In Elvis Presley's penultimate drama, Change of Habit, he plays a young doctor working in a ghetto clinic, a sort of urban Albert Schweitzer. A trio of nuns led by Mary Tyler Moore, working without their habits, are sent to aid him. Moore and Elvis fall in love. Shaken, Mary returns to the convent, questioning her commitment so the church. But one day she is summoned to the chapel. Elvis stands at the altar, looking radiant. He is singing a hymn. The camera follows her eyes from Presley's face to Christ's on the cross, back and forth. In the final scene of the film, we see Mary's face. It looks perplexed. For her, there seems to be no difference between these two men.

This is the most supremely arrogant moment in recent cultural history, surpassing even John Lennon's "We're bigger than Jesus" wisecrack. For Elvis moved beyond making a statement to a practical demonstration; in our eyes, there isn't much difference, either. And unless you understand that Elvis Presley was more than anything a spiritual leader of our generation -- there is really no way to assess his importance, much less the meaning of the music he created.

Listen to his best songs: there is no mistaking it. Uniting opposites, of course, is the essence of religion, and Elvis did that in the most banal, pragmatic and cosmic ways: he obliterated distinctions between musical forms, between races (for a moment at least) and even between good and bad. Many singers of our era might have recorded bits of deviltry like "One Night" and "All Shook Up." No one else could also have made a hymn like "Crying in the Chapel" a convincing hit. It would have occurred to no one else to try to span the gulf between those songs.

[From Issue 248 — September 22, 1977]

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