The Elvis wars

The 25th anniversary of Elvis Presley's death is only three months away and the battle to cash in on his legacy is growing fiercer by the day. Andrew Buncombe reports from Memphis

Above the meadows that the King once called his own, the rainclouds have darkened the sky and the downpour is approaching Biblical proportions. Puddles form on the gravel driveway where the King once trod, water besieges the roof of the small, wooden house where the King once lived.

This old ranch house in northern Mississippi, close to the state line with Tennessee, is now a flower shop. Debbie Henson sells blooms and bunches to excited brides-to-be and to high-school girls preparing for their prom celebrations. Elsewhere there are funeral wreaths and cards and bunches of lilies. The air is sweet and fragrant. Outside, a sign next to the road says: "The Flower Patch – Shop in Elvis' Honeymoon Cottage".

"Most of the things are the same as when Elvis was here," says Mrs Henson, friendly and welcoming and pleased to grant a dampened visitor a guided tour of the white-painted ranch building. "This carpet was here when Elvis was here. The floor and the woodwork are the original. Everything really – except for the bathroom."

Elvis himself has, of course, long since left the building. This summer, on 16 August, it will have been 25 years since the world's most famous pop star suffered a massive heart attack and fell unconscious on to the floor of the lavatory at the racquet-ball room of his Graceland mansion. His puffy, drug-corrupted body – which by then had ballooned to nearly 18 stone – was rushed to Memphis's Baptist Memorial Hospital, where it was announced that the King was dead. Were he alive today, Elvis would be 67.

But although Elvis might be dead – despite reports to the contrary from people who have seen him serving in chippies in Doncaster, square-dancing by himself at the Clinton County Fair in Oregon or, most recently, buying two chicken mega-buckets at KFC in Glasgow while cunningly disguised as a business development manager for an international finance company – his legacy is emphatically not. This anniversary year, in addition to all the existing commercial exploitation of his memory, Elvis will feature on the soundtrack to a new Walt Disney cartoon; there will be new albums released; special Elvis furniture will fill certain stores in the US; and, without a trace of irony, McDonald's – that sanctuary of good taste and nutritional propriety – will offer special Elvis-themed meals.

By far the biggest venture, however, is being planned for these wet, gently sloping fields here at Hornlake, about 10 miles south of Memphis. Elvis bought the so-called Circle G Ranch in March 1967, paying $437,000 (about £1.6m in today's money) for the 160 acres, as a place to keep his horses. Legend has it that the day Elvis married the 21-year-old New York beauty Priscilla Beaulieu, he was so concerned about a horse that was about to foal that he insisted he and his new bride spend their first married night together at the ranch. (Is it any wonder that collections of Elvis's love songs still sell so well?)

But the folksy charms of Mrs Henson's fragrant flower shop where the King and his Queen once lay together may not survive much longer. Under a $500m plan put forward by JD Stacy, a 72-year-old tycoon and property developer from Atlanta, Georgia, the Circle G Ranch is to be transformed into an Elvis theme park and convention centre that will feature an 18-hole golf course, holiday homes, luxury apartments and a museum featuring the world's largest collection of Elvis memorabilia.

Elsewhere there will be restaurants, three chapels, a cinema and scale-recreations of the White House and Graceland. Fans will also be able to croon in a special studio and make their own recordings – in much the same way as Elvis did when he paid just $4 to record My Happiness at the Sun Records studios in 1953. Stacy, a colourful character who made his money in gold and diamond mining before enjoying a tumultuous career running Nascar motor racing teams, believes that it will lure up to 3 million visitors a year.

"We're looking forward to building a premier resort destination that Elvis fans and visitors will enjoy coming to year after year," boasts Stacy, who in 1983 achieved the unusual distinction of owning seven different cars taking part in a single Nascar race. "We expect to have 75,000 visitors a day."

It is a huge plan and it is creating a huge row. The local Chamber of Commerce has enthusiastically welcomed the proposals – heartened by the prospect of new employment in an area where good jobs are hard to find. Don Wilkinson, the Chamber's executive director, says: "It is the biggest thing to hit Mississippi since [the] Nissan [car plant, in neighbouring Madison County]. I think it's even bigger than Nissan, because the car plant won't pay taxes for years and years. These people will be paying taxes immediately on completion."

But there are some who are not so delighted. Because, of course, Stacy is not the first person to have thought of founding a tourist attraction on Elvis's memory. Just 10 miles down the road are the great, gaudy gates of Graceland, the world's best-known – and, probably, most lucrative – pop-pilgrimage destination. And those who rule Graceland are far from happy at the prospect of a rival setting up shop next door.

Leading the opposition are those courtiers who were closest to the King – his daughter, Lisa Marie, his ex-wife, Priscilla, and the Elvis Presley estate. It is tempting to suggest that the row has got everybody all shook up. In reality things are much more serious than that. It has now got to the point where Elvis's estate has threatened Stacy and the theme-park developers with legal action should they use the name Elvis Presley in any form.

"It's not petty," insists Todd Morgan, the director of media and creative development for Elvis Presley Enterprises (EPE), which is effectively Elvis's estate and whose board is chaired by the King's daughter, Lisa Marie. "Elvis Presley is a trademark ... and for people to go around using the Elvis Presley name is violation of the trademark."

Morgan adds: "We can [all] run out on the front porch and shout 'Elvis, Elvis', but to develop a commercial venture, to do it to raise money is different. [The name] is the basis of everything we have. Elvis banked his own creativity as a business venture. He chose that ... and it is his legacy."

In Memphis one hears a lot of talk of Elvis's legacy, about how his memory must be preserved, how his memory must somehow not be cheapened. Just a couple of weeks ago, one woman preparing for a tour of Graceland was overheard telling a couple of fellow tourists in no uncertain manner that the King would not have welcomed tourists at the palace. "Elvis wouldn't have wanted this," she said, half-way through a breakfast waffle. "He wouldn't have wanted his house opened up."

Maybe. Maybe not. It is hardly the point. And despite everything you hear about preserving the legacy of Elvis or his memory or his music or his unquestioned place in rock'n'roll history, one doesn't need to be in town too long to guess that this row is really all about money. There are those who want to use Elvis's name to make money and there are those who are already using Elvis's name to make money and want to keep doing so.

The focus of the existing money-making operation is a Thirties farmhouse set upon a small hill overlooking what was originally Highway 51, but has since been renamed Elvis Presley Boulevard. The farmhouse was built by a family called Moore and named after an Aunt Grace. When Elvis, aged 22, paid cash for the building and the land in 1957, he saw no reason to change its name. It will forever be Graceland.

Graceland was opened to the public almost five years after Elvis's death, on 7 June 1982. Some 300,000 people visited that first year. By the mid-Nineties, this figure had risen to around 750,000; and, even today, there are still around 600,000 people each year who make the journey, paying $16 (about £11) for the basic tour of the house where Elvis spent most of his life, where he played and fooled around with his friends, where he recorded a number of songs and where he was to die that August morning. Graceland isn't America's most popular tourist destination – almost twice as many people visit George Washington's mansion, Mount Vernon, near the nation's capital – but, after the White House, is it probably America's most famous home.

And going to Graceland is not like visiting any other historic monument. For many, if not most, of the visitors, a trip to the King's mansion contains a degree of ritualism. It is part tourism, part rock'n'roll hajj. f "I just wanted to come here and see it. You hear so much about it," said Kathryn Edwards, 36, from Cardiff, who was visiting recently with her mother, Margaret. "He has become a legend ... the fact that he died so young. The older you get, the more the legend fades."

But take a trip inside Graceland and you realise that there are those determined to ensure the legend will never fade. "Welcome to my world," croons the King himself through the guided-tour headset as you enter the Graceland driveway. Throughout the hour or so it takes to wander through the surprisingly small house, recordings of Elvis and his daughter are included as part of the audio guide. The mood throughout is one of reverence.

Yet a visit to Graceland is, in truth, wonderful. From a purely historic perspective it is interesting to see décor and fittings that, in the Sixties and early Seventies must have seemed outlandish and cutting-edge – green, deep-pile carpet fixed to the ceiling, a 20ft white sofa, three televisions fitted next to each other (apparently so that Elvis, like President Lyndon Johnson, could watch all three major network news broadcasts simultaneously).

Today, of course, it all feels terribly dated – like walking through an old second-hand shop. Indeed, despite Elvis's soothing voice in your ears, and the photographs all around of him as a vigorous young man (contrasting so sharply with those of him in his bloated final days, his wasted eyes made heavy by prescription drugs), it is all rather melancholy. Around the gravesite, where Elvis lies next to the bodies of his parents, visitors shuffle past quietly, snapping the occasional photograph, reading the tributes left by fans from around the world. "God sent a special angel, rich in love," begins a handwritten poem left by a Debbie Joy, from Sidcup in Kent.

Melancholy or not, the fans lap this up – and more besides. Get off the tour bus that ferries you the short distance between Graceland and the tour car park and you will be offered a photograph snapped of you by a "courtesy photographer" standing in front of a mock-up of the Graceland gates before you climbed on to the bus. Most people seem to take up this offer of being framed forever in front of those famous, albeit fake, gates.

Likewise, who can resist dropping into the Chrome Grille, Rockabilly's Diner or the Shake, Split & Dip – all located within the so-called Graceland Plaza – and emulating Elvis by wolfing down some southern cooking, fries, burgers or ice-cream? And a trip to Graceland would not be the same, would it, without stopping off at Good Rockin' Tonight – a delightful store full of tasteful souvenirs such as Elvis-style sunglasses, glasses, posters, cards, CDs, videos, fridge magnets and endless other tat.

And where do dutiful Elvis pilgrims go to lay their weary heads? Where else but the nearby Elvis Presley's Heartbreak Hotel, located just a few yards from the plaza? The bellhop's tears may not keep flowing and the desk clerk may or may not be dressed in black, but Elvis's hits are played constantly over the hotel's loudspeaker system, and one or other of the 31 films in which he starred are constantly available on the in-house entertainment system. Channel-surfing in your room, it can be disconcerting to switch so rapidly from a young Elvis Presley starring as a courageous boxer in Kid Galahad (United Artists, 1962) to a slighter younger Elvis Presley starring as a charming travel agent in Blue Hawaii (Paramount, 1961) and then to an up-to-date news report on the besieged Church of Nativity in Bethlehem (CNN, 2002). What would Elvis, or indeed President Johnson, have made of such variety?

All these attractions – Graceland itself, the burger bar, the souvenir stores, the ice-cream parlour, the downtown Memphis bar at Beale Street where you can play on Elvis's pool table – are, of course, operated and owned by Elvis's estate. Quite how much the estate earns from them is a matter for speculation: as a private company, EPE refuses to reveal its profits. But informed opinion has estimated its annual turnover at up to $75m, while the value of the estate is thought to have risen from less than $5m at the time of Elvis's death to more than $125m today. And the estate is determined to protect the source of what must be a very steady income – even if it means warning off rival operations with legal action.

It may be that the estate is feeling a little threatened. For the first time since Elvis's death, questions have started to be asked about the drawing power of Graceland: last year visitor numbers were down, to below 600,000, and EPE laid off 15 per cent of its 350 or so permanent staff. Is the lustre finally beginning to fade?

EPE denies this adamantly. The slight downturn, it says, was the result of the recession and the terror attacks of 11 September last year, which affected all tourist attractions across the country. It says that this anniversary year is going to be bigger than ever and that it is expecting visitor numbers to swell. "Elvis's popularity is at an all-time high. Half of the visitors we get are under 35 years old," says Morgan. "The point we are trying to make is that Elvis has always [been embraced] by a new generation and we have ... always realised that has a lot to do with the future."

It would be hard to argue with Morgan about the number of young people visiting. On a recent visit, those paying homage to the King seemed split more or less evenly between those aged 35 or more and those younger. Plenty of those browsing through the souvenir shops afterwards would not even have been born when Elvis died. "He is still big in Australia," said Angela Moroney, 24, a backpacker from Perth, visiting with her friend Jane Lawson, 26. "He is still looked on as a legend. You just hear so much about him, you want to see where he lived."

JD Stacy's reasoning – that you might as well see where his horses lived as well – may or may not find favour with the punters, but it shows no sign at all of finding favour with the Elvis estate. On the contrary, the row – between EPE on one side and JD Stacy and his EPR Enterprises on the other – rumbles more noisily by the day. Last month, the Circle G project overcame objections about potential traffic congestion to obtain the necessary planning permission from the DeSoto County Planning Commission. Now the dispute is focusing on the new project's name. The developers plan to call their attraction "The Circle G Resort: Home of the Elvis Presley Ranch". It's hardly the snappiest name, but that hasn't made it any more popular with EPE's lawyers.

As Jack Soden, president of Elvis Presley Enterprises, puts it: "If [Stacy] thinks he's entitled to exploit a trademarked, copyrighted name just because Elvis Presley owned that farm for a short period of time, [that] is a shaky legal situation."

But Stacy's team is convinced it has the law on its side. "We had a meeting with the EPE people and we understand our rights," says the company's president, Paul D'Agnese. "We have some of the best intellectual property rights lawyers on the team. We know our rights."

D'Agnese insists that everyone will benefit from the project – his company, local people, the wider regional economy and, of course, the fans of Elvis who are looking for something in addition to the Graceland experience. "Our goal is to be a first-class resort for visitors from all over the world," he says. "Everyone will benefit from our plans. It will create jobs, not to mention that we are only 15 miles from Tunica, which is the third biggest casino town in the US. We are going to get a lot of golfers coming in here."

People living close to the site at Hornlake are somewhat more sceptical. While most welcome the prospect of additional jobs, there are also concerns about the noise and disruption to their quiet community that would ensue if the project goes ahead. "I think most people think it is a good thing. People are talking about it," says Samed Khdair, who runs a fuel station at the crossroads close to the ranch. "In this area there are not a lot of jobs. It's either Memphis or Tunica."

D'Agnese has no doubts whatsoever. Having obtained planning permission, his company now intends to hold its ground-breaking ceremony at the site this summer. With no small degree of symbolism, the developers have chosen the morning of 16 August. The King is dead, long live the King.