Elvis

Rating:
Summary: Elvis
Review: And you will too if you are among his legions of die-hard fans. This is definitely the most controversial (and I do mean HOTLY debated) Elvis bio. Goldman may indeed not be the most objective reporter out there (his bio of John Lennon came under massive attack as well). I found this book fascinating, however. It certainly focuses on Elvis' less memorable moments. We see Elvis shooting up combinations of drugs before going on stage at the MGM Grand. Elvis forgetting lyrics midway through a song. The infamous incident of Elvis shooting his television. Fat Elvis sweating profusely.

Elvis comes across half decently, however when compared to two figures that Goldman particularly targets. He depicts the Colonel as a rapacious, blood-sucking force of palpable evil, bent solely on drawing every last drop of lucre out of the Elvis machine. He single handedly thwarted Elvis' attempts at creativity, keeping the King focused solely on music that will be the most commercially palpable. The other great Villain is Dr. Nick, whom the author hints was actually responsible for Elvis' final inglorious demise on a toilet seat in his Graceland bathroom.

If you want to preserve your memory of Elvis as the leather-clad, vibrant performer of the Elvis Comeback Special, then I'd suggest this book is not for you. If you are curious about the more lurid details of an American icon's private life and the eclipse of an undeniably talented entertainer, give Goldman's book a try.

Rating:
Summary: Almost Useless
Review: One of the great cultural shames of the early 1980s is the way the mainstream press took this as "the definitive biography of Elvis Presley". Fans who balked about the portrayal of Presley here were accused of being unable to take the truth. However, the truth is this book is about as poor a biography as any ever published. It's actually hard to believe it got published as it veers closer to vanity screed than serious biography.

There are few grounds for defense. Goldman's advocates always play up his research. Very little of it shows up here. The acknowledgements list about 300 or so "sources", which by the way do not include Priscilla Presley or Sam Phillips among others. You never see most of the names directly cited in the text. You go through pages and pages without any direct quotes or attribution. Many stories are simply sourced to "the Presley circle". Nearly all the controversial stories fall into this category making them all dubious "breakthroughs" at best.

Further, his research is riddled with factual errors many of them easily confirmed. Fans might be amazed to hear that Elvis sang "Loving You" at the climax of "Jailhouse Rock" instead of "Young and Beautiful". Just one example of an easily confirmed Goldman botch. Dates are wrong, names are wrong etc. It's a very sloppy book.

Worse, Goldman endlessly indulges in speculation. For instance, he rants about how Elvis must have felt about his lack of circumcision using no other evidence than his imagination. Around the same time, he speculates that Elvis' promiscuity masked latent homosexuality again using no evidence. I should point out here that Goldman dwells excessively on prurient subject matter to the exclusion of almost anything else. Do we really need to know that Elvis used a stall instead of a urinal?

Goldman compounds his sensationalism by using isolated incidents to sum and dismiss an entire life. Lamar Fike, who is the main "source" of this book has even complained about Goldman's tendency to distort items to suit his POV. Every item is interpreted to make Elvis look bad.

Goldman's attitude is just as evident in the facts he leaves out. He tells us often about Elvis' indifference to or hatred for rock and roll yet never bothers to address the way Elvis even into the '70s would unwind with early rock and blues favorites in off-stage jam sessions.

Goldman compounds these errors with flat out fabrications like a story of Elvis' nightly habit of staring at a picture of his mother pasted on the nightstand by his bed. I'm sure Sam Phillips, who never uttered the "N" word in his life according to friends and relatives, would be surprised to learn that he uses it as a mantra in Goldman's universe.

Then there's the nasty, mean-spirited tone of the book. I've read biographies of Hitler where the subject was treated with more respect. Name calling is rampant. Elvis is a "pervert", a "hillbilly", a "little cracker boy", a "big fat woman recovering from an operation". This stuff is ridiculous in any biography. Goldman doesn't just stop at Elvis. His friends, family and musical favorites are also given nasty "pet" names. The culture of the American South is treated with similar derision as are rock and Elvis fans.

Goldman almost never discusses Elvis' music. If you picked this book up and started paging through it you would never guess it was about Elvis Presley the most important recording artist of the 20th Century. Goldman never discusses the creation or artistic merits of say "Jailhouse Rock", "Suspicious Minds", "All Shook Up", "Don't", "Little Sister", "Trouble" etc. The '69 Memphis Sessions, that many fans and critics cite as the pinnacle of Presley's artistic career, are tossed off in two or three sentences. Goldman reviews the Sun Sessions, "Heartbreak Hotel", "Don't Be Cruel", "Love Me Tender, the first three singles of 1960, "Blue Hawaii", "How Great Thou Art" and the '68 TV Show and that's it out of catalogue of more than 700 songs. This is probably a good thing as Goldman hates almost every Elvis track he reviews. The tracks he does enjoy (the critically safe Sun Sessions) he damns with faint praise. This is not surprising since Goldman makes it clear- throughout the book- that rock and roll is an inferior music.

There are some interesting interviews with Hal Kanter, Natalie Wood, Deborah Walley and Steve Binder. There is also some good work on Parker and his relationship with Presley. Although, even the Parker stuff is marred by excessive speculation.

Admirers of this book need to rethink their own agendas. People believed this book when it came out because they wanted to believe it which allowed them to miss its errors, mean-spirit and lack of cultural and musical understanding. If I were teaching a course on biography, I would use this book as an example of what not to do.



Rating:
Summary: Definitely a biased account of Elvis and his life
Review: Thanks for the heads up, but we all know that EP was a human being above other things. We all know about the gun fetish and temper...but that's not the problem with this book. I gave it two stars and not one, because Goldman indeed did his homework and interviewed many people that knew and worked with Elvis, and also for the potential that this book could have had. The problem is that throughout the book he fails miserably in maintaining an umbiased stance and functioning as the messenger. He is not a messenger! He's a critical writer who clearly does not like and did not like Elvis, and with this book he does nothing else but speak his mind about how awful of a person Elvis was and of course uses the accounts of the "victims he interviewed" to support his message. This book could have been a great account of the man's life, but sorry Mr. Goldman, I don't need to hear you telling me that Graceland looked like a whore house, that nothing in there is worth a dime or that Elvis needed a fireman lift to urinate......I think everyone would have appreciated a little more tact in exposing a man's private life like that. I would trash this book before the West brothers book anytime, without thinking twice and I would definitely shelf it as one of Goldman's greatest failures as a writer.

Rating:
Summary: Definitely a biased account of Elvis and his life
Review: Thanks for the heads up, but we all know that EP was a human being above other things. We all know about the gun fetish and temper...but that's not the problem with this book. I gave it two stars and not one, because Goldman indeed did his homework and interviewed many people that knew and worked with Elvis, and also for the potential that this book could have had. The problem is that throughout the book he fails miserably in maintaining an umbiased stance and functioning as the messenger. He is not a messenger! He's a critical writer who clearly does not like and did not like Elvis, and with this book he does nothing else but speak his mind about how awful of a person Elvis was and of course uses the accounts of the "victims he interviewed" to support his message. This book could have been a great account of the man's life, but sorry Mr. Goldman, I don't need to hear you telling me that Graceland looked like a whore house, that nothing in there is worth a dime or that Elvis needed a fireman lift to urinate......I think everyone would have appreciated a little more tact in exposing a man's private life like that. I would trash this book before the West brothers book anytime, without thinking twice and I would definitely shelf it as one of Goldman's greatest failures as a writer.

Rating:
Summary: GREAT LIES IF YOU HATE ELVIS!
Review: The name Albert Goldman is one that is truly reviled in the world of rock and roll. For his unflattering biographies of Elvis and John Lennon, Goldman is almost universally despised. However, that is unfortunate, because Goldman happens to be a thorough researcher and an intelligent human being who has written many good books on popular culture. The man is an academic with more than a little brainpower. And however much he may have disliked his subject, Elvis, there is no doubt that he was an expert on the man.

While diehard Elvis fans may not like what Goldman has to say, what he says is based on facts - mainly on interviews with primary sources, mostly Elvis's closest associates (bodyguards, handlers, friends and relatives) who lived and worked with him, were with him 24 hours a day, and knew him from childhood. And the simple fact of the matter is this: Elvis was a human being. A flawed human being. Not a saint, not a god, but a flawed human being.

While those who don't like this book claim that Goldman's information is not credible, I posit that it is credible. Fame and fortune have a way of corrupting people - particularly people who already are more than a little disturbed to begin with. Such was the case with Elvis. And because Elvis achieved the heights of fame and fortune (quite a lucky thing for him, considering he was a minimal talent at best - Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Gene Vincent were all a ga-zillion times more talented than he was), he was able to get away with his flaws to a degree that most of us never could.

In fact, Goldman was not the first or the only biographer to maintain that Presley was a drug-addicted, mother-fixated freak with a fetish for guns, 14-year-old girls and excessive amounts of cheeseburgers, banana splits and peanut butter and banana sandwiches. In fact, 5 years before Goldman's book came out, two of Elvis's own bodyguards, Sonny and Red West, wrote a book, called "Elvis: What Happened?" In this book they claimed pretty much all the same things that Goldman later would. Presley went to great lengths to have the West brothers' book quashed because he knew that the revelations, particularly about his drug addiction, were likely to ruin his reputation as a clean-living, God-fearing good ole boy.

Flash forward to Goldman's book. Goldman does a thorough profile of Presley, starting from his humble beginnings in Tupelo, Miss. and taking us all the way through to the end of his life. And Goldman takes a battering ram to the so-called "Elvis Myth" and smashes it to pieces.

Here again, diehard fans hate this book, primarily because they are reluctant to believe that their hero could be what Goldman claims he was - a narcissistic, self-indulgent pervert who put himself first in all situations. However, my question is this: if that is in fact what the man was, why not just admit it and be done with it? Why shoot the messenger because the message he brings is something you don't want to hear or don't want to accept? Goldman interviewed lots of people who knew Presley well and who were close to "the big E" for practically his entire life. Were they all lying? Many of the people Goldman spoke to had no vendettas or grudges against Presley - on the contrary, they served him in life and continued to love him in death. So why is Goldman pilloried for merely recording and creating a narrative based on the facts?

Bottom line: if you would prefer to read about what a wonderful person Elvis was, you will not enjoy this book. If, however, you are interested in an alternative interpretation of what the man was about, then take a look.

Rating:
Summary: GREAT LIES IF YOU HATE ELVIS!
Review: THE PAGES OF THIS BOOK ARE NOT WORTH LINING A LITTERBOX.
THE "EXPERTS" SUPPOSEDLY INTERVIEWED FOR THIS RAG,
WERE NO MORE THAN A HANDFULL OF DISGRUNTLED,FAT,BALD,AND
LEFT -OUT -OF- THE- WILL EX-EMPLOYEES.
GOLDMAN DESPISED ELVIS AND POPULAR MUSIC IN GENERAL,MORE
OF A BOOK FOR PEOPLE WHO STILL ARE JEALOUS OF HEARING OF
PRESLEY'S SUCCESS AND TALENT.
ONLY WORTH ONE STAR AS AUTHOR IS NOW DUST!

Rating:
Summary: Fools
Review: This book is a definitive account of Elvis's life! I can't believe how the other reviewers call this book trash and full of lies when it is the truth! Goldman interviewed the men who saw everything first hand! I love the one reviewer who calls them fat balding men (the mafia who ratted on E) what do you think Elvis was (minus balding)? Besides the book is not as biased as the average fawning Elvis bio, which protrays the man as an untouchable Mythological Hero. This book cuts through the BS that other books keep on perpetuating, and is actually based on fact, not the myths like the other 98 % of Presley books. People dislike this book simply because they dislike the truth and want to hold onto the lies that have became the "Presley Myth". Goldman's language is a bit vulgar at times but this book was not written for a 10 year old, nor is it worse than most movies now days. This book is unquestionable the real story.