Being Elvis : a lonely life / Ray Connolly.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Elvis Presley is a giant figure in American popular culture, a man whose talent and fame were matched only by his later excesses and tragic end. A godlike entity in the history of rock and roll, this twentieth-century icon with a dazzling voice blended gospel and traditionally black rhythm and blues with country to create a completely new kind of music and new way of expressing male sexuality, which simply blew the doors off a staid and repressed 1950s America.

In Being Elvis veteran rock journalist Ray Connolly takes a fresh look at the career of the world's most loved singer, placing him, forty years after his death, not exhaustively in the garish neon lights of Las Vegas but back in his mid-twentieth-century, distinctly southern world. For new and seasoned fans alike, Connolly, who interviewed Elvis in 1969, re-creates a man who sprang from poverty in Tupelo, Mississippi, to unprecedented overnight fame, eclipsing Frank Sinatra and then inspiring the Beatles along the way.

Juxtaposing the music, the songs, and the incendiary live concerts with a personal life that would later careen wildly out of control, Connolly demonstrates that Elvis's amphetamine use began as early as his touring days of hysteria in the late 1950s, and that the financial needs that drove him in the beginning would return to plague him at the very end. With a narrative informed by interviews over many years with John Lennon, Bob Dylan, B. B. King, Sam Phillips, and Roy Orbison, among many others, Connolly creates one of the most nuanced and mature portraits of this cultural phenomenon to date.

What distinguishes Being Elvis beyond the narrative itself is Connolly's more subtle examinations of white poverty, class aspirations, and the prison that is extreme fame. As we reach the end of this poignant account, Elvis's death at forty-two takes on the hue of a profoundly American tragedy. The creator of an American sound that resonates today, Elvis remains frozen in time, an enduring American icon who could "seamlessly soar into a falsetto of pleading and yearning" and capture an inner emotion, perhaps of eternal yearning, to which all of us can still relate.

Intimate and unsparing, Being Elvis explores the extravagance and irrationality inherent in the Elvis mythology, ultimately offering a thoughtful celebration of an immortal life.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgments (p. xi)
• Author's Note (p. xv)
• Foreword (p. xvii)
• 1 "Well, the bear shall be gentle" (p. 1)
• 2 "Don't you worry none, Mama" (p. 9)
• 3 "I would just sit there in class" (p. 15)
• 4 "I don't sound like nobody" (p. 23)
• 5 "What the hell y'all doin' in there?" (p. 31)
• 6 "What happened, what happened?" (p. 37)
• 7 "Doesn't everbody love their parents?" (p. 45)
• 8 "That Colonel ... he's the Devil himself" (p. 53)
• 9 "I'm like a Mississippi bullfrog" (p. 64)
• 10 "Why should music contribute to juvenile delinquency?" (p. 73)
• 11 "The colored folks have been singing and playing" (p. 82)
• 12 "Imagine! A Memphis boy with Natalie Wood" (p. 91)
• 13 "I hate to get started in these jam sessions" (p. 99)
• 14 "I wish we was poor again" (p. 104)
• 15 "Hang up your pretty stocking" (p. 112)
• 16 "This rancid-smelling aphrodisiac, rock and roll" (p. 119)
• 17 "I'm lucky to be in a position to give" (p. 126)
• 18 "Wake up, Mama" (p. 132)
• 19 "The world is more alive at night" (p. 141)
• 20 "There was a little girl that I was seeing" (p. 150)
• 21 "Whatever I become, will be what God has chosen for me" (p. 157)
• 22 "I didn't have any say-so in it all" (p. 165)
• 23 The schoolgirl who carried a derringer in her bra (p. 172)
• 24 "If we can control sex ..." (p. 181)
• 25 "The only thing worse than watching a bad movie" (p. 189)
• 26 "If you guys are just going to sit and stare" (p. 196)
• 27 "I know that I'm a joke in this town" (p. 201)
• 28 "Some of you maybe think that Elvis is Jesus Christ" (p. 206)
• 29 "What am I going to do if they don't like me?" (p. 212)
• 30 "And what was I thinking?" (p. 219)
• 31 "I want musicians who can play every kind of music" (p. 224)
• 32 "I dont't want some sonofabitch crazy bastard" (p. 230)
• 33 "Mr. President, you got your show to run" (p. 239)
• 34 "I was a dreamer" (p. 245)
• 35 "It's very hard to live up to an image" (p. 250)
• 36 "Sorry that I didn't break his goddamned neck" (p. 259)
• 37 "If you want me to leave" (p. 268)
• 38 "I'd rather be unconscious than miserable" (p. 275)
• 39 "I'm self-destructive, I know" (p. 282)
• 40 "I get carried away very easily" (p. 290)
• 41 "I don't know who to talk, to anymore" (p. 295)
• 42 "I'm just so tired of being Elvis Presley" (p. 304)
• 43 "A lonely life ends" (p. 311)
• Afterword (p. 316)
• After Elvis Died What Happened To ...? (p. 319)
• Elvis Presley's Best Recordings (p. 323)
• Notes (p. 327)
• Bibliography (p. 343)
• Picture Credits (p. 347)
• Index (p. 348)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Beyond his music and movies, Elvis remains with us on postage stamps and coffee mugs. Here, Connolly (Stardust Memories: Talking About My Generation; John Lennon 1940-1980) explores how a young boy from Tupelo captured the hearts and eyes of the world yet ultimately died depressed and alone in a Memphis mansion. Unlike most Elvis biographies, Connolly's focuses almost exclusively on the lucrative and tortured relationship between Elvis and "Colonel" Tom Parker. Though not exempting Elvis from responsibility, the author centralizes this relationship as the fulcrum upon which the performer miraculously rose and precipitously fell. VERDICT Though not as comprehensive as Peter Guralnick's Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley and Careless Love, this biographical sketch is more intimate than most written about the King of Rock and Roll. This latest addition to the Elvis literature contextualizes its subject with more empathy than celebrity. [See Prepub Alert, 6/6/16.]-Joshua Finnell, Los Alamos National Lab., NM © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

In this sympathetic portrayal of Elvis Presley, English writer and journalist Connolly tells the much-recounted saga of a hillbilly from Tupelo, Miss., who became the first rock-and-roll superstar. Four decades after Elvis's death, Connolly passes the familiar signposts: born in poverty with a stillborn twin, Sun Studios magic, the sinister "Colonel" Tom Parker, the army stint, romance with 14-year-old Priscilla Bealieu, the Vegas years, drug dependence and unhinged behavior. Gliding over this heavily mined terrain with aplomb, Connolly pays particular attention to Elvis's psychological makeup, in particular his underlying insecurity, a weakness magnified by the singer's gluttonous consumption of narcotics, amphetamines, and barbituates, food, and the loss of his beloved mother. Though far from uncritical, Connolly presents his material from what he depicts as Elvis's perspective, offering excuses and justifications for bad behavior, bad music, and bad films. This speculative leap provides both the strength and weakness of the account: while readers will pity the overwhelmed singer, the world seen through his eyes is quite blurry, and few of even his closest intimates come into focus. Instead, Connolly shoots a close-up of a talented mama's boy elevated and then broken by the demographic upheaval that transformed pop culture. In his last days, the King complained, "I'm so tired of being Elvis Presley"; as Connolly writes, death was the only escape available to the world's first rock icon. (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

At the height of his success in Hollywood, from 1962 to '67, Elvis was putting out a movie every four months mediocre efforts that continued to sell. Locked into movie contracts and a publishing partnership that prevented him from recording songs that he didn't publish, Elvis was a prisoner of his own success and, as author Connolly shows, a victim of his relationship with Colonel Parker, who, in exchange for immense financial rewards, left Elvis feeling like a failure without any artistic satisfaction. Connolly brings an English perspective to the story, pointing out how Elvis' desires to tour the UK, Europe, and beyond were always put off by the Dutch-born Colonel, who secretly feared leaving the States because he was in the country illegally. Connolly's lithe account of the Elvis story from his humble origins in Tupelo, Mississippi, to Ed Sullivan, Hollywood, Vegas, the girls, the drugs, the comeback, and beyond treads familiar territory already definitively covered by Peter Guralnick (Last Train to Memphis, 1994, and Careless Love, 1999), but Being Elvis, partly based on the author's interviews with some of the major players (including Elvis), is personal, intimate, and affectionate, though not uncritical.--Segedin, Ben Copyright 2016 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

A veteran London-based journalist rehearses the rise and fall of Elvis Presley (1935-1977).Connolly (The Ray Connolly Beatles Archive, 2016, etc.), who interviewed Presley while working for the London Evening Standard, is a fan as well as a stout critic, and his work is full of praise for his subjects musicianship, voice, and work ethic. But the author is unblinking about the myriads of problems that Elvis faced, and created, throughout his career: his serial sexual infidelities, his wild spending, his failures as a friend, and, of course, his increasing reliance on drugs and his inability to defeat his demons. Near the end, we see an angry, paranoid man, offering himself as a federal drug agent to serve President Richard Nixon, carrying multiple firearms, and winging all over the country in search of peace. Connolly follows a conventional biographical path from Elvis impoverished birth in Tupelo, Mississippi, to his seclusion and death behind the gates of Graceland in Memphis. The author also focuses on his multiple musical talents, his determination to broaden his musical appeal, his influence on many musicians who followed him. There is a sad scene at Graceland when the Beatlesthe latest superstarsarrive to pay homage. We see Elvis social awkwardness and the Beatles playfulness, and we yearn for a recording of the music they played together. Connolly also keeps us in touch with Elvis familyand his devotion to themand to the relationship between Presley and his long-term manager, Col. Tom Parker, whose self-destructive gambling habits are astonishing. Parker would never let Elvis tour abroad, an odd insistence that cost them all millions in lost revenue. The author illuminates, as well, the many forgettable Presley films, his final years in Las Vegas, and the brutal touring schedule that ground him down. Connolly carefully and sympathetically paints the many faces of Presley, faces eventually shrouded in despair. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.