In 2005 I was asked by Chrome Dreams for an essay to accompany this comprehensive 2CD package.

Dear old Roy Carr’s 1976 LP The Sun Sessions gathered together, for the first time, those seminal recordings. It came out as Punk was exploding, and everyone thought of Elvis as a jump-suited caricature. That LP set the record straight. I had been lucky enough to visit Sun Studios in Memphis in 2004, and stood where Elvis stood (X literally marks the spot) when he effectively created rock & roll. Memphis then was an apartheid town, and what Elvis did at Sun was as revolutionary as anything accomplished by Johnny Rotten.

It’s a record I still treasure, the swagger of ‘Good Rockin’ Tnight’ and ‘I’m Left, You’re Right, She’s Gone’. Above all, ‘Mystery Train’, still sounds so modern… Hard to believe it was cut when Eisenhower was President and the Beatles were still at school.

‍