But the situation was never straightforward and an interesting question of judgment arose when Barbra Streisand and Jon Peters approached Presley to play opposite her in the re-make of A Star Is Born. On one level his management amounted to cynical exploitation and was seen increasingly as such by his only client, who nevertheless remained superstitious about breaking their relationship. Guralnick reveals Parker as a strange mix of the anachronistic and the prescient, a combination of fairground barker and con man far-sighted enough to realise that his client was a product as individual and universal as Coca-Cola, there for the selling.Īnd Parker sold Elvis, invariably for short-term gain. In the end, the legendary generosity became a symptom of a larger malaise.Ĭareless Love takes its time proving what most of us instinctively knew, even as schoolkids: that Elvis wasn't the same after the army, and that his manager, Colonel Parker, made him do too many bad movies. Presley's problem was that after fame his life was managed, which left little to do beyond making spontaneous gestures. Despite sojourns in Las Vegas, Palm Springs and Los Angeles, this is a hometown story.
Women with children were sexually off-limits, including his own wife after the birth of their daughter. He remained at heart an adolescent - endearingly goofy, fond of practical jokes and necking.
The second part of Peter Guralnick's exhaustive life - more than 700 pages from army call-up in 1958 to death in 1977 - reveals a powerless figure whose growing awareness of his helplessness lent his decline a tragic dimension.įame brought Elvis no power as such, but he created the illusion via salaried hangers-on whose principal job was to pander to his arrested development. He bridged the hard-edged, rhinestone and show-girl entertainment of Las Vegas and Frank Sinatra - with an emphasis on retinue and prescriptive drugs - and the more transcendental, less sociable approach of those that succeeded him, notably John Lennon for someone so famous Elvis spent an awful lot of time in his room.
What this biography makes clear - in a way not apparent at the time - is how Elvis Presley, while appearing unique as the exemplar of rock 'n' roll, belonged snugly to a showbiz lineage.
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