When Elvis Presley fans press singer Joe Moscheo about his days performing as back-up singer to Presley in the 1970s, Moscheo says he faces questions that go far beyond the music.
"They want to know, 'Do you think Elvis is in heaven?'" Moscheo writes in his new book, "The Gospel Side of Elvis," a reflection on Presley's roots in a high-spirited gospel tradition from his youth in Tupelo, Mississippi.
"It's so much a part of who Elvis was," Moscheo says. "So much has been written about his weaknesses, whether it's women or drugs, that it's hard to believe he had this other side."
But Moscheo, who became a member of Presley's entourage during his revived career as a live performer in Las Vegas, says many fans who make the pilgrimage to Presley's Memphis Graceland estate these days are pondering big questions.
"They're coming from around the world and it's almost like they're going to church," he said of the Elvis faithful. "It's so obsessive."
Moscheo's book -- like Elvis-themed refrigerator magnets, T-shirts, ash trays, bumper stickers and hundreds of other trinkets -- were on sale at Graceland this week as tens of thousands of devotees made the trek to Memphis to pay their respects on the 30th anniversary of Presley's death.
The solemnity and even spirituality of the event for fans set against its heavily commercial overtones for an estate that made an estimated $40 million on Presley's legacy last year makes for a jarring contrast in the eyes of some critics.
But then, contradiction was a hallmark of Presley's career in the view of many biographers.
Feared as a rebel for his hip-rolling dance moves as he touched off the rock-and-roll revolution in the late 1950s, Presley craved legitimacy. When the Junior Chamber of Commerce named him one of the outstanding young Americans of 1970, he was so proud of the honor that he carried the trophy everywhere with him everywhere on tour.
Increasingly dependent on a range of painkillers, anti-depressants and other prescription drugs, Presley famously offered to help President Nixon in the war on drugs in 1970.
