If Elvis Were Still Alive, What Would His Comeback Be Worth? Billions, Ma'am. Thankyuhvuhrrymuch.

Imagine you are a power broker in the pop world and you've just gotten a phone call from an old friend whom you trust implicitly - Sam Phillips, the record producer who discovered Elvis Presley and always remained his confidant.

"You know, I was just thinking: If people will pay millions to see a boxing match on pay-per-view, what would they pay to see Elvis if it turned out he were still alive and in great shape?" Phillips asks from Memphis, where he still lives.

"Oh, I don't know, Sam. Billions?"

"Well son, get your checkbook ready," Phillips replies in a voice that tells you he's dead serious. " 'Cause Elvis is back in the building."

That's the challenge we posed to more than a dozen of the most successful figures in the pop world - managers, record executives, attorneys, agents, concert promoters and publicists whose client lists range from Madonna and Michael Jackson to U2 and the Eagles.

The panel was told not to worry about what Elvis has been doing all these years or how he managed to fake his death on Aug. 16, 1977. We just wanted their thinking on an Elvis comeback.

-- How much money could rock's greatest star make through a pay-per-view concert? A worldwide stadium tour?

-- Should he agree to be interviewed, to explain where he's been the last 20 years?

-- What kind of money could Elvis get for a new recording contract?

The answers dramatize the growth in the record business and the rock world since the music's infancy in the '50s. Presley, even as the biggest star of his generation, could only look forward to generating about $4 million with a blockbuster album and grossing about $50,000 for a concert. The superstars of today can think realistically of $100 million in album sales and another $1 million a night on the concert trail. In the last decade alone, the record business has doubled in the United States to gross more than $12.5 billion annually.

Irving Azoff, who guided the Eagles' reunion tour of 1994-95, thinks the sky's the limit for an Elvis return.

"Day One, the guy would have more money than he could ever spend," Azoff says. "It'd be like playing Monopoly where someone would just keep going past `Go' and collecting the dollars . . . ."

Are we talking $1 billion or more?

"I like the ring of $2 billion," says Ken Kragen, the Los Angeles manager who masterminded 1985's "We Are the World," one of the most celebrated benefit projects in pop history. "I think an Elvis return would be unlimited. None of the normal figures apply. You just create new benchmarks. There is nothing in show business that parallels this.

"Who in the world wouldn't want to see Elvis and hear his story?"

Even after you get past the tricky issue of Presley's being alive, it sounds ludicrous at first to imagine a 62-year-old as a successful concert attraction and sex symbol in rock. But Mick Jagger is 54 and the Rolling Stones grossed more than $120 million in the United States alone the last time they hit the road, in 1994.

And we're talking about the most dominant star in the history of pop music, someone whose main goal in coming out of hiding, we'll assume, is to regain his self-respect.

Under our scenario, Presley has spent enough time in a health spa to put himself in top physical and vocal form. No more bulging waistline. No more drug dependency. No more the tragic cartoon.

Attorney John Branca, who has represented nearly a third of the acts in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, including Michael Jackson and the Doors, stresses that Presley should be wary of how the comeback is perceived.

"The public doesn't like to see a performer being greedy," he says. "If the only reason Elvis were deciding to perform again was money, it would give people a bad taste. The challenge here isn't about just getting a second chance as an entertainer, but a second chance as a human being."

Not everyone, however, was enthusiastic.

Jimmy Iovine, whose Interscope Records has been the success story of the '90s in the troubled record business, says he wouldn't look forward to a Presley record.

"Did I love Elvis? Yes. Would I like to have him over to dinner to find out what he's been doing all these years? Most definitely. Would I want to go into the studio and make a record with him in 1997? No way. The guy's 62 and I think it'd be very hard to make anything good. Would it sell? Sure, but pieces of his hair would also sell. I wouldn't be interested."

No one doubted that Presley - whose estate today is valued at $250 million -could generate unprecedented sums with a comeback, but panel members frequently differed on the best route to those profits.

Rob Light, an agent with Creative Artists Agency who has designed tours for scores of artists, including Barbra Streisand, Prince and Alanis Morissette, says Presley should avoid a television show because the small screen rarely captures the dynamics of a rock concert.

"There are a hundred ways to make money, each one better than the next," he says. "The challenge is preserving the image of the youthful, dynamic Elvis. The ideal is to make every original Elvis fan feel 20 again - and that's why I would avoid television.

"Human nature has the ability to erase all the bad and savor the good," says Light. "You remember your high school sweetheart as the prettiest girl in the world. In the TV close-up, Elvis isn't going to be that guy who sang `Love Me Tender' on `The Ed Sullivan Show' or who looked like a god in Las Vegas. He's going to be a 62-year-old man with sweat running down his face."

But Michael Cohl, the Toronto-based promoter behind stadium tours for the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd and U2, voted for teasing the audience with a free TV show before embarking on a 100-plus-city worldwide stadium tour that could gross between $750 million and $1 billion.

"I think you put Elvis on the beach in Miami and draw 1 million people so that it's the biggest event ever in North America and you put it on free TV so that everyone can see it," Cohl says.

"I assume he'll be great because he was always great, so you confront the skepticism head on. There will be people going, `He's 62, he can't perform anymore, he's going to die of a heart attack on stage . . . .' And then he comes out and knocks 'em out. They'll go, `Sure, he's 62, sure he sweated, but wasn't he great? I can't wait to see him live.' They'll want to be part of history." With Elvis' return, the question is how the media would get access to him.

Ken Kragen, who helped resurrect Kenny Rogers' career in the early '70s, believes that an interview is probably Elvis' most powerful card, and that it should share the spotlight with a concert performance in a pay-per-view telecast.

Under Kragen's plan, the telecast would come at the end of a yearlong series of Elvis sightings - actual placements of Elvis in public situations.

"Eventually, there would be so many sightings that Time or Newsweek, looking for something offbeat, does a cover story: `Is Elvis Really Alive?' At that moment, you announce your pay-per-view concert . . . ."

Jerry Weintraub, the veteran film producer who also promoted Presley's concerts in the '70s, thinks Elvis would rewrite pay-per-view history.

"The show would get everyone who ever listened to an Elvis Presley song in their lives. I'd bet you could get half of the homes."

If Presley preferred traditional interviews, Pat Kingsley, one of the most powerful publicists in the movie business, suggests one print interview with a news magazine and one television interview with a news-oriented host.

But wouldn't a TV interview shatter the Presley mystique?

"He doesn't need mystique," says Liz Rosenberg, senior vice president of media relations for Warner Bros. Records and best known for her work with Madonna. "He's Elvis Presley and he's one of a kind. I think it'd be important to personalize him. I have faith that he would rise to the occasion and he'd be fabulous."

Freddy DeMann, who manages Madonna and is a partner with her in Maverick Records, disagrees with the television interview concept.

"There is no gain to telling the story," he says. "Don't explain away the mystery. That's one of the most powerful things he has going."

DeMann thinks Presley should kick off his return by going back to the place where he made his biggest splash on stage: Las Vegas.

"Put him back in a showroom and people would go wild," DeMann says. "The word of mouth would be sensational. Then he could tour and maybe end up with some kind of TV show. But you want to bring him back at his best."

And then there are the record and movie deals.

"I think a live album, properly promoted, would be sensational," says Donald Passman, a Los Angeles attorney who has represented Janet Jackson and R.E.M.

"The Beatles' model was a good one . . . the way they came with the documentary TV special before the `Anthology' albums. That way you would remind people of Elvis' history and get them ready for the album and the tour. And don't forget the merchandise. That alone would be a fortune."

And movies?

Remembering the generally awful quality of Elvis' movies, most panelists shuddered when the issue of films was raised. The consensus: limit any movie project to a documentary of the live shows.

The exception: producer Jerry Weintraub. His idea: a series of movies with Presley cast as a romantic action hero.

"I'm thinking of the stuff that Harrison Ford is doing, not playing the president, but things like `Clear and Present Danger,' " Weintraub says. "It'd be huge."'