We arrived at Graceland late-morning, high time for Memphis’ signature lung-swaddling heat. Coping with the temperature, as hundreds of thousands do annually, is the first step of the pilgrimage to see where The King lived and died. For fans, it is worth it, granted you can stomach the ornery tourists and copious, blatant merchandising.
It’s like Disneyworld, except Mickey Mouse is Elvis.
Attendants corralled us into queues, handed us headsets and placed us on a tiny bus, which travelled approximately a quarter of a mile, just across the boulevard, past the iconic music-staff gate and up the long driveway, through the front yard and up to the front of the house. Tours depart approximately every ten minutes — a failed system as the average tourist could spend more than ten minutes photographing the azalea bushes by the veranda. It only takes the first tour of the morning to back up tours for the remainder of the day, leaving guests jousting their way through a human barricade to photograph the baby grand piano in the music room.
“Please try to keep moving,” a docent urges. Nobody moves.
The home is modest in size and outrageous in decor. It’s the Versailles of the 60's. No color of the wheel or yard of faux animal fur were spared. If it could be edged in gold, it was, and nothing has changed since the day the music died. Like Alex said after our trip to Tupelo, Elvis' primary decorative motif was "hillbillies who won the lottery, and what they think rich people live like."
Every artifact remains exactly in place, the same feeling you get being in someone's home after a funeral — any minute they could walk in and pick up just the same. That, or there should at least be a spread of cold cuts, potato salad, and baked goods. The portraits of Priscilla and Lisa Marie in their “pre-plastic” years smile from every wall. (It was somewhere on this tour that Alex also pointed out that I look like I could be Elvis and Priscilla's kid - but seeing as Elvis died 12 years before I hatched, I'll just stick to pretending my dad is John Fogerty.) The piano stool where Elvis sat to play “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” stands before the glossy instrument. The built-in waterfall in the jungle room still trickles, surrounded by tiki upholstery and emerald ferns. The bar is fully stocked, the pool balls racked, the kitchen clean.
Guests aren’t allowed anywhere near the bathroom where Elvis died. They aren’t even allowed upstairs.
As we descended to the basement down a narrow staircase, both arteries leading into and exiting the basement clogged. The woman directing traffic from the TV room heaved gruffly and called to her coworker upstairs.
“We’re completely jammed down here!” Distressed as though she was the first to spot the iceberg from the Titanic...or at least managing who got onto what lifeboat.
It took twenty minutes of prodding and moaning for traffic to resume again, the entire time people continued to lunge for photos of the sofa where Elvis used to sit and watch his three televisions at the same time.
 |
| Pretty sure that's a bullet hole in the slide on Lisa Marie's play set. |
The tour wound back upstairs and outside, across the backyard and into a hall filled with Elvis’ gold and platinum records, trophies, and the wood-box television set his record label gave him after he sold his first million records. His hall of fame.
The procession emptied outside again, this time into the meditation garden where The King, along with his parents, stillborn twin brother, and grandmother, are buried. The cavalcade halted to photograph the graves. Some looked visibly distressed behind their sunglasses and point-and-shoot Nikons. Some placed notes and flowers on the five graves, mouthing a little prayer. Paul McCartney reportedly left a guitar pick on Elvis’ grave when he visited earlier this year, so The King could play in heaven.
Back across the street are museums housing his cars, airplanes, and outlandish wardrobe, plus roughly twenty gift shops selling every Elvis knickknack you can imagine — license plate frames, sunglasses, travel coffee tumblers with The King’s signature “TCB” (which stands for Taking Care of Business) in pink glitter. Every museum has it’s own gift shop and some of the gift shops have museums inside them.
There’s no hiding what Graceland is: a moneymaker. When the Presley estate began to dwindle, Lisa Marie was expected to inherit only $1 million. It’s a way to ensure the Elvis legacy lives on, both monetarily and spiritually. One of the great American icons whose life you can briefly step into for a small fee, to pay your respects, and remember The King.
No comments:
Post a Comment