10/24/2016
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.)
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 rhythm and blues with country to create a completely new kind of music and new way of expressing male sexuality, which 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. The creator of an American sound that resonates today, Elvis remains frozen in time, an enduring American icon who could capture an inner emotion, perhaps of eternal yearning, to which all of us can still relate.
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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. The creator of an American sound that resonates today, Elvis remains frozen in time, an enduring American icon who could capture an inner emotion, perhaps of eternal yearning, to which all of us can still relate.
Being Elvis: A Lonely Life
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 rhythm and blues with country to create a completely new kind of music and new way of expressing male sexuality, which 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. The creator of an American sound that resonates today, Elvis remains frozen in time, an enduring American icon who could capture an inner emotion, perhaps of eternal yearning, to which all of us can still relate.
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. The creator of an American sound that resonates today, Elvis remains frozen in time, an enduring American icon who could capture an inner emotion, perhaps of eternal yearning, to which all of us can still relate.
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Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940171068165 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Tantor Audio |
| Publication date: | 03/21/2017 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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