January 21–28, 1999

20 questions

Peter Guralnick

Interview by a.d. amorosi

1999 is shaping up to be a good year for Elvis Presley devotees. Along with BMG/RCA's pending February release of the early '50s Sun Sessions set, Sunrise, author Peter Guralnick looks at the King in the winter of his discontent in Careless Love—The Unmaking Of Elvis Presley (Little Brown). Guralnick, a journalist known for artfully executed biographies of America's most haunting musicians, makes his second portrait of Presley (1994's first volume, Last Train To Memphis, looked at Presley's rise) a darkly burnished, suspense-packed tale of isolation and near-Southern Gothic tragedy. Beyond the bizarre tales of drugs and money, Guralnick casts a post-army Presley and manager Col. Tom Parker as twins in a tortured drama of Shakespearean proportions.

How and why, throughout both books, did you manage to not impart a sense of judgment or morality?

I think a true portrait allows the reader to take away his own impressions. If what you're dedicated to is truth, then it's irrelevant what the author thinks.

You give us glimpses of Elvis' brilliance. Didn't that make the rest of his life—the sycophants, the drugs, lousy management—excruciatingly frustrating?

No. My job is to explore the phenomenon and describe it as truly as possible. But what I did try to do—and you've hit on something if "frustration" was your response to my narrative strategy—was try to invest everything I could in moments of significance to establish a sense of suspense, establish that things might've been different. It's what Hitchcock talks about in drawing the distinction between surprise and suspense. I want to invest enough of myself as a writer and you as a reader so you'll wonder constantly whether or not you'll be surprised. Maybe the ending'll be different this time.

Before you wrote this did you see Elvis' unmaking as true tragedy or simply an unraveling of a man's vanity?

I see the purity of his vision and his ambitions as so great, his aspiration being large enough, that the falling away from them is tragic. It's not a unique tragedy. His is a particularly American tragedy because in Elvis' life there's no separation between art and commerce.

Because Presley has been so exploited, most often by those around him, was it easy to get through to those remaining few who hold the vigil?

Over the years people have been extraordinarily generous. I never felt like the "stranger at the door," nor have I taken it for granted that people should be thrilled to answer questions. I remember interviewing Muddy Waters in 1970. And I remember his having extraordinary patience with my ignorance. He thought about each of my questions. Now that hasn't always been the case within the Elvis saga, some people made me wait six, seven years. But I've been lucky that most people have been very forthcoming.

Colonel Parker almost steals the show here—his machinations, the amazing husband/wife dichotomy they shared nearly to the end. How do you feel about him in retrospect?

The story of Elvis making those horrible movies would be nothing without the Colonel's plots and shenanigans. He's almost Shakespearean at times. He was so inventive and resourceful, a genius at selling and promoting. His deals are artistic works.… You can't take away the bonds of affection that existed between them in the beginning. You can look at it as a 25-year marriage that neither one of them had the courage to leave. A very human story. But even I would be hard put to defend the Colonel's dealing at the end of Presley's career. It was a fear of losing control of Elvis, losing his meal ticket. And his actions, while deplorable, are understandable. And I hope that distinction is what the reader takes away, that sense of fear.

From this period, what's your favorite Elvis song?

One song he sings from the beginning 'til the end was "Trying To Get To You"; I'm totally knocked out by ballads like "I Need Somebody To Lean On" from Viva Las Vegas which show him as a real interpreter of song; "I'll Hold You In My Heart Till I Can Hold You In My Arms" from the American sessions. I discovered the ballads when I worked on this book. I think that stuff's most underappreciated.