Finding Elvis on Earth
> The king might be dead these 40 years but fans still make a pilgrimage to his Graceland home to pay respects to their rock ‘n’ roll god
PILGRIMS come all day every day, filing past in silence, fighting back tears as they place mementos at Elvis Presley’s gravesite ( right), pausing to reflect, take pictures or say a prayer.
More than 600,000 fans visit each year, paying tribute to the icon of popular culture, the once-rebellious sex symbolturned-family entertainer, of whom John Lennon said “before Elvis, there was nothing”.
Forty years after his death aged 42, floral tributes from around the world still line the Meditation Garden, where the king of rock ’n’ roll ( far right) is buried at his Graceland home in Memphis.
On Tuesday, thousands of Elvis fans attended this year’s candle-light vigil to mark the anniversary of his death. Lisa Bseiso was one of them.
She claims that she had a “very spiritual, deep encounter” with Presley’s spirit when she first visited Graceland with her husband in August 2014.
“He was sitting in a chair,” remembers the 36-year-old daughter of a Palestinian father and Colombian mother, born and raised in Qatar.
“He had tears streaming down his eyes and he said: ‘Don’t forget me, spread my legacy in your part of the world’.”
So she went home, and set up The Official Elvis Presley Fan Club of Qatar, which she now plans to expand to Dubai, Bahrain and Kuwait.
“He’s a gift from God to all of us,” she tells AFP at Graceland, where she is visiting with her SAM PHILLIPS was the boss of Sun Studios in 1954 when a young Elvis Presley first came into the studio one Saturday afternoon in June. He was 19 years old.
Elvis was a good-looking boy with acne on his neck, long sideburns, and long, greasy hair combed in a ducktail that he had to keep patting down.
But what struck Sam most was his quality of genuine humility – humility mixed with intense determination.
He was, innately, Sam thought, one of the most introverted people who had ever come into the studio, but for that reason one of the bravest, too.
They worked on a number of songs all afternoon, with Elvis accompanying himself inexpertly on his own beat-up little guitar. Then he was sent home. Palestinian-Jordanian husband, mother, and friends. “God took him back home, but he’s still here.”
A life-long fan, listening to his music helped her recover from a car accident in 1999 that left her in a coma for two weeks, she says.
The idea that Presley’s spirit lives on is central to his fans of all ages, from all countries, who find his music soothing in times of trouble, and are moved by his rags-to-riches story and legendary generosity.
To fans, Presley is far more than just another poster child for the American dream, or even a man whose looks matched the Greek definition of classical beauty, says British author Ted Harrison.
“The Elvis known today is not the real Elvis, but a mythological figure millions can relate to in their own way,” says the author of The Death and Resurrection of
In another session, after several hits and misses, they managed to record an up-tempo song called That’s All Right, Mama, an old blues number by Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup.
Elvis just started singing this song, jumping around and acting Elvis Presley.
“For some fans, he also now fills a spiritual and religious vacuum in modern secular society. He is given a semidivine, quasi-messianic status, and mystical stories are told about his life.”
Thousands have shrines to Presley in their homes, consider visits to Graceland a pilgrimage, writing prayers on the wall outside, and some even go so far as to confuse him with Jesus, Harrison says.
Bseiso does not elevate Presley to the status of a prophet or Biblical figure, but has found in him a higher calling, as she seeks to spread his music around the region, as well as challenge stereotypes about Arabs or the Middle East.
“I think when he was born, God stamped him to be able to influence people and touch people,” she says. “His music talks to you ... it has a spiritual meaning in his words.”
A 10-minute drive from Graceland, the guide at Sun the fool. The rest of the session went as if suddenly they had all been caught up in the same fever dream.
They all worked hard on the song. Sam worked to get the song flow better.
By the end of the evening, Studio tells fans they are on “sacred and hallowed” ground in the basement studio ( below, far left) where Presley recorded his first song, That’s All Right, in 1954.
Ecstatic fans jostle to stand on the exact spot where he stood, and cradle and croon into the microphone he used, manically snapping photographs and tingling with delight.
“It’s heaven,” sighs Daniela Soto-Cuadra, a 42-year-old lawyer and mother of two from Chile, who just the day before, married a man she’s been dating only a month, at Graceland.
“I actually have goose bumps,” says Tessa Bruns, 40, an anaesthetist from Wisconsin, bursting with happiness under her baseball cap.
“Being a somewhat religious person and a Catholic, I would say Elvis is a religion, the blues, the rhythm, his legacy.”
So what would she have told Presley had she ever met him?
“I would say I think I worship the ground you walk on.” – AFP