Hangers-on tirelessly served the King’s whims, including multiple simultaneous affairs and the incredibly debilitating pharmaceutical habits that eventually did him in. While his celebrated 1968 TV special rejuvenated Elvis professionally, the overstuffed-jumpsuit years that followed had few aesthetic or personal high points. Guralnick meticulously documents manager Colonel Tom Parker’s cutthroat dealings with RCA Records and the movie studios, which resulted in staggering paychecks for both Presley and Parker (by the mid-’70s, Parker was splitting his sole client’s earnings 50-50). The times left him behind as he gamely acted in inanely trashy movies and sang inanely trashy songs in order to fulfill contractual commitments. After Elvis came out of the army in 1960, he increasingly became a clock-puncher. The unanswered mystery here is how someone who reshaped American culture between 19 could have so completely insulated himself from that culture for most of the rest of his life. Last Train to Memphis (1994) brilliantly illuminated the mystery of Elvis’s genius-what it consisted of and where it came from. Guralnick concludes his majestic two-volume biography of Elvis Presley with copious evidence of Elvis’s creative and personal plunge.
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