Word: presleys
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Bob Marley - these stars may have left indelible niches in the hearts of their fans, but few built shrines to them. Rumors of their survival rarely blossomed into testimony of posthumous visitations. Nor did their homes become cathedral theme parks. Yet each year Graceland, Presley's residence in Memphis, welcomes more than half a million Elvisitors, and many are true believers: call them Presleyterians. Like the Christian liturgical calendar, the Presleyterians' has two crucial dates. Today, the star's birthday, is their Christmas; and August 16, his death date, is their Good Friday. A star...
...when the Beatles conquered America, Presley was still in his 20s but already an anachronism. When he was 33 (Jesus' age at His death), Elvis made his comeback (resurrection?) with the NBC concert in 1968. But that was a false rebirth, for in his later, Vegas years, he often looked the pathetic, self-parodying porker. He was a prisoner of his own eminence - the King in exile...
...this was essential to the creation of a cult religion. Presley had to suffer in the only way a celebrity can, through self-humiliation. This soldered the bond between a onetime poor boy from Tupelo, Miss., and his blue-collar, blue-haired or red-white-and-blue fans. He was both beyond and beneath - above them and one of them. And if Elvis didn't die, how could he come back to life, in the Resurrection of the one true King...
...There was something feminine about Elvis. His mouth formed the pout of a sullen schoolgirl; his hair was swathed in more chemicals than a starlet's; his hips churned like a hooker's in heat. Presley was manly too, in a street-punk way. For him, the electric guitar was less an instrument than a symbolic weapon - an ax or a machine gun aimed at the complacent pop culture of the 50s. Performing his pansexual rite to a heavy bass line, Elvis set the primal image for rock: a man and his guitar, the tortured satyr and his magic lute...
...This song isn't a classic, but Presley's rendition is - an Elvis apotheosis and an Elvis parody. (Everyone else was imitating him; why shouldn't he?) Grateful for a jaunty tune about his favorite stuffed animal, and perhaps for the marketing tie-in to the official Elvis Presley Teddy Bears on sale at better chain stores, he turns it into a children's song; he could be a father crooning silky nonsense to a first-born. He lends a seductive petulance in "I don't wanna be your tiger/ 'Cause tigers play too rough." He plays with the title...