“Prelude,” excerpted from the book

Elvis Presley was onThe Ed Sullivan Show, and the kids did not understand what the fuss was about. If they had even heard of Elvis (“Elvis Pretzel singing ‘Heartburn Hotel,’” some of them thought the deejay said on their little plastic radios), they knew he was a singer whose voice attracted them. They had never heard anything like it. Now, seeing him for the first time playfully blub blub blubbing his way through ­“Don’t Be Cruel,” they saw he was grown-­up, sort of, but a kid like them, too. They could tell by the way he looked at them—he knew them, knew what they were thinking. Elvis . . . Elvis. They said his name and felt the first stirrings of love. He knew what was in their hearts and spoke directly to them.

      The adults saw Presley and thought, What the hell was that? If they were particularly threatened, they might shoo the kids back away from the television set, as if he were contagious and could somehow teach them about sex through the fuzzy black-­and-­white image. But since this was 1956, Dad probably just cleared his throat and left the room shaking his head, These crazy kids . . .

      Elvis was the first. Before the Beatles, before the Rolling Stones, before U2, before Eminem, there was Elvis. The original Slim Shady, he was black and white, rhythm and country, hot and cool. His appearance on Ed Sullivan ripped the 1950s in half, and America was never the same. He could not have seen what was coming—the Colonel, who wanted to make him into sort of a hip Perry Como (if such a thing can be imagined) certainly did not. And for himself, his wildest dream, the one beyond imagining, was to be in the movies like Tony Curtis. But whatever happened, he was game.

     In the beginning, Elvis did not understand the audience’s ferocious response to him. But he quickly learned to harness it, toying with his screaming fans like a lover. Onstage, something came over him. He was a different person—freer, able to express himself, musically articulate as he never was in conversation. People loved him and he gave their love back to them in kind.

      Did the kids even know why they liked Presley? They knew their parents hated him, which was a start. His concerts were an almost Dionysian release. After the placid tones of Frank Sinatra and Tommy Dorsey, rock and roll was a safe place for American teens to go berserk. The great seducer, Elvis left them spent, stunned. They had never seen anything like him: He was so totally different, ­that’s for sure. This beautiful man who loved his mama, wore mascara, and sang like an angel.

      The first superstar, Elvis was almost pure style. Tolstoy believed that one critical way to judge art was if it got a response—either good or bad. Everything about Elvis was provocative. His clothes, his hair, the way he sang, the way he moved on stage, his half-­kidding sneer. Adults, church leaders, the great dull morass that makes up acceptable society considered Elvis a joke, but Leonard Bernstein recognized his impact. Talking to Richard Clurman, an editor at Time magazine, he proclaimed, “Elvis Presley is the greatest cultural force in the Twentieth Century.” What about Picasso? Clurman wondered. This kind of parrying was common at the Time-­Life Building. “No,” Bernstein insisted. ­“It’s Elvis. He introduced the beat to everything and he changed everything—music, language, clothes. ­It’s a whole new social revolution—the Sixties came from it.”

      In terms of style, there were three distinct Elvises. The 1950s Hillbilly Cat beloved by fans is considered the purest Elvis. In his slouchy Lansky jacket Presley played country rube to New York City television audiences. The 1960s Hollywood Elvis—onscreen, he plays racecar drivers! Roustabouts! Twins!—presented a more clean cut (some would say neutered) Elvis acceptable to middle America. And finally, there was the 1970s Vegas Elvis—the glitz, the glamour, the behind-­the-­scenes shenanigans. Elvis is no longer the wide eyed country boy happy to be here. Spend enough time in Oz and you just know there is some heavy stuff going down. In Bill ­Belew’s hand studded jumpsuits, Elvis is no longer a singer, but the greatest entertainer in the world. He is quite simply, the King of Rock and Roll.

      Elvis blew into the complacent center of the 1950s and tore them apart. Like Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, three other style icons of the twentieth century, he came along at precisely the right time. Television, then in its infancy, and the first teenagers with spending money and a world view apart from their parents joined forces to make Elvis a star. Asked why he became the phenomenon he did, Elvis said humbly, “The people were looking for something different and I came along just in time. I was lucky.”

      Elvis’ style worked because it came from his life. Presley (possibly the most distinctive looking, and sounding, man in the entire world) was no publicist’s creation. Instead, he lifted his style—which was essentially, himself—from Beale Street, church, the army, Hollywood, and finally, Las Vegas and the road.

      No one looked like Elvis before he came on the scene. He was a stunning original—a shambling Memphis Beau Brummel, the bad boy (albeit with very good manners, because his mother would have killed him if she thought he was getting a big head), a Southern James Dean who reached his audiences through his music.

      Elvis had a keen visual sense not only in how he presented himself onstage, but in his homes, the cars he drove, the women he dated, even the guys who surrounded him. His pure, idiosyncratic style is all the more remarkable because he was completely untutored. Elvis instinctively recognized the transformative power of clothing—and, indeed, his very life—to simultaneously draw attention to himself and set himself apart from others. Dean Martin, the level-­headed, golf-­addicted, Rat Pack crooner Elvis idolized, also recognized this. “In a tuxedo, I’m a star,” he said. “In regular clothes, I’m nobody.”

      By high school, Elvis was using his wardrobe as an extension of his personality. A shy, dreamy boy with few friends and no discernible talent or ambition, he wore lace shirts when other boys his age wore khakis and madras shirts, refusing to cut his hair to play on the football team.

      Presley came to think of himself as a “freak,” set apart by the superstardom of his life and all it demanded of him. His talent was so extraordinary, his rise to fame so absolute, that nothing in his past, or his ­family’s past, prepared him for it. But then again, what could possibly prepare anyone for that almost crippling kind of attention?

      Unlike some celebrities who hide from the ­public’s attention, Elvis believed he owed everything to his fans. During the 1950s, whenever a teenager was reported missing, the local Memphis police checked the front gates of Graceland, in case she had run away. Elvis always stopped to sign autographs and pose for pictures, no matter how tired or busy he was, reasoning, after all, that they made it all possible.

      Elvis had an almost mystical relationship with his fans that continues to this day. By the end of his life, his connection with his audience was so absolute that there was no downtime for him. In the 1970s, he had his costume designer, Bill Belew, designing his offstage wardrobe as well. Unlike other public figures who made very clear delineations between their public and private lives, by then there was no separation between ­Presley’s professional and personal life: He was Elvis.

      Elvis affected history and, in turn, became history in a way that we, who recognize his influence—in fashion, in music, in cultural expectations—do not. Today, he is so linked with a singular moment in time that he is also a stylistic adjective used to describe a manner of dressing, living, and even behaving.

      But while icons like Audrey Hepburn and Jacqueline Onassis, for example, are aspirationally associated with European couture filtered through classic East Coast style, for a time Elvis became the punch line of late-­night jokes and cheesy impersonators, raucous living and zero impulse control. Except on stage or in the recording studio (to him, the only places it mattered), Elvis did not have the personal discipline of Audrey or Jackie.

      But at the beginning of the twenty-­first century, now that we are able to take a more studied view of ­Presley’s extraordinary talent (which, at the end of the day, is what counts, really), this initial, hasty opinion is finally being recast.

      The first thing that Elvis represents, perhaps his most compelling contribution, even today—is freedom. Total, absolute, and utter freedom. Freedom from parents, crummy jobs, school, people who ­don’t understand you. Elvis was not part of the Establishment, and never wanted to be. Instead, he created his own world.

      A man with the childlike personal conviction to do exactly as he pleased and the money and creative imagination to back it up, Elvis lived a life millions of people fantasize about. To do what you want, be who you want, drive, escape, live the way you want. Elvis’ voice—so intimate, so pure, awakened something in those who heard it and gave them the freedom to be themselves, too. Bruce Springsteen felt it. “It was like he came along and whispered some dream in everybody’s ear, and somehow we all dreamed it.”

      There is also Elvis’ dark side, as necessary to his style as his voice or his Cadillacs, for his darkness offsets his vast charisma. In the phrasing of his words we hear longing, regret—for things he can no longer have: his twin brother, his mother, the perfect dream of home, lost innocence. How simple his desire must have seemed when he stepped off that truck and walked into Sun Studio, smiling shyly to the woman behind the desk.

      In Elvis, we hear the longing of America. Those lonely whistle stops. A dog barking on a country road. A man who got on stage and sang to twenty thousand, who hated sleeping alone. This longing, this loss—both his and ours—and the endless search to fill it, built this country.

      Finally we see that Elvis is America, like rock and roll or blue jeans. For better or worse he inhabits our energy, optimism, and goodwilled rambunctiousness, as well as our short-­tempered, childish, and occasionally violent side, and reflects it back to us as clearly as any mirror. As Jimmy Carter said, “Elvis Presley was a symbol of the ­country’s vitality, rebelliousness and good humor.”

      Elvis does not possess the disciplined, flawless French style of Audrey and Jackie, nor Cary ­Grant’s cool Savile Row tailoring. How dull that perfection can be at times, after all. He was not a tiresome intellectual—but out on the road, searching, pushing forward, reaching the people. Elvis is not the voice of the city; we leave that to Frank Sinatra and Cole Porter. In Elvis, we hear the South, the West, churchgoing folk, truck drivers with one more haul to go before daybreak. Even today, Elvis speaks for them.

      Like the true America, Elvis is not properly schooled, but has unerring instincts; how to move an audience, but mostly, how to sing. Jerry Leiber, who cowrote “Hound Dog,” “Loving You,” and other hits, says, “He had an incredible, attractive instrument that worked in many registers. He could falsetto like Little Richard. He could sing. The equipment was outstanding. His ear was uncanny. His sense of timing was second to none.” Elvis singing to us: how intimate like love, how trusting, that voice in your ear leading you through the dark. Our modern prayer. Through his songs and through his life, he conveys the inchoate desire of this gorgeous heartbreaking country of ours.

      Dead at forty-­two, worn out finally and alone, Elvis tested the Zen koan as few are given the opportunity: What would you do if your life were pure possibility? If you could have, or do, anything you wanted? In the end, Elvis faltered. Paradoxically, the man who had all the freedom in the world closed up upon himself, retreating to Graceland.

      Yet for all his perceived faults (and who is anyone to judge ­another’s life?), Elvis did not fail to live in the time he was given. Like few men, he chased love—both giving and receiving; believing in its power like he believed in God. With his genius, he recognized that love and its transformative possibility of redemption, perhaps even more than his talent, could save him.

      He may have made a few bad judgment calls—some fans and cultural critics judge him as harshly as any ex-wife, but his lowest moments were higher than most ­men’s highs.

      Finally, we see that Elvis had all the dreams of man: youth, talent, physical perfection, artistic exuberance. Once possessed, they can never be taken from him. But none of it was enough to save him. Is this our American story? In the end, like all great loves—like the world itself—he will break our hearts. His voice and some small measure of innocence are the only things that will outlive him.

      And us.