{"id":10871,"date":"2015-10-21T19:52:30","date_gmt":"2015-10-22T02:52:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/?p=10871"},"modified":"2016-10-07T13:59:45","modified_gmt":"2016-10-07T20:59:45","slug":"graceland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/2015\/10\/21\/graceland\/","title":{"rendered":"A Playlist for Graceland"},"content":{"rendered":"

My travels in the south were paid for by Visit the Delta<\/a>.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I saw the ghost of Elvis on Union Avenue
\nFollowed him up to the gates of Graceland
\nThen I watched him walk right through…<\/p>\n

—Marc Cohn, <\/a>Walking in Memphis <\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Union Avenue is a huge arterial. I drove south from downtown Memphis past chicken joints and dollar stores and mobile phone outlets and strip mall after strip mall after strip mall and there it was, on my right, the gates of Graceland. I couldn’t turn into the driveway, I had to head down a long suburban block past a KFC, make a u-turn, and then turn right\u00a0 into what was basically an Elvis mall. It cost me ten dollars to park and another 35 dollars for the bare-bones Graceland tour.<\/p>\n

“It’s not Elvis week,” said a woman I’d talked to earlier that day. Her toddler was playing with my phone, one little hand on my knee, while we chatted. “And it’s not his birthday, so this is a really good time for you to go. I mean, there are other places for you to pay homage, there’s Sun Studios, and oh, also, there’s WC Handy’s house — it’s not Elvis but…”<\/p>\n

My mind was made up. I wanted to go to Graceland.<\/p>\n

\n

My traveling companion is nine years old
\nHe is the child of my first marriage
\nBut I\u2019ve reason to believe
\nWe both will be received
\nIn Graceland<\/p>\n

— Paul Simon, Graceland<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Tours leave every ten minutes or so from the Elvis mall.\u00a0 While you’re standing in line for your shuttle bus, an employee hands you an iPad and a pair of headphones. Graceland tours don’t use human guides, it’s all automated, tap the next arrow when you’re in the kitchen, the entertainment room, the jungle room… The iPad is full of multimedia stuff<\/em>, narrated by the actor John Stamos. And sometimes, Lisa Marie Presley tells stories about her dad. Nobody talks to you when you’re on your tour, not unless it’s to tell you to hold up on the mirror clad staircase or to move along, please, or photos are fine but no flash. It’s just you and your headphones and a quiet cloud of the Elvis curious.<\/p>\n

\n

Ah, they came in their thousands from the whole human race
\nTo pay their respects at his last resting place
\nBut blindly she knelt there and she told him her dreams
\nAnd she thought that he answered or that’s how it seems<\/p>\n

— Richard Thompson, From Galway to Graceland<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"gladys\"
Gladys Presley’s bedroom<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Elvis and his parents are buried at Graceland. There’s a semicircular pathway that takes you past three tombs and a smaller marker for Elvis’ brother, Jesse. It’s weird to see Gladys Presley’s neatly hanging dresses in a closet in the house and then, to see the stone capping her grave outside in the garden. It’s weird to see Vernon Presley’s desk and then, to see the stone capping his grave outside in the garden. It’s weird to see Elvis Presley’s dark brown paneled kitchen and his record collection and his pool table and his light switches and his white upholstered sofas and his staircases and then, to see the stone capping his grave outside in the garden.<\/p>\n

The recorded audio says, “Elvis passed on August 16, 1977.” I wondered about the script meeting where they settled on not saying a thing about how Elvis died.<\/p>\n

\n

And I guess he shoulda done like James Dean did
\n‘Stead of putting on weight and sinking down, down, down
\nEasier to take if he had just skidded straight
\nTo souvenir city and T-shirt town<\/p>\n

— Dan Bern, Too Late to Die Young<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"tombs\"<\/a>
Grave sites at Graceland<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Graceland is weird.<\/p>\n

Seeing the hall of gold records isn’t so strange — wow, there are a lot of them — and I laughed out loud while looking through the glass barrier at the artwork that Elvis fans sent him, piles of it, some quite good at expressing his likeness. Elvis’ racquetball court is now used to display his rhinestone decorated jumpsuits and I laughed at that, too.<\/p>\n

But the house is, well, I’ll just say it, it’s tacky. The peacock stained glass windows, the garishly upholstered pool room, the smoky marbled mirrors in the halls, the house expresses the pinnacle of bad 1970s design. I paid 45 dollars to walk around an Architectural Digest from 1974. I didn’t feel anything while walking the grounds. For a temple of rock and roll, the place was surprisingly devoid of soul.<\/p>\n

Elvis’ spirit lives elsewhere, I guess.<\/p>\n

\"elvis\"
Elvis paraphernalia in the hall of gold records<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Strike that.<\/p>\n

Out front there are two brick columns that flank the gates to Graceland. They’re covered with tiny graffiti.\u00a0 Elvis Lives, it says, or Leanna Loves Elvis, or Elvis Forever, or We Love You Elvis.\u00a0 People come from all over the world to see where Elvis lived out his most successful years, to scrawl their names on the gates, to say that the music meant something to them.<\/p>\n

I was a tourist but all those names on the gates, those are from pilgrims come to pay homage to their saint of rock and roll.<\/p>\n

He’s not my deity, but for many, he was the King.<\/p>\n

\n

Elvis is everywhere
\nElvis is everything
\nElvis is everybody
\nElvis is still the king<\/p>\n

Man o man
\nWhat I want you to see
\nIs that the big E’s
\nInside of you and me<\/p>\n

—Mojo Nixon, Elvis is Everywhere<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I went to see the King, or what’s left of him, and music played in my head the whole time. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":10872,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-elsewhere","masonry-post","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10871"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11608,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10871\/revisions\/11608"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}