The book ends in 1958, the year Elvis's music and movie career was put on hold by his induction into the Army. It's also the year his beloved mother Gladys died. The unselfish love and devotion she had always shown him were suddenly gone, at the very time when the rest of his life was going dizzyingly, ridiculously nuts, and it tore him up. Without her as his moral compass, he was never the same again. Also disturbing is his meeting with Priscilla when she's just 14 (he's ten years older) and while he refuses to have a sexual relationship with her until she's older, they certainly have a romantic relationship. His obsession that she remain 'pure' (good wife material) is just as disturbing, as is the increasing flow-through of women. Also, while Elvis definitely had strange habits and loved the accoutrements of stardom, he was genuinely a nice and caring person. The book has literally a hundred quotes from people of all walks of life who found him to be open, an "innocent" really, who treated everyone with respect and interest. You really feel that you'd have enjoyed meeting him and becoming a member of his entourage for a week.

This book is brutally honest about Elvis's countless personal faults, including his sense of making love being nothing more than a kind of infantilism.This is the really sad biography of an immature man who built an insular environment around himself, reinforced by an entourage completely reliant on his largesse. A mamma’s boy who never really recovered from his mother's death and who was incapable of having a mature relationship with women. I get a sense that Elvis never fully developed into a man. He remained an insecure boy, afraid of the dark but owner of an amazing talent and ability to charm people. The empire he created with all its wealth and privilege did nothing to assuage his inner emptiness. Prescription drugs provided him with something only he could understand. It was a hugely destructive choice and in the end forced him to become a ridiculous caricature of himself "the living legend is fat and ludicrously aping his former self..." He just seemed to "run out of gas". of course, ultimately the drugs killed him. It is such a shame. At one time he was "a champion, the only one in his class". In hindsight Elvis' downfall is almost as sudden as his rise and the author once again does a masterful job of researching and writing every detail. We all know what's coming at the end, just as we did watching the film Titanic, but like all great true stories the reader's interest is held not by what happened - but how. The pieces begin falling into place during his stint in the Army while stationed in Germany. He's introduced to drugs that will keep him awake on duty and to his future wife, 14 year old Priscilla Beaulieu. It continues through a string of Hollywood B-movies, numerous affairs and an immature lifestyle of "horsing around" supported by the guys now universally known as The Memphis Mafia. As long as they don't say "no" Elvis remains forever young and they remain on the payroll. If, on the other hand, your only image of Elvis is as a star of the insipid, cookie cutter, musical comedy (I use the term loosely) movies that he turned out after his military discharge, such as "Viva Las Vegas" and "Girls! Girls! Girls!," or the even later image of a bloated, overweight, jump-suited lounge singer, then you might enjoy the story of the singer’s climb to fame, a singer who still holds the top spot for record sales by a solo performer. If so, Last Train to Memphis is your book. It's also the biography of a tremendously gifted interpreter of other writers songs, and a man who though he never toured outside the USA became an international star, beloved by millions.

He was a man who thought and acted like a boy. Always craving an entourage that never left him, none of the people who surrounded him could help his addiction to a plethora of drugs. His autopsy showed an enlarged heart, liver damage as well as a painful bowel condition caused by excess drug usage. At the time of his death, at least 14 different drugs were in his body. The amount of codeine was ten times a normally prescribed level. His addiction to quaaludes brought toxic levels to a body that over abused drugs for many years. The second part of this two volume definitive look at the life of Elvis Presley slams the brakes on one of the most famous and notorious tales of living The American Dream. Whereas the author's earlier book, Last Train to Memphis, brought home the story of a young boy from a poor family who was blessed with unnatural talent and timing rising almost overnight to unimaginable heights of fame and fortune, Careless Love details his tragic end. A creature of habit and familiar surroundings, the outside world becomes his playground while his inner self struggles to make sense of it all through spirituality, a series of isolating "yes" men and women, and drugs.From the moment that he first shook up the world in the mid 1950s, Elvis Presley has been one of the most vivid and enduring myths of American culture. Beginning with Presley's army service in Germany in 1958 and ending with his death in Memphis in 1977, Careless Love chronicles the unravelling of the dream that once shone so brightly, homing in on the complex playing-out of Elvis' relationship with his Machiavellian manager, Colonel Tom Parker. It's a breathtaking revelatory drama that for the first time places the events of a too-often mistold tale in a fresh, believable, and understandable context.

The book also casts Colonel Parker in a fairly positive light. Parker really did have Elvis' best interests at heart, especially in terms of fame and fortune. He brought Elvis from a very promising regional act, a Grand Ole Opry kind of guy, to the biggest showcases in TV and Hollywood in a matter of months. And he protected Elvis' artistic independence in those early years, fighting relentlessly against RCA record execs who wanted him to record as fast as possible while he was hot. This could have been a treatise on what not to do, perhaps useful for the idols of today... But really, there is no time in this book to examine it so any instruction must be found between the lines & can be at best mere 2nd guessing. Elvis dreams repeatedly, what he calls a 'nightmare', that he woke up one morning & his fans had deserted him & all his everything had gone away forever, but I found myself wondering if that was in fact his unconscious mind pleading with him, telling him "This is what you have to do if you want to live or ever again find a quantum of solace, you have to make it all disappear". But his ambition and his what-they-call poverty mentality meant he could never accept that. He was strong enough to fight himself to a draw, but not strong enough to win.If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.

Overall, a great read that clued me in on what now seems like a gaping hole in my musical education and understanding of American culture. In many ways Elvis is the USA. The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power. I was three quarters of the way through this book before I realized that it is the first of two gigantic volumes, and I was enjoying it so much that it made me excited because I wanted a lot more. This volume covers Elvis' youth up until his deployment in Germany with the Army. as a matter of fact, his death wasn't so sad as it was the years preceding it. it was obvious to everyone, even elvis himself though he always denied it, that the guy was miserable. his complete dependence on pharmaceuticals and narcotics was actually his way of committing a very slow and painful suicide.I was also acquainted with the boyfriend of the sister of Elvis's last fiancee. I was hearing some of the stories of Elvis's aberrant behavior while obviously on drugs two years before the publication of . It's been a wonderful show, folks. Just remember this. Don't go milking the cow on a rainy day. If there's lightning you may be left holding the bag." The Elvis story has so often seemed to me to be almost Shakespearean in its tragical aspects. Careless Love merely confirms these feelings, with Elvis paralleling Hamlet's manic depression, surrounded by wheelers and dealers. Much in the book has been written before, but this, at last, is a lucid, complete and chronological account. As one progresses through the book, it becomes ever more clear to what extent Elvis was manipulated by all around him, how his talent was largely squandered by a manager whose sole interest was self-glorification and how Elvis, himself, so rarely reacted, but remained quietly professional and did the best with whatever was offered; at the same time he was, equally clearly, seething inside. The book pulls no punches, however, and honestly relates the decline, both personally and professionally, which occurred in the seventies, without resorting to smut or innuendo. This massive two-part biography is one of the best books I've ever read. I would put it in a shortlist of the essential nonfiction books to read if you want to understand American culture. Musical innovation is full of danger to the state, for when modes of music change, the laws of the state always change with them. (Plato, The Republic)