Being Elvis, Ray Connolly
Being Elvis, Ray Connolly
List: $20.99 | Sale: $14.70
Club: $10.49

Being Elvis
A Lonely Life

Author: Ray Connolly

Narrator: Jonathan Yen

Unabridged: 14 hr 18 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 03/21/2017


Synopsis

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. The creator of an American sound that resonates today, Elvis remains frozen in time, an enduring American icon who could capture an inner emotion, perhaps of eternal yearning, to which all of us can still relate.

About Ray Connolly

Ray Connolly is a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. While working for the London Evening Standard, he interviewed, among others, many rock stars and cultural icons of the 1960s and 1970s, including the Beatles and Elvis Presley. He contributes regularly to the Daily Mail and has also written for the Sunday Times, the Times, and the Daily Telegraph. He lives in London.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Pam

With the new Baz Luhrman biopic on Elvis coming out soon, I decided to read a brush-up on E’s life. Looking for something without too much exploitation, I chose this book by professional biographer/journalist Ray Connolly. It is a little short on the music itself, but not a bad summary of Presley’s......more

Goodreads review by Sara

I’ve read a ton of Elvis bios and while this one is far from being the worst (talking about you Albert Goldman!), it’s not exactly the best either. This is a great read for those who are either casual Elvis fans or those who have never read a bio of him before. There were a few tidbits that I didn’t......more