Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 24, 1992 TAG: 9203240425
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By ROBERT I. ALOTTA
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
One view of the legendary rocker is the young, slim Presley; the second is of the bloated, drugged-out Elvis of his latter days. The first Elvis is almost innocent in comparison with the second.
Postal officials want to please the American public. So the agency is asking Joe and Joanne Six-Pack and all their friends to send in postcards - to vote on which image of Elvis should be printed on the new stamp. The cards, by the way, can be obtained at your local post office - at only 19 cents a pop. But we'll save the Postal Service the trouble of counting the votes:
The winner will be the young Elvis!
Remember the young Elvis? He was the guy Ed Sullivan chopped off at the waist so that the screaming idolaters of Elvis the Pelvis would not rip their bodices in some wild frenzy.
This was the somewhat-shy boy from public housing in Tupelo, Miss. who called people "sir" and "ma'am." This was the idol of millions who was not afraid to hold his mother's hand and kiss her on the cheek - in public.
Elvis was the guy who refused to beat the draft and actually served in the army with an armored division in Germany. No cushy duty for Presley. He soldiered with the rest. He was a man who did the right thing.
But something happened . . . .
The aw-shucks Elvis changed. The high life, the leggy, bosomy show girls, the fast cars, the adulation got to the boy.
He discovered booze. Oh, did he ever discover booze! His nights became his days, his days became his nights. He needed downers to relax, and sleep, then needed uppers to keep him going. Drugs became a way of life for him. Booze and drugs. Drugs and booze.
This is the Elvis Presley we see on the second stamp. This is the Elvis everyone wants to forget.
We don't want to remember the television sets he used for pistol practice. We don't want to remember the cadre of good ol' boys who were his constant companions, and who shared his discarded groupies. We don't want to remember the sweat pouring from his overly ample body as he paraded across a Las Vegas stage. We don't want to remember, but we must.
Elvis and the bloated caricature of Elvis the King are one and the same. They are inseparable. We can't escape that fact But we, the American people, want to keep the two apart. We want to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative. That way we won't feel the pain.
What fools we are. We have enshrined Presley's memory in the chapel called Graceland in Memphis, Tenn. We have absolved him of his sins, including his adulthood. We have spawned impersonators who try to look and act like him. And, we present him to the present generation almost as a God-like figure.
Does Elvis deserve to be remembered? Of course he does. But the memory must be complete with all the dimples, warts and chins. The man's life should be a lesson to us all, a lesson to remember: Just as power corrupts, so too does fame. We can't forget that.
Perhaps the Postal Service can get its artist to create a third rendering. This one would include both faces of Elvis, so each time we looked at the stamp we could remember how a great talent killed himself in an insatiable quest for bigger and better thrills.
It also might remind us how two-faced we can be.
Robert I. Alotta is on the faculty at James Madison University in Harrisonburg.
by CNB