{"product_id":"being-elvis-a-lonely-life-9781631494017","title":"Being Elvis: A Lonely Life","description":"\u003cp\u003eElvis Presley is a giant figure in American popular culture, a man whose talent and fame were matched only by his later excesses and tragic end. A godlike entity in the history of rock and roll, this twentieth-century icon with a dazzling voice blended gospel and traditionally black rhythm and blues with country to create a completely new kind of music and new way of expressing male sexuality, which simply blew the doors off a staid and repressed 1950s America.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn \u003cem\u003eBeing Elvis\u003c\/em\u003e veteran rock journalist Ray Connolly takes a fresh look at the career of the world's most loved singer, placing him, forty years after his death, not exhaustively in the garish neon lights of Las Vegas but back in his mid-twentieth-century, distinctly southern world. For new and seasoned fans alike, Connolly, who interviewed Elvis in 1969, re-creates a man who sprang from poverty in Tupelo, Mississippi, to unprecedented overnight fame, eclipsing Frank Sinatra and then inspiring the Beatles along the way.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eJuxtaposing the music, the songs, and the incendiary live concerts with a personal life that would later careen wildly out of control, Connolly demonstrates that Elvis's amphetamine use began as early as his touring days of hysteria in the late 1950s, and that the financial needs that drove him in the beginning would return to plague him at the very end. With a narrative informed by interviews over many years with John Lennon, Bob Dylan, B. B. King, Sam Phillips, and Roy Orbison, among many others, Connolly creates one of the most nuanced and mature portraits of this cultural phenomenon to date.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat distinguishes \u003cem\u003eBeing Elvis\u003c\/em\u003e beyond the narrative itself is Connolly's more subtle examinations of white poverty, class aspirations, and the prison that is extreme fame. As we reach the end of this poignant account, Elvis's death at forty-two takes on the hue of a profoundly American tragedy. The creator of an American sound that resonates today, Elvis remains frozen in time, an enduring American icon who could \"seamlessly soar into a falsetto of pleading and yearning\" and capture an inner emotion, perhaps of eternal yearning, to which all of us can still relate.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIntimate and unsparing, Being Elvis explores the extravagance and irrationality inherent in the Elvis mythology, ultimately offering a thoughtful celebration of an immortal life.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eConnolly, Ray:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - \u003cb\u003eRay Connolly\u003c\/b\u003e is a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. While working for the \u003ci\u003eLondon Evening Standard\u003c\/i\u003e, he interviewed, among others, many rock stars and cultural icons of the 1960s and '70s, including the Beatles and Elvis Presley. He contributes regularly to the \u003ci\u003eDaily Mail\u003c\/i\u003e and has also written for the \u003ci\u003eSunday Times\u003c\/i\u003e, the \u003ci\u003eTimes\u003c\/i\u003e, and the \u003ci\u003eDaily Telegraph\u003c\/i\u003e. He lives in London.","brand":"Liveright Publishing Corporation","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50493079453970,"sku":"9781631494017","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_81621de6-bb18-4386-83ce-b814c731053e.jpg?v=1730625736","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/being-elvis-a-lonely-life-9781631494017","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}