Of Snakes Sex Playing in the Rain, Random Thou Read online

  Those were dark days, though. Watergate was synonymous with scandal; Vietnam was still a fresh and bloody memory; war raged in Central America, Asia, and the Middle East; and all of us were anxiously awaiting Reaganomics to trickle down. A lot of us expected music to once more take the lead in calling for social and political reform, for peace and love and brother- and sisterhood. What we got instead was Willy and Waylon and a collection of “Austin Outlaws,” who were no less silly than Elvis, and who, we imagined, demonstrated in their personal excesses the danger of popular music’s effects on those who produced it. Popular stars were at a nadir, then. Comedians were setting themselves on fire with their own narcotics, musicians were drowning in swimming pools, disco continued, and the punk rockers had a stranglehold on overtly sexual unintelligible lyrics. It looked like Rock and Roll was finally dead.

  It was about then that I visited Graceland for the first time. I didn’t go to Memphis for that purpose; but since I was there with some friends—all of whom shared my cynical view of “The King” and his courtiers—we decided to kill an afternoon wandering the grounds and making satiric marvel of the purple opulence required to sustain a true rock idol. We found what we were looking for.

  At the time, Graceland was a much more primitive place to visit than it soon became. On that steamy October afternoon, we parked in a dilapidated strip center across the street, braved traffic on the newly renamed Elvis Presley Boulevard (we couldn’t believe that, for starters), passed through the lyre gate, and plunked down a couple of dollars each for the privilege of hiking up to the mansion. Once there, we were told, if a large enough group gathered, a tour would be conducted. Our group’s size failed to meet the standard, so we were permitted to wander through the house more or less on our own. Stern security guards were the only signs of life inside.

  We saw the ground floor with the living and dining rooms, the basement TV room with its three sets, the pool room with its fabric-covered walls and ceiling, and the jungle room with its fountain and gargantuan, ugly furniture. And we saw mirrors, lots of mirrors. Ceilings and walls made of mirrors appeared throughout the house. “Maybe just a touch narcissistic,” one of my party whispered.

  Our self-guided tour was marked by soft sneers at the complete lack of taste, the artlessness of the furnishings, the horrendous absence of any eye for color, form, or even fashionable mundanity. Graceland was, we whispered to each other, painfully mediocre: the typical residence of someone who came into more money than he knew what to do with. Couldn’t Elvis locate a decent decorator? Couldn’t he at least appear to live like a king?

  From the house, we were directed by signs to the Meditation Garden, where The King and members of his family were laid to rest beneath bronze slabs. This turned out to be both the high and the low point of the tour. Situated adjacent to the smallish swimming pool, it is bordered on the other side by a semicircle of stone and stained glass. Flowers bedecked Elvis’s grave to the point of obscuring the writing etched on his sarcophagus, which is headed by an “eternal flame” enclosed in glass. It was out on the day we visited.

  When we came up, another small group stood there, listening to piped recordings of Elvis singing “The Old Rugged Cross” and “Amazing Grace” over and over; some were openly weeping. One woman prayed over a rosary.

  “What does that stand for?” one of my companions asked, pointing to a logo engraved on Elvis’s slab. The letters T C and B were arranged around a lightning bolt.

  I spoke without thinking. “Tacky, Crass, and Banal,” I said.

  A woman standing nearby turned on me and slashed my arm with a plastic long-stemmed rose. “Have a little respect,” she ordered in a tearful hiss. “This is His grave.” She then threw her polyethylene tribute to The King atop his slab and rushed off.

  “It stands for ‘Taking Care of Business,’ ” another mourner explained softly. “That was his philosophy.”

  I was stunned. I would have expected this sort of reaction in Jerusalem at the purported tomb of Christ, or at the Kennedy Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery, or even, perhaps, at the site of Custer’s Last Stand. Once, I had even shushed an overloud American tourist in Canterbury Cathedral while I stood pensively over the spot where Thomas á Becket was martyred.

  But this was the grave of Elvis Aaron Presley. Rock and Roll Star. Born 1935, died as a result of a heart attack that possibly was induced by an overdose of prescription drugs. Or not. But it was only Elvis Presley, in any case. His contributions to Western Civilization included no grand “I have a dream” speeches, or “Ask not what your country can do for you” admonitions, but rather such gems of wisdom as “That’s All Right [Mama]” and “Don’t Step on My Blue Suede Shoes.” Elvis Presley: Poor boy from Tupelo, Mississippi, who moved from sometimes truck driver to radio crooner to recording artist to . . . to king? Hell, I thought, he never even won a Grammy for his pop music—only for his gospel recordings—he didn’t write his own stuff, and he didn’t even play a great guitar, not like Pete Townsend, Jimi Hendricks or Eric Clapton. He wasn’t John Lennon or Mick Jagger or Otis Redding or James Brown or Elton John. He wasn’t even Johnny Rivers or Ray Charles or Billy Joel. He couldn’t croon like Gene Pitney, lacked Roy Orbison’s range, and was unable even to wade into the schmaltz of Bobby Goldsboro. You couldn’t make out to his music the way you could to Johnny Mathis or Nat King Cole; there was no Moody Blues mystique or driving intensity such as came from the Doors. There wasn’t even the frayed and dusty romance of Blood, Sweat, and Tears or Credence;, or the slickness of The Association or Chicago. Elvis’s time passed quickly. He belonged to the same generation of has-beens that included Ricky Nelson, Frankie Avalon, Herman’s Hermits, and that other notorious pretender to the throne, Jerry Lee Lewis, who at least wrote most of his own music.

  Sure, he had a lot of gold and platinum records; sure, he made a fortune in movies and concerts; but he belonged to another time and place, to another generation.

  In short, I had heard the rockers singing, and Elvis just didn’t sing for me.

  This opinion was affirmed, I thought, when we departed this gaudy shrine in south Memphis. Along the stone wall fronting the estate was a collage of graffiti scrawlings. They read, “We did it in your pool, Elvis,” and “I smoked a joint in Elvis’s john.” And those were fairly typical of the less reverent observations etched on the rocks out front. I breathed a sigh of relief. For a moment, back at the grave site, I thought the world had gone mad and that Elvis had somehow been beatified.

  “In ten years, this place will be a parking lot,” I predicted to my friends. “It’s too near the airport to survive.”

  Wrong again.

  ###

  A little over a decade later, I revisited Graceland. It was a deliberate trip, this time, a pilgrimage to seek out, if I could, what exactly keeps The King alive.

  Did I say “alive?” Yes. That’s the word. Apart from tabloid reports of Elvis sightings, there is no doubt that Elvis Presley lives. Oh, I don’t mean that whatever corpse interred in the Meditation Garden didn’t belong to Elvis Aaron Presley, and I don’t think that the now seventy-something crooner turns up in supermarkets and shopping malls, taunting his former fans with a ghostly shade. I mean rather that he’s more alive than Lennon and Hendricks, more alive than Holly or Cline or Cash, more alive than Jack or Bobby Kennedy or Martin Luther King, Jr.; even more alive than Ronald Reagan. In a way, he’s more alive than most of the singers and performers and icons of culture who are still drawing breath and interest on their fantastic earnings. For Elvis is alive in the heart of America.

  Anyone who doubts this must have spent the past thirty years on Mars. That might not even be distant enough; we have no real idea just how far radio waves carry into space. It could be that even beyond Pluto, Elvis impersonators thrive. It’s possible that some of them, like their terrestrial counterparts, derive a pretty good living from dressing up in white, spangly jumpsuits, driving around in pink Cadillacs, and attempting to imitate
the deep baritone melodies of The King.

  It doesn’t take a public affairs expert to note that in America, at least, Elvis-ana is part and parcel of craft shows, flea markets, and garage sales as well as some of the finer gift shops around the country. In some homes his portrait hangs next to that of presidents or popes. From ceramic statues to paintings on black velvet, from authentic original 45s to signed album covers, Elvis memorabilia and collectables constitute a fairly decent industry in America. There are more Elvis experts than there are Elvis stories to tell, more active fan clubs devoted to Elvis than to any half a dozen living artists, and Elvis film festivals are frequent annual events.

  So I had to go back, and I had to determine what there was about Elvis—apart from the invention of the CD rerelease—that had made his recordings sell more since his death than they did before, what kept middle-aged America steering their motor homes to Memphis, what, indeed, kept anyone else from seriously pretending to the throne of popular music. The answer, I figured, had to be at Graceland. I must have overlooked it the first time.

  Graceland had not become a parking lot. Instead, they built a parking lot for it behind an elaborate Graceland Center that houses, among other things, slick, modern shops full of Elvis souvenirs. There is a movie theatre that shows a documentary about Elvis’s life, a museum that contains nothing but Elvis’s motor vehicles, and a tour that takes visitors through Elvis’s Lisa Marie and Hound Dog II Jetstar planes that have been towed in and parked nearby. There is a post office and a bookstore and a record shop. Some of the old tourist courts along the boulevard have been refurbished in pinks and blues and advertise “Twenty-four Hour Elvis Movies” in each room. And, of course, there is Graceland itself.

  Today, one need not—indeed, cannot—hike up to the front door. After purchasing a ticket in Graceland Center, a guard directs visitors aboard a shuttle, which carries capacity loads directly up the tree-lined drive. There, a uniformed tour guide greets each group, and the lecture begins. Facts about Graceland are given first: Elvis bought the house for $100,000 in 1957; there are 13.8 acres on the property; he wanted a place “in the country” for his entire family, etc. Then, guests are ushered inside amid stern warnings against using flash photography or venturing off the approved route.

  Each room is described in minute detail, including when the furniture was purchased and who designed or selected it. The photos and paintings on the wall are noted, and anecdotes are related about various items or happenings that took place in each chamber. We learn, for example, that Elvis got the idea for three sets in the TV room from Lyndon B. Johnson, who, in the days before PIP, enjoyed watching all three network newscasts at once. The fabric wall and ceiling covering in the pool room was suggested to Elvis by a picture in a magazine. He selected the oversized furniture in the jungle room because it reminded him of Hawaii, and he didn’t take more than thirty minutes to pick it out. He had the ceiling of that room carpeted so he could use the room to make records, and Lisa Marie and her father regarded it as their favorite room in the house.

  Other exhibits have opened on the grounds, as well. Vernon Presley’s office, where Elvis’s fan clubs and business activities were centered, offers a brief film of his first press conference after returning from the service. The Trophy Building contains his awards, gold and platinum records, high school diploma, photographs, army uniform, and hundreds of items of costume and personal effects from his life as both private individual and public ruler of popular music. And there’s the racquetball court, where he spent his last hour. The story goes that he was there with friends who were relaxing and planning the next tour, when he felt ill, retired to his bedroom, and was never seen again. At least not at Graceland.

  Or was he? It is this question that perplexed me as I moved through this latter-day tour of Elvis’s home. On the surface, the Graceland complex appears to be nothing but a garish tribute to The King; it’s slicker than any pompadour Elvis ever wore, a cliché in yellow and white, preserved in time for the observations of both the curious and the faithful. But there’s no sense of undue reverence here, no feeling of standing on hallowed ground or sacred soil, no suggestion that supernatural greatness ever took up residence here. The guides, instead, tell homey anecdotes of Elvis’s life: tales of Christmas parties and friends’ birthday celebrations, of accidental spills and rips in the furniture, or of an afternoon when The King ordered a half-dozen motorcycles to amuse his guests, then turned around the next day and donated them all to charity.

  It was a royal thing to do, perhaps; but it was also a human thing to do, the sort of thing that Elvis was famous for. And throughout the mansion are other evidences of his humanity. “Elvis liked it this way,” or “Elvis thought this would be nice,” or “Elvis wanted it this way,” is the most common explanation for why this color or that furnishing was chosen. There’s the impression throughout the house that Elvis’s ghost is still running about adjusting pillows and straightening pictures, making the house ultimately and completely his home, one designed and furnished and maintained “his way.”

  As I walked about and ignored a persistent Elvis imitator (a tour guide said there was at least one in every crowd), who insisted on loudly amending and correcting all information given until he was escorted off the premises, I found myself looking at Elvis Presley’s home with a new eye. My former prejudices fell away. All at once, I came to understand something astounding: Graceland is not a monument. Nor is it a mausoleum. It’s merely a place where a man—a fairly ordinary man—lived. It’s not a memorial to a great star, who achieved fantastic wealth and fame and whose memory should be enshrined with the lonely or the brave. Rather, it is a common testimony to a common man who happened to do great things and to touch in some mysterious way a great number of people.

  The fact is that he—or his music—still does, and that’s what turned Crosby’s Christmas from white to forever blue—“without you”; that’s what keeps Elvis alive.

  ###

  Elvis Presley lives, I decided, because of the sort of person he was. Particularly because of the innate assumptions I bore at the time, and because I was most vehemently not an Elvis fan, I had previously presumed that he was a typical example of the more sensational cultural idols of the world, people for whom outrage and extravagance came as naturally as the sunrise, or in most cases, sunset. I assumed Graceland was just a Memphis boy’s poor attempt to imitate the Hollywood-style homes of so many rock, country and movie stars, professional ball players and a handful of successful novelists. I compared it to one of those thirty- and forty-room L.A. mansions sitting smack-dab in the richest residential real estate around, carefully remodeled and redecorated by imported interior designers, lavish in their multi-car garages, several swimming pools and hot tubs, elaborate private gyms and shooting ranges, manicured gardens, and expensive objets d’art. I looked for evidence of the millions of dollars even the lesser monarchs of popular culture routinely spend on their houses and their furnishings, for helipads and sophisticated security systems to insulate themselves from the prying eyes of fans who come to gawk at the symbols of their greatness and lavish displays of someone else’s good taste. I searched for signs of the tons of dope reportedly used in such castles of fame, of the fast women, fast cars, and fast fortunes squandered in their celebration of their own celebrity.

  But Graceland was nothing like that. Instead it was homey, warm, nice—and homely, ugly, and intensely personal. It was these virtues I had viewed as faults before, and it was that observation that led me to decide that The King was unworthy of the crown. He didn’t live like a king, and kings should live like kings. Shouldn’t they? Or should they only “take care of business” and be admired, simply, for being themselves?

  It was natural to assume that Elvis, of all people, would have made Graceland the symbol of the opulence he deserved, a veritable Xanadu, an apotheosis of squander and lust. After all, he earned it. He had a right to flaunt it.

  But he didn’t. As I passed throug
h Graceland this time, I discovered that there was no evidence of any debauchery or hedonism in the remains of Elvis’s life, no evidence of symbols for the sake of status or ornament for the sake of excess. Graceland simply wasn’t like that. And neither was The King.

  ###

  Elvis Presley came onto the American cultural scene to answer the need of what some have called “The Quiet Generation,” those teenagers who emerged between bobbysoxers and beatniks, who preceded flower children and the “Me Generation.” His music recalls a more naïve time, an innocent time. It provides a unique window to the recent past through which one almost has to squint to see drive-in eateries with pony-tailed carhops who happily trotted out clip-on trays of greasy fries and chocolate malts to the occupants of hardtops, ragtops, and rods, cars that were titty-pink, bat-shit yellow, and candy-apple red. It was a time when guys wore ducktails and talked about engines that were “bored and stroked” and had dual carbs and twin pipes, when gals wore poodle-skirts and worried about marriage and kids more than college and careers. It was a time when a prom was a teenager’s biggest night, when a joint was where they served beer, when a high school diploma meant something. It was a time when Ike was in the Whitehouse and America was in first place in every way that mattered and most that didn’t.

  There was the bomb, of course, and poverty, and labor problems; there was diphtheria and whooping cough, and a lot of people still got polio; there was subjugation based on gender, race, politics, and even just plain old attitude. But it was a simpler time, and one that lends itself easily to nostalgia, especially when there’s an Elvis song on the radio, and everyone remembers when “varsity” meant “star” and when a boy born in a shotgun house in rural Mississippi could, almost before he could buy a legal drink, make enough money to buy his mama an amazingly graceful mansion.

  All of that is reflected in Graceland’s many mirrors. Placed strategically to make the house seem larger and more elegant, they have less to do with self-admiration than with an innocent desire to make modesty seem more elegant. And in the naiveté expressed in the relatively conservative appointments, one finds the sweetness, the genuineness, and the depth of character that was Elvis Presley. And, I think, it is that combination of qualities, that recollection through a glass brightly, as it were, that keeps Elvis alive, that ultimately has turned me into an Elvis fan.