Fans remember their idol

Press, 12 August 1985, Page 6

Fans remember their idol

NZPA-AP

Mephis, Tennessee This is the big week for the people who sell Elvis Presley bedroom slippers and other memorabilia of the rock king. Thousands of fans are expected to descend on Memphis for the eighth anniversary of his death.

Presley died on August 16, 1977, but his fans return each year like pilgrims to walk through the white columned house he called Graceland and stand in line at souvenir shops to buy trinkets decorated with his image or his name. “We normally expect 50,000 outsiders,” said Michael Finger, of the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Organisers of this year’s Elvis International Tribute Week have arranged more

than three dozen events across the city.

The faithful can hear homespun tales of their hero’s private life at seminars staged by his former associates. Fans who cannot resist carving their idol’s likeness on old boards or ceiling tiles will compete in an art show.

Presley's former bandmembers and back-up singers will put on a concert. The First Baptist Church, in nearby Walls, special prayer service, and there will be an Elvis Presley Memorial karate tournament. There will be an Elvis memorial foot race, an Elvis Light Show at the Municipal Planetarium and a candlelight vigil at his grave.

“Last year, we had 8000 at the candlelight service,

and I would not be at all surprised to see 12,000 to 14,000 this year,” said Ken Brixey, marketing manager for Graceland. The winner of an Elvis trivia contest sponsored by Graceland will get a flashy Presley doll valued at SUS2SOO ($4750). It has a diamond belt buckle. The celebrations’ main attraction is Graceland which Mr Brixey expects to draw 35,000 to 40,000 visitors over the week.

Presley would have been 50 last January. “The whole year has been dedicated to the fiftyth anniversary of Elvis’s birth and that has given us a tremendous surge,” Brixey said. “The media have given us a lot of attention.”

For five years after Presley’s death the house was off-limits to the public, but

fans were allowed to walk up Graceland’s 300-metre drive to visit his grave. But three years ago executors of Presley’s estate formed a company called Graceland Enterprises, Inc., which hired promoters to organise tours. Entry costs SUS6.SO ($12.35) for adults and SUS4.SO ($8.55) for children under 12.

Profits go into Presley’s estate, which will belong to his 16-year-old daughter, Lisa Marie, when she becomes an adult.

Now more than 550,000 tourists visit Graceland each year, and souvenir shops conduct a brisk business in a shopping centre on the other side of United States 51, Elvis Presley Boulevard. Also across the street visitors can tour Presley’s former jetliner for SUS3.SO

($6.65) each and for SUSI ($1.90) a head can walk through the bus he took on road trips. Until recently most of the souvenir shops were run by private operators, but Graceland Enterprises bought the master lease on the shopping centre and has put all but three of the shops out of business. “The others,” Brixey said, “will be gone in a year or so when their leases run out.”

In the shops, visitors can buy Elvis fingernail clippers for SUSI.SO ($2.85), Elvis coffee mugs for $U55.95 ($11.30), Elvis dolls for SUSBO ($152), or Elvis bedspreads for SUSISO ($285). Mr Brixey said that his shops did a good business in $U519.95 ($37.90) bedroom slippers sporting little rubber heads in the likeness of Elvis on the toes.