THE TRAGIC ELVIS : Despite Grotesqueness of His Final Years, a Lasting Triumph

Was Elvis Presley really rock’s greatest star?

Yes--and the contest isn’t even close.

You could throw out half of Elvis’ 31 Top 10 hits and he’d still be No. 1.

That’s what makes his story so sad.

There was no concept of art in the early days of rock, and the only measurement of accomplishment that he knew was fame.

The sideshow is gearing up again in Memphis.

More than 50,000 fans will file in procession through Elvis Presley’s Graceland mansion the week of Aug. 6 as part of the 10th anniversary commemoration of the rock star’s death.

For $7 each, the faithful will be granted the privilege during the 90-minute tour of exploring the 23-room mansion where Elvis played and prayed and loved.

They’ll be able to see the “Jungle Room,” with its artificial fur upholstery and built-in waterfall, walk through the TV room with its mirrored ceiling and walls, examine the trophy room with the tux and gown Elvis and Priscilla wore at their wedding, and bow their heads in the Meditation Garden where Elvis and his parents are buried.

Most of the fans will also stop at the Heartbreak Hotel restaurant, across Elvis Presley Boulevard from Graceland, for black-eyed peas and corn bread, and then peel off $20 bills at the tacky souvenir shops nearby. On display: everything from copies of Elvis’ birth, death and wedding certificates to music-box hound dogs and porcelain figures of the King.

The irony is that the one man who would have not been embarrassed by this grotesque spectacle was Elvis himself. He would have seen it as a fitting tribute to his own legacy.

Lord Acton warned about the corrupting effect of absolute power, and no one in rock--not the Beatles, not Dylan, not Springsteen--experienced a power as absolute as Elvis’. And his audience willingly served him. Their job was not to question, but to adore.

Still caught up in the magic of the spell that Elvis cast during the ‘50s and early ‘60s, the King’s court allowed his every indulgence. Today’s Graceland sideshow is tasteful next to the concert ritual Presley presided over nightly in his final years.

Blinded by love, fans cheered--instead of hooted--as he strutted across the stage night after night in Vegas and the rest of America in a glittery cape, 50 pounds overweight and barely able to focus on the business at hand. They also looked past Elvis’ vulgarity and forgave him his arrogance.

They applauded as much on the nights when he could barely remember the words as on the rare occasions when the promise outlined in those magic recordings from the ‘50s seemed to live again. They did so because they had once loved him so much and they longed for the day that he would again be the Elvis of their dreams.

Until that resurrection day, they saw him as a victim of fame--not as someone who had squandered his talent. And they certainly didn’t recognize their own part in his downfall.

Elvis’ importance in the ‘50s was both musical and sociological. He didn’t invent rock ‘n’ roll, but he defined an attitude and style that influenced virtually every important rock star who followed, especially John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan, the most important and acclaimed figures of rock’s second decade.

As with James Dean and John Kennedy, two other cultural heroes of the time, Presley was a symbol of freedom and possibility for young people in ways that were tied to the moment and place. It’s possible in photographs and film footage to sense Presley’s charisma, but you had to live through the period--and probably be of a certain age--to fully appreciate his sociological impact.

It’s easier these days to explore his art.

The best place to begin is a four-album “commemorative” series just released by RCA Records. The “greatest hits” albums--a single-disc package titled “The Number One Hits” and a two-record collection called “The Top 10 Hits”--are going to be most cherished by fans.

But anyone who thinks “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Hound Dog” were Elvis’ finest hours just wasn’t paying attention.

These “commemorative” albums remind us that much of the popular appreciation--and worship--of Presley is based on false evidence.

Presley’s greatness didn’t begin with his first No. 1 record, “Heartbreak Hotel,” and it didn’t end--as is commonly held--when he got wrapped up in the ‘60s in those mostly awful movies.

His most inspired recordings were made in the two years before he became an international sensation on RCA Records in 1956, and the inspiration was most boldly revived in the months before he reclaimed his stardom in 1969 with triumphant live performances in Las Vegas.

Both periods are spotlighted, respectively, in the other “commemorative” albums: “The Complete Sun Sessions” and “The Memphis Record.”

Presley--young, white and handsome--was unquestionably in the right place at the right time. Those factors made him far more marketable in the mid-’50s (on radio, television and film) than older rivals (Bill Haley), less handsome ones (Carl Perkins) and, most undeniably, black ones.

To suggest that youth (he was just 21 when “Heartbreak Hotel” was released), good looks and skin color were all Presley had going for him, however, is a gross misreading of pop history. Those factors contributed to his unprecedented fame, but they didn’t explain his artistry.

Of all the early rock stars, white or black, Elvis exhibited the greatest feel for the three musical strains that were wed together in rock: gospel, R&B;/blues and country, outcast styles rejected as too primitive and earthy by the polished and polite pop Establishment.

In an essay on Presley in the 1982 edition of his book “Mystery Train,” rock critic and historian Greil Marcus noted: “It is often said that if Elvis had not come along to set off the changes in American music and American life that followed his triumph, someone very much like him would have done the job as well.

“But there is no reason to think this is true, either in strictly musical terms, or in any broader cultural sense. It is vital to remember that Elvis was the first young Southern white to sing rock ‘n’ roll, something he copied from no one but made up on the spot; and to know that even though other singers would have come up with a white version of the new black music acceptable to teen-age America, of all that did emerge in Elvis’s wake, none sang as powerfully, or with more than a touch of his magic.”

Even more important, Marcus adds, is that no singer emerged--at least until Dylan--with anything like Elvis’ combination of “great talent and conscious ambition.”

Elvis was 19 when he recorded his first tunes for Sam Phillips, the owner of Sun Records in Memphis. He was totally unschooled in the business of music, and Phillips’ greatest contribution was in making sure Elvis stayed that way. Phillips encouraged all his Sun artists--including other Rock and Roll Hall of Fame members Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison and Carl Perkins--to experiment.

Recalls Perkins, whose “Blue Suede Shoes” was one of rock’s first legitimate standards: “You just forgot about making a record and tried to show him (Phillips). I’d walk out on a limb. I’d try things I knew I couldn’t do, and then have to work my way out of it. I’d say, ‘Mr. Phillips, that’s terrible.’ He’d say, ‘That’s original .’ ”

In those early Sun sessions, Presley gave country songs, like Bill Monroe’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” a bluesy touch, and he gave such bluesy songs as Arthur Crudup’s “That’s All Right (Mama)” a country edge. Through it all, he sang with the playfulness and joy, abandon and delight, of someone turned loose in a private fantasy world.

Though his dreams were fueled by visions of possible stardom, he probably didn’t believe in his wildest imagination that this primitive and bastardized music he was making would ever make it onto a record or, holy Jesus, be played on the radio. Despite the sexiness and bravado of his vocals, Elvis, by most accounts, was a shy young man with hardly any success behind him and no future in sight.

This recording session itself might be the greatest moment in his life--and that realization alone might have been fantasy enough to treasure forever. The result was music that was alive with self-affirmation and hope, and was all the richer because it was built with the raw, uncomplicated rhythms and themes of country, gospel and R&B; music that dealt with the highest disappointments and wildest dreams of the under-class in America: people who most needed to believe in the American Dream.

Elvis didn’t have art on his mind, he had stardom on it, and once the door was opened, he stepped quickly through. After being established as a regional sensation, he left Sun Records for the big time: RCA. Without Phillips by his side, Presley became more conventional in the studio.

He still had the great voice--equally at home on rave-ups or ballads--and the instincts, but this was no longer fantasy land. RCA was the music business, and his job was to make hits. He made some terrific ones, but even the best usually lacked the primal urgency of the Sun days. Most surely, he was advised to “tone down.”

“Hound Dog” is one of the classics of the era, but his vocal is far less sexually threatening and aggressive on record than on tapes of the live shows he was doing at the same time. Many of the hits, as pleasant as they were, sounded like they were cut from the same cheery mold.

As Elvis’ star got bigger over the years, his records--made in Nashville and Los Angeles--became increasingly bland, but by the mid-’60s he was so isolated by his own fame that he didn’t even seem to notice. The thing that eventually shook him out of his lethargy was the recognition that he was no longer invincible.

The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Creedence Clearwater Revival and a dozen other groups had moved far past Elvis by the late ‘60s. He might still be King to the loyal fans from the ‘50s, but he was largely irrelevant to rock’s new generation. That fact sparked the most creative period in Elvis’ life since the Sun days.

Elvis returned to Memphis early in 1969, choosing songs personally rather than just accepting the fodder dished up for the latest movie. The recordings (23 of which appear on “The Memphis Record”) were used for two albums that year, “From Elvis in Memphis” and “From Memphis to Vegas.”

Some of the songs were simply tunes that Elvis had long enjoyed, but there was a dark theme to many that seemed to give the albums an autobiographical ring. Where the Sun sessions were instinctive celebrations of ambitions and dreams, the new material focused more on self-doubts and regrets.

“Stranger in My Home Own Town” is a bluesy Percy Mayfield song that Elvis turned into a reflection of the alienation he now felt in his own rock ‘n’ roll world. “Long Black Limousine” is a mournful country ballad about loss of innocence, and Elvis sings it with bitterness and explosive rage.

But the most telling moment from the sessions, which produced such hits as “Suspicious Minds” and “In the Ghetto,” is “Who Am I,” a gospel song that RCA didn’t include on either of the “Memphis” albums but ends the new “Memphis” release. Elvis recorded lots of gospel songs, but the tone here was unusually sad and lonely--a man finally questioning whether fame alone was enough of a goal.

In reviewing the “From Elvis in Memphis” album at the time, Peter Guralnick sensed this was a different Elvis. “What is new, and what is obvious from the first notes of the record, is the evident passion which Elvis has invested in this music and at the same time the risk he has taken in doing so,” he wrote in Rolling Stone.

“He needs to have our attention, and it comes as something of a shock to discover that a hero whom we had set up to feel only existential scorn, a hero who was characterized by a frozen sneer and a look of sullen discontent should need us in the end. It is his involvement after all which comes as the surprise.”

Presley made more good records and delivered some extraordinary live performances in the early ‘70s, when he had to prove himself once more. But he eventually was seduced once again by fame. Regardless of the quality of the shows, the crowds came every night and cried out his name and cheered long after he had left the building. By the time he realized fame was a dead end, it was too late. That was his real addiction.

Even in his most distant moments on stage, Elvis seemed to have a sense of humor about himself--making fun of the way fans shrieked at him and making fun of the old tunes, as if he knew his success was some kind of huge, unexplainable hoax. And he probably was genuinely confused because he was only looking at himself in terms of fame. He never quite understood his own artistry. That was his real tragedy.