Hundreds of personal possessions of Elvis Presley are on show in London – at a new exhibition at the O2 – including gold lame suits, gold discs, and even his gold telephone – though this is a mere taster of the tens of thousands of artefacts on display in Graceland, his Memphis home
Elvis Aaron Presley, the King of rock’n’roll, never performed in the UK. Instead, Elvis at the O2 is TCB – that’s Taking Care of Business, the Presley motto.
It’s the closest most British fans will ever get to Memphis, Tennessee, where he lived until his death in 1977. At his home in Graceland, there are tens of thousands of artefacts – from which a small selection has been shipped over to the UK. A 1957 gold lame suit is just one piece from the extended showbiz wardrobe of jumpsuits, leather outfits and increasingly bizarre costumes worn by Elvis in later years in Las Vegas; his mother’s pink Cadillac Fleetwood is a retro delight from the twenty ostentatious gas guzzlers on show in the Elvis Presley Automobile Museum – one of several buildings on the Graceland compound.
