said before that you believe in prayer. How does that—or does that—play a role in your life?

Well, like I said, I have my patron saints, and it’s just, it’s a good meditation. Sometimes I’ll go to church, and I’ll just read the Bible, and I won’t even say it along with the Mass, but sometimes, I’ll just sit at home and you know, I believe it does something, I really do. I believe there’s a power there. You know, it doesn’t matter if you do it in a synagogue or by your bedside, but there’s a power there.

What is your biggest blessing?

My biggest blessing, really, is three healthy children. I have three beautiful, healthy kids. Well, my son’s a man now. And my beautiful wife, what a blessing she is. And I was given a gift to play this guitar and make people happy.

If there is a curse, what do you think you’ve been cursed with?

The inability to sit still and shut up. Even back in grade school in class, the teacher would yell, “Setzer, sit down and be quiet.” I’m just one of those kind of guys. I envy people that can just go to the beach and relax and enjoy the day. I could never do it.

What’s your picture of heaven?

Wow!

I know it’s heavy.

Of course, none of us know…But I think you’re going to see an ultimate peace. I do believe it’s an ultimate peace, and I do believe we will see our loved ones. It sounds simplistic, but I believe there’s an ultimate peace. I believe it’s a place better than this.

You’ll be able to sit down and shut up.

Yeah, without having a teacher telling me to do it!

(c) Troy M. Meier is a freelance writer, musician and producer. This interview appeared in Risen Magazine.  

By Steve Beard

Shooting just began in Montreal for I’m Not There, the new biopic of Bob Dylan. In the wake of successful films about musicians, this one promises to definitely be different than Ray or Walk the Line. Six different actors will play various incarnations of Dylan’s personality: Heath Ledger, Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere, Ben Whishaw, and Marcus Carl Franklin. As you may know, Blanchett is female and Franklin is black.

That kind of Dylanesque maneuver has got to have the nasally folk icon smirking.

Original art by Zela Lobb – zelalobb.com.

For more than forty years, Dylan has energized the anti-war and civil rights movements, excited poets and songwriters, and exasperated those who have attempted to neatly pinpoint his philosophy on love, life, death, and the Almighty. With I’m Not There, director Todd Haynes will get his shot at defining Dylan.

There seems to be no end to the fascination with the man who is arguably America’s most significant and mysterious troubadour. Fans snatched up his autobiographical Chronicles, Vol. 1. PBS recently aired No Direction Home, Martin Scorsese’s four-hour documentary on Dylan’s life from 1961 to 1966. The Dylan musical, “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” will open on Broadway in October. All the while, he keeps doing his thing. The recently released Modern Times is Dylan’s 44^th album.

Yet even with the flood of content from and about Dylan, fans and observers still find themselves thirsting to know more; to unwrap the enigma and comprehend the reluctant prophet. “All I’d ever done was sing songs that were dead straight and expressed powerful new realities,” he writes in Chronicles. “I had very little in common with and knew even less about a generation that I was supposed to be the voice of.”

Dylan has a nagging habit of pointing observers to his songs for answers about his beliefs. As illustrated in the new 440-page Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews, however, there have been times when he has been more forthright. “I’ve always thought there was a superior power, that this is not the real world and that there’s a world to come,” he told Kurt Loder in a 1984 Rolling Stone interview. “That no soul has died, every soul is alive, either in holiness or in flames. And there’s probably a lot of middle ground.”

Of course, that response was given in the wake of his trilogy of gospel-related albums he produced after becoming a Christian in 1978—one of the most controversial conversions of the modern era. But his philosophy about life, death, and the immortality of the soul were not new subjects for him. When he was interviewed by Nat Hentoff for Playboy in 1966, it was noted that Dylan had said that he had done “everything I ever wanted to do.” If that was the case, Hentoff asked, what did he have to look forward to? Dylan deadpanned, “Salvation. Just plain salvation.” Anything else? Dylan continued, “Praying. I’d also like to start a cookbook magazine…I want to referee a heavyweight championship fight.”

Dylan was not being flippant, he was just being honest.

His public proclamations about Jesus brought far more controversy to his career than when he was booed for playing an electric guitar instead of an acoustic at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. His spiritual quest was exceedingly more countercultural than a mere shift of musical instruments. Dylan’s gospel albums dumbfounded critics and aggravated a segment of his fan base when the “spokesman for a generation” had become a preacher.

Yet plenty of people heard the art that Dylan was creating. Songwriter Leonard Cohen once referred to Dylan as “the Picasso of song.” He recalls, “People came to me when he put out [Slow Train Coming] and said, ‘This guy’s finished. He can’t speak to us anymore.’ I thought those were some of the most beautiful gospel songs that have ever entered the whole landscape of gospel music.”

Bono agrees. “This album was such a breakthrough,” the U2 singer recalls. “I was always annoyed that rock could cover any taboo—sexual, cultural, political—but nobody could be upfront about their spiritual life. Before Bob Dylan, no white people could sing about God. He opened me to these possibilities.”

Dylanologists on the Internet will continue to debate the state of his theological orientation. Dylan, however, will point them right back to his art. “Those old songs are my lexicon and my prayer book,” he told The New York Times in 1997. “All my beliefs come out of those old songs, literally, anything from ‘Let Me Rest on That Peaceful Mountain’ to ‘Keep on the Sunny Side.’ You can find all my philosophy in those old songs. I believe in a God of time and space, but if people ask me about that, my impulse is to point them back toward those songs. I believe in Hank Williams singing ‘I Saw the Light.’ I’ve seen the light, too.”

A few years ago, Dylan was making a habit of opening his concerts with the song “I Am the Man, Thomas.” Out of the more than 500 songs he wrote, it would not have been unreasonable to ask why he was opening with a cover tune from the old Stanley Brothers.

The song is about a conversation between Jesus Christ and the man that all Sunday school alumni know as Doubting Thomas. “Look at these nail scars here in my hands/ They pierced me in the side, Thomas, I am the Man/ They made me bear the cross, Thomas, I am the Man/ They laid me in the tomb, Thomas, I am the Man/ In three days I arose, Thomas, I am the Man.”

It would only be offering mere speculation as to why Dylan includes his gospel-centric songs such as “Man of Peace,” “In the Garden,” or “I Believe in You” on his playlist. Perhaps we should be content to conclude that he has always been an intriguing wordsmith on a quest to find God and is merely continuing that journey.

Bob Dylan never liked being a prophet or a preacher. His is a more artistic disposition. Once, while being interviewed in London, he began to talk about the kind of people he admired. He spoke of a doctor or surgeon—someone who “can save somebody’s life on the highway. I mean, that’s a man I’m gonna look up to, as being somebody with some talent.” Dylan went on to say, “Not to say, though, that art is valueless. I think art can lead you to God.” Asked if that was art’s purpose, he remarked, “I think so. I think that’s everything’s purpose. I mean, if it’s not doing that, it’s leading you the other way. It’s certainly not leading you nowhere.”

If anyone would know something like that about art, it would definitely be Bob Dylan.

Steve Beard is the creator and editor of Thunderstruck Media. 

By Steve Beard

January 2002

Long live the King! Fully twenty-five years after his tragic death, Elvis Presley still enjoys remarkable world-wide popularity. He has been immortalized to the next generation of kiddies in Disney’s Lilo & Stitch movie, locks of his hair were auctioned off for mega-bucks by a former hair stylist, and notable authors such as Bobbie Ann Mason and Alanna Nash continue to write books about him. Not surprisingly, Elvis tops the Forbes Magazine “Top-Earning Dead Celebrities” list at the $40 million mark. The Sun Studios session that created Elvis’ debut single was recently named as the key world-changing moment in music history by the readers of Mojo, the hipper-than-thou British magazine.

Original art by Dushan Milic – dushanmilic.com.

There have been two major reissues of his hits with Elvis: 30 #1 Hits and Elvis: Second to None. The #1 Hits album debuted at the top of the charts all over the world–including the United Arab Emirates. The album sold more than a million copies in its first three weeks–staving off competition from the Rolling Stones, Bon Jovi, Beck, and India.Arie. Elvis may have left the building, but apparently his fans have not.

In order to celebrate the #1 Hits debut, NBC ran an hour special called “Elvis Lives,” which included performances from artists such as No Doubt and Dave Matthews and running commentary that ranged from the bizarre (Britney Spears) to the brilliant (Bono). The show featured Elvis as a sex symbol, racial renegade, and the prime mover of rock ‘n’ roll as we know it. The one thing they clumsily left out was Elvis’s zealous quest for God.

This kind of awkward omission would have baffled anyone with a deep knowledge of Elvis. Despite the fact that he is most well known for swiveling his hips, Presley was most obsessed with seeking God.

When Elvis rolled into Jacksonville, Florida, on August 10, 1956, Judge Marion Gooding had prepared an arrest warrant for Presley charging him with impairing the morals of minors in the event that Elvis swiveled his hips.

Young people at the Murray Hill Methodist Church heard Elvis denounced in a sermon entitled, “Hotrods, Reefers, and Rock and Roll.” Elsewhere in town, the Rev. Robert Gray, pastor of Trinity Baptist Church, offered up prayers for Presley’s salvation after declaring that the singer had “achieved a new low in spiritual degeneracy.”

The Rev. Gray gained national notoriety after being featured in Life magazine. Elvis later confessed frustration at the Baptist preacher’s actions. “I think that hurt me more than anything else at first. This man was supposed to be a religious leader, yet he acted that way without ever knowing who I was or what I was like,” said Presley. “I believe in the Bible. I believe that all good things come from God.…I don’t believe I’d sing the way I do if God hadn’t wanted me to. My voice is God’s will, not mine.”

Elvis’s spiritual journey is a key ingredient to understanding the triumphs and struggles of one of the most pivotal figures in American pop culture. As a young man, Presley was raised in poverty and southern Pentecostalism. He attended a conservative Assemblies of God church, but would often sneak off in the middle of the service to listen to the preaching and singing at a black church less than a mile away. Elvis loved gospel music and dreamed of singing it professionally before his own career took off in the mid 1950s.

Elvis’s devoutness extended far beyond his love of gospel music. “We used to read the Bible every night, if you can believe that-he used to read aloud to me and then talk about it,” testifies Dottie Harmony, who dated Elvis in 1956. “He was very religious-there was nothing phony about that at all.”

In those early days, Elvis was not shy about speaking forthrightly about his religious beliefs and his hopes that God would lead his path. “I never expected to be anybody important. Maybe I’m not now, but whatever I am, whatever I will become will be what God has chosen for me,” he told Photoplay magazine in 1957.

Despite the fame and fortune that he had acquired, he struggled to find his way through the fast-lane living afforded him at such a young age.

After the Easter service at First Assembly of God in Memphis in 1958, the Rev. James Hamill says that Elvis told him, “Pastor, I’m the most miserable young man you’ve ever seen. I’ve got all the money I’ll ever need to spend. I’ve got millions of fans. I’ve got friends. But I’m doing what you taught me not to do, and I’m not doing the things you taught me to do.”

This struggle hounded Elvis throughout his life. No less than the Apostle Paul spoke of it this way: “For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do-this I keep doing” (Romans 7:19).

Elvis told his friend Pat Boone, “I wish I could go to church like you.” After Boone told him he could, Elvis replied, “No, they wouldn’t leave me alone. I would distract the minister.” Acknowledged that potential difficulty, Boone assured Elvis that “if they see that you are coming for the same reason that they are, all of that would ease away and you could actually worship freely like everybody else. And it would do you a world of good, Elvis.” According to Boone, Elvis “felt like he couldn’t go anywhere in public. So he was sort of inprisoned. I felt like he lived like Public Enemy #1 instead of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll. It stunted his social and spiritual growth.”

Spiritual exploration in the 1960s
Like so many other young Americans during the 1960s, Elvis explored exotic Eastern religions and experimented with drugs while reading Timothy Leary’s Psychedelic Experience. He was, by all accounts, an eccentric religious seeker on turbodrive. He seemed to have every earthly pleasure at his disposal, yet he had an insatiable intellectual and spiritual hunger for the mystical and supernatural.

One man who seemed to tap into that spiritual desire was a 24-year-old hairdresser named Larry Geller who told Elvis that he was most interested in discovering “where we come from, why we are here, and where we are going.” Geller told Elvis: “If there is purpose…then my purpose is to discover my purpose. It doesn’t matter to me if that takes years or a lifetime. That’s what we are born to do.”

This was the key to unlocking Elvis’s attention. “Whoa, whoa, man. Larry, I don’t believe it. I mean, what you’re talking about is what I secretly think about all the time,” said Presley.

Geller was asking the kind of transcendent questions that Elvis was not getting with the Memphis Mafia–his team of security and advance people. Elvis saw through the shallowness of stardom but was a prisoner to his own success. He hungered for more out of life and became obsessed with his destiny and purpose.

Under the tutelage of Geller, Elvis began to devour books on Hinduism, Judaism, numerology, Theosophy, positive thinking, the new-age, meditation, and Christianity. This sent Elvis off into a whole different spiritual direction and it did not sit well with those in his inner circle.

Although Elvis explored and researched many different religions and practices, he never abandoned or rejected his beliefs about Christianity. He was a true believer, but he also had the appetite of a spiritually-starved seeker. In one conversation with Geller, Elvis stated, “All I want is to know the truth, to know and experience God. I’m a searcher, that’s what I’m all about.”

Throughout Presley’s life, gospel music was the constant element of solace to man who was burning the candle at both ends in the fast lane of international celebrity. The only Grammy Awards that Elvis earned were with his gospel records. To many fans, he is as well known for “How Great Thou Art” as he is for “Blue Suede Shoes.”

Elvis owed a lot to gospel music and was stubbornly adamant about showing his gratitude. He was one of the only rock and roll stars who recorded religious music-crossing back and forth over the divide between the secular and the sacred. He insisted on singing “Peace in the Valley” on the Ed Sullivan Show for his mother and even took gospel music into the International Hotel in Las Vegas, despite protests from the management.

Glimpses of the sacred in Vegas
It was the Vegas years in the 1970s, however, that seemed to drain so much of Elvis’s vibrancy. Presley struggled with womanizing, pill-popping, reclusivity, and uncontrollable weight gain. He turned to uppers, downers and pain killers to dull the ache of depression and loneliness. Fame was a harsh taskmaster and Elvis and his entire entourage knew it.

As if to reconnect with his childhood faith, Elvis hired gospel groups such as the Imperials, the Sweet Inspirations, and J.D. Sumner and the Stamps to sing back-up for him while he was in Las Vegas. Surrounded by all of the glittery temptations that Vegas had to offer, Elvis seemed to be seeking to provide a glimpse of the sacred–for his audience, as well as for himself.

It would be a mistake to describe what went on in the Vegas shows as a revival meeting under neon lights. Nevertheless, Presley appeared to be hungering for the security and peace that he found in the faith of his childhood and was persistent to use his stature to ensure that he was able to play by his own rules.

Gospel singer J.D. Sumner recalls a woman approaching the stage in Vegas with a crown sitting atop a pillow and Elvis asking her what it was. She answered, “It’s for you. You’re the King.” Elvis took her hand, smiled, and told her, “No honey, I’m not the King. Christ is the King. I’m just a singer.”

In December 1976, Elvis requested that television evangelist Rex Humbard and his wife Maude Aimee meet with him backstage in Las Vegas in between sets. “Jesus is coming back really soon, isn’t he, Rex?” Elvis said as he began quoting all kinds of Scriptures about the Second Coming. “It really shocked me that Elvis knew all of those Scriptures from the Old and New Testaments about the Lord’s return,” Humbard told me in an interview.

Elvis, Maude Aimee, Rex and J.D. Sumner were sequestered into a large closet in order to have some privacy and speak about spiritual matters. “I could see he was reaching back to his childhood when he used to play his guitar and go to church and sing church songs,” recalled Humbard. “And I could see he was reaching back to the past–that spirituality, that feeling that he had years and years before that had been planted in his heart.”

What really shook Elvis up during their time together was when Maude Aimee told Elvis about her prayer that he would become a “bell sheep” for God. As Elvis asked her about what that meant, she explained: “In the Holy Land, they put a bell on one sheep and when it moves all the rest of the flock moves with him. I have been praying for years for you, Elvis, that you would become a bell sheep. If you fully dedicated your life to God you could lead millions of people into the kingdom of the Lord.” According to Humbard, “Elvis went all to pieces. He started crying. She shook him up by that statement.”

As the four of them held hands and prayed, “he rededicated his heart to the Lord,” recalled Humbard. “I asked God to bless him and to send His spirit into his heart and meet his every need.” Right after their prayer time, Maude Aimee went to the hotel gift shop and purchased a symbolic bell with a little diamond in it. During the evening’s second show, Elvis held up the small bell and smiled to Maude Aimee and then dedicated “How Great Thou Art” to the Humbards.

The prayers of Elvis’s final days
“Elvis recommitted his life to Jesus Christ on that night,” says Rick Stanley, Elvis’s stepbrother. “Elvis knew the Lord. He was a modern day King David,” he told me in an interview. Stanley believes that, like King David of the Bible, Presley was a man who pursued God, yet stumbled often into the sins of the flesh.

On the day before Presley died, Stanley told Elvis that a friend of his was telling him about Jesus and how she was praying for him. “Elvis Presley, at 42 years old, looked at me and said, ‘Ricky, she’s telling you the truth.’ Then he said, ‘People who talk to you about Jesus really care.’ I talked with Elvis for a while … then left to run an errand.” When he returned to Graceland, Elvis was dead.

On the night of his death, Elvis prayed, “Dear Lord, please show me a way. I’m tired and confused, and I need your help.” A few minutes later, he looked at Stanley and said, “Rick, we should all begin to live for Christ.” On the previous day, Stanley heard Elvis praying, “God, forgive me for my sins. Let…people…have compassion and understanding of the things I have done.”

Elvis was not a saint, and no one knew that better than Presley himself. He was an enigma who touched a nerve in American culture. There is, of course, no one on the planet that can attract 70,000 fans to his gravesite to recognize the 25th anniversary of his death. While there, fans recited the Lord’s Prayer, repeated the 23rd Psalm, and joined together in singing “How Great Thou Art.”

Can 70,000 fans be wrong? Sure, but these fans were not. Granted, there are small numbers of fanatics who decorate their houses with black velvet Elvis paintings and ceramic busts of The King. Nevertheless, the vast majority of fans are simply people who are grateful for the joy that Presley was able to bring into their lives through his movies and music.

Did he stumble and fall? Yes, quite often. Like so many other famous men of his era such as Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy, Presley was tempted by the devil in the wilderness. Unlike Jesus, they were not able to resist the lures of the flesh, but we should not dismiss their contributions. Admittedly, it is sometimes easier to judge someone according to an offending snapshot of their life than to view it as an entire movie, filled with triumphs and failures.

Each one of us, who are not afforded the smorgasbord of temptation that a man like Elvis faced, must endeavor with fear and trembling to be in the world and yet not of it–no small challenge.

Throughout his career, Elvis was a seeker after God. Sometimes that journey led him into more confusion, but he hungered to know God and experience his love. And he prayed with contrition. Not bad lessons of us.

When he died, Elvis had 14 different drugs active in his system. There are plenty of lessons to be gleaned from Elvis’s tragic life but they should be absorbed through the prism of sorrow and grace.

If one looks at Elvis as a prodigal son, there is good reason to believe that he died on his journey back to the Father’s House.

At the funeral for Elvis Presley, the main address was given by the Rev. C.W. Bradley, minister of the Wooddale Church of Christ in Memphis. He spoke of Elvis’s determination, decency, and his love of family. Bradley also acknowledged that Elvis was a “frail human being” and that “he would be the first to admit his weakness. Perhaps because of his rapid rise to fame and fortune he was thrown into temptations that some never experience. Elvis would not want anyone to think that he had no flaws or faults. But now that he’s gone, I find it more helpful to remember his good qualities, and I hope you do too.”

The way in which a person dies is not always the best way to remember the contribution he or she made while they lived. All of us have seasons of our lives that we would sooner forget–whether we were on drugs, in prison, or living the life of a prodigal. It is a worthwhile endeavor to work on extending mercy to others in the same way that we trust the good Lord will extend it to us. We could all use a little trip to “graceland,” even when we are remembering Elvis.

 Steve Beard is the creator and curator of Thunderstruck.org. This article is adapted from “Defending Elvis,” published by Risen Magazine.

You may remember the scene in the movie Crash (2004) where Anthony, a car thief played by rapper Ludacris, discovers a van with the keys dangling in the driver’s door. Since no one is around, he hops in and drives to a chop shop to sell off the parts. When they open up the back of the van, Anthony and the white shop owner are startled to find a dozen Asian men, women, and children. In stunning immediacy, the shop owner offers Anthony $500 for each one without a tinge of reluctance—haggling for humans like used auto parts.

As the 2006 Academy Award-winning morality tale, Crash is loaded with gut-wrenching scenes meant to prick our racial prejudices and stereotypes. The chop shop scene came to mind when I saw Amazing Grace, a recent film about British abolitionist William Wilberforce (1759-1833). The movie’s release was timed to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in England. At that time, the British Empire was heavily reliant upon the slave trade and Wilberforce dedicated his entire life to fighting the injustice.

Played by Ioan Gruffudd (superhero Mr. Fantastic in Fantastic Four), Wilberforce was elected to parliament at 23 years old. After experiencing a dramatic spiritual conversion a few years later, he struggled with his “secular” political vocation. He was ready to call it quits until John Newton, a former slave ship captain and author of the hymn “Amazing Grace,” convinced him that combating slavery would be doing the work of heaven. “The principles of Christianity,” says Newton (Albert Finney), “require action as well as meditation.”

Despite suffering from various illnesses, Wilberforce spent his life trying to ensure that others might be free. He even stopped taking the prescribed opium for his pain because it diminshed his mental alertness and rhetorical agility.

The British slave trade was shut down in 1807 because of Wilberforce’s tireless efforts, yet he continued to work until the end of his life to completely abolish slavery in England. In 1833, a bill to outlaw slavery was finally passed. Wilberforce died three days later.

But even today the global battle against slavery is far from over. “Although most nations have eliminated servitude as a state-sanctioned practice, a modern form of human slavery has emerged,” states the 2006 U.S. State Department “Trafficking in Persons Report.” “It is a growing global threat to the lives and freedom of millions of men, women, and children. Today, only in the most brutal and repressive regimes, such as Burma and North Korea, is slavery still state sponsored. Instead, human trafficking often involves organized crime groups who make huge sums of money at the expense of trafficking victims and our societies.”

The report profiles horrific examples: “Reena was brought to India from Nepal by her maternal aunt, who forced the 12-year-old girl into a New Delhi brothel shortly after arrival. The brothel owner made her have sex with many clients each day. Reena could not leave because she did not speak Hindi and had no one to whom she could turn. She frequently saw police officers collect money from the brothel owners for every new girl brought in.… Reena escaped after two years and now devotes her life to helping other trafficking victims escape.”

As sad as her story is, Reena is one of the lucky ones. In researching his book Not For Sale, professor David Batstone traveled to Cambodia, Thailand, Peru, India, Uganda, South Africa, and Eastern Europe to investigate modern-day slavery. His findings are breathtaking. “Twenty-seven million slaves exist in our world today,” he writes. “Girls and boys, women and men of all ages are forced to toil in the rug looms of Nepal, sell their bodies in the brothels of Rome, break rocks in the quarries of Pakistan, and fight wars in the jungles of Africa. Go behind the façade in any major town or city in the world today and you are likely to find a thriving commerce in human beings.”

The United Nations estimates that there are 10 million children being exploited for domestic labor. Hundreds of thousands of children are forced into domestic slavery in countries such as Indonesia (700,000), Brazil (559,000), Pakistan (264,000), Haiti (250,000), and Kenya (200,000). “These youngsters are usually ‘invisible’ to their communities, toiling for long hours with little or no pay and regularly deprived of the chance to play or go to school,” states a U.N. report. UNICEF estimates that 1 million children are forced today to sell their bodies to sexual slavery.

“The good news about injustice is that there is a God who hates it and wants to stop it,” says Gary Haugen, president of International Justice Mission. His organization of lawyers, criminal investigators, and social workers has been on the frontline to investigate human trafficking, collect evidence, and work with local authorities to rescue the victims and put the bad guys behind bars.

Abolitionists like Haugen are true superheroes. Despite the agonizing stories of slavery told in Batstone’s book, it really is a profile of the men and women who are using their unique skills and perseverance to fight injustice. “The women who embrace the child soldiers of Uganda move in a different universe from those abolitionists in Los Angeles who confront forced labor in garment factories,” he writes. “A Swiss-born entrepreneur launches business enterprises for ex-sex slaves in Cambodia, while an American-born lawyer uses the public justice system to free entire villages in South Asia.”

At the conclusion of Crash, Anthony finds a moment of redemption by freeing the Asian slaves from the back of the van. That cinematic scenario is what abolitionists hope and pray takes place wherever the darkness of slavery overwhelms the light of freedom.

Freedom matters—and now is the time for us to speak up for those who don’t have it.

Steve Beard is the creator and editor of Thunderstruck Media.