Richie references Scotty Moore and the ’68 Comeback Special, the Nasty Bits (!) and Muscle Shoals.

Like the show itself - or the show as it would like to be - it’s an impassioned plea to get back to the beating heart of rock, the sound of the singer’s early, hungry years.

He had a hot streak in the casino he hooked his old pal Zak Yankovic with his very first threesome (women in this world are as fungible as poker chips, and doled out as a reward in much the same way) and he made an end-run around the menacing Colonel Tom Parker for an audience with the King of Rock and Roll himself. Clean(ish) and sober for the first time in weeks, he’d flown to Los Angeles to sell the company plane and then skipped over to Vegas, chasing a rumor that the rhinestone-encrusted legend was looking to change labels. Why not, right? It was all coming together for Richie Finestra. But for a brief, beautiful period on tonight’s Vinyl - titled “The King and I,” because of course it is - it looked for all the world like we were about to enter an alternate timeline in which Elvis Presley invented punk rock. It lasted no longer than the A-side of a 45.