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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Elvis acquistion just more of selling out

David Segal The Washington Post

It’s been almost a month since Elvis Presley was acquired in a cash and stock deal valued at $100 million, and still hardly anyone seems to have noticed, let alone gotten worked up about it.

There were the obligatory mentions in the business pages. There were a few groans in the visitor forums of some Elvis Web sites. But not much more.

Sort of surprising, isn’t it? We’re talking about ownership of the pre-eminent icon of American pop culture.

A businessman named Robert Sillerman, who made a fortune buying and selling radio stations and concert venues, now owns the King and he’s going to sell him – or his likeness, anyway – in markets he calls “under-Elvised.” That means cities like Las Vegas and countries like Japan where, he says, images of Presley are surprisingly hard to find.

Sillerman has gobs to invest in all sorts of ventures, and he could slap Elvis on mugs, T-shirts and souvenir mini-bowling balls from here to Okinawa. Lots of Presley partisans will salute this international product rollout, and anything else that raises the profile of their hero (who would have turned 70 today).

But that alone doesn’t explain the silence that greeted the size of the King’s ransom. No, to understand that you need to understand this: Elvis is the greatest sellout in American history.

Not just in the history of rock and roll, mind you. He’s the greatest sellout, period. You’d be hard pressed to find someone who sold out more, sold out earlier, sold out with greater regularity.

Elvis started selling out almost as soon as he caught on and he didn’t stop until … well, he never stopped actually. Which is why the Sillerman purchase raised little fuss. It makes perfect sense in the context of Elvis’s entire life.

The classic sellout involves trading your ideals for money, which Presley did. He was a celestial, once-in-a-century talent. Nonetheless, he ended up squandering his gifts singing cheesy bossa novas, acting in lousy movies and taking the easy money.

Elvis can’t be entirely blamed – or credited, if you prefer – with his innumerable sellouts. He was needled and psychologically badgered into nearly every deal that shaped his professional life by his manager, Col. Tom Parker.

A former carny whose quick-money philosophy shadowed every dotted line that Elvis signed, Parker was notorious for two-bit schemes. He once charged admission to see a horse, billed as the world’s smallest, that was actually just a pony, buried up to his knees.

By the mid-‘60s, Elvis was basically a spectator at the revolution in pop. He spent most of his studio time on easy-listening soundtrack albums for a series of increasingly crummy films. He just couldn’t turn down a big check, even if some of those decisions were stupendously ill-advised.

In 1973, when they both were in need of a cash infusion, Elvis and Col. Parker sold to RCA the artist’s royalty rights to all of Presley’s back catalog for a measly $5 million. But for that notorious deal, the price tag on Elvis Presley Enterprises – which is the entity that Sillerman recently bought 85 percent of – would have been many times larger.

“A handful of people wrote e-mails saying the sky is falling when the (Sillerman) deal was announced,” said Jack Soden, the CEO of Elvis Presley Enterprises. “But a significant majority understand that this is a good thing. That this will allow the legacy of Elvis to grow and prosper.”

Presley was rock music’s first franchise and today he’s as close to a one-man Wal-Mart as any artist will ever get. This is his legacy to today’s performers.

Take Snoop Dogg. According to Rolling Stone magazine, the Dogg is getting paid by T-Mobile (for an ad), and Vital Toys (for an action figure), and XM Satellite Radio (for a monthly show), and Pony Sneakers (for the Doggy Biscuitz shoe line), by the makers of VSOP Passion Blend, a booze, and by the naughty lads behind “Girls Gone Wild” videos, who license his name for a “Doggy Style” line of tapes.

You hear anyone calling Snoop a sellout? Nah. He and every other platinum rapper are the true heirs to Elvis’s brand-it-now, sell-it-soon approach.

Songs beget films, films beget endorsements and endorsements beget more songs. It’s the great shameless cycle of American commerce, and proof, if any were needed, that the King is gone but he’s not forgotten.