Ray Connolly - Being Elvis: A Lonely Life

BEING

ELVIS

A LONELY LIFE

RAY CONNOLLY

Liveright Publishing Corporation

A Division of W. W. Norton & Company

Independent Publishers Since 1923

New York London

Years before I decided to write this book, I interviewed, in my job as a journalist and then a screenwriter, many of the people involved in the story of Elvis. They included Sam Phillips, Marion Keisker, the Reverend W. Herbert Brewster, Carl Perkins, saxophonist Boots Randolph, Roy Orbison, Mike Stoller, Rufus Thomas, Jerry Wexler, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Chris Hutchins, Bob Dylan, Stanley Booth, B.B. King, Freddy Bienstock, Billy Swan, George Klein, Colonel Tom Parker and my friend the late Mort Shuman. Then, of course, there was Elvis himself. So, Im very grateful to all of them for sparing me their time and thoughts, as well as to YouTube for making so many interviews with those who knew him so easily accessible.

Hed been right to worry about money. While he was by no means poor, when auditors looked into Elviss finances after his death and added up his assets, they were surprised. Including his home, cars and airplanes, they reckoned that despite the hundreds of millions of dollars hed generated in his career, his total worth was less than $10 million. At the rate Elvis spent and gave, and considering the financial obligations he had to family and staff, that wouldnt have lasted very long had he stopped touring. By way of comparison, John Lennon, who was to be murdered just over three years later, is believed to have left over $150 million. But then Lennons finances were being overseen by Yoko Ono, the daughter of a Japanese banker. Elviss money was managed by his self-educated father Vernon and Colonel Tom Parker.

He couldnt have been more wrong about one thing, however. Afraid that he would be forgotten after his death, the reverse happened. He has been more honored and is more respected in death than he ever was in his lifetime. The immediate surge in record sales in 1977 might have been expected, but the continuing interest in him, which, since then, has doubled the number of his records sold to an estimated billion-plus, couldnt have been anticipated. RCAs buying of his back catalog from him in 1973 proved a shrewder move than they could have guessed: half a billion more records and no artist royalty to pay. That being said, having taken over the management of the catalog, RCA finally gave the recordings the respect they deserved, repackaging them in multiple themes: Fifties, Sixties, Seventies, Blues, Country, Rock, Movies, Religious, Romance, Ballads, etc. On top of that, virtually all the surviving outtakes of hundreds of his recordings have now also been made available, while in 2016 a new album, If I Can Dream, on which his voice is backed by Londons Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, sold over a million copies.

As shocked and upset as the fans were at the time of his death, there was quickly a corresponding emotional reaction among a generation of musicians, many of whom had been drawn to music by Elvis. Soon, some would be writing songs about him, with the result that detractors, who had listened with their ears tightly shut, were given a lesson in cultural appreciation by Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Mark Knopfler, Bryan Adams, Elton John, Frank Zappa and many others. Bruce Springsteen, a big fan, was at the time of Elviss death trying to get a new song hed written especially for him to Graceland for consideration. Hes never known whether it ever reached Elvis. It was called Fire and it became a million-selling hit for the Pointer Sisters the following year. Elvis may never have understood how or why he sang the way he did. But those who followed him knew that he had been unique and inspiring.

Mercifully, although many of those sixties films which he so despised played for decades on afternoon television, that part of his career seems, in recent years, to have been all but wiped from the public memory. Today Spinout, Fun in Acapulco, Tickle Me and the rest might just as well have never been made; but nothingnot even some of the most dire Elvis impersonators, of whom there are tens of thousands around the world,can seemingly kill the continuing popularity of Suspicious Minds and Dont Be Cruel.

Obviously Elviss looks have helped the continuing mystique, as they helped throughout his career, with an image of him as a young man appearing on US Mail postage stamps in 1992 and again in 2015. The careful marketing of Graceland as a tourist attraction, and the prudent licensing of his recordings to movies like Oceans Eleven and Men in Black, as well as to commercials for telephones, supermarkets and sportswear, have also helped keep his memory fresh.

But none of this fully explains why, forty years after his death, he remains one of the most recognized figures of recent history, with his estate now earning an estimated $55 million a year, according to Forbes business magazine. Shrewd marketing can only go so far. There has to be something else. It is, of course, his voiceor, should we say, his voices, because he used a multiplicity of styles for different songs.

I didnt copy my style from anyone, he often said early in his career.

Actually, he did. He copied it from everyone, his own voice being the result of a collision between all the different styles he loved. And, in the barrage of sound that popular music constantly throws at us, it is the tonality of that voice which still connects, for some indefinable reason and in some subliminal sense, with millions of people, whether or not they speak English.

He wasnt a trained singer; he listened and he learned; and the songs he sang werent sophisticated in their construction. But when, not much more than a youth, he would seamlessly soar into his falsetto of pleading and yearning, or as a lonely middle-aged man his singing would break with regret, millions recognized the emotion. Capable of going from bass to baritone and on to tenor and falsetto in the same song, his voice was the most pliable of instruments. Consummately versatile, it didnt matter if it was urgent rock and roll, pop operetta or a spiritual; at his best he sang as though he truly believed in the feelings he was expressing.

That was his gift and that was his appeal. He could communicate in song like very, very few others. Whether he could be classed as a great singer has to be a personal opinion. For me, Ive always liked what Bob Dylan had to say about his liberating effect.

Hearing Elvis for the first time, said Dylan, was like busting out of jail. I thank God for Elvis Presley.

Also by Ray Connolly

FICTION

A Girl Who Came to Stay

Trick or Treat?

Newsdeath

A Sunday Kind of Woman

Sunday Morning

Shadows on a Wall

Love Out of Season

NONFICTION

John Lennon 19401980

Stardust Memories (anthology of interviews)

The Ray Connolly Beatles Achive

SCREENPLAYS FOR THE CINEMA

Thatll Be the Day

Stardust

FILMS AND SERIES FOR TELEVISION

Honky Tonk Heroes

Lyttons Diary

Forever Young

Defrosting the Fridge

Perfect Scoundrels

TV DOCUMENTARIES

James Dean: The First American Teenager

The Rhythm of Life (three-part music series)

PLAYS FOR RADIO

An Easy Game to Play

Lost Fortnight

Tim Merrymans Days of Clover (series)

Unimaginable

God Bless Our Love