Here's a post I wrote on The King* back in 2004, when this blog was only four days old.

* That post is one of the most heavily trafficked in the history of this blog (as of Wednesday, it was number 6 for August. That has to be search traffic and external referrals). If you do an Elvis Death Day search on Google, it currently comes up number one. But no one has ever left a comment on it. And to that, I find myself asking, WTFF?

I'll post some other 30th anniversary stuff when the morning comes.

Update

Here's a look at some of the fans attending the Wednesday night vigil:

(I borrowed that image from this BBC photo gallery)

The best that could be said about them is they're a fairly ordinary-looking bunch. But to Elvis, I don't think that would have mattered. If you were his fan, he loved you unconditionally.

In that sense, you could liken Elvis to God. I remember some lunchtime conversations with my Regina Leader-Post colleagues in the late 1980s/early 1990s when "Elvis is alive!" tabloid fodder was at its peak. At least one person mentioned that some thought the mania over Presley showed overtones of the birth of a new religion! :)

Here's Mike Nizza, writing in that always-excellent NYT blog The Lede:

If scientists somehow proved that there was absolutely nothing more to say about Elvis Presley, it wouldn’t matter a bit. Just one look at the Elvis Sighting Bulletin Board proves that point: News is being generated beyond all reason. Of course, Elvis worship is not about reason; it’s about love. And in the year 2007, that love is being spread in the great snow globe that is the Web. And yes, it’s all shook up today, the 30th anniversary of his death.

What Nizza doesn't note is the love Presley directed back towards his fans. The Memphis Commercial Appeal didn't miss it:

"It all comes down to Elvis' relationship with the fans," said Jack Soden, president of Elvis Presley Enterprises on the lawn of Graceland Mansion. "Elvis connects with people in a very personal and emotional way. It shows that his legacy still has momentum. I'm not going to say we're surprised by the turnout, but it certainly has blown us away by every measure."

In the outstanding biography Last Train to Memphis,  Peter Guralnick wrote that when Elvis was back home in Memphis in the 1950s, he's spend two hours a day happily signing autographs -- although strangely, in retrospect, Guralnick doesn't have a 'fans' category in his index for that book. In the companion volume Careless Love, Guralnick extensively indexes his fan references. Here's a passage of Elvis talking about his relationship with his fans in a 1956 interview with reporter Lloyd Shearer of Parade magazine:

"I don't assume the attitude of, 'Get these people out of here,' like I have heard of being done. I don't just sign the autographs and pictures and so forth to help my popularity or to make them like me. I do it because they're sincere, and if you don't do it, you hurt their feelings. Once you get involved in this business, your life is not your own, really, because people are going to want to know what you're doing, where you are, what you eat -- and you have to consider that these people are sincere."

In the mid-1960s, Elvis's career was in a bit of a trough (not coincidentally, the Beatles were at their peak) and he was starting to be seen as a recluse. In one interview about the time he turned 30, he told a journalist that "I certainly haven't lost respect for my fans ... I withdraw not from my fans but from myself."

While travelling to Los Angeles around that time, Presley saw Joseph Stalin's face in a cloud, then saw it morph turn into Jesus's mug -- something Elvis, on a spiritual kick, believed to be a sign from God. He had the bus stopped and ran out into the desert.

He told his spiritual adviser Larry Geller: "Can you imagine what the fans would think if they saw me like this?"

Geller: "They'd only love you all the more."

Presley: "Yeah, well I hope that's true."

Clearly they still loved him when he was much more messed up than that.

When one Indian yogi told Presley to reserve a half-hour per day for his soul, she said Elvis told her, "He was very much pulled toward his following, he wished to please them, they gave him love."

When Presley started his run in Las Vegas in 1970, Guralnick wrote of him:

"Elvis always retained the deepest respect for his fans. He genuinely loved his audience in a way that it's difficult to imagine (Dean) Martin or (Frank) Sinatra even contemplating, but there was no question that he felt he was letting them in for a treat if he allowed them to see him as he really was, unbuttoned if not altogether unvarnished."

Here's Elvis in a 1973 performance in Hawaii singing Suspicious Minds:

Towards the end, Elvis makes a self-deprecating crack about how "I'm caught in a trap/I can't walk out/I hope this suit/don't tear up, baby" when he went down into an extended-leg crouch. His audience forgave him. And if you watch, he bestowed benediction on a number of ladies. To me, Elvis's decline as a vocalist and performer is notable in this video, but if you look at the comments on YouTube, people are rapturous about this performance. Love means forgiveness and acceptance.

To me, that love thing -- from Elvis to the fans and back again -- remains the best explanation as to why up to 50,000 of them (the Memphis Commercial Appeal's estimate) gathered last night to mark the 30th anniversary of his unquestionably undignified death when other high-wattage, charismatic entertainment talents see the 30th anniversaries of their leaving the building (so to speak) go relatively unnoticed.

Thank you for reading to the very end. Thank you very much. I really love you for it.

Addendum

Check out this companion post -- 'Elvis is dead' -- The Forgotten Rebels' take

And here's some footage of Elvis leaving the building. This take was reportedly his last public performance.