Elvis Presley

From Barnes & Noble

An Interview with Bobbie Ann Mason

Barnes & Noble.com: How did you come to write this biography of Elvis, given your fame as a writer of fiction?

Bobbie Ann Mason: It's a short biography, so I couldn't tell everything. It's more of an essay with a point of view. I came at all of this as a southerner, and I approached it in a somewhat literary way, using images and descriptions of photographs and little moments in his life that were not that well known but that I thought might be revealing. It was Elvis's dream to rise above his impoverished background and to buy his mama a Cadillac and a nice home, and that dream fueled his music. I am from western Kentucky, and my fiction takes place in that setting, which is directly north of Tupelo [Mississippi, Elvis's hometown] and Memphis. So I grew up hearing the same music and being aware of a similar culture. I felt I had some insight into him.

Another motivation for writing the book was to counteract that stereotype, all of those clichés about Elvis. Many people don't know much more than spangle jump suits, the guy who shot out TV sets, gorged on peanut butter sandwiches, and gave away cars to perfect strangers. That's really not Elvis. His people were country people, and they had their own culture, and Elvis was always loyal to that world at the same time he wanted to get out of it. And he was always uncomfortable when he would cross class lines. There is so much about Elvis that you can understand when you understand the textures of that upbringing.

When Elvis first was able to buy his parents a house in Memphis in 1956, I imagine that there was probably nothing more exciting in his life from then on -- the ability to achieve that dream, the idea that they could have a real house, a nice house with two bathrooms, four bedrooms. Gladys hung her wash out on the line because it was what she was used to, but the neighbors didn't approve. Life became impossible at that house because Elvis's fans stole the wash, and it was getting on his mother's nerves. It was his parents who found Graceland because it was out in the country -- so Gladys could have some chickens and Vernon [Elvis's father] could raise some hogs. Elvis bought it and kept it as his home for the rest of his life. It was the place he was devoted to, where he honored his mother.

B&N.com: He was extraordinarily close to his mother, Gladys. Could you talk about his relationship with her?

BAM: I think it was a very volatile relationship. She was very strict with him as well as indulgent with her affection. And after she died, it is often said that he lost his moral compass. And part, I think, of his lack of inhibition in his performances and as a performer are ways of rebelling against her, in a way. He could let loose on stage in a way and cause all of the girls to squeal when he would go on road trips and was discovering his sexual magnetism as a performer, much to his surprise. He was totally devoted to his mother. At the same time, he couldn't be what she wanted for him to be, which was to marry a nice girl and have children. And Gladys died and Elvis had difficulty after that.

B&N.com: Please tell us about Elvis's early career and why he was considered so controversial.

BAM: Nobody had done anything like this before: the mixing of the music, rhythm and blues, and country music. Elvis loved all kinds of music. He was hearing it in his head from the time he was born. It was the way he performed without inhibition and the way he brought in these new strains of music that upset the nation at large. I think that maybe southerners were not so shocked, depending on what class level they were. So, it was the revolutionary new music and the fact that he swiveled his hips.

He thought it was funny. All his life he mocked his image. When he first, very first, went on stage, and his leg was shaking out of nervousness, he didn't know why the girls were squealing. He thought they were criticizing him, but it took him not very long to discover what they were responding to. I think he just let loose in a way because he didn't know any better. He was always very polite and had manners, but that kind of crude behavior that he let loose with, he just thought, What the hell? This is creating some excitement. I like it.

B&N.com: Elvis did a large number of films but grew dissatisfied in Hollywood. What bothered him about it?

BAM: He wanted from the very beginning to be taken seriously as an actor. Singing was natural to him. He always sang -- gospel music especially -- but had also grown up with movies. That was just a dream -- something you couldn't even imagine you could ever do. But he got the chance to go to Hollywood and was so serious with Love Me Tender that when he showed up the first day he had memorized not only his own lines but also everybody else's. Not just that day's worth of dialogue but the entire script. He kept losing out on big opportunities to make serious movies because the Colonel discouraged him.

B&N.com: There was a very spiritual side to Elvis. He grew up a fundamentalist Christian. As an adult he explored numerous religions, including many Eastern religions.

BAM: Elvis was a very serious, introspective person. He had a very religious upbringing in the Pentecostal Holiness Church. It didn't suit his needs as he got older and more famous, but he couldn't stop thinking about these more spiritual questions: Why was I chosen to be Elvis? Why did this happen to me? What should I do about it? So, because he had a religious bent, he explored a lot of religions and underlined a lot of passages in books that he thought applied to his situation. He just read all the time and was tormented by these questions.

Ultimately, he thought he had an important role to play, not as a minister but as an entertainer. He was devoted to being Elvis. His tragedy was that he was so sincere in trying to move up to the image that the public imposed on him. He would say nobody could live up to an image but he was so grateful to his fans for making him the King of Rock 'n' Roll that he felt he had a duty toward them -- a responsibility. So, in a way, he was the servant of his fans. And that probably inhibited him artistically as well.

B&N.com: How did Elvis get involved in taking drugs, and how did the habit lead to his death?

BAM: Elvis started to take amphetamines in the army because his officers gave them to him so he could stay awake during tank patrol. And he loved them and he placed his faith in them, because he innocently thought they could not be bad for you if the army officers agreed to give them to you. He liked it, and he kept using them after he got out of the army. That really was his drug problem, because he had to take downers to go to sleep. His faith was in prescription drugs. He then abused them, because he thought they were all right. So, he ruined his health.

B&N.com: How do you explain that Elvis is the great American musical figure, a great American phenomenon -- even in death? Why is he such an important figure in American history. And exactly why has his image survived him?

BAM: Elvis, of course, changed American culture [and] American popular music. By the end of the 20th century, rock 'n' roll was the dominant world form, I guess. And he was largely responsible for that. And his image -- and this is a scary thing -- he had the power to communicate directly with people. First of all, he was musically electrifying. Secondly, he was an electrifying performer. But it is a complex question, why his image has survived him. We may not realize how huge his popularity is, but [during] Elvis Week in August there are fans in Britain [who] will charter 10 to 20 jets. Also, that recent [recording] of 31 No. 1 hits went platinum in Brazil and many other countries. It went triple platinum in the U.S. The power of his music is his ultimate legacy. I hope it is not jump suits from the '70s. Most people got to throw away their clothes from that time.

B&N.com: What are you working on now?

BAM: I am working on a novel. It takes place in Lexington, Kentucky, where all my fiction does. I don't know much more.

The San Diego Union-Tribune

If you're going to read one book to find out what Elvis was all about, Mason's is a good choice. She brings to the task a novelist's eye and the sensibilities of a Southern girl who came of age in the 1950s.

James Sullivan

As scores of Elvis Presley biographies will tell you, Elvis was born alongside a stillborn twin. For bestselling Kentucky novelist Mason (In Country), the beating of that other heart in the womb is only the first mythic episode in a life that transcended the most imaginative fiction. Elvis "began his life with a backbeat," she writes in this highly enjoyable rendering of the Presley folklore. There can hardly be anything left unsaid about Elvis, and Mason acknowledges as much. Gliding through the particulars—the dizzy rise to superstardom, the development of the quintessential Vegas act—she is at her sharpest when analyzing Presley's inner turmoil. In later years, his sometimes bizarre antics were symptomatic: "He seemed to plead with the audience to see through his act—to reject him," she writes. The pressures of being Elvis were colossal, and Mason's little bio ably illuminates them.

Publishers Weekly

Written by fellow Southerner Mason (In Country; Clear Springs), this abbreviated biography suffers fromthe series' length limitation but makes up for it by hitting the significant points. Mason credits Elvis with inventing rock and youth culture and "[puncturing] the balloon of 1950s serenity and conformity." She posits that the result of his stint in the army "was to erase his rock-and-roll rebel image and turn him into a mainstream all-American boy next door," and that in 1969, after almost a decade spent making bad films, "he was genuinely invigorated by making good music again." It's when Mason offers her insight into Southern culture that the biography turns superficial, like her attempt to contextualize the bloated figure of the drug-addled singer's late years by noting that "in the deep-fried South, his shape was a familiar sight, typical of his age group." On the other hand, she does intrigue, stating that Elvis "was innocently authentic, but he craved the inauthentic, as country people, who are so close-uncomfortably close-to what is starkly real, often do." Unfortunately, Mason doesn't have the room to explain because she has to get back to zooming through the rest of Elvis's life before her space is up. As such, this intro to Elvis will be useful, but is still no substitute for Peter Guralnick's definitive two-volume biography (Last Train to Memphis, Careless Love), which Mason praises in her acknowledgments along with many other sources. (Dec. 30) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Children's Literature

How could a mouse be born into a human family? Critics and librarians in 1945 fretted that children would never accept a notion so unbelievable or a story without a neat ending. They need not have worried; New Yorker writer E. B. White's first children's book, Stuart Little, was a huge success. Since he is so tiny (only two inches tall), Stuart suffers many mishaps (such as getting rolled up in a window shade or being dumped onto a garbage scow), but he experiences triumphs, too, like sailing a model schooner safely through a storm on Central Park's boat pond. The little mouse's romantic nature sends him on a journey north in his tiny motor car to seek the beautiful bird Margalo; his more assertive side allows him to cope with a classroom of children on an unlikely assignment as a substitute in a rural school. After several more adventures and a conversation with a friendly and rather poetic telephone repairman, Stuart decides to keep on going. "As he peered ahead into the great land that stretched before him, the way seemed long. But the sky was bright, and he somehow felt that he was headed in the right direction." Garth Williams's perfect pen-and-ink drawings, scattered throughout, rival Ernest Shepard's at their best. In 1970 White received the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award for this book and Charlotte's Web. Although at the end, the heroic little mouse disappears down the road leading north, it's unlikely that Stuart Little will ever disappear from print. 1945, HarperCollins, Ages 7 to 12.
—Barbara L. Talcroft

VOYA

In her story of the man with arguably the most famous hips of all time, Mason creates a worthy addition to the Penguin Lives series of bite-sized biographies of famous folks penned by contemporary novelists. Here teens will get a good idea of where today's boy bands got their roots. As Mason generously dishes the dirt that teens will probably be most interested in, such as Elvis's adventures in excess with his infamous entourage, the "Memphis Mafia," and his doomed romance with naïve teen Priscilla, she is always compassionate in her telling and often makes Elvis out to be a victim of his unprecedented fame: "Elvis, the consumer supreme, was consumed, both before and after his death." Mason's storytelling skills really shine when she describes two of the more bizarre episodes of Elvis's life: his impromptu jam with the Beatles-during which Elvis reportedly said to the star-struck Mop Tops, "If you guys are just gonna sit there and stare at me, I'm going to bed," and Ringo ended the evening playing roulette with Colonel Parker-and his strange meeting with President Richard Nixon, at which "he almost surely was stoned." Mason's novelistic approach will appeal to teens who are looking for an entertaining biography that does more than list names and dates. Mason's main theme-that fame is often an unquenchable fire-will be a familiar litany to those raised on the sounds of 'NSYNC. Mason provides a worthy general purchase for most public and high school libraries. Source Notes. VOYA CODES: 4Q 2P J S (Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses; For the YA with a special interest in the subject; Junior High, defined as grades 7 to 9; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12). 2003, Viking,192p,
— Jennifer Hubert

Library Journal

Award-winning novelist Mason spins a tragic tale of Presley, who tried to fill his role as the great American hero but could never escape his poor Southern background. She covers the familiar terrain of his impoverished youth in Tupelo, MS; his initial success at Sun Records; his rise to fame and army draft; his mother's death and his own early drug experimentation; his 1968 comeback; his sequined Vegas persona; and his increasing loneliness, drug addiction, and premature death in 1977. Throughout, Mason casts Presley as a complex figure, a man who was consumed by low self-esteem and fears but driven to succeed, who symbolized teenage rebellion yet called his mother everyday, and who became the ultimate American icon but could not shed his white-trash roots. Though clearly written and accurate, this addition to the huge Presley bibliography seldom provides any new insights and sometimes embellishes basic facts with overly imaginative conclusions. Part of the "Penguin Lives" series, this slender book will satisfy only the few who have never read much about the King. An optional purchase. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/15/02.]-Dave Szatmary, Univ. of Washington, Seattle Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A noted fiction writer (Zigzagging Down a Wild Trail, 2001, etc.) applies a bracing working-class sensibility and a native understanding of Elvis Presley’s southern roots to the familiar tale of his meteoric career. Penguin Lives are not usually based on primary sources, and Mason acknowledges as her main reference Peter Guralnick’s definitive two-volume biography (Last Train to Memphis, 1994; Careless Love, 1999). She didn’t need to do original research to feel close to the King. Raised on a farm in Kentucky, the author absorbed the same diverse musical influences, from R&B to gospel to opera. "When he emerged with his own startling, idiosyncratic singing style, we recognized its sources," she recalls. "Elvis was great, so familiar—and he was ours!" It wasn’t just a musical heritage they shared. Mason, who has written about her own feelings of inferiority as a country girl attending the University of Kentucky in Lexington, nails the opposing drives that sent a polite mama’s boy onstage to drive girls wild with his gyrations. "Elvis was born into the mind-set of poverty," she reminds us: "the deference toward authority and the insolent snarl underlying it." This instinctive understanding is particularly helpful in addressing the thorny question of Presley’s loyalty to Colonel Parker, whose focus on the fast buck played a major role in his artistic decline. Elvis and his parents knew the Colonel was a con man, Mason believes; they wanted someone unscrupulous to "maneuver among the bankers, lawyers, company executives . . . because they knew the big dudes would just stomp on them." Her take on Presley’s drug use as a means of suppressing his insecurities is similarly convincing. Readerslooking for evocative descriptions of the King’s boundary-smashing music will do better with Greil Marcus’s Mystery Train or Dave Marsh’s Elvis, but Mason’s plain prose and blunt opinions are the perfect vehicles to convey his utterly American life. Although the complexities of Elvis’s character and his place in American culture can’t be entirely explicated with such brevity, Mason grasps the essentials with perception and passion. Author tour