Presley fans ready to mourn

Press, 6 August 1987, Page 18

Presley fans ready to mourn

Devotees will this month mark the tenth anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death

By SIMON HOGGART The Elvis ceremony is much the same every year — a candlelight vigil on the lawn of Presley’s Memphis mansion — but this will be the biggest ever. Anywhere between 20,000 to 50,000 people are exported on the night Some will stay through the darkness, lighting a succession of candies, until dawn breaks on August 16. This is the anniversary of the day Presley died, or “passed away” as they always say in Memphis. He had a heart attack in his bathroom while alone in the house, and his body was not found until he had been dead for two hours. But the vigil, during which people will be able to carry their candles to the grave where Elvis is buried next to his mother, father and grandmother, is just one of nearly 50 events scheduled for Elvis International Tribute Week. This will begin in Memphis on Saturday. There will be guided tours of Elvis’s old high school (including a special breakfast at which visitors will be able to eat Elvis’s favourite dishes, prepared under the supervision of his cook), concerts, parties, a memorial service, rallies, dances, religious festivities, art exhibitions and even an Elvis Presley skm run. Growing myth Elvis fans who suffer a single boring moment during the week just won’t have been trying. The extraordinary thing is that the Presley myth keeps on growing. When Graceland, his mansion house in a southern suburb of Memphis, open five years ago, the estate expected two or three years good business, followed by a levelling off. In fact,, the

number of visitors has arisen steadily. It is running at well over half a million a year now, and attendances are up 20 per cent on last year. Nor are the visitors all folk in their forties who were the same age as the singer (he would have been 52 this year). Many are young children who were born after Presley died. For the family determined to “do” Elvis, a week in Memphis might not be sufficient The Elvis Presley guide map of the city shows 54 sites, including everywhere he lived, the stores where he shopped, the church he attended, the roller-skating rink where he met Miss Dixi Locke, his first sweetheart Then there is his statue, where to find his old jacket the studio in which he first recorded ... The truly dedicated fan will also drive to his birthplace, at Tupelo, Mississippi, and enjoy a hamburger at the McDonald restaurant which he would undoubtedly have patronised if it had been built Shrine Gracelan itself is the heart the principal shrine, of the Elvis cult The house itself is not particularly large by film star standards, and Presley paid only $lOO,OOO when he bought it in 1957 at the age of 22. At different times 10 or a dozen people lived there, including all of Presley’s family (his grandmother outlived her own son, Vernon Presley, as well as her grandson).

His aunt, Delta Mae Presley Biggs, aged 68, still lives in Graceland, in a part closed to visitors. But every evening, after the day’s three or four thousand visitors have departed, she

moves arouhd the house, removing the velvet ropes, and turning it back into a home from a tourist attraction. The house is decorated in the style Louis XV might have chosen for a mobile home. There is a 15-foot-long sofa for formal entertaining, lavish leather, gilded furniture, about 14 televisions, and a nine-foot grand piano covered inside and out with gold leaf. The “jungle room,” or den, was fitted with the ugliest furniture he could find in a Memphis department store, chosen as a practical joke at his father’s expense. It is all upholstered in fur, and the arms of the chairs end in snarling animal heads. Scores of Presley’s costumes are on show, along with memorabilia from his childhood, his guns, his imposing collection of police badges, and scores of his gold discs, including five for "Don’t Be Cruel” alone. It is claimed that his world-wide sales are now higher than one billion records. What is not on show is the paraphernalia associated with his crippling drug dependency. Graceland guides are extremely sensitive about this matter, which they say has been exaggerated in various books about Elvis.

Patsy Andersen, a Graceland executive who also liaises with fan clubs, says that he only ever used legal prescription drugs. “I guess there is nothing that infuriates me more than hearing people say he was on coke or heroin. He was an old-fashioned guy who took whatever the doctor told him,” she says. “He believed that if one pill helped you, then two would make you feel good twice as

long. I think he was dependent, but that he didn’t realise iL” Inheritance Visitors can also inspect Presley’s many cars, including the Stutz with gold fittings, and his plane, a four-englned jet named the Lisa Marie after his daughter. The plane has seven rooms, including two bathrooms with gold fittings, and numerous TVs on which he could watch Monty Python tapes and old Peter Sellers movies to while away long — and frequently quite pointless — journeys. Lisa Marie herself still visits Graceland, and was there recently. “I guess she just feels comfortable,” says Patsy Andersen. “She has relatives and a lot of good memories of her life here.”

Presley’s daughter will also eventually inherit the whole place in 1993, when she turns 25, as well as all her father’s money; making her one of the richest young women in America, if not the world.

As you see the crowds round the gravestone in the Meditation Gardens, some overcome by emotion as they gaze at the everlating flame which flickers over the singer’s tomb, it is hard not to see Elvis worship as something almost religous. Even the most trivial relics of the great one are studied with awe, and the guides describe the details of his daily life with all the relish shown by their counterparts at Versailles or Blenheim Palace.

Not surprisingly, as well as spending $7 a head on the tour (plus extras for the planes, the museum and the movie) the average visitor also shells out an extra $2O on souvenirs and food.

Indeed, as this month’s rites will show, Elvis is worth financially far more to his home town dead than alive.

Copyright, London Observer Service.