ReZoom

I remember the moment I heard Elvis Presley had died. It was the first celebrity death that holds a real-time memory for me. I was in my bedroom in North Carolina, still on summer vacation, but the start of high school was looming. Over the radio, the DJ announced that the King was dead. I looked down and saw a shaft of sunlight shining through the window, leaving a rectangle of brightness on the carpet. Strange, but I remember it like it was yesterday and could point out exactly on my carpet where the sunspot was today.

It was Aug. 16, 1977. It was before CNN, before TMZ, before our obsession with celebrity meant we had to know every detail, the more gruesome and lurid the better (not that we didn't all ultimately know more about the King dying on the throne than we needed to). When I think about the 24-hour blow-by-blow that Anna Nicole Smith's death recently received, I shudder to think what his coverage would be like if he'd died today.

I wasn't alive for Elvis's musical hey day of the mid-‘50s for the Sun Records and early RCA days; the only Elvis I'd even seen was the sweaty, hopped-up, bloated caricature of the mid-to-late ‘70s.

But all that changed in 1994 when I read Peter Guralnick's Last Train to Memphis. The exhaustively researched, meticulously detailed and lovingly told biography takes Elvis from birth to his Army days in Germany. It is so well written that I felt every ounce of his perhaps unnatural devotion to his mama, Gladys, and his unyielding anguish when she died. More importantly, I felt his unquenchable yearning to sing and to become a star that would make her proud. I found myself rooting for him and really hoping he'd make it as I read the book, so absorbed in the narrative that it was possible to forget he'd achieve mythical status.

That book set me off on my own Elvis pilgrimage. I became obsessed. I dreamt about Elvis, I listened to CD after CD, especially the early material, which, of course, led to a journey to Memphis to see Sun Records and tour the underwhelming Graceland. Along the way, I devoured every bit of Elvis minutiae I could get my hands on. I also watched the movies. Most of them, of course, are instantly disposable, but Jailhouse Rock and Viva Las Vegas are all you need to see to wish that Presley had landed meaty roles that really allowed him to stretch as he seemed like a natural in front of a camera.

What sealed my Elvis obsession was seeing the '68 Comeback Special on home video in 1995. Good God. To quote the King, "Lord almighty, I feel my temperature rising." Elvis prowling around in the black leather suit like a caged panther has been unmatched for raw sexuality on stage before or since. He is a single-minded predator and anyone who didn't want to be his prey had no understanding of the irresistible gravitational pull of primal attraction. To this day, my heart beats faster when I see it.

And then a strange thing happened – I learned too much. I started reading trash; books by anyone who had ever shaken Elvis's hand. I knew I'd gone a step too far when I learned Elvis liked girls to wear big white panties and that he supposedly never slept with Priscilla again after she gave birth because of all of his mommy issues. There truly was such a thing as too much information.

I dialed back on the preoccupation and, although I will admit I really miss dreaming about Presley, these days my time is spent listening to his music and watching the occasional Elvis flick when it pops up on TV.

What's clear is that 30 years after his death, the world's obsession with Elvis only grows stronger ... and time has been kind to his memory. At his death, he was seen by many as washed up, and, as horrific as it may sound, it's a shame that he didn't die a few years earlier while still in his prime so he could be preserved as forever perfect, like James Dean. But those latter-day, unflattering Elvis images are increasingly fading into the background as fans who weren't even alive before he died discover his glory for the first time.

A Cirque du Soleil show in Las Vegas is coming in 2009 that centers on Presley's music. Also in the works are Elvis-branded casinos and hotels around the world. There's even a limited edition Reese's banana crème cup that serves as an homage to Presley's love for peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Those will all help keep the King alive for generations to come. But for me, all I've ever needed is the music.