Jailhouse Rock Aside, the Center Won’t Roll : ‘Elvis’ Show Is a Start. Now, When Will the Real Thing (Rock, That Is) Show Up?

Trivia lovers should jot down March 28, 1989, as a watershed date in Orange County culture: It was the first time a rock band appeared on stage at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

Oh, so what if it was merely part of “Elvis: A Musical Celebration,” an eye-poppingly vacant theatrical “tribute” to the King, and not a true concert? So what if at least two of the “musicians” backing the pseudo-Elvis during a segment on his Las Vegas years weren’t actually playing the guitars they were holding? We rock fans need to be thankful for the little things.

There on the stage usually occupied by tuxedoed violinists or tutu-ed ballet dancers was a real rock drummer banging away on a real rock drum. If that wasn’t a real rock singer belting out real rock classics like “Hound Dog” and “Jailhouse Rock,” at least the guy was pretending to be a real rock singer.

And the best news: Even with the real-rock-concert-like amplification blaring louder than Joshua’s horns, the walls didn’t come tumbling down--an encouraging sign that this $73-million facility, built to withstand earthquakes, could also survive an actual rock show one day.

So let’s not get too impatient if the Center is easing into rock the way Congress eases into tax reform. We need to keep the Big Picture in mind.

No one expects or even wants the Center to turn into a rock concert hall. But isn’t it time these people allow some of the rock-world performers who could give the Center’s regular diet of high culture a dash of pop culture spice?

Even if one (very generously) looks at the “Elvis” musical as a start, it’s still just a simulation. Would classical audiences sit still for a Sir Georg Solti celebrity look-alike conducting a Yamaha DX-7 synthesizer programmed to sound like the Chicago Symphony?

The Center wouldn’t have to go head-to-head with the outdoor amphitheaters, whose primary business is rock and pop concerts. Just offer an alternative from time to time (especially during the fall and winter months when the amphitheaters are dark).

So far, though, the Center’s spectrum of pop music has been limited to middle-of-the-road pop acts like Diahann Carroll and her husband, Vic Damone, whose show at the Center in January perhaps was best characterized by Damone’s jokes about the size and quality of Carroll’s physical attributes.

Plenty of room for stuff like that, but no room for rock ‘n’ roll.

It’s intriguing to realize that this weekend, while mock-Elvis continues, two American music originals are in the county, either of whom would be ideal choices to play Segerstrom Hall: Jerry Lee Lewis and Randy Newman.

As a contemporary of Elvis, Jerry Lee is a particularly apt point for comparison, although when asked, Center officials expressed no interest in booking the Killer. (Must be that nasty nickname. Maybe he oughta just leave it Mr. Unlucky in Love.) Some rock experts--including Sam Phillips, the man who first recorded both Presley and Lewis--will argue that Jerry Lee was actually the greater talent, and that he didn’t achieve Elvis’ popularity only because of his more flamboyant, non-conciliatory personality.

Jerry Lee, who was scheduled to play the 2,500-seat Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim on Saturday, is hotter than he has been in years because of the publicity surrounding his upcoming biographical film, “Great Balls of Fire,” with Dennis Quaid in the lead role. One of the charter inductees into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, Jerry Lee has had a greater impact on contemporary American music than any individual who has appeared at the Center to date. And he is every bit as vital today as he was 30 years ago.

You have to wonder: If Elvis was still around, could he get booked at the Center? For whatever reason, Jerry Lee hasn’t, and he’s as real as rock gets. Maybe they’ll show the movie.

Randy Newman, who winds up a 2-day stand tonight at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano, has created a body of songs as revealing of the human condition, and that of Americans in particular, as anyone in the rock era. He’s like Mark Twain and Stephen Foster rolled into one.

Why not pair up Newman, a skillful orchestrator who usually performs solo, with an orchestra to provide the colorful arrangements he uses on record? It has been done before--at Symphony Hall in Boston, home of the Boston Symphony. Why not here?

Two weeks ago, France’s Gipsy Kings played to 3,000 fans at the Palladium in Hollywood. Why not present a group like that, whose lovely flamenco-based music melds classical and pop styles? As it was, the Kings bypassed Orange County.

Lou Reed, whose harrowing musical tales of damnation and redemption have marked him as a major force in American pop culture for more than 20 years, was playing respectable Broadway theaters in New York earlier this month. Reed is performing at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles later this month, but will walk right over the wild side of Orange County.

I would wager that concert-goers would behave themselves as responsibly as they did last week for the musical resurrection of Elvis. They might not even scream as loud as the audience did at the giant puppets who watched make-believe Elvis on make-believe TV.

This isn’t to say that the Center has never played host to an honest pop act. A scant 15 months after it opened, Johnny Cash played there, which certainly counts, even though he is better known for his mark on country music than as a Sun Records label mate of Elvis and Jerry Lee in the ‘50s.

And only 14 months after that, we got an imitation Elvis, which is as close to the genuine article as anyone is likely to get this side of Kalamazoo.

Extrapolating that timetable--one real and one quasi-rock event in 2 1/2 years--it is safe to figure that by some time in the mid-’90s, certainly by the early 2000s, we will see an honest-to-Elvis rock show at the Center.

It’s just a matter of time. Rock fans, wind your calendars.