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The Rev. Robert D. Martin thinks so. "This has the makings of the rise of a new religion," says the retired Episcopal minister from Hernando, Miss. "Elvis is the god, and Graceland the shrine. There are no writings, but that could be his music. And some even say he is rising again. The August week is more like people going to Lourdes than to an entertainment event. People genuflect before his grave. Women have come to Memphis to deliver babies, claiming Elvis is the father and that he will come down from heaven when the , boy is 16 to anoint him -- sort of like Jesus in the Jordan River."
Fine, but why Elvis? Not just because he was rock's first superstar, but also because as the pawn of his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, he was the last pop idol who did not control his own career. In 1956 he released his first million-seller, Heartbreak Hotel, and raised screams and hackles on TV variety shows. Then, too soon, he was devoured by Hollywood's make-over machinery, steered into a rut that would lead to 33 low-mediocre films. Parker's determination to slip Elvis into the old show-biz mainstream effectively neutered the emperor of sexual and musical threat. By 1964, when the Beatles conquered America, Presley was still in his 20s but already an anachronism. And in his later, Vegas years, he often looked the pathetic, self-parodying porker. He was the first Elvis impersonator and a prisoner of his own eminence -- the King in exile.
All 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 above them and one of them.
And now, some of them believe, he is with them again. On the stone wall that surrounds the entrance to Graceland they scrawl messages to their elusive idol: OUR LOSS IS HEAVEN'S GAIN . . . ELVIS, WAS THAT YOU AT BURGER KING? . . . ARE YOU DEAD -- OR JUST LONESOME TONIGHT? Infidels can look at the balance sheet and say that wherever the star may be, he is certainly taking care of business. Presleyterians know better: ELVIS is an anagram for LIVES.