El Vez: Colorful Impersonator Gets a Big <i> Ole</i>

It’s The King--alive and slightly on tilt.

El Vez, the Mexican Elvis, wears the trademark white polyester, rhinestone-studded, flare-legged Vegas jumpsuit . . . but with a sequined Our Lady of Guadalupe stitched on the back. The perfect get-up for songs such as “You Ain’t Nothin’ but a Chihuahua” and “That’s All Right, Mamacita .”

The Elvettes, El Vez’s faithful backup singers (Priscillita, Lisa Maria, Gladyscita and Que Linda Thompson), in their petticoated skirts, off-shoulder peasant blouses, beehive hairdos and multiple tattoos bear stunning resemblance to barrio cantina waitresses. Backstage at El Vez performances, they provide their own refreshments: Sego (a favored diet drink of the ‘60s) spiked with tequila.

Blessed With More Style

Seldom has the latter-day Elvis phenomenon been blessed with more satire--or more style. On stage El Vez dares to dress in the most outrageous cultural cliches. Extravagantly embroidered boleros, sombreros dancing with ball fringe, pointed-toe boots--all musts in any fashionable amigo’s wardrobe. Offstage, without the El Vez trappings, Robert Lopez is equally colorful, preferring hand-painted ties from the ‘40s and plastic imitations of crocodile shoes. As his mother, Gina Lopez, points out: “He was always artistic. He was first on his block to have platform shoes. They were about a foot high.”

Lopez’s penchant for exaggeration has proved most effective--rarely has an artist’s career taken off so fast and frenetically.

It started last May. Lopez, 28, a veteran of respected pioneer L.A. punk rock bands and more recently the curator of La Luz de Jesus folk art gallery on Melrose Avenue--a showcase for the campy, religious art he imported from Mexico and Central America--was staging one of his monthly openings at the gallery.

His openings have gathered something of a cult following and this one was a show of 36 artists’ paintings of Elvis, his clothing and assorted, uh . . . tributes. To round out the evening, Lopez hired a mediocre Elvis impersonator and dressed up himself as Col. Tom Parker, Presley’s legendary manager.

Shortly thereafter, it struck him that he too could impersonate Elvis, but perhaps with a home-boy edge. He chose to become what he terms an Elvis “interpreter” and “cultural ambassador.”

Lopez explains that over the years he has become conscious and appreciative of his Mexican heritage. Though his grandparents were born in Mexico, Lopez remembers that he didn’t learn any Spanish until he took a few classes at his Chula Vista high school. And while he says he was never embarrassed by his ancestry, he admits to squeezing lemon on his shiny black hair to see if it would bleach in the sun, a natural result of going to school with surfers.

After the El Vez brainstorm struck, Lopez decided to break in the act right away, big time: Memphis, during Weep Week, the annual August memorial festivities at Graceland.

“I wrote the songs on the airplane and rehearsed them in my hotel room,” recalls the performer at his home in Echo Park, a veritable folk art/Elvis museum attractively cluttered with Presley memorabilia mounted, displayed and accessorized with low-rider touches such as hubcaps dotting the walls.

“I figured that if worst came to worst,” he says, “I’d just stand in front of Graceland with a ghetto blaster and do my act.”

Worst came to best. Lopez called a Memphis night spot where he knew a whole batch of Elvis impersonators would be performing. He easily impersonated a talent agent and got himself booked on the show.

Wearing gold lame pants and a giant gold sombrero, he also serenaded the crowds at Graceland and passed out fliers promoting his club gig.

“At Graceland, someone started a rumor that El Vez was the little kid who played Elvis’ sidekick in ‘Fun in Acapulco,’ ” says Jon Bok, Lopez’s roommate and a furniture artist whose work is exhibited at galleries throughout the world. “Everyone wanted to have their picture taken with him.”

As a result of his Memphis stage performance, Lopez was swiftly booked on national television on NBC’s short-lived “Too Hip for TV.” He’s also set to appear as El Vez on an upcoming “Hunter” episode and is negotiating with a major film studio about an El Vez movie.

Talk shows are starting to call. And the folks at “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” the wild-eyed, Saturday morning show for kids, have contacted Lopez about portraying a Latino character on the program.

“I was on network TV before I ever appeared in L.A.,” marvels Lopez, whose El Vez is distinctly on the thin side. He makes no attempt to get Presley’s voice down precisely and tosses folk dance moves in with the requisite pelvic gyrations--along with a few late ‘80s touches of his own.

Since last August, El Vez has performed for numerous local charity functions, including a star-studded LACE benefit at City Restaurant, where comedian Bobcat Goldthwait caught his act and invited him to open for him earlier this month at the Wiltern Theater.

At that enthusiastically received performance last Saturday, El Vez, decked out in industrial-strength mariachi duds, introduced himself as the illegitimate son of Elvis and Charo--”maybe.”

A giant sombrero descended from the stage’s rafters, which also suspended 4-foot-high sparkling gold letters spelling El Vez , and at the finale, a pinata. Appearing with the singer on the final number was a small troupe of Mexican folk dancers, who, like the Elvettes, are employees of Melrose maven Billy Shire, owner of the Soap Plant, Zulu, Wacko and La Luz de Jesus Gallery.

According to Bok, “Robert was teaching the dancers the dances while Bobcat Goldthwait was doing a sound check.”

In true El Vez spirit, the half-hour opening act was produced on what the artist calls “a cardboard-and-glitter budget,” and it had a primitive look about it. A cardboard ’58 Cadillac convertible, for instance, with a bandanna-sporting El Vez at the steering wheel, inched across the stage before he performed “En el Barrio,” to the tune of “In the Ghetto.”

For the last number--”Viva La Raza,” a flag-flashing takeoff on “Viva Las Vegas”--El Vez made his fourth and last costume change into the Vegas jumpsuit . . . right on stage. In one of the cheekiest bits of the act, members of the Elvettes held up a sheet with a throbbing strobe light behind it, enabling the audience to see shadows of El Vez’s body as he changed behind the sheet.

Que Linda Thompson (the Elvettes’ version of Presley’s last girlfriend) describes the scene on stage in terms as overstated as the black liner on her eyelids:

“We like taking off his clothes! Naked El Vez with strobe lights! I get goose bumps just thinking about it!”

Is anybody offended by all this? Lopez claims he’s received only supportive responses to his act.

Armando Duron, of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, is not surprised.

Though he hasn’t seen Lopez perform, he’s read about El Vez’s antics. And he approves: “I wasn’t personally offended. And based on what I read, I don’t think many people would be. In some sectors where people are more religious and sensitive about icons, there might be some trepidation. But in the folkloric Mexican dances, dancers wear the Virgin (Mary). . . . It’s not given the same negative connotation as wearing the flag.”

Says Joni Mabe, the Athens, Ga.-based artist who created the Traveling Elvis Museum: “I think he’s wonderful. . . . Just the way he does his name, El Vez, that’ll get you right off.”

Mabe, who met Lopez last August at Graceland, has seen a full complement of Elvis impersonators--a black Elvis, a Hindu Elvis and more. But none, apparently, with the wit of El Vez, unless it’s by accident.

“There are some who don’t intend to do it with that much humor, but it turns out that way,” she reports. “The majority are real serious.”

As for Lopez, look for him to get real serious with El Vez real soon. Already, he’s thinking about performing with a full mariachi band and dreaming about Pepe, his pet Chihuahua, becoming the next Spuds MacKenzie.

He says he wouldn’t mind having a dance troupe like Mexico City’s Ballet Folklorico in his show.

“And if money was no object,” he beams, “I’d have the Mexican Aztec pyramids behind me.”