Category: Flyer Flashback

Cars are the lifeblood of America. Car factories in Spring Hill and
Smyrna put Tennessee in the middle of the Southern car-manufacturing
industry that helped depress Detroit and the industrial Midwest. And
car advertising helped newspapers, including this one, get off the
ground, prosper, and survive the current recession. So let’s hear it
for the car biz.

In the fall of 1995, the Flyer proudly displayed two full
pages of car ads, which was something of a catch at the time for a
five-year-old struggling to compete with the local daily and its
near-monopoly of the lucrative car-advertising market.

You could buy a brand-new 1995 Mitzubishi Galant four-door sedan for
$12,899 or a Mirage for $207 a month. A new BMW started at $19,999.
Today, that will get you a nice used luxury car. Used cars were cheap
too: a 1994 Ford Escort for $7,988, a 1994 Mercury Topaz for $8,688,
and a 1995 Saturn for $11,488.

The Saturn made its debut in 1994. It was touted as a new kind of a
car from a new kind of General Motors, and the assembly plant at Spring
Hill was the pride of Middle Tennessee. Former governor Lamar Alexander
landed the plant, and the announcement seemed to foreshadow decades of
prosperity, good jobs, and near full employment. Which it did, although
not so many decades as we might have hoped. The Saturn died this year
after Roger Penskie’s rescue plan was aborted. GM had stopped making it
at Spring Hill a couple of years ago. The plant will be shuttered this
year, its future in doubt just 15 years after the first Saturn rolled
off the line.

I’ll miss the Saturn. My 1995 model served my family well until I
sold it last month for $2,000. Good car, good for the state, good for
this newspaper. RIP.

“The planners say they want to revitalize Mud Island. The mayor says
he wants a family-oriented attraction. Excuse me, but isn’t Mud Island
already family-oriented? How do we make it more family-oriented? Maybe
some big cartoon characters — Mickey Memphis or Ricky Riverboat
or Cathy Catfish. I can visualize them greeting the hordes of squealing
little children at the doors of the already cartoonish Welcome Center,
skipping gleefully, hand-in-hand, across the new land-bridge to the
same old Mud Island theme park. …

“Before I go any further, let me go on record: I like Mud Island. I
realize that’s kind of like standing up in church and admitting you’d
like to boff the preacher’s daughter. More often. But, hey, Mud Island
is probably the only intelligent and well-designed piece of civic
architecture this city has come up with since … well, since. That
doesn’t mean it wasn’t a flawed idea to begin with, just a
well-designed flawed idea. Intelligent tourist attractions don’t work.
Tourists aren’t intelligent. If they are, they’re not in Memphis.

“You want a bold, innovative plan for Mud Island? Okay. Bulldoze it.
Level it. Tear down the damn park and give the silly airplane [the
Memphis Belle] to whoever is dumb enough to take it. Eat your
losses and chalk it up to experience.”

From “An Immodest Proposal,” a September 26, 1996, commentary by
Cory Dugan addressing yet more ideas to lure visitors downtown.

Dugan, former Flyer art director and art critic for the
paper, was known for his frighteningly smart style.

As for an update: Mud Island was not bulldozed; the idea for the
land-bridge may finally be dead; and the Memphis Belle was moved
to Ohio in 2005.

The Memphis Area Transit Authority is in crisis, with problems
rooted in funding, routes, demographic changes, and the continued
indifference of a public wed to the automobile.

Those are the issues that bedevil the system today, and those were
the issues that vexed MATA, as well as local planning authorities, back
in September 1996, as documented in Jacqueline Marino’s Flyer
cover story “The Long Road Home.”

As Marino put it then, “For a world-class distribution center,
Memphis still has problems transporting people from one side of town to
the other. Supporters blame the situation on funding and image. …
Along with the age-old complaints that bus service is too slow, too
limited, and too expensive, MATA faces increasing demands from
businesses, riders, social advocates, and government critics.”

Not much has changed. In 1996, Marino took note of a persistent
critic: “‘In Europe, in a language I don’t know, I can figure out how
to get places,’ says city councilman John Vergos, one of MATA’s most
vocal critics. ‘But here in the city I live in I can’t figure the buses
out. The route maps are confusing. A tourist at the Peabody has no idea
how to get to Graceland … . [General Manager William] Hudson knows I
disagree with much of MATA’s focus. It’s not glamorous, but MATA needs
to get to the nitty-gritty of running a bus system.'”

Hudson is still aboard and has made some changes over the years but
is likely to have to withstand more criticism from Vergos, now an
ex-councilman but still a critic and one who was appointed to MATA’s
governing board just this month by Mayor Pro Tem Myron Lowery.

“Having had all spring and pre-season to prepare for Ole Miss,
Memphis’ performance was surprisingly lackluster.”

All of us on the Flyer editorial staff have commented at one
point or another this year that the “Flyer Flashbacks” often
seem more like “Flyer Déjà Vu.” The sentence above
was written by former Flyer editor Dennis Freeland in 1999,
following the U of M’s 30-10 drubbing at the hands of Tommy
Tuberville’s Ole Miss squad in the season opener.

Here’s more from Freeland: “Part of what annoys Tiger fans is the
success they see at other programs. Besides the reconstruction job
Tuberville has done at Ole Miss, there is Tulane. Last year, the Green
Wave hired the other Bowden, Tommy, to replace Buddy Teevens. Tulane
went 7-4 in Bowden’s first year. They opened the 1998 season at
Cincinnati last weekend, scoring 52 points against the Bearcats. … If
Tulane can score that many points against a conference opponent in only
the second season under their new coach, why can’t Memphis at least
average more than one touchdown per game?”

Freeland went on to point out what eventually became the downfall of
former Tiger coach Rip Scherer: his teams’ total lack of offense. His
successor, current coach Tommy West, has taken care of that problem;
his teams have scored lots of points through the years. And to be fair,
West has significantly upgraded the program, having taken the U of M to
several bowl games.

But, as Freeland’s 1999 column reveals, some frustrations remain
eternal. The Tigers just can’t turn the corner on Ole Miss. But since
last Sunday’s 41-14 pounding is apparently the last game in the series
for a while, Flyer writers in 2019 will at least be spared the
anguish of writing about losing to Ole Miss.

Roxy Blue

Nineteen years ago this week, the Flyer was weighing the
potential benefits and pitfalls of the “Great American Pyramid,” set to
open the following spring, with a two-part piece from Allen Hester. But
Robert Gordon’s music column in the August 30th Flyer is
particularly interesting in retrospect.

Gordon leads with reports on major-label prospecting on the Memphis
scene: “Another Memphis act signs big! Roxy Blue, Memphis’ metal
wonder, has inked a big deal with David Geffen Company, home of Guns N’
Roses, Whitesnake, and other way-loud thumpers. … [The band’s demos]
set Virgin and Geffen sword to sword, and the band had the happy chore
of picking from two good deals. Tom Zutaut, who signed chart-monsters
Guns N’ Roses and Edie Brickel, signed the band after hearing them live
at the Stage Stop. Big things ahead!”

Gordon also mentions Geffen’s interest in a collaboration between
local musicians R.T. Scott and Mike Barnes.

Big things never emerged from any of this.

But a counterpoint within the same column are early mentions of a
couple of artists who would bloom in significance later on. Gordon
mentions a successful showcase in Atlanta for Phalon Alexander, the son
of Bar-Kays bassist James Alexander. More than a decade later,
Alexander would come into his own as the hit-making hip-hop and R&B
producer Jazze Pha.

Gordon also reports on a newish band, A Band Called Bud, getting a
cease-and-desist order from Budweiser and changing their name to the
Grifters, arguably the signature Memphis band of the ’90s.

Earlier this month, a standing-room-only crowd of riverfront
advocates and preservationists piled into the Balinese Ballroom
downtown to give the Riverfront Development Corporation (RDC) a piece
of their minds.

Many of those present weren’t happy with the RDC’s plan to place
rough stone (called riprap) at the base of the historic cobblestone
landing. Some also expressed concerns about RDC’s plans to install
east-west walkways leading to the river’s edge. No one seemed to argue,
however, with the RDC’s plan to replace missing cobblestones in the
historic landing.

But this isn’t a new project. According to a September 2000
Flyer story by Chris Przybyszewski, “the RDC has begun
supplementing the historic Memphis cobblestone walkway that lies
between Confederate and Tom Lee parks with both new and old
cobblestones. This $4.5 million project … will provide a safe and
attractive way to walk from the Tennessee Welcome Center into downtown
and south to Beale Street and Tom Lee Park.”

RDC president Benny Lendermon told the Flyer this week that
the $4.5 million cobblestone upgrade is the same project under way
today. Only, now the cost has inflated to $6 million.

Przybyszewski also reported that the RDC had plans to add medians,
pedestrian walkways, and flashing signs along Riverside Drive. At the
time, Lendermon said it looked “too much like the expressway.” Those
upgrades are in place today.

Generally speaking, Flyer staffers don’t interview each
other. But 10 years ago, I was a Flyer intern and Chris
Herrington was both a Flyer freelancer and helping the Guernseys
auction house with a very special project — what we called
the auctioning of Elvis.

In order to raise money for Presley Place, a transitional housing
development in downtown Memphis, Elvis Presley Enterprises (EPE)
decided to sell items from its vast archives. They picked things that
were either duplicates or considered expendable: for instance, two
green (not blue) suede chairs.

It was my first cover story for the Flyer, and I remember
being driven to a nondescript storefront in Whitehaven, its windows
completely covered.

An organization that hasn’t let anyone see the upstairs of Graceland
for more than 40 years, EPE wanted complete secrecy as the auction
house did its work.

“Many of the items for the October 8th auction in Las Vegas are
documents: Elvis’ first RCA contract, his address book from 1956, a
packet of celebrity Christmas cards. There are also what the archivists
call the sexier items: Elvis’ black satin-like pajamas, his 1956
Lincoln Continental Mark II, his Army fatigues.

“Except for an oasis where a computer and digital camera are set up,
the rest of the room, like a garage the night before a garage sale,
overflows with old furniture and odd items: Elvis’ Palm Springs desk; a
globe with a heavy wooden base; one basketball, deflated; two
larger-than-life black statues; and a chair from Graceland’s fabled
Jungle Room.”

Not sure where any of those items ended up, but I can tell you
exactly where Herrington and I did.

The Flyer‘s cover story for August 13, 1998 (11 years ago to
the very date of this week’s issue), concerned the conclusion of a
county-wide election that had some surprising results — one of
which illustrated the importance to candidates’ hopes of celebrity
gained elsewhere. (Pay attention, Jerry Lawler!)

With the vote-counting still incomplete and convinced that suburban
voters might have doomed his reelection hopes, Criminal Court judge Joe
Brown — then as now a TV judge as well — was writing out a
formal complaint. As I wrote then: Watching him scribble furiously,
Election Commission chairman O.C. Pleasant said casually, “You know,
you finished ahead in the early voting.”

“What!” said Brown, coming to a dead stop. He mused about the
disclosure briefly, then wadded up his still-unfinished letter of
complaint and walked away from the counter. “What the hell. I’m out of
here!” he said, forgetting all about his earlier grievance.

In the same issue, John Branston documented how shaky the 1997
merger of Promus Corporation and Doubletree Hotel Corporation had
become. As Branston noted, “The chiefs found out they didn’t like each
other.” The “eye-opener” was “the departure of [Mike] Rose, former
chairman of Promus and president of its Memphis-born predecessor,
Holiday Inns. … That someone of his stature would resign they took as
an indication of how strained relations were at the top.”

We also editorialized in that issue in favor of the state’s “Yes or
No” method of voting on appellate judges’ tenure. “On balance,” we
wrote, the Tennessee Plan had “served the purpose of responsible
— and responsive — justice.” For what it’s worth, the plan
has just survived, with unexpectedly modest changes, a fresh all-out
challenge to it in the 2009 session of the legislature.

“Can America’s Distribution Center make a profit on the
Internet?”

That was the question posed in a Flyer cover story on this
date 10 years ago.

The difficulty of answering that question is apparent in the opening
paragraphs of the story, which touted a hot new company called EveryCD.com as “the biggest music store in
Memphis.” The business sold compact discs from a catalog of 350,000
titles.

The iPod was a few years away, needless to say.

Memphis enjoyed a business boom as companies such as Toys ‘R’ Us,
Nike, Planet Rx, and Williams-Sonoma built or occupied warehouses in
Memphis to serve their online businesses.

An expert quoted in the article predicted that the distribution of
physical goods would drive local employment to ever higher heights for
years, thanks to the online economy. And a would-be entrepreneur cited
“the unexploited supply of tech workers in the area who can be hired at
a fraction of the salary they would demand in high-tech centers such as
New York or California."

The tech revolution left Memphis somewhat short of Silicon Valley.
Warehouses proved easier to build than to turn into long-term
businesses. Companies got millions of dollars in tax incentives for
promised jobs that never came. And the blight on roads such as Shelby
Drive, Holmes, and Lamar bears witness to that.

As the article noted, talk was cheap on the eve of the new
millennium.

“In May, Amazon.com, the nation’s
number-one online book retailer, scuttled plans at the last minute to
locate a major distibution center here that would have employed
hundreds.”

It wasn’t all hype, of course. Nike and other companies had staying
power, and the infrastructure of FedEx and Memphis International
Airport drives the local economy to this day and will, sooner or later,
lead Memphis out of the recession.

As for Planet Rx, we can’t for the life of us remember what all the
fuss was about.

“As openings go, it was a low-key affair. Rubberneckers lined the
curbsides of Beale and Second (holding signs like ‘Brad Pitt is my
Elvis’ and ‘Elvis was a Jedi Knight’), but, despite the intense
early-evening heat, there were neither streakers nor fainting
victims.

“Advance rumors notwithstanding, such high-powered celebs as Pitt,
Billy Joel, and Elton John were no-shows. And so were John Travolta and
Tom Cruise — both members of the Church of Scientology, like
presiding eminences Lisa Marie Presley and Priscilla Beaulieu Presley.
Juliette Lewis, affecting a spiked blond haircut, was on hand, though,
one of some 20 ‘friends’ brought to town to help the two Presleys
— daughter and ex-wife, respectively, to the late King of Rock
and Roll — open Elvis Presley’s Memphis Thursday night.

Lisa Marie and Priscilla Presley

“The new Beale Street club will serve as flagship for an operation
which Elvis Presley Enterprises hopes to expand to at least 20 clubs
over the next two decades — with Las Vegas and Honolulu as the
next proposed venues, and with various foreign glamor-capitals under
active consideration. Something on the scale of Hard Rock Cafe or
Planet Hollywood seemed to be the idea, but first reviews of EPM’s
culinary offerings were mixed.”

So wrote Jackson Baker and Mark Jordon in the July 31, 1997, issue
of the Flyer.

Five years later, Elvis Presley’s Memphis closed and was reopened by
Jimmy Ishii as EP – Delta Kitchen and Bar in 2006. Original plans for
EP included a recording studio and two art galleries.

EP closed in late 2008 and is currently being converted into
Republic Nightclub and Restaurant, which is billing itself as “Memphis’
First Celebrity Driven Mega-Club!” You can follow them on Twitter at
twitter.com.republicmemphis.