In Search of Pelvis Redux

By J.D.Reed

ELVIS by Albert Goldman; McGraw-Hill; 598 pages; $14.95

"Before Elvis there was nothing," John Lennon stated in one of his last interviews. The exaggeration was permissible; Elvis Presley, a Memphis hillbilly shouter, did, in fact, radically transform popular music in America. Prior to "the Pelvis," the rhythms of rock were buried in the funk of "race" music. In his wake came the generations of rock compounds: -abilly, acid, punk, and, inevitably, Beatlemania. The first to mesmerize the millions of white teen-agers of mid-'50s America, Elvis all too soon degenerated into rhinestone rumbling, and his act, his records and films, even his bloated, tragic end, contained elements of self-parody.

In this fascinating, perverse study, Albert Goldman struggles to take Presley beyond the familiar Late Show caricature. But the author's attempt, like his earlier Ladies and Gentlemen--Lenny Bruce!!, is filled with portentous speculations and lofty pronouncements about the American Dream and its dreamers. What Goldman does provide, however, is a telephoto focus on life behind the mansion wall of Presley's Graceland. Like the histories of those two other native recluses, Howard Hughes and Hugh Hefner, Presley's private existence was a medley of ritualistic fetishes. The public persona, however, was pure stagecraft.

At home in Memphis the blue-suede revolutionary was a pussycat with a distinctly warped psyche. His father Vernon Presley was convicted in 1938 of altering a check and sent to prison. The three-year-old Elvis was fiercely coddled by "the Hillbilly Cassandra," his mother Gladys. Until he was eleven, he slept in the same bed with "Satnin'," his baby-talk name for the mother he stroked and petted until her death. Gladys did not let the boy play out of her sight until he was 15 and still walked him to school in ninth grade. At 16, Elvis transformed his paralyzing shyness into a bizarre statement: greased locks, pegged pants, mascara and eye shadow. Later he would dye his dirty-blond hair black, imitating a hoody Tony Curtis in the 1949 Brooklyn gang movie City Across the River. When Gladys died of a heart attack in 1958, the King of Rock 'n' Roll was still on apron strings. He demanded that her casket be opened. Then he babbled childish words to her "sooties"--their private name for feet.

Other adults mesmerized Elvis as well. With a gravel-voiced, paunchy old carnival huckster, Colonel Thomas Parker, Presley zoomed from white gospel singalongs to gold-record celebrity. The Colonel, claims Goldman, was actually an illegal Dutch immigrant, Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk. According to Goldman, the manager's alien status would explain why Presley never played Europe or Japan.

When the commitment to rock faded, however, Elvis romped in the Hills of Beverly. Like much of Presley's life, this ordinary greed offends Goldman. It is "What makes him so ... echt Amerikan."

Elvis made 31 excruciating formula films in 13 years. One off-screen date, Natalie Wood, said he was "terribly conventional ... He didn't drink. He didn't swear. He didn't even smoke! It was like haying the date that I never ever had in high school." But for diversion, "the Guys," Elvis' entourage of good ole boys, would procure women. The requirements: under 18, under 5 ft. 3 in. and under the Elvis spell. Some starlets cooperated by forming threesomes, wrestling in their under pants while the excited King, sated on cheeseburgers, watched from his bed.

No voyeurism could aid his performing career in the early '70s. Always a supreme ironist and imitator, a fan of Monty Python and Dr. Strangelove, Elvis began to kid his early songs. Near the end, in the kind of Bible Belt town where he had first gained fame, Elvis even gave away expensive jewelry to win over an audience that failed to appreciate the 255-lb. monster parading as Presley.

Goldman is particularly acute as he recounts the final decade in Graceland, with its turn-of-the-century whorehouse decor of red plush and smoked mirrors. Elvis subsisted on a diet of charred bacon, mashed potatoes and very sophisticated opiates and uppers. His affairs in shambles, he fired most of his faithful retinue in a paranoid frenzy of firearms and pills. An abject drug addict, he flew to Washington for a spur-of-the-moment meeting with Richard Nixon in connection with his role as a spokesman for the President's antidrug campaign. Said Nixon: "You dress pretty wild, don't you?" Replied the sedated Elvis: "Mr. President, you got your show to run and I got mine!"

But the show had run its course. Elvis was so stoned he could not get to the bathroom at night. He was pinned into bathtowels to keep the sheets clean. When he died of "heart failure" in 1977 at age 42, keeping his insomniac vigil in the reading chair of his opulent bathroom, one Hollywood kibitzer acidly remarked, "Good career move."

Goldman's arch, stinging overview echos that bitchy comment. All too often, he relies on shallow dazzle and backup effects. His subject is a compelling case history, an exploited talent with a wasted, truncated life. But that is not enough for Goldman. The biographer insists that each kink in his subject's psyche represents a tremor in the nation's collective unconscious. When Goldman finishes his juicy recounting of Elvis Presley's life, however, the mystery of the King's fascination remains. For that, fans and readers should rejoice. As Elvis always insisted, "You don't come back for an encore."

--By J.D. Reed

EXCERPT

"He had grown accustomed to taking heavy doses of Pacidyl, Valium, Percodan and Demerol every night. Such heavy downers often caused him to fall asleep in the middle of a sentence or even a meal. One moment he would be sitting at the table, piddling with his mashed potatoes. The next, he would be head down in the slop. Linda Thompson once left Elvis for a moment while he was eating a bowl of chicken and rice soup. When she returned, she discovered him with his face totally submerged in the dish. If she hadn't pulled his head back before it was too late, he would have earned the doubtful distinction of being the first man in history to drown in a soup bowl."

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