Elvis Presley would have been the first to laugh at the mad, godlike status he attained after death, but he would have surely identified with the human, gospel-haunted need such adoration rises out of. He shared that need, and courted it. He could si ng and move with a spellbinding violence and grace. Yet his nature was also marked by a startling passivityan eerily contented lack of ambition at his essence that kept him from growing after his first fiery years of success. That early fire still b urns, nevertheless, and his mythical figure remains an omnipresent fixture today.