Bill Drummond gives insight into his year managing The Ghost of Elvis.
The 25 Comeback Special was, is and will always be a celebration of The Ghost of Elvis’s residency in The Curfew Tower for the year of 2024. As in the year when The Curfew Tower became Graceland in The Glens.
But first…
A bit of back story.
Sometime before COVID, we heard a news story on the BBC about how Elvis Presley Enterprises were about to deconstruct Graceland, as in the home of Elvis in Memphis, and then sell the deconstructed Graceland to whoever was the highest bidder, be it in Tokyo, Beijing or one of the Gulf States. And for Graceland to be rebuilt wherever that highest bidder might be. They, as in Elvis Presley Enterprises, pronounced it could make more money there, than being stuck in Memphis, Tennessee.
Something had to be done.
Or so I thought. And my thoughts percolated. And these percolated thoughts arrived at me declaring that I would become to manager for the Ghost of Elvis for the year of 2024. And for that year, The Curfew Tower in a village called Cushendall in The Glens of Antrim on the north coast of Ireland, would become Graceland in The Glens.
The Curfew Tower has been run as an artists’ residency for almost 30 years. Now is not the time to go into the whys or wherefores of all that.
All you need to know is…
For the year of 2024, in my role as the manager of The Ghost of Elvis, I invited artists (as in singer / songwriters) from the north of Ireland, to do time in this now Graceland in The Glens.
And…
While doing time there, to write the second-best song they had ever written.
And…
Record this song as primitively as possible on the cassette player left in the prison cell of this now transitioned Curfew Tower.
And…
This song had to be for The Ghost of Elvis.
And…
The artists came.
And…
They wrote the second-best songs they had ever written.
And…
They recorded them on the cassette player in The Cell.
But…
Fate decreed that me, in one of my other selves, should attempt to write a film script for a 90-minute drama, about one of these artists doing time in Graceland in The Glens.
And…
Tracey Moberly would direct this film.
And…
Tony Wright of VerseChorusVerse should play the part of The Artist.
But…
The star of this film would be Puppet Elvis*.
And…
The only dialogue in this 90-minute drama would be an internal dialogue between The Artist and Puppet Elvis.
This 90-minute drama took on the name STAY.
And as with, when I first started to try and make things happen, I had the budget of my weekly dole, I now have the budget of my monthly state pension. It seems to make the perfect bookending for my out there active life.
Anyway…
The songs crudely recorded on a cassette player, were then also recorded with the full and widescreen backing by Belfast’s finest soul band, The Gold Tips, in the best studios that Belfast had to offer. And those primitive, and these widescreen recordings, became the soundtrack to the film STAY.
STAY was premiered at the Cushendall Golf Club this past Saturday, as in on the 30th of August 2025.
But…
Not only was STAY premiered…
But…
STAY was followed by Into The Graceland, which was a contemporary dance piece performed by the Ariffe Dancers and choregraphed by Philip Johnston.
And…
That was then followed by The Gold Tips taking to the stage to back all of the other artists who had done time in Graceland in The Glens, performing live their second best song that they had ever written.
But…
Not only that…
Each of the artists had chosen a song from the catalogue of the real living and now dead Elvis, and they performed their interpretation of that as well.
This was not karaoke.
This was not a tribute act.
This was more real than the whatever the real thing might have been.
There are many reasons to loath everything that Elvis represented and still represents. And I can embrace those loathings. But at the same time there is something deep within those flaws that tore Elvis apart that still speaks loudly and quietly and deeply and shallowly to me. And I cannot seem to shake them off.
Anyway…
As with many of the things I have been involved with over the years, I saw this in my head as a play. A play in three acts with the title The 25 Comeback Special.
The Cushendall Golf Club was rammed. Almost all of the good people of Cushendall were there. And they seemed to embrace each of those three acts, even if a film, filmed on a budget provided by a state pension, or a contemporary dance piece were not their thing, it all seemed to strike certain chords. Maybe even chords that had not been struck before. Or maybe even those dissonant chords.
Anyway…
Over the past fifty years (and counting) I have attempted to make numerous things happen in different ways, in some sort of public sphere. Some have been done to garner attention. Some were done to go unnoticed. But this one was the first one that made me weep with emotion. This emotion might have been triggered by my age and the knowledge that there will not be too many of these left in me. But I like to think it was triggered by the amount work and effort and risk and creativity all those involved, put into The 25 Comeback Special.
And like Elvis it too was flawed. But I have learnt over the years that it is often those flaws that make something feel real. As in not like the over rehearsed or choreographed, thus vacuous, performances I have seen done by Michael Jackson or even Prince, when they got every move perfect to a millifraction of perfection, that the whole thing had no soul.
Anyway…
Right now, I have no idea, if any aspects of this will ever be staged again, or even if the film STAY will be screened elsewhere.
Maybe it was all a one off and that was the way it was meant to be.
For those that took part or took the risk of coming…
Thank you.
Yours,
Bill Drummond
Post Script:
*Tracey Moberly made Puppet Elvis, William E. Drummond wrote his words, Tony Wright spoke his words.