Posted on Friday, September 12th, 2003 at 11:46 pm by Philip Devitt
I can’t hand-on-heart say I was a fan of Elvis. To be honest I never really listened to his music or watched his films but suprisingly I still felt drawn to the place he called home. In order to get into Graceland you have to goto the tourist offices, first impressions told me that this was a place for racking up as much Elvis cash as possible. The King may be dead, but if the cash flowing into this place couldn’t pay for the research required to produce dandruff sourced clones of the King then nothing could. I’m not gonna lie and say it was cheap, it cost more that a few dollars to wander ’round the Kings old domain, and even more to get the headphone/mp3 player which allowed you to learn about what you were looking at. Still, how often do you get to wander ’round the home a legend.
I was a little dissapointed by my first glimpse of the house, it looked a little small — but then again, I thought the same of some of the celeb homes in Hollywood. The tour takes you through most of the lower floor of the house, including the “Jungle Room” thats referenced in the Marc Cohen song from which this blogs title comes from. The upper floor is restricted as the property is still a home, and rather like a stately home the residents would like a little privacy. You only get a true impression of the property’s size when you wander around the grounds, ok, so it’s starting to look a little bigger. Throughout the grounds you are informed of the Elvis story, not wanting to spoil it for you I won’t tell you how it ends, and virtually all of his show costumes are on display as you walk through his career.
I would recommend anyone with a remote interest in music to visit Graceland; even if you aren’t a fan of the King you should get a taste for who he was and how he lived, afterall, without him there wouldn’t be Rock ‘n Roll as it is today (personally I prefer B.B. King — who incidentally has a bar in downtown Memphis)
Without wanting to spoil the end of the Elvis story too much, here’s one of the pictures we took while paying our respects to the one and only Elvis Aaron Presley.
Catch ‘cha later.
