I was 12 years old again and sobbing at the end of this film

Watching Baz Luhrmann’s new movie, EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, I realised that not all my heroes’ lyrics reflect contemporary thinking. A Little Less Conversation, while featuring a cracking tune, is a straightforward call for a prospective romantic partner to stop giving her opinions and instead remove all her clothing. It’s a line of argument, in my experience, unlikely to produce the desired outcome.

Suspicious Minds also has problems. It is a case of “he doth protest too much, methinks.” If the balladeer is as innocent as he claims, why is he so fretful about the odd question about his late-night movements? I think his partner is right to be suspicious!

Always on My Mind, meanwhile, boils down to a belief that it’s OK to mistreat your loved one – “Maybe I didn’t treat you/ Quite as good as I should have” – providing you spare them the odd thought.

And perhaps it’s just as well that Baz’s movie didn’t feature Kissin’ Cousins: “She’s a distant cousin, but she’s not too distant with me”.

For all of that, I found myself choked up with emotion as I watched the film, a mesmerising compilation of footage of rehearsals and performances, skilfully intercut with the narrative delivered by Elvis himself by way of interviews and stage chatter. By the end, I was properly sobbing. “What’s wrong?” I was asked, and it was hard to explain. Suddenly, I was 12 years old, and Elvis was my protector in what seemed like a harsh world.

I didn’t have the same reaction to Baz’s film Elvis – the drama that gave such prominence to the role of the Colonel, as played, not so well, by the usually excellent Tom Hanks. It was a strange choice, I thought, to put the Colonel front and centre, rather like making a John Farnham film and then focusing on Glenn Wheatley.

This time, though, it was just Elvis and his musicians. Part of the pleasure was seeing how much they liked him – guitarist, drummers and backup singers glancing across with eyes full of pleasure and admiration. It reminded me of how important he was to me.

Teenage fandom is often mocked. From the Bay City Rollers onwards, the mania of fandom is seen as some sort of delusion: it’s just a band, it’s just a singer. Why have you Blu-tacked posters all over your bedroom walls? Why have you used Texta to write on your schoolbag? Why, using your maths compass, have you scratched your hero into the plastic of your school ruler?

Six decades on, TV networks still play the footage of screaming teenage girls greeting The Beatles at Sydney Airport, just to show how crazy they were. They do the same with Taylor Swift’s fans.

This, it seems to me, misses the point. The years between childhood and adulthood are difficult. You’re trying to locate your own identity. Life at home, for some people, is full of misery. Sometimes school is worse. The world can feel like it bristles with bullies.

You need a club that you can call your own, some armour to protect you from the world. Sometimes, it’s a literal club: the Matildas, the Sydney Swans, or the Rabbitohs. Sometimes it’s an interest in Japanese anime or gaming or fantasy fiction. And sometimes it’s a singer.

For me, it was Elvis. As a newsagent’s son, I ran an after-school newsstand near the front door of the local shopping centre – the only newsstand in the world to stock a big stack of The Daily Mirror, a big stack of The Sun, a middling stack of the Australian Women’s Weekly and two copies of Elvis Presley Monthly. They never sold, you’ll be unsurprised to know, but I was making a point about what I thought was important in the world.

I also had access to every leftover magazine and newspaper, stacked ready for disposal, their front covers or titles sliced off to receive a credit from the publisher. I’d attack them with scissors, clipping out any mention of my hero, Clag-pasting them all into a scrapbook. No mention was too small: the five lines in the TV guide, noting that Viva Las Vegas was the midday movie on Channel Seven, would be clipped, annotated and filed.

I’m sure anyone who saw my scrapbook thought I was an idiot. I was certainly behind the times: this was the era of David Bowie and Michael Jackson. Elvis’ years as a teenage heartthrob were long gone.

Drying my tears after EPiC, I’m convinced I wasn’t an idiot. I needed a club and I found one. Elvis saved me, which is why I’ll never mock the teenagers screaming their affection for Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish or Bad Bunny. It’s the enthusiasm for life that matters – the guileless, crazy-brave expression of passion – rather than the individual towards whom that passion is directed.

They are a suit of armour that allows you to go into the world, despite all the perils and pressures of teenage life – and to do so with an open heart. And who wants to mock that?

As Elvis himself might have put it: “Don’t be cruel to a heart that’s true.”