TO say Jamieson Shaw has experienced numerous "pinch-yourself" moments working on Elvis would be a gross understatement.
If you've been keeping abreast of what's happening in pop culture, you'd know that Australian director Baz Luhrmann's cinematic re-imagining of the life and career of the King of Rock'n'roll, Elvis Presley, has been shaking hips and stomping feet in movie theatres around the globe.
Elvis is a box office smash, just as cinema is still finding its feet post-pandemic. Presley's timeless appeal, 45 years on from his death at 42, is testament to the genius of his songs and performances.
Naturally, that music is central to Luhrmann's Elvis. One of the creatives tasked with bringing Presley's music to the big screen was Newcastle's Jamieson Shaw.
The former Hunter School Of Performing Arts student served as music producer and supervising music editor on the film, having forged a professional relationship with Luhrmann after working on The Great Gatsby, Strictly Ballroom The Musical and TV series The Get Down.
These roles included editing the original score, Presley's archival recordings and working with third parties such as Stevie Nicks, Chris Isaak and Tame Impala, who contributed music to the soundtrack.
Shaw admits he wasn't a massive Presley fan before working on the film because the music had always existed for his generation. The mission of the film was to illustrate why Elvis mattered.
"In music and pop culture, in particular, he was the first mega star rock star, the first teen idol," Shaw says. "It's really easy to take it for granted.
"He almost becomes this cultural wallpaper and it's great and you know it's great, but because it's always there you don't necessarily think about the circumstances under which it was made."
Owners of Presley's music, RCA Records, threw open the vault to Luhrmann and his team. With almost 800 songs recorded, Shaw had the opportunity delve deep into a collection of recordings that are among the most famous in rock history.
"It was an absolute pinch-yourself-career-highlight moment," he says. "It was a five-year journey for me so sometimes you forget those moments.
"But to be entrusted with the original files and tape transfers from some of the most iconic recordings of all time was amazing.
"I was able to hear before the takes, the band mucking around in the studio and heard what the engineer might be saying through the glass and Elvis crack a joke to the guitarist and then launch into a recording the world has heard a million times."
Through access to Presley's catalogue Shaw was able to blend parts of different songs - be it a vocal, a bass line or riff - to essentially create new "DNA tracks".
Examples include Craw-Fever, where Presley's cover of Little Willie John's Fever was mixed with Crawfish from the 1958 film King Creole. Another saw Shaw take the sweet melody from his personal favourite, the ballad Summer Kisses, Winter Tears, and laid it over the gospel groove of I Got A Feelin' In My Body.
"We wanted to make something fresh and shed new light on the Elvis sound, but with Elvis' fingerprints and DNA on them," he says. "Every note you hear, every sound, every bass line, drum beat, vocal, Elvis was a part of that recording. We just took them and rearranged them into something that was newer."
Shaw also called in old Newcastle friend and collaborator Georgie Jones to provide backing vocals on Stevie Nicks and Chris Isaak's version of Cotton Candy Land.
When the Elvis project began Shaw and his wife, Ash Bee, lived in New York, but moved to the Gold Coast Hinterland as filming commenced before the initial COVID lockdown. The couple fell in love with the natural surrounds and have since settled in the Currumbin Valley.
Shaw is completing work on a Christmas film starring Will Ferrell before his focus turns to family commitments.
Shaw and Bee are expecting their first child on September 5, which the father-to-be happily points out is an important date in rock'n'roll history.
"It's Freddie Mercury's birthday, so we have high hopes," he says.
