7 Elvis Presley 7records for the size of the audiences. Even his films, a few
slight vehicles, were box office smashes.
Presley became the teen idol of his decade, greeted
everywhere by screaming hordes of young women, and,
when it was announced in early 1958 that he had been
drafted and would enter the U.S. Army, there was that
rarest of all pop culture events, a moment of true grief.
More important, he served as the great cultural catalyst of
his period. Elvis projected a mixed vision of humility
and self-confidence, of intense commitment and comic
disbelief in his ability to create frenzy. He inspired literally
thousands of musicians—initially those more or less like-
minded Southerners, from Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins
on down, who were the first generation of rockabillies,
and, later, people who had far different combinations of
musical and cultural influences and ambitions. From John
Lennon to Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan to Prince, it was
impossible to think of a rock star of any importance who
did not owe an explicit debt to Presley.
Beyond even that, Presley inspired his audience. “It
was like he whispered his dream in all our ears and then
we dreamed it,” said Springsteen at the time of Presley’s
death. You did not have to want to be a rock and roll star
or even a musician to want to be like Elvis—which meant,
ultimately, to be free and uninhibited and yet still a part
of the everyday. Literally millions of people—an entire
generation or two—defined their sense of personal style
and ambition in terms that Elvis first personified.
As a result, he was anything but universally adored.
Those who did not worship him found him despicable (no
one found him ignorable). Preachers and pundits declared
him an anathema, his Pentecostally derived hip-swinging
stage style and breathy vocal asides obscene. Racists
denounced him for mingling black music with white (and
Presley was always scrupulous in crediting his black