This is the really sad biography of an immature man who built an insular environment around himself, reinforced by an entourage completely reliant on his largesse. A mamma’s boy who never really recovered from his mother's death and who was incapable of having a mature relationship with women. Silence is the resting place of the soul. It's sacred. And necessary for new thoughts to be born. That's what my pills are for...to get as close as possible to that silence." - p. 456 Elvis was always surrounded by an entourage of home-town and ex-army buddies (the ‘Memphis Mafia’), who were all fuelled on uppers and who lived off his largesse (he was extremely generous with money and gifts). Meanwhile, the carnival conman Colonel Tom Parker directs Elvis’s career – towards more trashy films, in particular, and fewer records (so as not to flood the market and keep the value high). The films' OSTs actually sold more than Elvis’ ‘real’ LPs, so the Colonel was happy to keep churning these out, at the expense of his musical career or development.

The writing is strong and while it does tend a little bit towards tedium, it only serves to shore up reality and dispel myths. Ultimately, brightening Elvis' star even further as we realise quite how phenomenal he was. This could have been a treatise on what not to do, perhaps useful for the idols of today... But really, there is no time in this book to examine it so any instruction must be found between the lines & can be at best mere 2nd guessing. Elvis dreams repeatedly, what he calls a 'nightmare', that he woke up one morning & his fans had deserted him & all his everything had gone away forever, but I found myself wondering if that was in fact his unconscious mind pleading with him, telling him "This is what you have to do if you want to live or ever again find a quantum of solace, you have to make it all disappear". But his ambition and his what-they-call poverty mentality meant he could never accept that. He was strong enough to fight himself to a draw, but not strong enough to win. Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley. Plus: Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley.He was a man who thought and acted like a boy. Always craving an entourage that never left him, none of the people who surrounded him could help his addiction to a plethora of drugs. His autopsy showed an enlarged heart, liver damage as well as a painful bowel condition caused by excess drug usage. At the time of his death, at least 14 different drugs were in his body. The amount of codeine was ten times a normally prescribed level. His addiction to quaaludes brought toxic levels to a body that over abused drugs for many years.

Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley is beautifully written portrait of Presley's early years -- his impoverished childhood in Tupelo, Mississippi, the move to Memphis in his teenage years, and the amazingly rich and complex soup of musical influences that city offered to a shy, sensitive boy with a huge love of singing and music of all kinds. The Elvis story has so often seemed to me to be almost Shakespearean in its tragical aspects. Careless Love merely confirms these feelings, with Elvis paralleling Hamlet's manic depression, surrounded by wheelers and dealers. Much in the book has been written before, but this, at last, is a lucid, complete and chronological account. As one progresses through the book, it becomes ever more clear to what extent Elvis was manipulated by all around him, how his talent was largely squandered by a manager whose sole interest was self-glorification and how Elvis, himself, so rarely reacted, but remained quietly professional and did the best with whatever was offered; at the same time he was, equally clearly, seething inside. The book pulls no punches, however, and honestly relates the decline, both personally and professionally, which occurred in the seventies, without resorting to smut or innuendo. In hindsight Elvis' downfall is almost as sudden as his rise and the author once again does a masterful job of researching and writing every detail. We all know what's coming at the end, just as we did watching the film Titanic, but like all great true stories the reader's interest is held not by what happened - but how. The pieces begin falling into place during his stint in the Army while stationed in Germany. He's introduced to drugs that will keep him awake on duty and to his future wife, 14 year old Priscilla Beaulieu. It continues through a string of Hollywood B-movies, numerous affairs and an immature lifestyle of "horsing around" supported by the guys now universally known as The Memphis Mafia. As long as they don't say "no" Elvis remains forever young and they remain on the payroll. I've been watching Oscar nominated 2022 films and while I wasn't really interested in Elvis (I've never been a fan), watched the Baz Luhrmann film about his life. That film completely changed my perspective. I'd never realized how tragic the latter part of his life became. That film and this epiphany were the impetus for wanting to read Careless Love. Garth Hudson – keyboards, organ, accordion, piano, synthesizers, vocoder, soprano, alto and tenor saxophones, bellsThis is as interesting on the development of US teen culture and the burgeoning post-war music business as it is on the man himself, and the amounts of money being generated from the Elvis franchise are just jaw-dropping. My only reserve about Careless Love is the unnecessary use of profanity. But other than that, the book is a real must. The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.