This May Make Milli Vanilli Glad They Got Out When They Did
At Home In The World: Collected Writings From The Wall Street Journal
January 2, 1991
What really happened to Elvis Presley? Never mind that. A Los Angeles disc jockey is having enough trouble figuring out what happened to Elvis's head.
All 1,200 pounds of it, that is, made of steel, wire, fiberglass, flowers, and birdseed. The 10-foot high head rode up on Mississippi's float in last January's Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, California, alongside flowery facsimiles of fellow Mississippi muscians Tammy Wynette, Leontyne Price, and B. B. King.
Tammy, Leontyne, and B. B. were dismantled after the parade. But Elvis found his way home. Two morning disc jockeys at KLOS-FM in Los Angeles drove the head on a flatbed truck to Graceland, the late singer's mansion in Memphis, Tennesee. Elvis later turned up at a shopping mall and a restaurant in Jackson, Mississippi, then languished in a Jackson scrapyard.
Last month, the head became a hot property. The sculptors who built it offered to buy it. The Jackson Clarion-Ledger reported that KLOS wanted it for a new promotion. Graceland said it would buy the head to destroy it and thus snuff out its humorous appeak. But that offer only alerted another disc jockey - Magic Matt Alan of KIIS-FM in Los Angeles - who started phoning the Mississippi scrapyard, on the air, to inquire about the head.
The publicity-shy scrapyard isn't telling anybody if it still has Elvis, including Mr. Alan, who has offered $500 and 100 pounds of extra crispy Kentucky Fried Chicken for the King's crown. (Mr. Alan has said he wants Elvis for his yard in Encino, a Los Angeles suburb. "Encino is Elvis, and Elvis is Encino," he tells listeners.)
At last sighting, the head wasn't doing very well. "All the seeds were gone because the birds were feeding on it," says J. Malcolm White, a Jackson restauranter who baby-sat the head briefly in an abortive plan to make it an "Elvis was Irish" entry in a local St. Patrick's Day parade. "It didn't really resemble Elvis at all."
The suspicious minds at Graceland had an inkling such tomfoolery would result if it allowed an Elvis float. "I think them, 'We know from experience that if you make a 10-foot-high head of Elvis Presley, it won't disappear after the Rose Parade'," says Jack Soden, Graceland's executive director. Mr. Soden says the sponsors promised him the head would be destroyed. The state's parade committee wasn't taking any chances with rock icons yesterday. Its Tournament of Roses entry honored the International Ballet Competition.
