The King was very much alive here!
For the ninth successive year, the 3 Day Elvis Fest descended upon Benidorm last weekend, attracting hundreds of die-hard fans to the resort. Many of them took great effort to dress up for the occasion, with the men parading their quiff wigs complete with sideburns and ladies in some beautiful 50’s style dresses.
One group of four certainly attracted plenty of attention with their matching two-piece pink bathing suits, straw hats, sunglasses and Elvis tote bags – everyone was wanting a picture with them!
There was also rather surprisingly a number of men, yes men, wearing full on blonde wigs, lippy and Marilyn Monroe dresses and the organisers held a competition for the best Marilyn of the day.
The Melia Hotel was the epicentre, where a great poolside show featuring many of the Elvis Tribute Artistes (ETA’s) took place each lunchtime giving the hotel guests a fantastic free afternoon, listening to some incredible live entertainment – a real bonus for them.
The weather was a little bit of a mixed bag, with a breeze mixed together with outbreaks of sun but thankfully the rain kept away. There are also shows featuring world class ETA’s taking place at two other venues over the course of the weekendThe Rock & Roll House and Showboat however, but these were for ticket holders only, which had actually sold out months ago.
For the first time, Australian ETA Mark Anthony took part, fresh from another Elvis convention in Nashville that took place only the previous week and
just before that he was in Georgia, Atlanta – he’s certainly covering a lot of airmiles! Mark has been an ETA for around 15 years, having been an Elvis fan from around 4 years of age and it’s his first time ever here in Benidorm. After his performance he took a few minutes out to have a chat with me and what a lovely guy.
He was introduced to The King by his older brother and eldest cousin, who were both die-hard Elvis fans so he had little choice in the matter. During his early years he performed in cover bands, played the drums and also did some jazz singing in and around Sydney. A carpenter by trade, one day he decided he wanted to do something that he’d never get sick of and decided it could only be one thing -Elvis and so started his new career which he now travels the world doing.
Like many Elvis fans and ETA's, he does an annual pilgrimage to Graceland in August on the anniversary of his death, spending an entire week there – it’s a great time of the year to be there he told me. His all-time favourite Elvis song is “If I could Dream” – (one I’d personally never heard of) which was the closing song written for Elvis to sing in the 1968 Comeback Special as it was dubbed by his fans. It was the first time he came back to perform live on stage after a long 8 year break and the song was specially written to close the show, still resonating about the world today if you listen to the lyrics Mark says. Elvis has had 100s of hits and each time Mark performs it is a combination of those. If it’s like here in Benidorm with die-hard fans they love to hear some of the more obscure seldom heard ones, but if its somewhere were there aren’t such avid fans then they always like to hear the popular classics such as Suspicious Mind, In the Ghetto, Blue Suede Shoes which then leaves them wanting more.
On Sunday night, there was a spectacular closing show at Benidorm Palace, where all the ETA’s performed and the palace was absolutely packed to the rafters. Before jetting back Down Under on Tuesday he was taking a day off and planned on driving up the Guadalest to explore a little bit of the surrounding area. Normally when he does these type of shows he only gets to see the airport lounge, hotel room and venue so he was very excited to be able to get a day’s sightseeing in. Hopefully he’ll be back again next year – he told me that he’d been wanting to take part for the last few years but always already seemed to have prior bookings by the time he was made aware. Well next year’s Elvis Fest will take place 24-26 April and tickets were already flying out – many of the fans automatically book from one year to the next.