Elvis is still in building

Humorist Dave Barry once wrote, "Eventually everybody has to die, except Elvis."

Barry was being funny, as always - but was he right?

As America marks the 30th anniversary of Elvis Presley's death this week, the singer is still very much with us. Perhaps you've seen the new commemorative DVDs of "Jailhouse Rock" and "Viva Las Vegas," or the custom-made Elvis bikes that Harley-Davidson is offering, or the Elvis banana-and-peanut-butter cups Reese's is selling. Perhaps you bought some of these things with your prepaid Elvis Visa.

Ensuring that The King stays alive is the job of Elvis Presley Enterprises, the multimillion-dollar company that handles the licensing of the singer's name, image, movies, merchandising and perhaps the most famous piece of Presleyana, the Graceland mansion in Memphis. In 2005, Presley's daughter, Lisa Marie, sold her majority ownership in the company for more than $100 million to Robert F.X. Sillerman, the billionaire media mogul. Sillerman, whose company CKX Inc., also owns the television show "American Idol," wants to turn Elvis into an even bigger brand by making massive improvements to the Graceland complex and also by exerting greater control over the Elvis image.

"His influence is increasing, not decreasing," Sillerman says of Presley. "From a simple business standpoint, it seemed to make sense."

Among Sillerman's plans for Graceland are an 80,000- square-foot visitors center, plus additional hotels and nightlife offerings that he hopes will keep tourists on the grounds longer than the usual day-trip. "We're not touching the mansion," Sillerman notes. "That is sacrosanct."

What isn't off-limits, however, are the various small businessmen who have, in their own way, been keeping Presley's legacy alive. Sillerman has already announced plans to close two independent shops near Graceland and a museum in Las Vegas to make room for official Elvis Presley Enterprises establishments. (Cirque du Soleil is reportedly working on an Elvis-themed show at the Las Vegas MGM Mirage.)

Even Elvis impersonators began to fear a crackdown from Sillerman after he appeared on MSNBC's "Countdown" last year and announced he wanted to license impersonators, which the company likes to call "Elvis tribute artists." Sillerman has since stated that he won't persecute "unofficial" Elvises. "It's not clear that they're not infringing on the likeness, but that's fine," Sillerman says. "It perpetuates the image."

King of dead celebrities

In the pantheon of dead celebrities, Elvis is undeniably a king. Born Jan. 8, 1935, in East Tupelo, Miss., Presley became the world's first true rock and roll star. Described by Sun Records owner Sam Phillips as "a white man with the Negro sound and the Negro feel," Presley established a race-based blueprint for rock music that would last for generations. Dreamily handsome but with the rough edges of a working-class boy, he injected a startling sexual energy and sense of rebellion into his music. Eventually he evolved (some would say disintegrated) into a flashy, fleshy, Las Vegas showman. But even in this incarnation Presley defined a certain aspect of American culture.

Thanks in part to his infamously shrewd manager, Colonel Tom Parker, Presley also became one of the first mass-marketed superstars, lending his name to nearly every kind of object from lipstick to luggage to automobiles. In addition to his music, Presley made more than 30 feature films, several television specials and concert films. When he died at Graceland on Aug. 16, 1977 (of heart failure, possibly caused by prescription drug abuse), he left an imprint on the world that's still difficult to measure.

But is that imprint fading? Even with Sillerman's strict oversight, Elvis faces some challenges in the years ahead. The rock memorabilia business has in recent years taken a hit thanks to eBay, which is making once-rare items seem common. Presley's music has historically sold well posthumously, but overall CD sales have dropped 25 percent since 2000, a trend that doesn't bode well for the future. And although Sillerman says 40 percent of Graceland visitors are younger than 35 (and unaccompanied by parents), there is no question that Presley's original fans are getting older.

"I do believe it's only going to get harder and harder going forward," says Jeffrey Lotman, CEO of Global Icons, a Los Angeles-based licensing firm that once specialized in dead celebrities but has been phasing them out in favor of more dependable corporate clients such as Chevron and Hershey's. Though he still handles a handful of past stars, including Marlene Dietrich and Bing Crosby, "About five years ago we decided to bury the dead," Lotman says.

Making Elvis relevant

It's difficult to make someone like Presley, who's been dead for 30 years, relevant to a generation that's in thrall to video games, cell phones and MP3s, Lotman said. You can put his music on kiddie-film soundtracks, as Disney did with the animated "Lilo and Stitch," but "can you really youthify him permanently?" Lotman asks skeptically. "Is that going to happen with ringtones? Or cute little animated cell phones?"

Even among those who collect old-fashioned memorabilia such as posters and autographs, the market seems to be somewhat down. Marc Zakarin, president of the Huntington-based memorabilia house It's Only Rock and Roll, says prices on many items were higher in the "pre-Bay" era, as he called it.

"A guy like me would travel around the country finding this stuff," Zakarin explains. "I'd buy a box of Elvis perfume and sell it for 500 bucks." The items were fairly common, Zakarin admits, but as eBay gained prominence, "all these people who thought these things were special began to communicate."

Still, he notes, Presley continues to fetch some of the highest prices in the business, just under the Beatles. Even the little gold necklaces that the singer handed out willy-nilly to fans ("TCB," or "Taking Care of Business," for the guys, and "TLC," or "Tender Loving Care," for the girls) still go for about $3,000 apiece, Zakarin says.

There's no doubt that Presley fans have an insatiable appetite for anything related to their idol. Several years ago, when Warner Home Video was about to reissue the 1970 concert film "Elvis: That's the Way It Is," the company discovered several minutes of outtake footage of Presley rehearsing the song "Bridge Over Troubled Water." George Feltenstein, a senior vice president at Warner Home Video, decided to include the footage, but he left out the actual performance of the song, which he thought redundant. Fans, however, thought otherwise.

"We heard from fans that they missed seeing that," he says. "No matter what you do, it's never enough." Warner this month released the film in a two-disc set featuring the "Special Edition" with the outtake footage and the original version with the performance.

Presley's music, too, continues to sell respectably. According to Nielsen SoundScan, the deceased singer sold 410,000 copies of the holiday album "White Christmas" in 2000 and about 900,000 of "Second to None" in 2003. Even his 2004 gospel album, "Ultimate Gospel," racked up 350,000. Most remarkably, the 2002 collection "30 #1 Hits" sold a whopping 4 million copies.

Clearly, the singer's allure "hasn't faded at all," says Ed Christman, retail reporter at Billboard magazine in New York. When it comes to greatest hits packages, he adds, "If you hit the 100,000 unit mark in terms of sales, you're doing your job."

Sillerman expresses no doubts that Presley will live on for many years. He cited two famous quotes: One was Leonard Bernstein's declaration that "Elvis Presley is the greatest cultural force in the 20th century," and the other was John Lennon's rather biblical proclamation, "Before Elvis there was nothing."

If Dave Barry was wrong about Presley, and the singer does indeed have to die, he's had a longer life than most.

BY RAFER GUZMÁN