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In death Elvis still kicks ass
SHONE BABU , TOI Crest, 9 January 2010, 12:34pm IST

Elvis was to music what Picasso was to art. After all, he was the first poster-prince of entertainment. He has spawned a cottage industry of

impersonators who imitate him for a living. In death, Elvis rakes in perhaps more money than Albert Einstein and John Lennon put together, and there is enough auctionable material in Elvis's estate to keep those headlines coming for decades.

Around the time MJ died, Facebook and conversations were abuzz with exclamations of how this was going to be bigger than (the deaths of) Elvis and Lennon put together. Not too different from the innocent but virulently annoying query of a 10-year-old about a confrontation between Superman and the Green Lantern.

So far, Elvis seems to be leading the poll. MJ's funeral was impressive, but six months later, the awe and endearment with which everyone took his name has taken a bow. Do we, for example, remember how, on hearing the news that it was actually Susan Boyle's album that outsold MJ's posthumous releases, there was just a whimper of disappointment?

MJ was the Pope of pop, but, in the words of Lennon, it all started with Elvis. He wasn't a musical genius . He didn't write any of the songs he sang on stage. But he brought with him an ensemble of orchestrated performances that left audiences wildly entertained and teary-eyed .

The songs were composed and written by others, but Elvis had the

unique ability to make them his own. The voice that reigned supreme on the charts for decades possessed a soulful lilt that was unique for a white man.

President of the Elvis Presley fan club India, and an RJ with Rainbow FM, Fali Singara says (see box), "In the initial days, when Elvis was heard on radio, people would stop their kids from listening to him, thinking it was a black man singing. Only after he staged an appearance on a TV show did people know he was white."

However, for us there are good reasons to believe Elvis was a very Indian icon. And not just because he was installed as a deity in a temple in Karnataka a few years ago. Singara says the early Bollywood movies were just like Elvis movies, with a dash of James Bond thrown in. "The handsome hero but loveable rebel woos the girls, beats up the villains, has a couple of 'amorous' escapades and bursts into song and dance without notice," he says. And what to say of Elvis' love for bling and kitsch? His spangled jumpsuits, knuckleduster rings, golden belts and flamboyant style paved the way for Bappi Lahiri's iconic image.

Mahesh Punwani, a retired engineer from Mumbai, who attended an Elvis concert as a student in the US, says it was a chance encounter that left an indelible impression on him. "Elvis had come for a concert in Phoenix in 1969. I remember the football stadium was packed, and he arrived two hours late, driven to the stage in a limo. I saw his face, and you could see the blood rushing to his face every time he spoke. He was charged and the whole scene was truly ethereal."

It also comes as a surprise that long before The Beatles made it look cool, Elvis already had an Indian guru. He was really interested in exploring Indian mysticism in his later years. "His song Kismet, and his dutiful devotion to Indian mysticism reveal that Elvis was acutely interested in India. It was part of his attempts to achieve self-realisation ," says Singara.

Growing up in the eighties, an entire generation got to see Elvis on the few channels that aired at that time. In the pre-satellite era, MTV would play movies starring Elvis or The Beatles.

More than his sense of fashion, more than the baritone voice, more than the stage acts, perhaps Elvis's greatest contribution to music would be the way he made his fans relate to him," says Nikhil Mawkin, a budding musician who started out doing Elvis covers across the capital. "Like very few celebrities, Elvis had the unique ability to make the fan feel he/she was the only one he was communicating to," says Mawkin.

At one point, Elvis was doing 60 concerts in 30 days at the behest of the Las Vegas studios. And ,unlike Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin, Elvis didn't just sit on a stool. Performing stars burn out faster. Michael Jackson met with the same exhausted end too.

For musicians, however, Elvis remains an indirect influence. "He's called the King of Rock 'n' Roll, but everyone knows he was only one of the pioneers in this field. There were other greats like Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Muddy Waters who were virtuosos in their own right. But this white man sang the black man's blues and brought rock 'n' roll to the mainstream," says Bruce Lee Mani, lead guitarist for Thermal and A Quarter, a Bangalore-based band. In fact, for any musician playing rock and its various paraphernalia, Elvis' influence has trickled down in the form of the stage acts, the sound and the very act of singing.

There were better singers than Elvis, and there were truly greater actors too, but surely Elvis was the greatest entertainer of the 20th century.

'Before anyone did anything, Elvis did everything'

The message on the T-shirt is typical of the passion that drives the Mumbai-based official Elvis Presley Fan Club of India. A look at the rest of the Elvis memorabilia - painstakingly put together by founding member Zahir Chinoy - will put the T-shirt in perspective.

Edgy and electric - much like the king of Rock 'n' Roll himself, the treasure trove of moods, moments and turning points narrates a story scripted over the last 50 years. From a plaque commemorating Presley's debut with That's All Righton July 5, 1954, to menu cards from each of his shows to a boarding pass from a flight on the Lisa Marie airplane to movie posters, Elvis mirrors, tickets and pictures from Graceland and more, every piece of the collection tells its own tale.

Holding pride of place is a picture of Elvis from Blue Hawaiiautographed by the man himself. "My grandma sourced that for dad while on a trip to Hollywood," says 36-year-old Sajjid, Zahir's son. "It was a weekend, and the studios were shut. She happened to meet a waitress who knew Elvis' director. So grandma gave her my dad's name and address - and forgot all about it. But the waitress had not made a tall claim. The photo did arrive in due course," he says.

With over 100 active members from across the country, the first Elvis Presley Fan Club of India was formally founded by Chinoy and Rajiv Jacobi in 1981 - though the shared mania for his music had brought them together much before that. "When Elvis passed away in 1977, the Elvis Presley enterprise made the name a trademark. No business venture or club could be named after him unless they registered. We applied and succeeded," narrates Jacobi. "We once sourced some Elvis music for an American fan who lived in a city less than 200 km from Memphis. I guess that's saying something. Even Patsy Anderson (former manager at Graceland) said our understanding was incredible," he recounts.

From networking with fans across the world, to getting together to discuss his music and its roots, to organising his movie screenings, to addressing audiences on Elvis, the club does it all. "On his 75th birthday, plans are afoot to organise an Elvis concert in the city. And step up the screenings as well, not to forget redoing the basement which was damaged in the monsoon floods some years ago," says Sajjid.

And thus, the quest continues. The King Lives. But we know that, don't we?