ELVIS is making another comeback…in 2021.
The King Is Back, Ben Portsmouth’s tribute show, will be back at York Barbican on April 9 next year.
Berkshire singer Portsmouth was last in the building with his Elvis Presley act on December 20 2019. Tickets for his return are on sale at yorkbarbican.co.uk or on 0203 356 5441.
Portsmouth and his band Taking Care Of Elvis have been taking care of Elvis tribute business for a dozen years in a show built around “a little less conversation, a lot more action, please”.
“The show I do is pretty much all of Elvis’s eras,” he says. “So, from the Sun Studio to his movie years. Then I’ll do the 1968 comeback with the leather outfit.
“The first half is more like a story of Elvis’s life and what he was doing in his career at the time. The second half is just like an Elvis Seventies’ concert.”
In pursuit of authenticity to the maximum, all of Portsmouth’s Elvis outfits are flown over from the United States, with the peacock jumpsuit being his favourite.
In August 2012, Portsmouth made Elvis history when he became the first act from outside the United States to win the annual Elvis Presley Enterprises “Worldwide Ultimate Elvis Tribute Artist”, held in Memphis, Tennessee.
Portsmouth loves the Elvis voice, the look, the stage charisma, his humour, but more than that. “He was just a people person,” he says. “He was just a simple country boy who liked his cars, his food and all the rest of it.”