Profile: Lisa Marie Presley's deal will generate more ker-ching from the King - but will Elvis be badly managed again, asks Brian Boyd
In 1977 Wade Jones went to see Elvis in concert in North Carolina. Towards the end of the show, Elvis introduced his band. Before he went on to the next song, the singer picked up a white Styrofoam cup full of water and swigged from it. At the end of the show, Wade Jones asked a security guard if he could climb up on to the stage and take the cup as a souvenir. The guard agreed. Jones noticed there was still some water left in the cup.
Last week that water was sold on Internet auction site, eBay, for $455. You might think that's expensive for a few drops of water from 28 years ago, but remember that price doesn't include the Styrofoam cup - it's just for the water. Jones had put the water into his freezer directly after the concert. Eight years later he transferred the water to a specially sealed container.
It took an awful lot for Jones to sell the water that had been in close proximity to Elvis's general mouth region all those years ago. There's no way he's parting with the cup, though - never. This is the cup, after all, that had rested momentarily on Elvis's lower lip and had actually been gripped by at least one of his hands. What Jones is willing to do, though, is to put the cup on display (for about an hour or so). If you want to look at the cup - you can't touch it - all you have to do is meet Jones's travel expenses and pay him $300. There is no shortage of takers for this exclusive, once-in-a-lifetime, intimate Styrofoam-cup-gazing session.
"Before Elvis there was nothing," John Lennon once remarked. No screaming fans, no personal entourages, no secular worship, no hit-parade singers making front page headlines, no celebrity psychosis, no "drink/drugs" hell and no popular rock 'n' roll. Elvis spent his adult life in uncharted celebrity (when the term actually meant something) territory. After Elvis, the deluge.
A recent poll in the US found that more than 17 million Americans had at some point impersonated Elvis and that one in 10 had made the pilgrimage to his Graceland home. Some 71 million Americans still consider themselves to be "active Elvis fans".
This week finds "The King" back at number one in the UK charts with a re-release of Jailhouse Rock. Tomorrow, it looks highly likely that he will have the 1,000th UK number one single when another re-release, One Night, is expected to beat current musical heroes, The Killers, to the top spot. You can give up (if you haven't already) looking at the charts for the next four months as it looks like Elvis will be number one until April. His record company, Sony/BMG, is re-releasing 18 of his hits on a weekly basis. It is supposed to mark the fact that Elvis would have turned 70 earlier this month, but it has more to do with copyright - or rather the lack of it.
Earlier this month, Elvis's That's All Right, erroneously described (but generally accepted) as the first ever rock 'n' roll single went out of copyright in Europe, due to it being 50 years since it was released. The song is now in the public domain (although not in the US, where there is a copyright cut-off date of 95 years after recording), which means that anyone will be able to release it without paying royalties to the owners of the master recording or the performer's heir.
As the months go by and more and more Elvis songs go out of copyright in Europe, his record company is looking for one last ker-ching from The King - hence the glut of singles on release and the boxed sets expected to be assembled over the next few years.
It would be devastating for all concerned if any of the many "Elvis is still alive" sightings were to prove correct. Elvis is the highest-earning dead celebrity, raking in an average of $37 million a year from music and merchandise sales. His sole heir and daughter, Lisa Marie, is the beneficiary of all Elvis-related incomes.
There are concerns, though, that his "earning potential hasn't been maximised". Expect a new marketing front to open up soon - and not just from his record company. Last month, in a move that surprised many, Lisa Marie sold 85 per cent of Elvis's estate to businessman Robert F.X. Sillerman, who founded the music and sports promotion agency SFX entertainment. The deal, worth $100 million to Lisa Marie, sees Sillerman running Elvis's Memphis home, Graceland, (which still attracts close to one million paying visitors each year), owning Elvis's name and likeness; owning the rights to all Elvis photographs and owning earnings from sales of Elvis's music and films.
Fears that Elvis's legacy would be "all shook up" by the Sillerman deal weren't allayed by a statement from Lisa Marie which read: "This [the new deal] is an exciting new structure that opens up an incredible array of opportunities with a major infusion of new investment capital to do just that".
Fans were dismayed by the deal, to which they refer as "Elvis: The Sale". Sillerman, for his part, released a gnomic statement, saying: "I am extremely excited about our new venture, which we believe will bring unique concepts to different aspects of the utilisation of entertainment content and will challenge the current models of distribution and consumption of content". Translated: a new range of Elvis bubble bath.
It is believed Lisa Marie brought Sillerman in expressly to handle the upcoming Elvis musical on Broadway - All Shook Up - which she is determined will out-sell Mamma Mia (currently the biggest hit musical in the world). The musical will also kick-start another bout of Elvis record sales.
Lisa Marie has said that she wants her father to be "an even greater force in the entertainment world" and she has followed with interest how the musical careers of Abba and Queen have been resuscitated by hit musical shows. Sillerman too has "growth potential" on his mind: "Mr Sillerman is planning on expanding Elvis into areas of the world that he believes are 'under-Elvised'," says a spokesman for his SFX company.
There's already speculation that Sillerman, who now legally "owns" Elvis, will become the new Colonel Tom Parker figure - Elvis's manager when he was alive. It has always been believed that Parker underestimated Elvis's unique vocal talent and remarkable iconic status, and pressurised him into making the awful MGM films, and recording songs which weren't worthy of his ability.
Whether Elvis will be as mis-managed in death as he was in life remains to be seen. Only one thing is sure: The King is dead . . . but his assets live on.
The Elvis File
Who is he? Elvis Aaron Presley
Occupation: The Most Famous Musical Figure In The World
Why is he in the news? Although he died aged 42 in 1977, Elvis is still number one in the charts. Even though his songs are going out of copyright in Europe, there are numerous new "marketing possibilities" opening up: definitely a musical and possibly a range of men's after-shave - "for the Hound Dog in you" etc.
Do say: "Did you know that Elvis's iconic status was achieved almost independently of his actual work or cultural achievement . . . I still have some of his water in my freezer."
Don't Say: "Elvis was America's answer to Cliff Richard."