Long Live The King

Embrace the cheese.

We were headed to Graceland, and when we told a friend who’d been there recently of our plans, she offered those three little words of advice.  “There’s no point in trying not to look like a tourist,” she told us, “or, for that matter, attempting to maintain your dignity.  It’s Graceland, after all.  You’re an undignified tourist by definition.  Trust me, the whole experience will be much more enjoyable if you just embrace the cheese.”

It was with this in mind that I smiled as we stood before the wall mural.  Behind us was a painted portrait of Graceland, with the official Graceland logo emblazoned in white at the top of the scene.  Before they let you board the bus that shuttles you from the commerce part of Graceland to the mansion part, they make you stand in front of this mural so a listless Graceland employee can snap your digital photo.

To capture this image in front of the actual Graceland would require standing amidst several lanes of traffic on Elvis Presley Boulevard, which is a fairly high-volume thoroughfare, so you could make the argument that the good folks of Elvis Presley Enterprises are kindly providing their visitors with a needed service.  You could also make the argument that they’re greedily attempting to shove their hands even deeper into the pockets of a captive audience, for at the end of the tour, naturally, you’re presented with the opportunity to purchase a package that includes the photo as an 8x10 glossy, a strip of wallet-sized snapshots, and a refrigerator magnet for $20.

“This looks so fake,” I whispered to Nicole, glancing at the real thing across the street.

“Embrace the cheese,” she whispered back.  “I’m sure it only gets worse.”

I smiled broadly.

Our moment in front of the photo wall behind us, we waited patiently in line, where we were handed our audio tour guides.  Above us, on a TV monitor, a video showed us how to use these players -- the button with the arrow pointing to the right means play; the button with the square means stop -- in case we came to Graceland directly from either 1914 or a village where everyone speaks in clicks and whistles, and we’ve never used a walkman, discman, VCR, DVD player, iPod, or cassette deck before.  With this complex playback system mastered, we boarded the bus and began our audio tour.

Touring the Graceland mansion provides insight into Elvis’s unique tastes, and a sobering reminder of just how much styles have changed since Elvis died in 1977.

Though it was fun to see the out-of-fashion furniture and fixtures, perhaps most fascinating were the King’s choices in wallcovering.  Paint, wallpaper . . . Elvis had no interest in these things.  He liked mirrors.

Check that.  He was obsessed with mirrors.  In the Living Room, massive mirrors surmount the mantel, and more mirrors cover most of the rest of the walls.  This not only gives the room an expanding effect, it really helps you appreciate the two giant stained-glass peacocks that separate the main room from the piano room toward the back.

The stairwell going downstairs is completely mirrored, save only for the steps, which means holding the handrail isn’t just a good idea -- it’s the only way to keep from breaking your neck on the way down.

Once you get downstairs, you’re led to the blue-and-yellow TV Room in the basement, where three TVs line the wall (Elvis heard that President Johnson watched all three networks at once, and wasn’t about to be outdone by the President), and of course, the entire ceiling is mirrored.

But though he was obsessed with mirrors, Elvis was into other bizarre wallcoverings, too.

The Pool Room, just off the TV room, is startling in its mirrorlessness, but what it lacks in mirrors, it makes up for in fabric.  The walls are draped with ripples of multicolored cloth -- more than 350 yards of it.

This theatrical, medieval effect almost prepares you for the Jungle Room.

As you walk back upstairs, you’re greeted by a new wallcovering:  green shag carpet.  When you emerge from the stairwell into the Jungle Room, you realize the carpet on the walls was just the appetizer -- in the Jungle Room, home of a custom-designed indoor waterfall, custom-carved wood furniture, animal-print couch cushions, a porcelain monkey statue, and that 70s staple, wood paneling, the floor and ceiling are done in green shag carpet.  It’s simply astounding.  The man dressed like Andre 3000, but he decorated like Joe Dirt.  Even the kitchen is carpeted.

Ultimately, though, it’s not the white fur bed from Elvis’s wardrobe room, the copy of Erich von Daniken’s “Gods From Outer Space” on Elvis’s desk (Elvis was “always searching” in his reading, Lisa Marie tells us on the audio tour to explain her father’s book choices), the 24-karat-gold-lined sinks in the bathrooms on board the Lisa Marie Airplane, or even the multitudinous mirrors that draw more than 700,000 visitors to Graceland annually.

But if it’s not any of that, though, what is it?

In the ticket lobby, before we got in line to get on the shuttle, a flyer enticing me to join The Official Elvis Insiders caught my eye.  A snapshot of Elvis, looking no longer young, but still somehow youthful, and wearing a shirt made, it would seem, from a leftover swatch of the Pool Room fabric, smiled at me.  “Know Elvis.” read the text above the photo.

“That’s like those Jesus bumper stickers,” Nicole said.  “Know Jesus, Know Peace.  No Jesus, No Peace.”

I looked back at the flyer, and mentally completed the thought.  “Know Elvis, Know Peace.  No Elvis, No Peace.”

The music matters, of course, as does the man himself, and the mythology that has evolved around him.  But the magic, friends, is the cheese itself.

Embrace the cheese.