ELVIS - THE MUSICAL

I performed in ‘Elvis the Musical’ as Young Elvis over two seasons in the West End of London.  By pure chance one morning, I heard about the auditions on the radio.  Two hours later, I was in the theatre auditioning and was straightaway picked to be ‘young Elvis’.  Two weeks after that, I was on stage performing live in a major London theatre in my first ever stage role!   It was undoubtedly a baptism by fire but then again, I did know every single Elvis song by heart and could sing them too!

I was suddenly on stage, performing twice a day, six days of the week with my own burgeoning fan club and fan mail.  The first six month run was at the Prince of Wales Theatre in 1996 and the second season was in 1997 at the Piccadilly Theatre.  It often doesn’t seem real anymore.  Time moves on at a pace and suddenly, there’s a big gap between my life today and my time on stage. But whenever I look at the old press clippings, it suddenly all comes back to me!   There’s no doubt the whole experience taught me a lot about life and screen.

I’ve put together a short picture gallery here and pretty much all the reviews and clippings I could find, warts and all.  Not all the critics were kind about the show.  Well, it was hardly ‘Othello’.  But as I re-read all the lines of copy that were written about me and my performance, I’m relieved to find that the harshest comment I received was that I wore ‘too much eye shadow’.  On stage, that is.  Click here to see me singing “Love Me Tender” live on Channel 5 in 1997whilst promoting the musical.  For more video, audio and interview recordings, click here.   

Whilst I’ve always regretted never having had the opportunity to meet the great man himself or see him in concert, I’ve had the good fortune over the years to meet many people who knew him well including June Juanico, Elvis’s girlfriend in 1956 who had come to one of my performances in 1997 and later, back stage, had told me how much I reminded her of Elvis! 

I also had the great pleasure to meet the ‘Sweet Inspirations’, Elvis’s amazing backing singers and his warm up act, as well as Ronnie Tutt, Jerry Scheff, Glen D Hardin and James Burton from ‘The TCB Band’ when they all came to perform at Wembley Arena, London during their European “Elvis Presley in Concert” tour in 1999. 

Whilst I never met The Jordanaires, Elvis’s brilliantly talented and first backing group, I did contact them in 1998 and sent them a performance tape.  I was very flattered when Gordon Stoker wrote back and complimented me on my performance!

Having by then developed somewhat of a reputation in the Elvis world for sounding very much like Elvis, I was approached by record producers sometime in 2000 to record some Elvis tracks for an EMI compilation.  It was a fun two years spent juggling my day job in animation with early morning and weekend studio recording sessions.  Eventually, three tracks were recorded for the final CD and an Elvis-style medley called ‘One for the Money (King for a Day Mix)’ with my vocals was released in a 2 x CD, EMI dance compilation called ‘I Love to Party 2003’.    I can’t quite believe that my name in the album’s song list actually appears alongside such legendary greats as Wham, Queen, Diana Ross and Tom Jones and, almost inevitably, the album reached the dizzy heights of #10 in the Christmas 2003 album charts!   Click here for more on that story! 

In 2013, I produced, choreographed and performed a few Elvis songs to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Children’s Media Conference in Sheffield, UK!  It was a lot of fun and I was specially honoured to have a few colleagues in the kids TV business join me on stage as my very own highly entertaining backing group!

In 2015, when Red West came to London to meet the UK Elvis fan club, I was invited to join and perform a couple of Elvis songs along with my good buddy, Tim Whitnall, who had played ‘middle Elvis’ in our show and we had the great pleasure to meet Red, his wife Pat and family.  Red was Elvis’s close confident and bodyguard.  He was also a stuntman, an accomplished songwriter and actor and acted in many, if not all of Elvis’s movies.  After Tim and I had performed a couple of songs for the fans, he invited us up on stage to join him in his own amazing rendition of “Johnny B. Goode”!

And of course, I’ve never stopped listening to Elvis and singing his songs every day, except that now, I mainly just sing around the house and as I go about my daily business of creating and producing new content for kids and family!

Alexander Bar

Elvis and The Jordanaires
in 1956

Red West with Elvis
in 1970

Elvis & June Juanico
in 1956





Dominique and I with Red and his wife, Pat, London, 2015
June & I outside the Piccadilly Theatre, London in 1997
Click the images for larger view.