Some of us are late developers, some, like me, later than just about everyone else. This tendency was identified early in my life. I must have been about eight when I was warned " you keep on reading all those books, you'll never learn anything." I heard the advice but kept on reading. Time marched on. Years passed and I was usually the last person to notice anything, preferring the historic to the contemporary. As for fashion, if a particular thing or style was "in", I had a chance of getting around to, writes Eileen Battersby.
In a society of trend setters, there has to be at least one square - me. I'm neither lamenting nor complaining. It's just what happened. I've never been interested in clothes which could be partly explained by always having been involved with sport and animals. Last to learn to drive, last to discover boys. Food is something I eat, not review.
As for music, aside from Central European folk and bluegrass hillbilly-type stuff, I only like classical music. Not because I'm snobby or elitist, it just happens to be the music I enjoy, revere and understand; symphonies, violin and oboe concertos, piano sonatas, masses, motets, Schubert Lieder and so on. The vast world of modern pop music rock and pop, punk and grunge and all the rest - an entire culture replete with heroes and weirdoes - arrived and went, without my noticing.
Despite the intensity of my commitment to Baroque, my hero J.S. Bach, and later giants such as Mozart - the John McEnroe of classical music - Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Stravinsky and Barber, I have absorbed the achievements of the singer songwriter such as Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young. But as for all this stuff about Elvis Presley, I just never figured it out. To me he was the guy with the Liberace wardrobe, the giant sideburns, those yucky movies and a sad, strange biography rivalling Marilyn Monroe's tragedy.
But opinions based on opinion and nothing else falter. During one of my many middle-of-the-night drives between home and the west of Ireland, I felt sleepy. And decided to pause the Chopin Nocturne to which I was listening and turn on the news. Switching on the radio a few minutes early I heard a female presenter saying that she was about to play two versions of the same song. On came an understated, noncommittal You Were Always On My Mind from Willie Nelson. I knew the song. The Pet Shop Boys had recorded it in their quasi-electronic, cynical style in the late 1980s. Singer number two was Elvis Presley. Soon I was wide awake. Presley sang with feeling and a sense of regret. OK, so it is a great song but there was more to it. A light-bulb came on in my mind.
A couple more middle-of- the- night drives, a couple more Presley numbers, such as his version of You Don't Have To Say You Love Me which I had heard sung by Dusty Springfield several times around the announcement of her death. It seemed as if every time I switched from the Bach or the Haydn on the CD player to the radio news, I was in time to hear Presley sing Love Me Tender, Suspicious Minds, You've Lost That Loving Feeling, In the Ghetto, Make the World Go Away. I was beginning to sing his songs in the bath, the stables, the car, the supermarket. My curiosity was encouraging me to inquire openly about Elvis Presley.
No one laughed outright, although several appeared concerned that despite my not having served time in a Gulag somewhere and in spite of my obvious interest in music, I had missed out on a 20th century icon who revolutionised modern popular music. Curiosity outweighed my embarrassment.
So here I am in the supermarket and among the CDs on sale is Elvis Presley - the 50 Greatest Love Songs - on the cover a young Elvis pouts with youthful defiance. I weakened and put it back.
When Dusty Springfield's death was announced we were stopped in traffic. My daughter,Nadia, wanted to hear more of her songs but I said the report had been on the news. She decided we should buy a Springfield CD. We tried. The sneering young man in the shop laughed at me, not the five-year-old girl who wanted the CD, saying "Dusty Springfield is so uncool, only grandmothers listen to her". "Thanks sonny boy," I muttered and slunk out. Recalling that episode, I didn't buy the Presley CD.
After a few more car trips and late night news checks opening on to more Presley songs, me exclaiming to myself, "this guy's a really good singer, he has vulnerability, an emotional intelligence, a multiplicity of voices, of styles, genuine musicality. Most of all, you can understand every word." Back to the supermarket, and the Elvis Love Songs.
I put it into the basket. At the checkout, out comes ice cream, chocolate cake, three litres of milk, a bag of carrots, a bag of apples - and the Elvis CD. The cashier, an older woman, older than me, glanced at me but said nothing.
Nadia took over. "Put it on the car CD player. Off we went, back to the west. While the fans were mourning their lost king, I finally discovered him. There are too many who know a great deal about him for me to presume to add anything about the polite, poor, white, Southern child of the Great Depression who sang so well but became too rich and unhappy to survive.
Still, there's a wonderful song called I've Lost You - it is about a relationship collapsing: I watch you sleeping and in your face the sweetness of a child, murmuring a dream you won't recapture though it will haunt the corners of your mind. It is but one of many classics.
The Gospel sound, all the catchy rock and roll numbers, the ballads, the love songs, Elvis was, and is, a great singer for many reasons; he had a musical, textured rhythmic voice, that emotional intelligence. Concentrate on his voice; sweet, remorseful, defiant, suggestive. Unlike so many of the superstars of modern popular music, he could sing - that's why he is the King.