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Elvis Presley: universal Rock Icon.

THE KING IS DEAD. Elvis Presley died, at age 42, in 1977 in Memphis. It was an ignominious tumble, off a toilet and into a pool of vomit, but it heralded perhaps the most glorious resurrection in pop culture history.

Of all of popular culture’s enduring icons—James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, the Fab Four, John Wayne, whatever—see if you know as much about their personal proclivities as you most likely know about Elvis Presley. That he fancied deep fried peanut butter and mashed banana sandwiches. That he had a penchant for firing guns at television sets if the show displeased him. That he and his mother had a secret baby-talk language that included morsels like “iddy-tream” for ice cream and “belly wash” for Pepsi. The point is only that so immense is his fame that so many of us are aware of at least some of the things even if we’re not otherwise interested in him.

Not since the days of Charlie Chaplin has any entertainer realized such worldwide fame. As an American icon—a king—Elvis saw during his life time his empire extend around the globe, until it encompassed even the most remotest regions, the most deepest and darkest continents, the most exotic peoples. At the time of his death, Elvis was the second most frequently reproduced image in the world. The first was Mickey Mouse. A survey asked Americans whose face they thought should be added to the four presidents on Mount Rushmore. John F. Kennedy came first. Elvis was second. There’s also a classroom for the budding study of Academic Elvis.

During the 1950s, America’s postwar cluster of young people was a massive force waiting to be mobilized. Seldom does an entertainer galvanize the unstated yen of an age and serve as the harbinger of the decade to come—the 1960s—as did Elvis Presley. And it is no less a testament to Elvis’ power as pop icon that in death he had a No. 1 single (a techno remixed version of 1968’s “A Little Less Conversation”) that raised the Nation’s consciousness of its most celebrated star. With the release of the song, this 1950s rock god ascended above the image of the velvet wall hanging that threatened to tarnish his image, saving him from being a fleshy emblem to aging beehives and leisure suits of a bygone age. Still, no matter how many remixed songs are churned out, Elvis remains what he was: the very first rock star. He was the very first superstar of the baby boomer era.

In a 1950s America so squire, so uptight, so repressed and so easily shocked, it was virtually inevitable—necessary one might say—that someone such as Elvis Presley would rock the boat. Elvis didn’t “invent” rock and roll, but he gave it teenage legitimacy creating the generation gap. He changed the course of popular music forever.

The writing was on the wall that change was coming when Elvis appeared on the Milton Berle show in 1956. This former truck driver sported long sideburns and an oversized zoot suit singing Hound Dog---thrusting not his pelvis, but his groin! “You-ain’-tah (groin thrust) nuth-in but a hound dog (groin thrust) crying’ all the time.” Elvis at first rocked the number, but suddenly he broke it off for a slow-downed bluesy “take this and suck it” raunchy rendition. And this is being done on National television in 1956!

The schism between parents and teenagers is now on the way. Middle aged drones are now calling him “Elvis the Pelvis.” In reply to critics who think he’s obscene, he makes a remark that will fill the fans with glee: “They’re all frustrated old types, anyway. I’m just natural.”

In a popular iconographic fashion, Elvis’ life divides into three acts, roughly divided by decades: live and swivel-hipped in the 1950s, on screen in the 1960s, sporting a rhinestone jumpsuit in Vegas in the 1970s. His truck driver to superstar to drug casualty life path adheres to the cautionary myth of the American dream. His death is what gave his myth its shape, its arc and trajectory. By the end of his days, when Elvis had withdrawn into Graceland in a suicidal pharmaceutical funk, that life had become shapeless and purposeless. But death reinstated it to a proper form, gave it a texture to be molded into iconic myth, the biggest the world as ever known. The King is dead—long live the King.

3611 Moncton Street, Richmond, BC.

Ben Yoshita grew up in a different Steveston in the 1950s and '60s. "It was way better than it is now. It was a fishing village. We had canneries here and everybody who lived here was involved in the fishing industry in some way or another." Who lives there now? "A bunch of yuppies. I don't know who they are."

Yoshita's father was a fisherman, his mother a cannery worker, interned in the B.C. Interior during the Second World War. "The village was mostly Japanese. My father was actually born here. When the war broke out my parents were shipped to the inland. After the war, I was born in Toronto. We moved back when I was one year old in 1949 or '50 when they said it was OK for the Japanese to move back to the coast."

As a teenager Yoshita fished with his father but at 19 his future was fixed when he was hired at Marine Garage. When the three owners retired in 1986 he bought the business. "We have a pretty good following of loyal customers. I have kids of my customers and grandkids of my customers. It's kind of a family thing."

Yoshita hasn't changed a thing about the Marine Garage he purchased, loving its vintage look. "Yeah, 'cause I'm an old-fashioned guy. l don't like changes. I don't even have a cellphone yet."

- Canada.com