"Elvis' 1969 opening night in Las Vegas was his first time back on a live stage in more than eight years, playing the biggest showroom in the biggest hotel and drawing more people for his four-week engagement than any other show in Las Vegas history. His performance got rave reviews, “Suspicious Minds” gave him his first number-one hit in seven years, and Elvis became Vegas's biggest star. Over the next seven years, he performed more than 650 shows there, and sold out every one. Las Vegas was changed too. The intimate night-club-style shows of the Rat Pack, who made Vegas the nation's premier live-entertainment center in the 1950s and ‘60s, catered largely to well-heeled older gamblers. Elvis brought a new kind of experience: an over-the-top, rock-concert-like extravaganza, setting a new bar for Las Vegas performers, with the biggest salary, the biggest musical production, and the biggest promotion campaign the city had ever seen. In doing so, he opened the door to a new generation of pop/rock performers, and brought a new audience to Las Vegas—a mass audience from Middle America that the city depends on for its success to this day."