Elvis (Lives) - Hardcover

Mason, Bobbie Ann

3.89

276 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0297829793 ISBN 13: 9780297829799

Publisher: W&N, 2003

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When Bobbie Ann Mason first heard Elvis singing on the radio, she recognised immediately that 'he was ours...a country person who spoke our language'. Born to a poor family clinging to the edge of respectability, Elvis was catapulted into a stratosphere of wealth and fame he could never have imagined. His music, blending black and white influences and drawing on his powerful sexual allure, exploded across 1950s America as the sound of liberation. But as Mason shows with great understanding, nothing in Elvis's life had prepared him for his mythic status. Locked into a sharecropper-like contract with his manager, Colonel Parker, he was forced to keep churning out mediocre movies and albums, while turning to drugs and spending sprees to cope with his isolation. Even his triumphant comeback in Las Vegas couldn't banish the demons that eventually cost him his life. Elvis is a book that only Bobbie Ann Mason could have written, and the Elvis she portrays is unforgettable.

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Review:

Finished copies of ELVIS have gone out, with a publication date of 13th March. There has been initial interest from LOOSE ENDS (BBC Radio 4). Teletext are also planning a feature. The first two full pages reviews have come in, andare great: 'Bobbie Ann Mason makes an efficient guide to Elvis country.'Craig Brown, MAIL ON SUNDAY (***) 'It is a measure of Mason's deft touch as a writer that the story she tells us does not become too heavy with symbolism...[a] considerable achievement.'Justine Picardie, DAILY TELEGRAPH '...an admirably balanced study.'IRISH TIMES 'Mason cuts through the crap and gets to the agony and the ecstasy of Presley's life and times, painting a picture of a deeply flawed and hugely contradictory mythical hero sacrificed, Osiris-like, on the alter of the American consumerist dream.'David Sutton, JACK MAGAZINE There

From the Back Cover:

'Elvis Presley seemed to have sprung on the world without a history. His emergence in the mid-fifties was so sudden, his music so fresh, his personality so evocative that he could not be labelled. People went crazy. There was never a mania quite like it. Teenagers went wild with excitement; their parents went wild with anxiety over Elvis's overt sexuality. Girls ripped his car apart; they stripped his clothes off; they were ready to rock and roll. Elvis's celebrity was an amazing American phenomenon, and the entire nation was gripped by it... he swept up marginal groups of people with a promise of freedom, release, redemption; he took people close to the edge and brought them back again; with his stupendous singing talent, he blended all the strains of popular American music into one rebellious voice; he created a style of being that was so distinctive it could be made into an icon; he violated taboos against personal expression and physicality; he opened the airwaves to risk and trembling. Rock-and-roll had been brewing for years, but its defining moment was Elvis.' - Bobbie Ann Mason

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