Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #173623 in Books
• Published on: 1995-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 736 pages

Customer Reviews

Almost Useless
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.

Trash
Albert Goldman has long been considered a biased hack, and his Elvis bio, if anyone recalls the Rolling Stone article going through it, researching it, and refuting it, is the basis for a lot of Goldman's bad reputation. Anyone, anyone, with a modicum of knowledge about Sam Phillips certainly knows he never used the N word - never - and yet this book is supposedly factual. And his big source is Lamar Fike? Hello!

If you want to read an honest account of Elvis' life, try the books by Peter Guralnick, Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love. This two book set is, in my opinion, the definitive biography of Elvis Presley. This may come as a shock to some, but Elvis was about music and guess what, Guralnick's books actually discuss the music in detail, including the genesis of rock 'n' roll itself, making for fascinating reading.

As someone who has helped to research many biographies for a very, very distinguished biographer, Barry Paris - just look him up on Amazon, why don't you - I can tell you that this book is disgustingly, horribly researched - when there was any research done at all, with bad source notes and a major bias. Like his equally revolting book on Lennon, Goldman's Elvis bio neglects to paint a portrait of a full, complicated human being. Guralnick's books do not in any way portray Elvis as a saint. They do, however, place him and his music in history and give a total picture of a man.

Trash!
I was forced to give the book 1 star, as Amazon does not offer a 0 star option. Even people who dislike Elvis should find the writing insulting. Only someone who was severely jealous of Elvis could write the evil words and tone found in this book. I'm not a disillusioned Elvis fan. I'm well aware that Elvis had his faults and find it appropriate to mention some of them in a biography. However, Albert Goldman chose to make up hateful lies and worked hard to make Elvis seem gross and uncouth. I must admit that I did not complete the book. In fact, I could no longer stomach the rubbish and quit at page 22. I wondered where all this jealousy and rage were coming from. A quick flip through the back page flap where I found the photo of Mr. Goldman answered that question. Poor guy.

If you want a book with truth in it, don't waste your time on this book of lies! If you are severely in hate with Elvis you might like it. But if after reading it you find it a good book, I recommend you seek out a qualified psychiatrist.

Shellie Collins