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LEGENDARY ROCK ‘N’ ROLL star Elvis Presley died 40 years ago today.
Affectionately known as the King, his songs and performance have spawned thousands of tribute acts around the world.
The Elvis fanbase in Ireland remains alive and well, and TheJournal.ie spoke to tribute acts Kevin Doyle and Ciaran Houlihan about the enduring appeal of the iconic superstar.
Kevin Doyle runs a greengrocers in the Dublin suburb of Ballyfermot by day. By night, however, he and a band of fellow musicians play the songs of Elvis to packed crowds across the country.
“It started about 20 years ago,” Doyle said. “The big gig at the time was midnight at the Olympia and we were doing our best to get on there.
“They wanted tributes to particular artists and we already had a few Elvis numbers on our set so we went for it.”
That initially small band has now grown to 15 members, as their show now incorporates a full brass section in order to play all of the King of rock ‘n’ roll’s hits.
“We really wanted that big sound,” he said, adding that the band had even played with Elvis’ own iconic TCB band on occasion.
So how does one go about capturing that famous Elvis sound? “It’s very difficult,” Doyle said.
We’ve all done an awful lot of studying to get as close as we could. We focused on his live recordings, his bootlegs and everything we could… It’s not just about me impersonating Elvis. We have all of our musicians go to school to make sure they sound exactly right.
On numerous occasions, Doyle and his band have played the Olympia, the Point, appeared on RTÉ and played to crowds ranging from thousands to hundreds.
“Our audience can be aged from nine to 90,” he said. “It’s always a surprise when you see young kids singing along to a lot less familiar songs.”
Ciaran Houlihan similarly travels around the country, bringing the different eras of Elvis’ music to the stage with a big band backing him up.
“He really had three different eras,” he said. “My favourite song of his is actually one of the lesser-known ones – Impossible Dream.”
Houlihan goes to great lengths to get the same look as Elvis, and has had jackets made by the King’s own tailor Gene Doucette.
“Once you’re wearing that, it puts you into character straight away,” he said.
His favourite venues to play include the Winter Gardens in Blackpool, Dublin’s Olympia and Belfast’s Opera House.
“They all have different vibes,” he said. “But at every venue we always get such a diverse crowd.
We get whole families coming to shows, from children right up to grandparents. Elvis is going as strong today as he was back in the day.
And what about Elvis’ enduring appeal, 40 years on from his death?
“Through it all, he was just a cool dude,” Houlihan said.
“He was around for a long time, but then again he died quite young [Elvis died aged 42]. He had music that appealed to everyone when he was alive, and it still does.”
Doyle said: “I think it’s the simplicity of the music, and what it was doing at the time. If you look now, there’s nothing pushing the boundaries the way that the likes of Elvis was then.
It’s something that’s now passed down from generation to generation, and we see a lot of younger people coming along to our gigs. It’s not about making Elvis cool again, it’s about keeping him cool.
Kevin Doyle and his band play the Grand Social in Dublin this evening.
Ciaran Houlihan will be playing Knightsbrook Inn, Trim, tonight with the Elvis Spectacular Band.
This young farmer/food producer is completely right to suggest that his sector is being made a scapegoat for the sins of the combustion industry.
As combustion induced global heating gathers pace at a frightening speed, maybe Irish farmers should take a leaf out of the oil cartel’s handbook, and cut production in order to increase prices abroad for top quality food.
We need to use our own land to produce our own energy, and finally break free from the stranglehold of fossil fuel addiction.
To simply live, we need to live simply.
@Ciaran Sherry: and if every country takes a similar approach to food production then what happens? Reduced food supply doesn’t just result in higher per unit prices, it also results in mass starvation. How many people should we be looking to sacrifice in our pursuit of this simple life?
@Ciaran Sherry: I suspect that if Irish farmers cut production, farmers elsewhere would just be thankful for being gifted markets.
@Ciaran Sherry: They would be swallowed by the global marketplace. The fact is food production and human consumption are not sustainable. Diets need to be supplemented and the process needs to part move into a lab, yes yes, the jobs the people, I’m not talking about tomorrow but it’s coming and is unavoidable.
@Ciaran Sherry: a lot of people think that things will be the same buy what u want eat what you want farmers followe the policy of government in 2007 this included the greens cheap food high production they all screamed knowing this was not good for biodiversity now the very same people are saying the opposite so farmers will now cut production eu climate policy has no payments planned what so ever for this despite grace suleiman and other greens saying we will be compensated farmers should tell them to go where the sun doesn’t shine
Whoops – hospitals over the last 25 years.
But apparently we’re meant to believe we can change the planet’s climate
The climate doomsters conveniently forget the climate of Earth has changed regularly & mankind has always managed to adapt.
AND we now have technology our ancestors could only have dreamed of.
We should encourage our hard working farmers to create as much food as possible
Simples
@Gerry Kelly: ‘mankind has always managed to adapt’: What price would you be willing to pay for ‘adaptation’? As more and more parts of the world turn to uninhabitable desert, would you be happy to see the population of Ireland increase to, say, 30 million through migration that people are forced to undertake in order to survive?
Oddly, it seems to me that the climate crisis denialists and those most opposed to (inward) migration are always the same people.
@Gerry Kelly: 1) Mankind has already changed the planet’s climate. Hence the mess we have created.
2) Mankind has only existed on this planet for a couple of hundred thousand years. A blink of the eye with regards to the species that have come and gone since life arose here. Through most of that time we have barely hung on. But the last 6 thousand years or so have been a climate sweet spot for humans, allowing us to expand across almost the entire planet, and increase our population to 8 billion.
During the last 200 years or so we have polluted our atmosphere with greenhouse gases that have and will increase global temperatures.
We are now approaching the the upper limit of that climate sweet spot.
@Gerry Kelly: Nope, people who know about anthropogenic climate change also know about natural climate change, it’s only those who are minimally informed who think otherwise. Mankind have not gad to adapt through a mass extinction event yet which is what we’re staring down the barrel at at the moment.
World population 1950 – 2bn
2050 – projected to hit 10 BN
Our island nation has a population of 5 million & we haven’t been able to build enough houses schools or hosp
@Gerry Kelly: World population 2000 years ago was probably in the region of 150 million.
Hence the attack on farmers to devalue land for the landgrab which will “offset” emissions.
Don’t fall for this, guys.
Lovely steak
The issue is that farming lobbyists and representative organisations appear to use exactly the same tactics as the fossil fuel industry: block, deny and try to preserve the status quo.
If farming representative organisations come with proposals to reduce subsidies for fossil fuels and fossil fuel companies, to reinvest these in promoting sustainable farming (i.e. switching from livestock farming to tillage and land regeneration), I reckon there may be quite a few who’d go along with this. The only ones I see coming up with these type of solutions are those that farmers hate: environmentally-minded policy makers.
The planet’s climate is changing
It has in changed in Ireland 7 times since the last Ice Age melted away
Unless I’ve got something wrong – we appear to have survived those changes & my hunch is we’ll survive this one also
@Gerry Kelly: Your hunch outweighs science. You win.
It might very well be true. If it is you were put there, not by the Greens but by Mr. Badman and his cronies in the Department. If farmers free themselves of these malign influences they might find that people appreciate them and the work they do
We have been told that Ireland has high per capita Greenhouse gas emissions.
This article claims that a reason why Ireland’s farming related CO2 emissions are such a high proportion of our total is that we do not have the heavy industry of other countries.
Something is awry.
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere:
Per various CO2 emissions per Capita lists for 2021/2022:
Ireland averages around 7 t
Palau in Oceania around 178 t
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: yes but when you add up our total emissions it is nothing will have no effect on the climate biodiversity here is another question though
@Athena: According to worldinfometers, in 2022 Ireland’s per capita CO2 emissions was 8.29 tonne, with Palau at 2.34 tonne.
But that is not the point I was raising.
We are told our per capita emissions are high, compared to the average, or even the just among our peers.
Yet this article states that we do not have the heavy industry of other countries, that heavy industry to makes up so much of their emissions. The article claims that because the absence of emissions from heavy industry, our emissions from agriculture is relatively high, i.e. appears high only because of this absence.
Something does not add up.
If that claim is correct, then how on Earth are our per capita emissions so high?
Or is that claim misleading?
Why are so many of the articles “comment closed”.
@T M Byrne: in case SF/IRA would bring publisher to court
One third of all food produced worldwide is wasted, and that waste contributes the same GHG emissions per year to the global total as the total emissions of the European Union. Now by my reckoning if that food waste was tackled and eliminated, it would reduce the global GHG emissions by the same amount as I mentioned earlier.
That would be a major step in the right direction and it would effectively reduce global agricultural emissions by one third. Because less waste means less need for production.
Seems unfair to farmers who happily produce other than dairy/livestock, this article doesn’t give them a mention?
… any adults in the room?
Daft to start killing Irish cows which feed 44 million people, to reduce emissions
… while we have NO TAX (World Wide) on jet fuel or tanker fuel ….
… to fly us off on City Breaks and Tourist trails
and ship all those unnecessary goods around the world.
No VAT, No Excise Duty, No National Oil Reserve Levy” … nothing.
…. “Far from Right!”
… any adults in the room?
@Neuville-Kepler62F: technical point – I don’t know about you but my cows are dead when I eat them. Bit hysterical?
Just to make it clear – I am absolutely NOT a climate change denier. It is abundantly clear the p
Who in earth would ever listen to a farmer lol
@Murray peter: Everyone with a bit of intelligence would.
Tell us about your knowledge of farming?
How many days a week do you work?
Farmers work a seven day week, year in year out.
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