last train to memphis by peter guralnick

The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.Įveryone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). An American epic that belongs on every bookshelf. A serious, musically literate, and historically attuned biography. The year marked the end of a youthful innocence and the beginning of a long and sorry decline. Still, Elvis repeatedly expressed his fears that he would ``go out like a light, just like I came on.'' This volume ends in 1958, when Elvis was inducted into the Army and his beloved mother died. Guralnick perfectly captures Elvis's mixture of naãvetÇ and shrewdness: He carried a joy buzzer to his first meeting with RCA executives but also carefully practiced every stage movement for maximum effect. Thanks to Phillips, who patiently oversaw his first sessions, the real Elvis quickly emerged: a dynamic performer who knew instinctively how to bring his audience to a frenzy and rapidly became a star. Amazingly, his own style seems to have emerged full-grown he took only a few guitar lessons, performed little in high school, and to all outward appearances was ``beyond shy,'' in the words of his first producer, Sam Phillips.

From an early age, Elvis heard and admired gospel and rhythm and blues. The fact that his father made little attempt to lift his family out of poverty turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because they remained just one tiny rung up the social ladder from their black neighbors-and their music. The son of a ne'er-do-well father and an unnaturally devoted mother, an only child whose twin brother died at birth, Elvis grew up sheltered and alone. Whereas Albert Goldman, in his infamous trash biography (Elvis, 1981), served up an overstuffed, doped-up Elvis in a one- sided portrait of an American nightmare, Guralnick (Sweet Soul Music, 1986, etc.) takes a more sensible and sensitive approach, tracing the roots of an American dream.

The first volume of two in what is bound to be the definitive biography of the King.

Last train to memphis by peter guralnick