When you think of Memphis there’s usually only one thing you think of – Elvis. Memphis is the home of the walking quiff himself, the king, Elvis the pelvis. Now not being over 50 I cant say I know too much about the man himself other than his legend, the guy that defined an entire era of music by shaking his booty, twitching his lip and thanking everyone all the time. A man who was not only regarded as the greatest recording artist of all time (he has an award that says so) while he was still alive but who eventually cemented himself in history by popping his clogs while having a crap.

So we thought it only fair while passing through this neck of the woods to pay the old fella a visit at his world famous resting place Graceland. I had no idea what to expect but I guess I was a bit disappointed that the house itself didn’t have a pomade hair-do all of its own, complete with light reflecting body hugging suit but hey, that just goes to show we shouldn’t believe everything Las Vegas tells us.

The tour itself was pretty straight forward, as many rooms in the mansion-like house as you could imagine, apparently Elvis was obsessive about having a TV in every room and bizarrely for a millionaire celebrity still lived with his parents! But I’m certainly not gonna waste your time and mine describing every room in the house, the photos can waste as much time as you like and give you a pretty good idea what the place looked like.

There was of course a separate ‘wing’ for all his trophies, imaginatively called ‘The Trophy Building’. This was actually pretty impressive, its was almost wall-to-wall covered with awards and records that had won awards and outfits that had won awards and outfits that he’d been wearing while accepting awards and newspaper clippings of him winning awards and… well, you get the picture. In all fairness I had no idea he had made so many records or that so many of them had won so much acclaim, I just thought he was a big burger eating nympho with big hair who had the occasional big song. Turns out he pretty much invented rock ‘n’ roll, fancy that!

Anyway there was also a bit dedicated to his movie career but that hallway seemed to run very short in comparison to the rest. Can’t imagine why…

Once we’d had our brains overloaded with images of the human disco ball that was Elvis in Las Vegas we moved on to a rather surprising and altogether more sombre part of the tour, his grave. Now call me ignorant if you wish but I genuinely didn’t realise that he and his family were buried on the grounds of Graceland. His parents, Grandmother and twin brother (he was born as one half of a pair of twins but his brother died at birth) and he are all buried together in a little section to one side of the property. Its quite eerie actually. It had also recently been hid (73rd) birthday so there were wreaths of flowers all over the place.

After that we wanted something a little lighter so we found ourselves in Elvis’ very own automobile museum, a collection that showcased his favourite motorbikes and cars, most of which would look very comfortable on the set of ‘Grease’ including the oh so famous Pink Cadillac. We also managed to get to see and have a look around his private jet, the ‘Lisa Marie’ named after his daughter.

After that I was pretty Elvis’d out, there’s only so much a man can take! So for now I’ll say ‘Uh-huh thank you very much’. 

Memphis (Graceland) 1 - www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=183625&l=f5ee5&id=699720654

Memphis (Graceland) 2 - www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=183639&l=674d6&id=699720654