Stories & Lifestyle: Elvis Presley – from legend to advertising character

Elvis Week in Memphis. The Heartbreak Hotel has been fully booked, the souvenir shops along Main Street are selling small bottles with real "Elvis-sweat," there's an Elvis Gospel Brunch in the nearby Baptist church and at the University of Memphis producers like Greil Marcus and Sun Record legend Sam Philips debate "Is Elvis History?" And, same as every year, thousands of people with candles and peanut butter sandwiches will gather for a wake outside Graceland.

Out there in the garden, under a granite panel decorated with flowers and teddy bears, the King of Rock'n'Roll is buried in a sealed copper coffin, dressed in his skin-tight, white suit with bell-bottoms and several pounds of gold jewelry, after he had died from an overdose of pills and alcohol on August 16, 1977 on the flokati-rug next to the toilet. However, the 27th anniversary of Elvis' death is not only an occasion for the usual fan rituals, but also for an aggressive marketing strategy, aimed at making the hip-swinging 60s rock'n'roller popular among a young audience.

His residence acts as a crowd puller Gradually, fans of the immortal Elvis are either dead or dying. His residence that has been turned into a museum still attracts approximately 650,000 visitors each year - much more than the birth place of US founding father George Washington. However, every second Graceland visitor is older than 50, many of them even older than 70. Not surprising, since the King himself would be 67 already and probably retired. But other than cult bands such as The Doors or country star Johnny Cash who are being rediscovered by today's audience, Elvis songs are considered to be the outdated music of the grandparent generation.

Jack Soden, president of Elvis Presley Enterprises, the marketing department of the Graceland empire, says that they do not mean to neglect the original target group. But in order to successfully sell Elvis' music, they had to sell him as a character and explain to the young generation why he is still important. The result of this way of thinking is a massive campaign offering more Elvis merchandise and music than at the King's lifetime. Apart from many new Best Of CDs and several documentaries on DVD, Elvis songs are also being used in youth-oriented advertising spots. In a Nike spot, for example, you can hear Elvis' "A Little Less Conversation" as a techno remix. McDonalds offered a special Elvis Happy Meal, the women's sections in the book stores offer a new book titled "A Girl's Guide To Elvis." And the animated Walt Disney movie Lilo & Stitch, the story about an alien and a girl from Hawaii, features six Elvis songs and ends with a visit to Graceland.

Attempts at reinterpretation One of the more serious attempts at reinterpretation of the Elvis phenomenon is a project of New York record producer Kevin Eggers. His independent record label Tomato Records with an eclectic range including rare recordings of Nina Simone, Louis Armstrong and Philip Glass, has already published a record with Elvis' earliest gigs on the radio show The Louisiana Hayride of 1954-56 in 1984. Those recordings are considered to be very important contemporary documents. However, the sound quality was so bad that no one except for musicologists and die-hard Elvis fans wanted to listen to them. Thanks to new technology and Eggers' readiness to break taboos, Elvis' young-unpolished voice has now been isolated and his band from back then replaced with live musicians in the studio. This CD, "Roots Revolution," is the rare experiment of a careful rejuvenating cure that didn't force Elvis Presley's image into today's standards of hip-ness, but rather gives you the opportunity to hear the original sound of a young Elvis who revolutionized the American music scene.

Elvis-purists For the dogmatic Elvis fans, however, Eggers' CD remix is disrespectful stealing from the dead, on the same level with the new collection of Elvis-bedroom furniture, the Elvis-style golf course or the great memorial concert in the Memphis Pyramid Arena, where pictures of old Elvis concerts are projected onto a screen while live bands accompany him. Donald Hinton believes, however, that the King is probably highly amused about all the commotion around the 27th anniversary of his death. In his book "The Truth about Elvis Aron Presley: In His Own Words" the psychiatrist from Kansas City claims that Elvis faked his own death in order to escape from the hated stardom.

Hinton says that Elvis is leading a hermit-like existence far away from Graceland today, and every time he wanted to do something wild, he would simply go trout fishing. Well then, tight lines!