Review: Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley (Peter Guralnick, 1999)

Peter Guralnick’s two-volume biography of Elvis Presley is the best biography of an entertainer that I have ever read. The first volume crackles with the excitement of the early days of the King of Rock and Roll — I could hardly put it down.

The second volume picks up in 1958. Elvis is only 23 –his beloved mother Gladys has just died at age 48, and Elvis is drafted into the Army at the peak of his popularity. He died only 19 years later at the age of 42 — isolated, paranoid and addicted to drugs.

How did it come to that? That is Guralnick’s central theme in this volume. Elvis’s physical and emotional decline isn’t the whole story though. Elvis was still capable of cranking out great music during this period — ‘Suspicious Minds’ (1969) might be the best song that he ever recorded. Though he spent most of the 1960s making forgettable movies, when he returned to live performing in 1968, the results were initially spectacular according to most accounts. The ’68 Comeback Special is still regarded as a landmark television event, and his early years in Vegas set the Strip on fire.

But as Elvis’s marriage disintegrated and his career began to falter, his weaknesses overtook his frail character. He was painfully insecure and seemingly unable to form meaningful, long-term relationships. The small circle of close associates (aka the infamous Memphis Mafia) that Elvis established early in his career evolved into near total isolation from the outside world — they lived in their own reality, made their own rules and catered to the whims of one man. Drugs were merely another avenue to escape reality.

As with his first volume Guralnick goes along way in helping resurrect the music of Elvis Presley — his passionate recounting of the studio sessions and live performances allowed me to approach the music with a fresh ear. Even though we do see flashes of the earlier greatness throughout this period, Elvis seems incapable of sustained creative effort.

Postscript: As you may have gathered, these books have re-ignited my interest in the music of Elvis. Some years back RCA released a series of remastered boxed sets chronicling the phases of Elvis’s career. I immediately bought the first volume — The King of Rock and Roll: The Complete 50′s Masters (5 CDs). If you don’t already own it, stop reading and go buy it right now. After finishing Guralnick’s second book, I ordered the remaining sets: From Nashville to Memphis: The Essential 60′s Masters (5 CDs), Command Performances: The Essential 60′s Masters II (soundtrack cuts, 2 CDs) and Walk a Mile in My Shoes: The Essential 70′s Masters (5 CDs). I realize that the work in these later sets is spottier, but I felt somehow compelled to get them — it is almost as if I will not know the whole story that Guralnick is trying to tell unless I dive into these collections. I know it sounds silly but if you read the books you’ll understand . . . and you should read these books — they are magnificent.