Melody Land Still All Shook Up : Elvis Home Replica Remains Shuttered on King’s Birthday

While fans around the world were holding elaborate celebrations in honor of Elvis Presley’s 60th birthday, John (Slick) Barton paid a visit Sunday to a Northridge shrine to the King that has been somewhat quiet since the Northridge earthquake.

Barton, 30, an Elvis impersonator, peered through the gates of Melody Land, a two-story Georgian-style house at the corner of Parthenia Street and Zelzah Avenue that pays tribute to Graceland, Presley’s legendary home in Memphis.

Inside, the $1-million replica bears many features of the real thing, including gold-plated sinks and Italian toilets shaped like crouching lions, but it was rendered uninhabitable by the quake and remains closed, awaiting repairs.

Melody Land was built by Danny Unawich, another impersonator who has been performing his Elvis act for more than two decades. Unawich opened the shrine to his idol on Aug. 16, 1991--the 14th anniversary of Presley’s death.

It also includes a heart-shaped pool and a fountain, and Unawich covered the living room furniture with plastic, just as is done at Graceland. But because of its smaller size (Melody Land sits on one acre, while Graceland is on 13), the mock Presley home has a putting green rather than a golf course.

Unawich, who performs under the stage name “Danny U,” claims to have met Presley when the King came backstage after one of Unawich’s Las Vegas shows in the early 1970s. At Melody Land’s 1991 opening, he said he had built the huge home not out of a pathological Presley fixation, but because “it was a personal thing. I promised Elvis.”