The King and I...why there’s nothing like a trip to Graceland
Elvis’s home is a intimate shrine to an icon, as author Síle McArdle discovered
When a dewy-eyed Priscilla Beaulieu said ‘I do’ to Elvis Presley at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas 50 years ago tomorrow, few could have realised this cossetted 21-year-old had the foresight to create one of the world’s most popular tourist attractions.
But after the King of Rock’n’Roll breathed his last face-down on a bathroom floor at Graceland in 1977, five years after their divorce, Priscilla was faced with hard facts about the house they shared as volatile star and restless wife: its upkeep cost a fortune and it might have to be sold.
So Priscilla and Elvis’s other trustees hired investment banker Jack Soden to make it a tourist attraction – and within weeks of the 1982 opening, this elegant white and cut-stone mansion had put Memphis on the map… and recouped every cent of their clever investment.
Last month the dated visitors’ centre opposite Graceland was replaced with Elvis Presley’s Memphis, a 40-acre €41million complex stuffed with more wonderful memorabilia from his larger-thanlife career.
And last year the brand-new 450-bedroom Guest House at Graceland, including campervan park and camping ground was opened – just an easy walk from Elvis’s home.
The King sprinkled his lavish belongings like confetti wherever he went, but no museum artefact can ever replicate the charm of Graceland in the flesh.
Take the poodle wallpaper chosen by his beloved paternal grandmother, Minnie Mae, for instance.
Or the portrait at the bottom of the stairs showing a blond Elvis – he dyed his hair, believing that dark was more attractive. There are so many unique personal touches that – bizarrely – it feels like the singer’s spirit is still there.
Much of the décor is bizarrely extravagant, of course: the frantic pleated fabric ceiling above the pool table, the shaggy green carpet cocooning the ‘Jungle Room’, the eye-popping yellow adorning his basement man-cave. But, rightly or wrongly, those rooms struck me as the unnatural handiwork of a man under pressure, a star trying to live up to a reputation which had snowballed out of his grasp.
Much more real, I reckoned, was the relatively modest 1970sstyle kitchen, the hub of the house, where food was on the go 24/7 and the TV constantly blared. And the office of his estate-manager father, Vernon, complete with filing cabinets and Bakelite phones – where sacks of fan mail, often
5,000 a day, came to be answered.
The reality factor is especially poignant in the meditation garden, built at Elvis’s request in the mid1960s, where the hyperactive star went to reflect.
The King is buried there now, his flat gravestone set between Minnie Mae and Vernon’s. His mother, Gladys, rests beside Vernon and next to her is a small stone tribute to Jesse Garon, their stillborn son; Elvis’s twin brother.
There, people pause their selfguided visitor iPads and wander in silent or whispered contemplation.
My own thoughts were buzzing with the rows of discs in the Hall of Gold and the framed cheques written by Elvis to people in need, but the meditation garden soon stilled them.
The singer’s drug-taking has been airbrushed from the story – and fair enough, I say. (After Memphis I watched Elvis’s bloated last live performance… and deeply regretted it.)
So, on her golden wedding anniversary tomorrow, and whatever your views about her hammy acting and trout pout, Priscilla Presley surely deserves to be wished every happiness with new beau Tom Jones.
She was, after all, instrumental in making millions happy by preserving her ex-husband’s legacy in such an intimate, timeless way.
SP McArdle’s latest magic travel history adventure, The Red-Letter Day, is available from www.sppublishink. com.