Graceland

Written on 5/22/24

Air Products sent me to Memphis in 1975. The Tennessee EPA shut down our acetylene plant there earlier that year likely due to the steaming swamp of lime water behind the plant. Plant Manager Sam Perkins and I met with the EPA guys and they (surprisingly) approved our remediation plan on the spot. That would never happen north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

I had an unexpected four hours until my return flight. Sam said, “I know what all you Yankees want to see in Memphis. Let’s go to Graceland and see if Elvis is in town.” Sam had a shotgun mounted on a gun rack in the back of his pick-up. I couldn’t refuse.

The gates to Graceland were closed, but we could see the building (very impressive) and the semi-circular driveway with Cadillacs of every hue parked bumper-to-bumper (even more impressive). Elvis was definitely in town.

Across the street was (for lack of a better term) Elvis World including his private Boeing 707 (The Lisa Marie), a museum, movie theaters continuously showing Elvis films, and a massive Gift Shop. The hefty (for 1975) admission charge was $10. People streamed in to Elvis World from buses filling the parking lot.

Graceland was in the news yesterday. A private lending firm claimed that Lisa Marie defaulted on a $3.8 million loan with Graceland as collateral. Therefore it was now theirs and they could sell it to the highest bidder. With Lisa Marie’s death, the sole surviving Presley is granddaughter Riley Keough. Riley’s lawyers obtained a court order to stop the sale since the Presleys could not find the loan documents, never saw the $3.8 million, and the notary who “validated” the transaction claimed she never heard of it.

Besides bringing back a fun memory, the current Graceland kerfuffle strikes me as a great business opportunity. Since opening to the public in 1982, Graceland has hosted more than 20 million visitors, according to its website, and now averages more than 500,000 each year. At $10 per visitor (and you know admission is more than that today), annual revenue is $5 million. That’s a pretty decent return on a defaulted $3.8 million loan.

By Ed Dufton