About this item
Elvis Presley is a giant figure in American popular culture, a man whose talent and fame were matched only by his later excesses and tragic end. A godlike entity in the history of rock and roll, this twentieth-century icon with a dazzling voice blended gospel and rhythm and blues with country to create a completely new kind of music and new way of expressing male sexuality, which blew the doors off a staid and repressed 1950s America. In Being Elvis, veteran rock journalist Ray Connolly takes a fresh look at the career of the world's most loved singer, placing him, forty years after his death, not exhaustively in the garish neon lights of Las Vegas but back in his mid-twentieth-century, distinctly southern world. For new and seasoned fans alike, Connolly, who interviewed Elvis in 1969, re-creates a man who sprang from poverty in Tupelo, Mississippi, to unprecedented overnight fame, eclipsing Frank Sinatra and then inspiring the Beatles along the way.
About the Author
RAY CONNOLLY has written several novels, including SHADOWS ON A WALL, LOVE OUT OF SEASON and SUNDAY MORNING, the movies and novels THAT'LL BE THE DAY and STARDUST and the television series LYTTON'S DIARY and PERFECT SCOUNDRELS. He also wrote a biography of JOHN LENNON, whom he knew well. He was about to fly from London to New York to see Lennon when he got the call telling him that the ex-Beatle had been murdered.
He also wrote and directed the TV documentary JAMES DEAN: THE FIRST AMERICAN TEENAGER, worked with record producer SIR GEORGE MARTIN on the BBC Television series THE RHYTHM OF LIFE, and has written TV plays, films and documentaries, radio plays, short stories and much journalism.
His latest novel, KILL FOR LOVE, a thriller about music, is available on Kindle. He is currently writing a screenplay about the life of DUSTY SPRINGFIELD.
He is married and lives in London.
