The King and I

     I have just finished my third book, a full length biography entitled, Elvis Presley: The Man. The Life. The Legend, and I have to say that it is, hands-down, the coolest thing I have ever done in my entire life.

     An English major and former journalist, my previous two books were well received biographies of Audrey Hepburn and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, each written with the help of their families, but nothing prepared me for Elvis Presley.  (Or perhaps, in the ways of the world, everything did.)

     It was not my idea, but after a friend suggested it, I saw the whole thing in a flash (as they say).  Genius — totally genius.

     And so, my journey began.

     I did not tell anyone because I think that all great ideas, like love affairs, are ephemeral in nature and at least in the fragile, early stages, don’t stand up well to outside criticism.  Thus, I quietly began my education in All Things Elvis.

     I listened to everything of his I could get my hands on, read every book from Guralnick to the cartoonish, watched hours of concert tapes, interviewed as many of his friends who would speak with me (which was pretty much everyone).  I remember being in London on my Jackie book tour, sitting on a friend’s roof garden overlooking the chimney tops of Mayfair, with the opening bars of “Kentucky Rain” breaking my heart.   (If you want to feel like an American, go to a foreign country and listen to Elvis coursing through your headphones.)

     And I knew: I was going to write this book.  If my agent agreed, if my publisher agreed, if Graceland helped or did not, it was going to happen.

     So that was it, Elvis and me.  What a gorgeous, glorious time we had.  We spent three years together and by the time I was physically writing the book, I woke up every morning at 6:30 with his voice in my head, or a scrap of a paragraph I wanted to remember, or an image to get in the book, or something Jerry Schilling confided to me.  I know my name is on the front cover, but I don’t feel that I wrote the book, so much as I got out of the way and let it come through me.

     Now I know, of course, that Elvis and I have very little in common… I live in New York City (a town I love but Elvis was not so wild about), I am a woman in my thirties (definitely not a sex symbol), educated on the east coast, and could not get up and sing in public if you paid me.  But somehow, I got him down on the page.  During the time I wrote the book, I became Elvis, and Mr. Lansky, and all the boys on the road, and Beale Street in 1956, and Vegas, and his mother, and the fans who loved him from afar.

     Looking at it from the calmness of several months later, it was a remarkable thing.  People ask how Audrey and Jackie compared to Elvis, and all I can do is shake my head and say, “Elvis just blew them out of the water…”

     Becoming a writer is a dream, and I feel extraordinarily fortunate to have been given this chance, to have been given this subject.  In retrospect, the entire process was sort of magical — all the people I met, the remarkable generosity of everyone at Graceland and EPE (Pete Davidson is a saint).  I remember afternoons seated beside Susan Sherwood of the photo department going through hundreds of images of Elvis, each better looking than the next.  Seeing the layout of the book for the first time.  “Would you look at that guy,” the designer and I marveled to one another.  Being taken on a tour of Memphis in a ’56 Cadillac by the irrepressible Tad Pierson.

     To be honest, I have not met too many fans.  When I was doing research, I stayed at the Heartbreak Hotel, and it got to the point where I did not tell people why I was there, because they had all kinds of highly specific, somewhat arcane questions that I was far too shy to ask Jack Soden.  (If anyone has any particular insight as to why Elvis is not buried next to Gladys in the Meditation Garden, please fill us in.)  Plus they all wanted to tag along to the archives as my mythical assistant.  (“No one will notice!” they assured me.)

     By the time you read this — please God, I hope they like it, I think to myself! — the book will have been out for a few months, and I will have been to Memphis for Elvis Week 2004 (believe me, everyone I know wants to come down and “help out” with the signings).  But if I could say anything to you, it would be this: I did the best I could to present Elvis in a human light.  He is not a saint, he is not a sinner, but a very real human being who was blessed, for some reason, with extraordinary gifts of perception, talent, generosity and the ability to sing a song. 

     At the end of the day, he did the best that he could.  As did I.

     I hope we get the chance to meet someday; in the interim, let me know what you think.

PCK.