Tour Graceland Via Cd-Rom

Wednesday would have been the 62nd birthday of the hip-shakin’ hound dog himself, Elvis Presley.

Thousands make the pilgrimage to Graceland, the Memphis, Tenn., monument to the life and legend of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Now, with a computer and a spare $49.99, you too can tour the King’s castle via “Virtual Graceland,” a two-disc CD-ROM loaded with tidbits like the recipe to Elvis’ favorite peanut butter and banana sandwich.

You can play a few notes of “Don’t Be Cruel” on Presley’s personal piano by using your mouse to push down on keys. You can jump over the velvet ropes and, through a technique known as “navigable movie technology,” “walk around” the Jungle Room, a testimonial to the King’s eccentric design flair. There are more than 500 things you’ll be able to find and do on the tour.

“We wanted to make it easy; we wanted to make people forget they were in front of a computer,” says Dave Antil, “Virtual Graceland’s” primary producer and project manager.

“Virtual Graceland,” three years in the making, is simple to navigate. Just point the cursor, click and tour the estate. And there are numerous features you won’t find on the regular tour. Antil says the set is the first CD-ROM about Elvis and Graceland that is officially endorsed by the Presley estate.

The CD-ROMs include almost 50 hours of interviews with many of Elvis’ friends and relatives, home movie clips and personal photos, some provided by Priscilla Presley.

Presley and her daughter, Lisa Marie, declined to be interviewed for the project, but “they both love it and think it’s great,” Antil says.

“When you’re on the regular tour, the tour guide talks about … this thing and that thing, and Elvis did this and Elvis did that, but on this disc, we actually talk to the people that did those things with Elvis,” Antil says.

“We talk to T.G. Sheppard and some other buddies who had fireworks fights in the backyard. George Klein talks about the time the back of the house burned up, and Joe Esposito, who was Elvis’ tour manager and friend, talks about one day when there was a really rare snowfall in Memphis and they ended up building a big snowman. We actually have some home video Joe took of that. You hear it right from the guys that lived this life with Elvis.”

Antil and his film crew spent more than two weeks at Graceland filming the estate and interviewing the King’s friends and relatives.

After the filming was completed, Antil and the other disc designers employed the navigable movie technology, which allows you to enter a room or other area and move through it, giving the sensation of actually walking around.

While you’re moving through the room, you can click on numerous spots or zoom in or out on certain areas.

For example, when you click on a TV in any of the rooms, video of Elvis performing appears.

In the kitchen, Joe Esposito tells the story of the first and last time Priscilla tried to cook.

Move to the pool room, take a shot on the pool table and find out who put the rip in it. Check out Elvis’ amazing automobile collection or ramble around inside his personal plane, the Lisa Marie.

“On the regular Graceland tour, there are velvet ropes in front of each room and you have to kind of bend over and look into the room while the tour guide’s talking,” Antil says.

“But we went in there and took the ropes down. We started going in the drawers, going into the cabinets. That’s the way we wanted people to experience it. We wanted them to go in, zoom in on things, zoom out, click on things and look at things deeper than you could on the actual tour.”

Also included with the set is a complete discography of Elvis’ music, including a breakdown of all his gold and platinum hits and a list of every Elvis song that made it onto Billboard’s charts.

Perhaps you want to know what year Elvis appeared in the movie “Harum Scarum.” (It’s 1965.) There’s a list of his 31 feature films.

A detailed time line also breaks down some of the King’s most important events and achievements.

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