Elvis Night at Andy’s

A half-empty beach bar, a full Elvis show, and a night that refused to behave.

© 2026 Good Boy Records

This memoir is my headline contribution to this week’s Stories From The Jukebox, a memoir piece built around a song that took far longer to find its voice than I care to admit.

This one’s for Mr. Polk. He very kindly said I could bring one of my own songs to the table, which is no small thing. There are easier, safer choices I could have made. Something tidy, well-behaved, and perfectly capable of sitting quietly on the page without needing much explanation. But this is not that song.

Elvis Night at Andy’s

This song never really left me alone, and in my experience, when that happens, you’re better off giving in early and telling the story properly rather than trying to outmanoeuvre it. It was written nearly twenty years ago.

It starts, as these things often do, with Elvis Presley. Or rather, the King.

In our house, you don’t really say “Elvis.” It’s just the King, because that’s who he is and always will be. I’ve never been a completist when it comes to him. The middle years can quietly get in the sea along with the films and the conveyor belt soundtracks. But the voice, those early records, and then that late-sixties comeback where he sounds like a man who has remembered exactly who he is and decided to prove it all over again, that’s the bit that stuck.

Alongside that, there was always the gospel side of things. Not the polished, overly reverent recordings, but the moments where you’re watching a documentary and it feels like Elvis and his mates are actually enjoying themselves. Gospel music is not all that common in England, and so I grew up watching those moments, where it seemed as if the music might spill off the stage and carry on without permission. That sense of something alive, slightly loose at the edges, stayed with me far longer than I realised.

A few years later, my band fell apart in the sort of mildly theatrical fashion bands tend to favour, which left me in that familiar position of having far too much music in my head and absolutely nowhere for it to go.

So I did what most people do in that situation and took the family to Spain, partly to get away from it and partly because when something like that ends, you’re not entirely sure what you’re supposed to do next.

We were staying at a friend’s place, and he gave me one very specific instruction before we went. Whatever you do, he said, make sure you go to Andy’s. No explanation, no detail, just the kind of recommendation that suggests you’d be an idiot to ignore it.

So we went.

Andy’s turned out to be exactly what you want from a family holiday discovery. A beach bar not near the beach but actually on it, with sunbeds, parasols, families camped out for the day, and everything you might need within reach. Food, drinks, shade, the works. If you’re anything like us, you don’t treat something like that as a one-off. You settle in, which is exactly what we did.

Days blurred into each other in that very specific holiday way. The kids in the water, me pretending to read while actually keeping one eye on them over the top of my glasses, and that quiet sense that nothing much is happening, which is usually when something does.

At the time, I was reading Warren Zevon’s autobiography, which is not the lightest choice for a beach, but it felt exactly right for my frame of mind at the time. Every now and then a line would jump out and sit with you, and although you don’t always know what to do with those things, as a songwriter, you tend to keep them anyway.

One of them stayed.

Too old to die young… and much too young to die.

I didn’t know it then, but that line had already found its way into the song.

About a week into this, signs began to appear around Andy’s announcing an upcoming Elvis Night. I had never seen a proper Elvis tribute act, and the idea that my first encounter might take place in a half-empty beach bar in Spain was, to my mind, reason enough to rearrange the rest of the holiday if necessary.

I announced, with the kind of confidence that brooks no discussion, that we would be attending.

This did not go down especially well. My wife recognised the tone immediately and realised this was no longer a suggestion but a decision, while the children, who were young enough to ask entirely reasonable questions like “What is Elvis?” and “Why are we going?”, were given answers that did nothing to reassure them. For all they knew, I’d dragged them out to see something to do with Burger King.

Over the next few days I returned to the subject with increasing enthusiasm, building it up to such an extent that by the time the evening arrived, it had taken on the shape of a major family event, despite the fact that no one else had expressed even the faintest interest. It was, in short, a classic case of me deciding that we were all going to enjoy something together and then working backwards to justify it. As you do.

So we arrived, slightly overdressed for a beach bar and already committed, only to find the place almost entirely empty. Not quiet, not subdued, just empty. A couple of tables, a makeshift stage, and not much else.

I took up position directly in front of it with the quiet determination of a man who has decided that this is going to be a good night regardless of any evidence to the contrary.

Dinner came and went, drinks were poured, and then, with a complete lack of ceremony, he appeared.

Spanish Elvis.

Not a bloke from Benidorm doing the tourist circuit. Not some half-hearted nod to the idea. This was a full, committed performance. White jumpsuit, slicked-back hair, three dancers who looked like they had wandered in from a Brazilian carnival, and a backing track that suggested he was taking this far more seriously than the setting might have warranted.

The children were immediately unsettled, while my wife just calmly lit a cigarette and settled in to observe events with a certain detached curiosity, like she’d seen this sort of thing before. And I, for reasons I couldn’t have explained at the time, found myself completely drawn in.

It was ridiculous, completely out of place, and yet somehow exactly right.

And, given that I was in a fairly bad place after the band had disintegrated just as things were starting to happen, it was probably exactly what I needed.

He moved between the stage and the handful of tables, bringing the performance into the room whether anyone was ready for it or not, and he came directly over to us, which was the moment the children decided that invisibility was the only sensible option.

I, on the other hand, responded like a man who had been waiting for this all his life. Clapping, encouraging, singing along, fully invested in the show as if the fate of the night, and indeed the holiday, depended on it.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, something shifted in me. Because, for all its absurdity, I realised that this was exactly what music is supposed to do. Not to impress or posture, but to create a moment in time that people can step into, even briefly, and feel part of something.

We flew home the next day, and with very little to do on the flight, I found myself going back over the evening in my head. The Zevon book was still in my bag, and at some point I borrowed a pen and started writing lyrics on the inside cover, then in the margins, wherever there was space.

The song arrived more or less intact, beginning to end, and that line was there exactly where it needed to be. Because it wasn’t just Zevon anymore. It was about Elvis, but moreover, I realised that this line I had lifted from Zevon’s book was also now applicable to me.

Too old to die young… and much too young to die.

And for the first time, it didn’t feel like a clever line. It felt more like a statement. Today, we would think of it as a writing prompt.

I finished the song, closed the book, and thought, quite reasonably, that that was the end of it. The band was gone, there was no obvious outlet for it, and like a lot of other songs, it went into a drawer and stayed there.

Every so often I’d take it out, play it to someone, tell the story, and say the same thing I always say. One day I’ll record it properly, and when I do, it won’t be polite. It will sound the way that night felt.

At the time I was deep into a lot of American music, particularly bands coming out of the Athens, Georgia scene. The sort of bands who would happily let fans record shows, trade tapes, pass things around. I loved the records, but those live recordings used to drive me mad.

Because you could hear the crowd. Singing along with every word, and ruining it, as far as I was concerned. You never get that with British or European audiences. And then, slowly, I realised it wasn’t being ruined at all. It was just theirs. Not mine. This was their big night out, and it’s what it sounded like in those rooms. Not arranged, not directed, just people joining in and having a wonderful time, because that’s what they do.

So of course, I stole it.

I realised if I was ever going to record this song, it wasn’t just going to sit there nicely. It was going to have that feeling. A room full of voices, loose, human, slightly out of control.

And I was going to add a gospel choir!

Not a formal choir, something closer to an audience that had turned itself into one. The problem, of course, was practical. No band, no budget, no room big enough to hold that sound - and of course, no access to a proper gospel choir.

So it just sat there, for about twenty years. Until last year, when I finally found a way to make the music the way I’d always heard it, without needing any of those things.

And at that point there was no question. The choir was going in.

The song eventually found its way onto my debut album No Band Required, released in 2025 under the entirely sensible artist name of Chip Martini, which made perfect sense at the time and still does if you don’t think about it too hard.

It also doesn’t really fit the album. Which is probably why it had to be there. This was the last song I wrote as everything else was falling apart, and the first one that proved it hadn’t actually gone anywhere. It just took its time.

And when it finally got its moment, it got the full treatment. No half measures.

Is it a bit overblown?

Too right it is!

Just the way that night in Spain felt to me at the time.

Elvis Night at Andy’s

Footnote:
This piece lives on Grooves & Gravy, where I write about music and the trouble it tends to cause. If you’re in the mood for the songs themselves and a slightly more theatrical take on things, that’s what Good Boy Records is for.