Horror holidays: Arts editor Patrick McDonald (one of the Fat Elvises) reflects on his 1992 trip to Graceland
Thunderbolts and lightning were very, very frightening for arts editor Patrick McDonald when he visited Graceland on the 15th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death. Regrets he has.
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Elvis knew that I was in his house … and he wasn’t happy about it.
My 1992 holiday plan had started out normally enough, initially intended to be a lengthy road trip across the US and Canada but later truncated – after a family emergency – into a zigzagging highlights package of flights and cities.
Confession: At the time, some colleagues, friends and I had formed a comedy band officially titled the Enormous Las Vegas Impersonators Society (ELVIS for short) but universally referred to as the Fat Elvises. Its roster included five or six singers and musicians … and me, who possessed neither talent but was permitted to stay in the group because I made the gags, props and costumes, which consisted of ridiculously rotund white jumpsuits and preposterous quiff wigs with matching sideburns.
As a result of this, I became The Advertiser’s de facto Elvis Presley roundsman, and all manner of articles, albums and paraphernalia pertaining to the late King of Rock’n’Roll seemed to mysteriously materialise on my desk.
It didn’t matter that the whole premise of the band had been to ridicule Elvis’s bloated demise – with songs like Enormous Behinds (to the tune of Suspicious Minds) and Viva Lasagne – along with parodying the foibles of any other pop star whose hits we could satirically rewrite.
When I realised that the timing of my trip would coincide with a week of celebrations for the 15th anniversary of Elvis’s death, I set the wheels in motion to make the most out of a stop in Memphis and, of course, a visit to his home Graceland.
A call to the official Australian Elvis fan club yielded unexpected results, in the form of an interview scheduled with Todd Morgan, the then long-running director of communications for Elvis Presley Enterprises, at his office – which happened to be a room on one side of Graceland.
Better still, when I turned up at those famous gates, I was treated to a personal, one-on-one guided tour of Graceland, in between the large tourist groups which usually fill its green-shag-pile-carpeted Jungle Room and the yellow, black and mirrored TV room, where an irate Presley would literally shoot the three screens.
Unbelievably, I was also invited to attend a ceremony in the racquetball court behind Graceland – where Presley gave his last private performance only hours before his death – in which his label RCA and the Recording Industry Association of America unveiled a large glass sculpture and wall of 110 gold and platinum albums acknowledging him as the highest-selling artist of all time.
Only about 80 people from around the world were invited, and I found myself standing right alongside Elvis’s original guitarist Scotty Moore and drummer DJ Fontana – two of the three musicians (along with bassist Bill Black) seen accompanying him in all his early black-and-white TV appearances, such as on the Ed Sullivan Show.
Perhaps I had taken this impostor thing too far.
As I entered Graceland for my interview with Mr Morgan, the most incredible storm rolled over Memphis.
Heavy clouds turned the day outside almost pitch black, and torrential rain began to fall.
Minutes into our conversation, the power went out and we were plunged into darkness, occasionally illuminated only by bolts of lightning outside as tremendous thunder shook the roof and walls.
The only thing still working were the batteries in my tape recorder, so we continued to talk in the dark, in particular about Elvis’s fans.
“It’s frustrating for them and us because the news media will pick out some really bizarre character, some 300-pound guy with five acres of sideburns and no personality – of his own, that is,” Mr Morgan said, as if he had some sixth sense about my alter ego.
Elvis also must have sensed the oversized wig and trademark silver sunglasses I had brought in my bag, to take some surreptitious souvenir photographs at his grave in the grounds outside, as a particularly loud thunderclap underscored his employee’s remark.
It might also explain the ghostly figure which appears at an upstairs window – where the public were not allowed – in the photo of me standing outside Graceland wearing the aforementioned wig and glasses.
It wasn’t the only celebrity close encounter on that trip. I had a friend at the Montreal comedy festival Juste Pour Rire, or Just For Laughs, who had previously brought acts to the Adelaide Fringe and who once took the Fat Elvises to Melbourne for a gig.
That show was a story in itself: Imagine half-a-dozen full-sized men trying to don grossly inflated costumes in a narrow hallway used as a “changing room”, then trying to follow an act which ended with the previous performer dropping his pants, putting a firecracker in his backside and shooting sparks out of it across the stage to the tune of Ethel Merman singing There’s No Business Like Show Business.
Anyway, Montreal was incredible: I got to attend a press conference with US comedy icons Jerry Lewis and Lily Tomlin trading quips, found myself standing at a makeshift urinal next to UK comedian Ben Elton (who was trying out some new material at a secret pub gig), and ended up staying in the same hotel as most of the artists, which meant bumping into acquaintances from that year’s Adelaide Fringe in the elevator, such as comedian Flacco, the bizarre Tokyo Shock Boys and the original cast of Stomp.
It also meant attending a late-night drinking session in the hotel bar, chatting with a cavalcade of comedians, many of whose stars were still on the rise and – while already household names to American audiences through shows like Saturday Night Live – were still largely unknown in Australia.
The following morning, with no other plans for the day, I left the hotel to go shopping alone and see the sights of Montreal.
It was the era before mobile phones, so imagine my chagrin when I returned to my room and got a message – which I had missed by just five minutes that morning – asking if I had wanted to go white water rafting that day with a couple of comedians I’d met the night before, and who turned out to be just a couple of years away from their respective film and TV success: Adam Sandler and Drew Carey.
To this day, it is one of my great regrets – but it’s still the sort of missed opportunity that makes for a great holiday story.
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