When I’m visiting the former homes of famous people – most recently people like Ernest Hemingway, Lyndon Johnson and Elvis Presley – I find myself most fascinated with their kitchens…and never more so than with the kitchen in Elvis’ Graceland mansion.
Hemingway didn’t cook much, and neither did Johnson nor Elvis, for that matter, but for The King, food was particularly important. The annals of culinary history are rich with stories of Presley’s predilection for over-the-top dining adventures, like the time he and his entourage flew, on the spur of the moment, to Denver to eat a number of Fool’s Gold Loaves: sourdough bread, hallowed out and stuffed with peanut butter, blueberry jam and a pound of bacon. Or the spread he loved of burnt bacon (are you seeing a theme?), mayonnaise, black olives and pecans. Or the sandwiches of jelly, heavy cream, Granny Smith apples and… (wait for it) bacon.
The case could be made, of course, that this excessive diet, so frequently including large quantities of pork belly, was a contributing factor in Presley’s physical decline. Perhaps it was, but it’s also emblematic of a guy who seemed to have everything but never, apparently, enough.
Like Graceland itself, Elvis’ kitchen is not fancy, not “rich,” but rather surprisingly human-sized. The cabinetry, appliances, and ceiling fixtures are all very, very…upper middle-class. Nice, but not world-class, very functional, workmanlike and, most importantly, relatable. That relatability is one of the reasons why I think Presley is still so popular: he is hailed as the King, a demi-god, yet he liked to goof around with his buddies, had human failings and ate very simple, un-fancy foods. He was a man of the people, and he never seemed to lose touch with his audience; he was a “working class hero” in a way John Lennon could never have hoped to be. Many of his fans, I believe, were able to relate to and understand his weaknesses while at the same time they aspired to the heights this country boy was able to reach.
Presley used his wealth to buy fun stuff: cadillacs for new girlfriends, airplanes, “cool” jump suits. He had one of the very first microwave ovens available anywhere: he wanted everything fast. The microwave is still there, beneath the fake Tiffany lamps, next to the 70s’ issue avocado green coffee urn, all so very normal.
You could imagine Presley wandering down the staircase from the second floor, late at night/very early in the morning, gold jewelry perhaps jingling, dyed-black hair tussled, looking for a snack by the light of the refrigerator.
Getting that sense of the person who lived there is what I liked most about Presley’s kitchen in particular and his Graceland in general. It’s a thoroughly lived-in shrine to a man who perhaps more than any other popularized the most popular musical form on the planet. At the end of the day, he was just a guy who had a hunger that was probably never satisfied…and a guy who really, really liked bacon.
