Elvis,
One for the Money The King of Rock Sold His Soul for a Song
David
Segal, Washington Post Staff Writer, Thursday, December 30,
2004
It's
been two weeks since Elvis Presley was acquired in a cash
and stock deal valued at $100 million, and still hardly anyone
seems to have noticed, let alone gotten worked up about it.
There
were the obligatory mentions in the business pages. There
were groans in the visitor forums of some Elvis Web sites
-- "the seven deadly sins come to mind," sniped one fan. But
not much more. Sort of surprising, isn't it? We're talking
about ownership of the preeminent icon of American pop culture,
and like any icon, this one is in some important way our creation.
A
businessman named Robert Sillerman, who made a fortune buying
and selling radio stations and concert venues, now owns the
King and he's going to sell him -- or his likeness, anyway
-- in markets he calls "under-Elvised." That means cities
like Las Vegas and countries like Japan where, he said in
interviews, images of Presley are surprisingly hard to find.
Elvis Presley's manager, Col. Tom Parker, heavily influenced
his decisions, including the notoriously cheap sale of royalty
rights to his back catalogue.
Sillerman
has gobs to invest in all sorts of ventures, and he could
slap Elvis on mugs, T-shirts and souvenir mini-bowling balls
from here to Okinawa. Lots of Presley partisans will salute
this international product rollout, and anything else that
raises the profile of their hero.
But
that alone won't explain the silence that greeted the size
of the King's ransom. No, to understand that you need to know
this: Elvis is the greatest sellout in American history. Not
just in the history of rock-and-roll, mind you. He's the greatest
sellout, period. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who
sold out more, sold out earlier, sold out with greater regularity.
Elvis
started selling out almost as soon as he caught on and he
didn't stop until -- well, he never stopped actually. Which
is why the Sillerman purchase never raised anyone's dander.
It makes perfect sense in the context of Elvis's entire life.
Actually, it makes perfect sense in the context of American
history.
We've
always been a little ambivalent about selling out; we do it
more often and more grandly than any nation on Earth. The
first recorded use of the phrase, according to the Oxford
English Dictionary, referred to "the proposed sell-out of
the State of North Dakota to the infamous Louisiana Lottery
Company." We can only imagine what that must have been about.
The year was 1890.
The
classic sellout, of course, involves trading your ideals for
money, which Presley did. He was a celestial, once-in-a-century
talent. Nonetheless, he ended up squandering his gifts singing
cheesy bossa novas, acting in lousy movies and taking the
easy money. While Presley was occasionally disgusted by the
dreck he was asked to sing in the studio, and while he resented
hack scripts like "Harum Scarum," perhaps the worst of his
many movies, he was never bothered enough to make a fuss,
at least not a fuss that would improve his material. If your
only goal is to sell, quality be damned, you have lots to
sell and nothing to sell out. That's an ethos with legs, as
it happens.
If
you want to understand Snoop Dogg or 50 Cent or any number
of rap stars, you need to understand Elvis. Those guys owe
the man. Before we get to why, let's be clear that Elvis can't
be entirely blamed -- or credited, if you prefer -- with his
innumerable sellouts. Elvis was needled and psychologically
badgered into nearly every deal that shaped his professional
life by his manager, Col. Tom Parker.
A
former carny whose quick-money philosophy shadowed every dotted
line that Elvis signed, Parker was notorious for two-bit schemes.
He once charged admission to see a horse, billed as the world's
smallest, that was actually just a pony, buried up to his
knees. But leave that aside. At the time that Elvis started
selling out -- arguably when he all but gave up on rock in
the early '60s -- the idea of a rock star selling out didn't
exist.
Rock
then was just a type of music that was huge with the kids.
The expectation was that something else would replace it,
soon. Only later, when it was clear that rock wasn't going
away -- when it took on the spiritual significance of a religion
-- was the idea of "selling out" your rock-and-roll roots
even possible.
By
the mid-'60s, Elvis was basically a spectator at the revolution
in pop. He spent most of his studio time on easy-listening
soundtrack albums for a series of increasingly crummy films.
He just couldn't turn down a big check, even if some of those
decisions were stupendously ill-advised.
In
1973, when they both were in need of a cash infusion, Elvis
and Col. Parker sold to RCA the artist's royalty rights to
all of Presley's back catalogue, for a measly $5 million.
But for that notorious deal, the price tag on Elvis Presley
Enterprises, which is the entity that Sillerman recently bought
85 percent of, would have been many times larger.
"Elvis
died when he went into the Army," John Lennon said when Presley
actually expired in 1977. It's a sentiment you'll hear from
more than a few of his early and ardent fans.
But
the critics have always been outnumbered by the admirers.
They don't fret much about how Presley is merchandised. It's
one of the things that Elvis had in common with his audience.
"A handful of people wrote e-mails saying the sky is falling
when the [Sillerman] deal was announced," Jack Soden, the
CEO of Elvis Presley Enterprises, said Tuesday.
"But
a significant majority understand that this is a good thing.
That this will allow the legacy of Elvis to grow and prosper."
Presley was rock music's first franchise and today he's as
close to a one-man Wal-Mart as any artist will ever get. This
is his legacy to today's performers. Take Snoop Dogg. Right
now, according to Rolling Stone magazine, the Dogg is getting
paid by T-Mobile (for an ad) and Vital Toys (for an action
figure), and XM Satellite Radio (for a monthly show), and
Pony Sneakers (for the Doggy Biscuitz shoe line), by the makers
of VSOP Passion Blend, a booze, and by the naughty lads behind
"Girls Gone Wild" videos, who license his name for a "Doggy
Style" line of tapes.
You
hear anyone calling Snoop a sellout? Nah. He and every other
platinum rapper are the true heirs to Elvis's brand-it-now,
sell-it-soon approach. Songs beget films, films beget endorsements
and endorsements beget more songs. It's the great shameless
cycle of American commerce, and proof, if any were needed,
that the King is gone but he's not forgotten.
(Spotlight/Article,
Source: The Washington Post, 29 Dec 2004)
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