Harrogate Advertiser Fri 18 Aug 2000   MEET THE GREAT PRETENDER!   We've all bought our favourite band's latest album, but what makes otherwise rational people cross the boundary of 'fandom' into imitation?  Reporter Michael Upton met Elvis impersonator Alan Lunn to find out.   On Wednesday night, Alan Lunn stood in front of a mirror, gelled back his freshly-dyed black hair and prepared to imitate a legend.   For Alan, by day a music teacher, dedicates his spare time to impersonating the late, great Elvis Presley, and this week he took his tribute act back to Harrogate's Sun Pavilion in a show to raise funds for the Heartbeat 2000 campaign.   Alan, 57, has been belting out 'Jailhouse Rock' and crooning 'Always on my Mind' in the pubs and clubs of Yorkshire for almost 40 years and has now filled the Sun Pavilion three times.   His dedication to the music of the world's biggest selling solo artist began in the late 1950s, when the teenage Alan's breaking voice threatened to see him outlawed from the choir at St Mark's Church.   "It got to the stage where I couldn't fit into any vocal section.  The choirmaster took me aside and told me to go away and model my voice on someone famous.  I was already a fan of Elvis' music anyway, and when I found I could sing like him, things just took off."   Alan began performing "The King's" classics from age 15, and when he got to legal age, he took his act onto the Yorkshire circuit.   "The response to my voice has always been very positive and sometimes euphoric.  I can't remember a hostile reaction," he says.   Like all Elvis devotees, Alan was shocked by the rock'n'roll legend's untimely death in August 1977.   "I was absolutely stunned, I did a show at the Dragon pub the week he died.  There were people in tears at that show - it was a very emotional night," he recalls.   For Elvis fans, August 16 is a significant anniversary, and Alan confides that Wednesday's show was moved to that date for posterity.   In fact, yesterday was the opening day of this year's Las Vegas convention, and Alan informs me that more than 40 addicts from Harrogate, most of whom were in Wednesday's audience, would be there, jumpsuits and all.   Alan himself does not subscribe to the copying of Elvis' 70s persona, despite drawing on the singer's later work for much of his performance.   He instead prefers to emulate the star's appearance on the cover of the 'Always on my Mind' album; a stylish black shirt complemented by a dapper red scarf.   "I never looked much like Elvis and my inspiration has always been the music rather than the look.  The jumpsuit is rather clichéd these days, and I prefer to focus on the songs," he maintains.   Indeed, the former advertising executive had originally planned to take to the stage with his natural near-white hair until Rob Shaw, his accompanying guitarist, insisted darkening his locks would make the performance more authentic.   Alan revived his Elvis show in January after a gap of 15 years, before which he was a familiar face across the county.  He left a job at Barclay's Bank seven years ago to focus on the guitar and singing tuition classes he runs at his home in Forest Lane, but admits fatherhood enforced a postponement of a return to performing.   "I have passed on my love of music, as my daughter Sarah is a music teacher, and Mathew (his son) is an accomplished drummer," he says.   Cassettes of Wednesday's performance, which included a set by Shania Twain impersonator Gaynor Damari, will be winging their way across the world to Alan's own fans.   "I have friends in Canada, Chile and the USA, and all of them insist on being kept up to date.  Even so many years after his death, some people still love anything to do with Elvis," he says.   Like many fans, he has a real affection for his hero, summing up Elvis' appeal as 'the man and the music.'   "His magic was a combination of the two.  His music would not have impressed without his unique personality and vice versa.  Fame built him and then killed him, but he was an amazing figure, a hero to so many."