Elvis: he's everywhere and nowhere, a mononym as familiar as Coke and a cipher as abstract as the clichés he came to (dis)embody. Both the King of Rock 'n' Roll and a costume party punchline, the man born Elvis Presley left the building an icon, his image now so ubiquitous — and for so long — that it's easy to forget how seismically his appearance ruptured the culture in the 50s.
As music critic Greil Marcus once wrote: "Elvis was not a phenomenon. He was not a craze. He was not even, or at least not only, a singer, or an artist. He was that perfect American symbol, fundamentally a mystery."
