Much time has elapsed and countless guests have checked in and out of the Heartbreak Hotel since Elvis Presley died this week 45 years ago.
If the memory of his greatness and uniqueness as a musical artist has slightly faded over the decades since then, the stunning 2022 Hollywood blockbuster, Elvis, starring Austin Butler as the man himself and Tom Hanks as his manager Colonel Tom Parker, is a powerful reminder of what an unmatched giant musical and showbiz force he was - and continues to be.
Elvis Presley died, aged just 42, on August 16, 1977, at his Graceland home in Memphis. In that pre-digital age, many people in the UK found out the news when it was announced by the visibly shocked newsreader Reginald Bosanquet near the end of ITV's News At Ten that day. It would become a moment, much like when news of President Kennedy's death broke a decade and a half earlier, or Princess Diana's death 20 years later, that people would remember where they were and who they were with.
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But as music fans around the world went into mourning, there would be an instant positive economic knock-on effect in this corner of the globe. Elvis was the biggest star on the RCA label and, as fate would have it, Washington New Town, Tyne and Wear, was home to a giant RCA plant which had been churning out records since 1970.
A report in the weeks before its opening had announced: "The whole mammoth operation will be staffed by local workers." During the early years of the decade, more than 300 people were employed there, producing 18 million records a year by Elvis, David Bowie - and a range of pop and classical performers.
However, the changing face of the leisure industry was beginning to take its toll. Sales of vinyl were falling, and the introduction of the music cassette was eating into into the record market. In 1976, only six years after the factory opened, the writing was on the wall. In July 1977, RCA announced that 94 staff at the Washington plant were set to lose their jobs, with the entire 350 workforce about to be put on short-time working. Closure seemed just a matter of time.
Then Elvis died and sales of his records immediately went through the roof. The Tyne and Wear factory would get an unlikely reprieve. Word went out from RCA's headquarters in America to its plants around the world that production had to increase, and Washington, being the most modern, was at the forefront of meeting the sudden unprecedented demand.
Elvis records were effectively sold before they were pressed, and 12-hour shifts were introduced as the factory became a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week operation. "Workers all shook up over disc boom", ran one headline in the Chronicle. A year after the King's demise there were still 300 working at the factory.
The boom was temporary, unfortunately, and record sales continued to fall. In 1981, RCA sold up in Washington, and Dickens set about building the biggest DIY retail complex in Europe at the location. Today on the town's Armstrong Industrial Estate, 45 years on from Elvis Presley's untimely death, a B&Q home improvement store dominates the site where millions of copies of Jailhouse Rock were once produced.
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