A very important Elvis day is coming up this week. Friday, Aug. 16, will mark the 25th anniversary of the King's death, from drug-induced cardiac arrest on the toilet in his second-floor bathroom at Graceland.
Big things of a strangely religious sort are likely in store for that day in his hometown, though that is nothing new. It was clear back in 1987, at the 10th anniversary, when 50,000 "Presleyterians" gathered in the steamy heat of Memphis, Tenn., for a candlelight graveside vigil: Elvis Aron Presley had reached the status of secular saint, with Graceland his Jerusalem, complete with its solemn rituals (vigils), votive inscriptions (the Fans' Memorial Wall) and sacred souvenirs (packets of Graceland dirt).
Saint and Elvis, which had been coupled years earlier in the tabloids, appeared together that August in major daily newspapers for the first time. And why not? After all, saints, as charismatic, mediating agents between our everyday world and remote and powerful spiritual forces, have existed for millenniums in all religions, and outside conventional religion as well. And even within the traditional categories of Christian saints -- comprising martyrs, confessors, ascetics and so forth -- Elvis, in the eyes of his followers, has his place as a "martyr."
This is clear from even a brief survey of post-mortem Elvis literature, such as May Mann's Elvis, Why Won't They Leave You Alone? (New American Library, 1984), in which we learn the King's last thoughts as he lay dying on the floor of his bathroom: "This must be like what Jesus suffered." Purged from the singer's factual life history are any references to drug abuse, obesity or paranoiac violence. (Remember that Elvis was the one who shot up a Vegas TV when Robert Goulet came on.)
This adoring "saint literature," which constitutes an extended rebuttal to Albert Goldman's damning 1981 portrait of the debauched Elvis (Elvis, McGraw-Hill), speaks instead of a dirt-poor Southern boy who rose to fame and glory, of the love of a son for his mother (Gladys), of generosity and humility (he always said "sir" and "ma'am") and of superhuman achievement in the face of great adversity.
These books emphasize Elvis' profound spiritualism and his painful, premature death -- a death coming at the hands of his own fans, whose merciless demands for Elvis entertainment exhausted and ultimately killed Elvis the entertainer. ("Uppers" were to prepare for a concert; "downers" to get necessary rest afterward.) In their eyes, he had died for them, and any further revelations of his seeming debauchery would, ironically, only reconfirm and intensify their image of his suffering.
Elvis the healer
The stickiness of the word "saint" can be avoided by adopting sociologist Max Weber's non-religious terminology for people like Elvis, which centers instead on the word charisma or "gift." Weber identified the charismatic as possessing "a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities."
Emphasis shifts away from the source of the charismatic gift, as a grace from God or as a reward for an exemplary life, to its recognition and acknowledgement, for whatever reason, by the world at large. This allows for the existence among the ranks of charismatics of the likes of Jesus Malverde, a mustachioed brigand who was hanged as a bandit in Culiacan, Mexico, in 1909, but who today is venerated there as a saint, with his own chapel-shrine, icons, votives and an impressive list of attributed miracles.
Elvis Presley demonstrated the possession of charisma through his phenomenal early success as an entertainer, from 1955 to 1957. This "gift" he had, in fact, earned through his own onstage and record-industry performance -- through his powerfully affecting voice and mesmerizing sexual gyrations. And his timing was perfect. The depth and breadth of Elvis' impact on America's psyche was enormously enhanced by the appearance during those very years of TVs in our living rooms and hi-fis in our dens.
No amount of bad moviemaking in the 1960s or degenerate Vegas antics in the 1970s could take that gift away. And Elvis knew he had "it," and eventually began to cultivate its latent spiritual and miraculous potential. By the early 1970s, Elvis had become, in fact, an acknowledged healer and self-proclaimed messenger from God. Larry Geller, Elvis' hairdresser and spiritualist, discusses both qualities in If I Can Dream: Elvis's Own Story (Simon and Schuster, 1989):
"I once saw Elvis heal a man who was having a heart attack. Another time Elvis treated Jerry Shilling [of the 'Memphis Mafia'] after he had taken a nasty spill on his motorcycle and was unable to move. 'The next thing I knew,' Jerry said later, 'I woke up the following morning healed.'
"In the seventies ... I witnessed hundreds of concert goers carrying their sick and crippled children to the stage and crying out, 'Elvis, please touch my baby,' or 'Elvis, just hold her for a minute.'
"In Elvis' mind, his life was being directed divinely. ... And he truly felt that he was chosen to be here now as a modern-day savior, a Christ."
Some of Elvis' posthumous miracles were gathered by a clinical psychiatrist, Raymond A. Mood, Jr., in Elvis After Life (Peachtree Publishers, 1987), and these are supplemented almost weekly in the tabloids. Elvis appears to a small-town cop, helping him find his runaway son by revealing a vision of the L.A. rooming house where, in fact, the boy turns up a few days later. Elvis receives into paradise a young girl dying of Down syndrome, just as she utters her last words, "Here comes Elvis!" Elvis mostly comforts and guides, but sometimes he heals. "Elvis' Picture Has Cured Me of Cancer!" shouts a 1987 headline in the Weekly World News.
Taking relics, leaving votives
How unusual is this Elvis phenomenon? Although the Sotheby's auction catalog Rock 'n' Roll and Film Memorabilia (August 1989) pictured Elvis on its cover, it included "relics" of many other celebrities, including Marilyn Monroe, whose black stiletto heels from Some Like it Hot were projected to bring a hammer price nearly equal to Elvis' 1976 rabbit jacket. On the 30th anniversary of her death in 1992, The New York Times characterized Marilyn as a "serious icon ... gifted with a bizarrely passive charisma."
As for trading in celebrity earth, this, too, is hardly unique to Elvis and Graceland; a Californian claims to have sold by mail-order 20,000 packets of dirt from the lawns of Johnny Carson, Shirley MacLaine, Katharine Hepburn, and nearly four dozen other stars. Elvis' charisma-infused corpse, like that of some Christian saints, required special security (a seamless 800-pound copper coffin), but this has been true as well of all sorts of famous figures in modern times, including dictators. On the 13th anniversary of Juan Peron's death, thieves broke into his locked tomb and surgically removed his hands.
Over the last quarter-century, thousands have made the pilgrimage to gather sacred soil from the gravesite of Jim Morrison in Pere-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, and many have left votive messages of the Elvis sort. On the anniversary of John Lennon's death, Lennon fans gather in Manhattan for a candlelight vigil at the assassination site outside the Dakota. And most recently, there is Princess Di's accident site under Place de l'Alma in Paris, with its own generation of pilgrim-fans, sacred souvenirs and heartfelt votives scribbled on the tunnel's fatal pillar.
Insofar as the cult of the dead Elvis differs from these, or from that of Jack Kennedy for that matter, it is a difference of degree and not of kind. Fifty-thousand gathered at Graceland for the 10th anniversary of Elvis' death, whereas just a few hundred showed up at the Dakota for the 10th anniversary of John Lennon's death. On any given day 2,000 or more will pass through Graceland's Meditation Garden, whereas just a couple dozen Morrison fans a day make their way to his gravesite in Paris.
Finally, it is striking that among the thousands of votive messages on the Fans' Memorial Wall there is seldom any hint of Elvis as intercessor, even when he is clearly the source of the miraculous and the context is otherwise heavily religious. Rarely is God or Jesus ever invoked, and rarer still is there any mention of Elvis as the recipient of prayer. In this respect, Elvis' "sainthood" is strikingly different from the conventional Christian sort, wherein the role of the saint as advocate before the deity is always central.
Though, of course, sainthood has not always been the same, even in Christianity. The great martyrs mostly date from before the Peace of the Church (fourth century) and retreating into the desert as an expression of saintly piety went out of fashion more than a millennium ago. As the early Christian saint was a product of and a window onto his or her world, so also is Elvis Presley.
In the words of Presleyterian Anna Norman, written on the Fans' Memorial Wall, "Elvis, You've become such an icon for our time."
A King Is Born
Jan. 8, 1935: Elvis Aron Presley is born in a two-room house in Tupelo, Miss. Twin brother Jesse Garon Presley is stillborn.
Start the Music
Jan. 8, 1946: Elvis buys his first guitar, for $7.75 (plus 2 percent sales tax), at a Tupelo hardware store.
The Ascent Begins
Jan. 27, 1956: "Heartbreak Hotel" is released, the first of five Elvis singles to reach No. 1 on the Billboard charts that year. Five more would make the Top 20.
Doing His Duty
March 24, 1958: Elvis is inducted into the Army by the Memphis, Tenn., draft board. He is discharged from active duty on March 5, 1960.
The Royal Family
May 1, 1967: Elvis and Priscilla Ann Wagner marry in the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas. Their daughter, Lisa Marie, is born nine months to the day later. Elvis and Priscilla would divorce on Oct. 9, 1973.
Doing His Duty II
Dec. 21, 1970: Elvis, seeking to be named a "federal agent-at-large" in the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, meets with President Nixon at the White House. He gives the president a Colt .45 pistol as a gift.
His Final Act
Aug. 16, 1977: Elvis dies in the master suite at Graceland.
Still First-Class
Jan. 9, 1993: The Elvis postage stamp is released. Gary Vikan is director of the Walters Art Museum. His years of studying Byzantine pilgrimage and sainthood sparked an interest in contemporary secular pilgrimage and "sainthood," and thus, Elvis.