Last Train To Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley - 'The richest portrait of Presley we have ever had' Sunday Telegraph

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there are many ways to interpret his life: as a greek tragedy, as the fall of the american dream, as a religious tale of someone who got totally swept up by every sin in the book. you name it, elvis lived it. I was also acquainted with the boyfriend of the sister of Elvis's last fiancee. I was hearing some of the stories of Elvis's aberrant behavior while obviously on drugs two years before the publication of . I grew up in Memphis in the late 60s. In those days it was impossible to not run into Elvis. Especially when I was a teen in the early '70s. He was everywhere. Always seeking recognition and attention from fans. He loved being idolized. Also, while Elvis definitely had strange habits and loved the accoutrements of stardom, he was genuinely a nice and caring person. The book has literally a hundred quotes from people of all walks of life who found him to be open, an "innocent" really, who treated everyone with respect and interest. You really feel that you'd have enjoyed meeting him and becoming a member of his entourage for a week. Also disturbing is his meeting with Priscilla when she's just 14 (he's ten years older) and while he refuses to have a sexual relationship with her until she's older, they certainly have a romantic relationship. His obsession that she remain 'pure' (good wife material) is just as disturbing, as is the increasing flow-through of women.

If volume 1 ( Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley) was the triumphant rags-to-riches part of the story, this is the crash and burn. What is so sad is that the seeds of the final destruction are set so early. In his 1954 essay, "The Loss of the Creature," Walker Percy contrasts the experience of Garcia Lopez de Cardenas, commander of the first group of Europeans to set eyes on the Grand Canyon, with that of a 20th-century tourist. "It can be imagined:," he writes, "One crosses miles of desert, breaks through the mesquite, and there it is at one's feet. Later the government set the place aside as a national park, hoping to pass along to millions the experience of Cardenas. Does not one see the same sight from the Bright Angel Lodge that Cardenas saw?" As, I'm sure, you have guessed, Percy's answer is- decidedly - "no." "It is almost impossible [to gaze directly at the Grand Canyon]," he proposes, "because the Grand Canyon, the thing as it is, has been appropriated by the symbolic complex which has already been formed in the sightseer's mind." You can't see it because you're too busy trying to confirm all the received ideas you already have about it. It's been a wonderful show, folks. Just remember this. Don't go milking the cow on a rainy day. If there's lightning you may be left holding the bag." Overall, a great read that clued me in on what now seems like a gaping hole in my musical education and understanding of American culture. In many ways Elvis is the USA.It's also the biography of a tremendously gifted interpreter of other writers songs, and a man who though he never toured outside the USA became an international star, beloved by millions. He was a man who thought and acted like a boy. Always craving an entourage that never left him, none of the people who surrounded him could help his addiction to a plethora of drugs. His autopsy showed an enlarged heart, liver damage as well as a painful bowel condition caused by excess drug usage. At the time of his death, at least 14 different drugs were in his body. The amount of codeine was ten times a normally prescribed level. His addiction to quaaludes brought toxic levels to a body that over abused drugs for many years. He surrounded himself with predatory types, buying the love and allegiance of friends, family, and strangers alike with spur-of-the-moment gifts: sports cars, luxury cars, jewelry, homes and even -at one stage- horses. Almost every friend he ever had was more than happy to prey on Elvis's largesse. Less enjoyable than part 1, but no less well researched. If there is a flaw, it's just that there was so much information to convey that readability got sacrificed. This is understandable & forgivable. And then again, this part of the story is a tragedy.

Beginning with Presley's army service in Germany in 1958 and ending with his death in Memphis in 1977, Careless Love chronicles the unravelling of the dream that once shone so brightly, homing in on the complex playing-out of Elvis' relationship with his Machiavellian manager, Colonel Tom Parker. It's a breathtaking revelatory drama that for the first time places the events of a too-often mistold tale in a fresh, believable, and understandable context.He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. The book also casts Colonel Parker in a fairly positive light. Parker really did have Elvis' best interests at heart, especially in terms of fame and fortune. He brought Elvis from a very promising regional act, a Grand Ole Opry kind of guy, to the biggest showcases in TV and Hollywood in a matter of months. And he protected Elvis' artistic independence in those early years, fighting relentlessly against RCA record execs who wanted him to record as fast as possible while he was hot.