Best Western's Travel Blog - You Must Be Trippin' - Elvis, Excess, and Graceland -- uh, huh, huh

Elvis, Excess, and Graceland -- uh, huh, huh

January 29 2009 by Mike Mason

I am not really an Elvis fan. In fact if you split the world in two halves you basically end up with Elvis lovers and non-Elvis lovers. I also understand that for Elvis lovers a trip to Graceland can be an unforgettable, life-bending experience. And if Elvis isn't your thing, well, a trip to Graceland, though a fascinating experience in pop culture and America, can seem, well, a bit weird frankly. In fact, the most interesting part of Graceland for me was that Elvis is clearly the genesis for pop culture indulgence and excess as we know it today. Just think without Elvis, no MTV Cribs. I know, weird.

I have a brother that lives in Memphis and though he is also on the non-Elvis lover side, living in the region you pick up on lots of stuff. He gave me some of the inside scoop on Elvis's famous abode.

Elvis Presley lived and died in Graceland, the home he outbid the YMCA to buy in 1957 because he was determined to own the biggest house in Memphis. You'll find Graceland a few miles south of Memphis, Tennessee, on Elvis Presley Boulevard, because the fourteen-acre estate itself wasn't enough of a monument to the man whose "Aloha from Hawaii" concert was seen via satellite by nearly half the people living on planet earth in 1973.

On the outside, the house really isn't that impressive. It's not the biggest house in Memphis. It wasn't in 1957, either. A rather typical building in the classical revival style, the original structure was just over ten thousand square feet, which turned out to be too little space to adequately display Elvis's one hundred and fifty gold, platinum, and double-platinum albums, so he expanded the floor space to nearly eighteen thousand square feet.

Part of the expansion includes the legendary Jungle Room, which started as a back porch. Elvis walled-in the porch and installed a waterfall that occupies one wall and bedeviled him with leaks.

The Graceland tour also includes the basement, which has something of the same relationship to the typical, American den as does Elvis's rhinestone jumpsuits to the mod sweaters of the 1960's. The Joneses that Elvis had to keep up with were the Johnsons living in the White House. When he heard that Lyndon had three televisions in one room so that he could simultaneously watch the news from the three networks, Elvis had to have three televisions, too. They say he mostly watched football.

Also in the basement is the Pool Room, which outdoes the Jungle Room for decor weirdness. Workers spent more than a week pleating--pleating--across the walls, ceiling, and one of the couches four hundred yards of fabric that has been certified to cause epileptic seizures.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of the house is just inside the front door. There between the piano room to the right and the dining room to the left you stand below the very spot that Elvis died. Go ahead, look up. It's as close as you'll ever get. The upstairs of Graceland has been closed off to everyone but immediate family since Elvis died there in 1977.

Outside the mansion, you can visit Vernon Presley's office, the racquetball court that now showcases Elvis's truckload of awards and honors, the galleries of his clothes and cars, and the museum that includes a few pieces of paper on which a poor, unknown-outside-his-high-school, adolescent Elvis sketched a couple football plays. But all of these areas lead to one spot: Elvis's final resting place in the meditation garden south of the house. Elvis lies in state here with Vernon, Gladys, his grandmother Minnie Mae, and a marker for his stillborn twin brother, Jesse Garon. The plenitude of flowers you find here are fresh, arriving daily, and appear to be from mostly Japanese fans.

The celebration of excess that is Graceland does not end with the house and its grounds. Across the street alongside the several gift shops sit two of Elvis's planes. The smaller Lockheed JetStar helped Elvis get from gig to gig in the 1970's. The larger plane, a 1958 Convair passenger plane he christened "Lisa Marie" when he purchased and converted it for personal use in 1975, has a bedroom in the rear. The bed is outfitted with an enormous, FAA-approved belt and gold buckle that fastens across it, so Elvis could sleep through take-offs and landings.

Don't feel self-conscious about that well-worn recliner or the vanity plate. Yes, perhaps the vanity plate is a bit self-indulgent. But when you make the Graceland pilgrimage, you'll see that you have little need to fear exceeding the generous standard set by Elvis Presley, America's patron saint of pop star excess.

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