By the very nature of its subject matter this volume tells a far more depressing tale than its predecessor, chronicling Elvis's long, slow slide, despite his 1968-69 comeback, into maudlin commercialism and self-loathing.īecause the book is more about the consequences of fame than its achievement, more about business decisions and in-fighting among friends and associates than it is about music, Mr. ''Careless Love,'' the follow-up to that earlier volume, picks up with the 23-year-old Elvis serving a two-year Army stint in Germany and ends with his drug-fueled death in 1977 at the age of 42. It was a book that not only captured the magic electricity of the King's early years, but also explicated his invention of a revolutionary musical idiom, a style lovingly built upon a host of earlier genres from gospel to blues, rhythm-and-blues to country, with a voice that would help reroute the course of American music. ''Last Train to Memphis'' (1994), the first volume of Peter Guralnick's life of Elvis Presley, was a model of biographical scholarship: erudite and ardent and almost novelistic in its conjuring of Elvis's spectacular rise.
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