Elvis and Michael

The young Elvis Presley gave the illusion, most clearly in 1957's "Jailhouse Rock," he could move his legs in two directions at the same time, which pretty much says it about Michael Jackson's moonwalk.

Thus, Elvis was the young Michael Jackson's role model. Neither man could sit still, while singing a song, and both men knew how to move it. They knew that moving was part of singing, at least the way they sang. More importantly, they knew, or learned, that's what their fans wanted. He's got a great voice, a powerful, sexy, voice, but an Elvis fan can't watch "Jailhouse Rock" without being moved, powerfully, by how the man is moving. By then, the movements were not spontaneous, but choreographed, and much deeper, sensually, than Elvis might have managed by himself. The movement was that important.

A Michael Jackson fan can't watch "Thriller" without wanting to move like the man, whose moves, if they originated with Elvis, were different from the King's because they were not only choreographed, but tightly choreographed. The step Elvis created was compared to a dead man walking. By Michael Jackson's time, he looked like a robot responding to a remote.

Did Michael take off on Elvis? I think so. Michael was the black Elvis. I have heard several commentators compare Elvis and Michael as being "unique," and I think that is right. The only difference is, Elvis, the King of Rock and Roll, came first. Michael may have liked to be the King of Rock and Roll, but that was already taken. So he became the King of Pop. He couldn't be "Michael the Pelvis," so instead he grabbed his crotch. Elvis had Graceland, Michael had Neverland. He COULD wear outlandish performing outfits, and he wore them a lot better than Elvis could, strapped into his white flight suits. And, of course, Michael married Elvis Presley's daughter.

Their lives - brilliance decaying into the bizarre - and deaths were eerily the same – cardiac arrest bringing down dissipated bodies in the early afternoon, at far too young an age – but Michael's death didn't rock me, the way Elvis's did, because I was an Elvis fan, and only a Michael observer. Fans attach, physically and emotionally, to their stars. In media literacy studies, we call it the "proximity value." There is a direct connection between what the star is doing and how the fan is reacting. That's physical closeness. Emotionally, the fan wants to be like the star. I wish I looked like that. I wish I could sing like that. I wish I could move my legs like that. I wish I was rich and famous like that. I'll buy stuff that will make me feel closer to him.

Michael's fans are shocked today, and every Elvis fan knows how they feel. It was early afternoon in The San Diego Union newsroom when news of Elvis's death arrived, on Tuesday, Aug. 16, 1977. Denise Carabet, an erudite, worldly, brilliant, business world expert and financial writer, came back from lunch with her mouth open a foot. Elvis never had a bigger fan than Denise, or me. Getting out the Wednesday paper that day was an exercise in professionalism for many of us.

Elvis had long since become a blubbery caricature, but he had long since given me what I wanted. I had those 1954-57 years, and when Elvis came back from the Army in 1960 and started singing pop songs and making snoozer movies, I more or less left him behind. It wasn't fair. But fans are rarely fair with their stars. I will take his Sun Studios songs with me to my grave, and when he died at 42, I discovered, angrily, that I had wanted him to live up to that immortality. Not for his sake (though that would have been nice) but for mine.