Rating: 
Summary: the book about his life, not his music
Review: "Down At The End Of Lonely Street" tells us the life of Elvis chronological, starting from his birth on January 8 1935 to his death on August 16 1977. The epilogue contains facts about the Elvis Business, which was created after Elvis' death. Although the text on the dustjacket claims that this book is "more than the definitive biography of Elvis Presley" the book isn't THE definitive biography of Elvis at all. Sure, after reading this book, you'll know the most important facts of Elvis' life and career, e.g. how he became a famous musician and an icon. You'll read about the Army Years, about the movies he made, his Comeback in 1968 and what is now called his Las Vegas Period. You'll even get to know to "experience" his autopsy. That's about all. The book's main focus is Elvis' private life and it's influences on his career, but about the carreer itself is little told. This is an important minus of the quality of this book, afterall in the end it's Elvis' music that counts and not his private life. E.g. the recording sessions during his career are often just footnotes in this book, paying less than a page per session, while e.g. the girls he dated are discussed in more than 20 pages! Further, while the '68 Comeback Special is well discussed, as is the 1973 Aloha From Hawaii Show, Elvis In Concert is really ignored, beeing described in just a few sentences. This is ridiculous, because Elvis In Concert had a disastrous impact on Elvis' image. His last worldwide show dated back from 1973, when he was great looking and slim. Elvis In Concert shows us a bloated Elvis, which shocked the world. Mr. Brown and Mr. Broeske should have discussed the importanty of this show for Elvis' career and they should have described it as carefully as they described Elvis' early '50s TVshows, like The Ed Sullivan Show. It has to be said although, that the book doesn't just focus on Elvis' excesses, but also on his positive side, which makes the book well balanced. Not the definitive biography, but nevertheless an easy to read biography on Elvis Presley, which makes it a great book for all those people just starting to read about The King.
Rating: 
Summary: Well researched but not the best
Review: A lot of work went into this book, but it lacks objectivity. It is pro-Elvis, though not excessively so, but it seems entirely too kind to Dr. Nick and Priscilla. Dr. Nick no doubt curbed Elvis's overall drug consumption and minimized the careless peaks that would have occurred had he not been present. However, Dr. Nick was still party to the drug excess. It is difficult not to believe that his interest was primarily money at the expense of caring for Elvis. Despite receiving a hefty income, he found it necessary to borrow $200,000 from his very volatile patient. And then there was the racquetball misadventure resulting in legal estrangement. Still, I received a better appreciation for Dr. Nick's effort by reading this book. He did have a daunting task. As regards Priscilla, the authors seem to have bought the image she has been trying to project. Finstadt's book on Priscilla presents a more plausible picture.
Rating: 
Summary: Lebiram ed Ajrob
Review: Bad taste as most of the poor writers against the man and his huge musical talents. No matter how much they try to trash him he will be the One and Only forever. I wasn't a fan of Elvis before the 1997. Yeah, twenty years after his death! Then I started getting interested on him. Watched all his movies, read all or most of his books, and he captured, not only my heart, but my mind too! What a phenomenum! Incredible!
Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: I picked this book of just to have something to read and it floored me. The book gives you ALL of Elvis's life and not just the sanitized versiion. I would highly recommend it to anyone seeking the TRUTH about Elvis. From his greatest moments to his lowest.
Rating: 
Summary: Routine
Review: If Peter Guralnick's mammoth two volume biography didn't exist, this book might serve more of a purpose. But compared to the Guralnick books this is downright flimsy. There is excruciatingly little new here though there are a few early anecdotes and some interesting interviews with marginal players in the Presley story like co-stars Deborah Walley and Mary Ann Mobley who don't get interviewed in connection with Presley very often. There is also extensive interview time spent with the infamous Dr. Nick. Otherwise the book seems like a collection od press clippings that have been trotted out dozens of times before. To make things worse, it seems that in the photo sections the authors deliberately went out of their way to find the most familiar pictures available.
You would think that there wouldn't be anything new to write about Elvis but the Guralnick books were filled with revelations. He didn't stop at the familiar and wound up turning up dozens of forgotten gems just from information that had been in the public domain but had never been gathered in a contemporary work about the king.
This book has other problems besides familiarity. Elvis' music gets glossed over. For example Elvis' 1969 memphis sessions, that produced From Elvis in Memphis and "Suspicious Minds" perhaps the artistic height of his career, get a page and a half. While the authors have an appreciation for Presley's achievement they don't always appear to have the greatest understanding of it. Reading authors like Guralnick, Dave Marsh, Greil Marcus and even Ernst Jorgenson you can feel and hear the music as you read. In their descriptions the music sets off a universe of ideas. That's not the case here. There is a discography, a filmography and a list of Elvis' TV appearances in the back but these have been done better (sometimes in entire books)many times before. In fact, the discography, because of its arbitrary selections and factual errors, is useless.
So, unless you have to read every single word that has ever been written about Elvis you can miss this one.
Rating:
Summary: the book about his life, not his music
Review: Others have been disappointed that this book doesn't discuss Elvis' music as much as his private life. But note the title! Taken this way, it is one of the best chronologies of his life. I have read. It was interesting to read it after having just read Guralnick's 2 tomes. In fact I was sorry Guralnick didn't have the latest info on Elvis' autopsy and cause of death. It is a great book for "beginners".
Rating:
Summary: I could have gone the rest of my life not knowing that......
Review: This book is good if you appreciate hear say and gossip. While I know that Elvis couldn't walk on water, there are some things in this book that didn't need to be written. You can never tell if this is a book for or against the King of Rock and Roll. I'm for him, that's why I threw the book away. I'm giving it 2 stars becuse they had some good pictures and everything was spelled correctly.
Rating:
Summary: If There Is Only One Elvis Book You Ever Buy, Let It Be This
Review: This book is wonderful from start to finish. It tells aboutElvis's stillborn twin, a line of heart trouble in his family, his sexlife, the REAL way he died, and everything in between. This book is so good it was actually hard to put down when I had to.
Rating: 
Summary: I read it in 4 days!
Review: This book was for me, unputdownable. Partly because I really didn't know that much about Elvis in detail, and was glad to find a recent book with all the updated information on his life and death. This book covers everything, although it seemed that it wanted to show negative things more than positive. I came to the conclusion that it was balanced, but perhaps just a little toward the negative. In the end he was really just a poor kid who didn't know what had hit him when he became an icon and his life a public feeding frenzy. It's revealed that Elvis died of a genetic heart condition, but it really seems more like Colonal Tom Parker killed Elvis by acting as though Elvis was a money making machine. I drew my own conclusions about Elvis a long time ago, however this book helped to understand the man behind the phenomenon and legend that is and always will be, Elvis the King.
Rating:
Summary: Down at the End of Lonely Street
Review: Well, well, well, this book is not a biography of ELVIS is the everyday gossip of a Hollywood columnist as Pat H. Broeske. Don't know much about the other author Peter Harry Brown but to say it took them 10 years or research about Elvis and his career is just a joke. Very poor description of events and dates. Too bad I sepend my money on it.
|
