Backlisted - Last Train to Memphis/Careless Love by Peter Guralnick

Episode Date: April 1, 2019

Elvis Presley is the subject of this episode of Backlisted, care of Peter Guralnick's twin biographies Last Train to Memphis (1994) and Careless Love (1999). Joining John and Andy to discuss these remarkable books are novelists David Keenan and Bethan Roberts. In addition, John talks about Nancy Sandars's poetry collections Grandmother's Steps; while Andy learns to stop worrying and enjoy Anthony Trollope and his classic novel The Way We Live Now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When you're working out at Planet Fitness, it's a judgment-free zone, so you can really step up your workout. That's why we've got treadmills. And our team members are here to help, so you can be carefree with the free weights. There are also balance balls, bikes, cables, kettlebells, and TRX equipment. But, like, no pressure. Get started for $1 enrollment, and then only $15 a month. Hurry this $1 enrollment sale at Planet Fitness end July 18th. $49 annual fee applies. See

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And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance. Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books. Today you find us in downtown Memphis in the small, slightly echoey studio at 706 Union Avenue, home of Sam Phillips' Sun Records. It's a sultry evening, everyone's relaxed, the soda's flowing,

but there are storm clouds gathering outside. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound, the platform where readers crowdfund the books they really want to read. And I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. Joining us today are David Keenan. Hello, David. Hey. David Keenan, novelist, one-time musician and critic,

whose work, in particular for The Wire, has introduced a wider audience to experimental rock, noise, folk, industrial and psychedelic music. He's also published books on England's esoteric underground, tarot and two highly acclaimed novels, both published by Faber. The first, This Is Memorial Device, winner of the 2018 Collier Bristow London Magazine Prize and earlier this year, For the Good Times,

a Chris Christopherson song, covered at one stage by Elvis Presley, I believe. By Perry Como, which is kind of where I was coming from. That novel was described by Suzanne Moore as occult, transformative, difficult, fantastic. David once claimed that his favourite Beatle was Yoko. Still stand by that to this day. Listeners, listeners, listeners, I agree with David entirely.

And so much to everyone's surprise, this is actually going to be an hour about how great Yoko is. Let's go. Oh, no. Also expressing dissent there is the novelist Bethan Roberts, author of five novels. Hello, Bethan. Hello.

Including Mother Island, published by Chateau and Windus, which won a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize in 2015, and her latest, by an uncanny coincidence, called Graceland, inspired by the relationship between Elvis Presley and his mother Gladys also published by Chateau in February and which the Financial Times claimed prompted this reader to burst into song. Bethan grew up in a house filled with Elvis's music and according to her publisher first became captivated by the story of Elvis and Gladys as a girl,

pouring over her mother's scrapbooks and annuals. Has your publisher been accurate? Yes, it's pretty accurate. My mum is a big Elvis fan and has an Elvis mirror in her bathroom. Does she? Yes, she does. And my auntie has an Elvis oil painting in her bedroom. What era of Elvis is it? Well, the mirror is the Comeback Special Elvis,

Black Leather. Take a choice. Another strong look. And the oil painting is, I would say, early 60s Elvis. Ooh, OK. Mm-hmm. Elvis is back, Elvis. Yeah.

Elvis is back. Right, in a rare departure from backlisted tradition, David and Bethan are here to talk to us today about two books, Peter Goralnik's epic account of the life of Elvis Presley, Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love, published by Little Brown in 1994 and 1999, respectively. But before we plunge into the Memphis miasma, Andy, what have you been reading?

Well, I feel like I'm almost trolling the listeners at this point because the books that we're talking about today come to a total of 1,300 pages, in addition to which the book that I've been reading this week is 800 pages. Because, you know, come on, don't be lazy. What I've been reading is the way we live now by anthony trollop and that is that was written and published in 1875 i haven't read

any trollop this is really what i want to talk about it was great i haven't read any trollop since i was at school when some idiot thought it would be appropriate for A-level students to study the Warden and Barchester Towers. I mean, I absolutely hated it. But returning to Trollope, now I am a significantly older man, I just thought it was so fluently written and amusing in the best way, right? So it may not be true that we all grow more conservative as we get older but maybe it is true that we do grow more likely to appreciate it's interesting you bring up trope i also studied in university and recently i've read a critic was it jonathan

rabban perhaps the guy that wrote coasting and stuff and he actually quoted some lines from trope and like you said andy i was kind of blown away by how lucid it was. And I thought, am I finally reaching the age where Trollope makes sense? Next step, death. Yeah, it's true. Well, you know, box set, Trollope, death. Yeah.

Yeah. Anyway, so I was going to read a bit because one of the things that the way we live now is it's about the city, the relationship between the city and the government. It does feel incredibly contemporary. It's also to do with issues of anti-Semitism, which feels very contemporary.

And it's also a satire of the book world. There is some really funny stuff about what the book world was like 150 years ago, which, hey, it turns out it's still like now. So that was great. But then yesterday our listener, Finula Barrett, reminded me that in The Soldier's Art, Volume 8 of Anthony Polo's A Dance to the Music of Time, there is a very funny description of how you feel about Trollope,

depending on what age you are when you read it. So I'm just going to read that very quickly now. So we've got Nicholas Jenkins, the narrator, is talking to a general. This is during the Second World War. He's talking to General Liddement. Suddenly, General Liddement raised the book he had been reading in the air, holding it at arm's length above his head.

For a moment, I thought he was going to hurl it at me. Instead, he waved the small volume backwards and forwards, its ribbon marker flying at one end. Book reader, aren't you? Yes, sir. What do you think of Trollope? Never found him easy to read, sir. The last time I had discussed books with a general had been with General Conyers. My answer had an incisive effect. General Liddement kicked the second chair away from him with such violence that it fell to the ground with a great clatter. Then he put his feet to the floor, screwing round his own chair so that he faced me.

You've never found Trollope easy to read? No, sir. He was clearly unable to credit my words. This was an unhappy situation. There was a long pause while he glared at me. Why not? he asked at last. He spoke very sternly. I tried to think of an answer. From the past, a few worn shreds of long-forgotten literary criticism were just pliant enough to be patched hurriedly together in substitute for a more suitable garment to cover the dialectic nakedness of the statement just made. The style, certain repetitive tricks of phrasing,

psychology often unconvincing, where women don't analyse their own predicaments as they're represented. Rubbish, said General Liddement. He sounded very angry indeed. All I can say is you miss a lot. So I thought that was really, really great. The other thing I would say is, Andy, how do you read so much? Well, in the case of Trollope, what I did was I read it in the 20 installments in which it was published originally on a monthly basis. And I read one installment a day, and that was about 35 pages.

And I thoroughly recommend that as a way of doing it. And I also did some of it on audio read by Timothy West, and that was fantastic as well. So I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope. John, what have you been reading this week? Well, the book I'm talking about is really inspired. It's a slim volume of poetry published by a woman who I knew for 20 years

who lived in the next village to mine in Oxfordshire, amazing human being called Nancy Sanders, who published her first volume of poetry when she was 85. And it's an amazing, amazing collection as well. The reason I know Nancy, she lived in the next village. You couldn't miss her. She was kind of one of those big personalities. She lived in the same house for 101 years. She died in 2015, 101, and never married, lived with her sister, Betty, for a long period of time. That's pretty unique in itself. She was one of the most interesting archaeologists of the 20th century.

She went to Wickham Abbey School. She was educated at home. She traveled in Europe during the 30s, sort of stumbled into the Germany just as it was turning Nazi and then into Spain just as the Civil War was starting and then more or less retreated home but became an archaeologist almost in response to that. She decided she needed to do something during the war,

so she became a motorcycle dispatch rider, which was brilliant, and then she ended up at Bletchley Park, as all incredibly clever women did. She was in the Y branch at Bletchley Park, decoding all kinds of transmissions from German U-boats. Anyway, the other thing she did, she became the bit of archaeology she loved was Bronze Age, prehistoric, but also Sumerian, and she became the person who translated

the Epic of Gilgamesh, which I nearly thought of doing, the oldest recorded story ever. We will do the Epic of Gilgamesh. The Epic of Gilgamesh, and her translation sold, it was a Penguin Classic, one of the early Penguin Classics, sold over a million copies. Whoa. She was the best conversationalist. She had a deep, instinctive kind of love of history.

And then out of nowhere, I think she talked about poetry a lot. She was amazing, incredibly well-read about almost everything. So you'd kind of, you know, I'd bring her books and she'd say, of course I've read De Chivago, But have you read Pasternak's poetry? Well, no. But anyway, I just thought I'd read you a little. There's this volume that came out. It's called Grandmother's Steps.

It's published by Agenda. She was a very close friend of the poet David Jones of in parenthesis fame and would correspond with him and had beautiful original David Jones lithographs on her wall, amongst other amazing artwork. Here's just a really short poem, Much Better, it's called. Unlucky couple, look how you wasted happiness. Beyond the wilderness of sand, sad history, murders, confusions, floods, we would have done much better in your place. Another hundred generations on, today's green orchard and its grass meeting the low-swung apple branch, the din of bees in the blossomy dome, and desultory blackbirds sauntering into song, all summer's imperceptible undertone

will have become as improbable as paradise. Beyond a wilderness of centuries, electric storms and shocks and many deaths, someone will say, look how they wasted happiness. We would have done much better in their place. We'll be back in just a sec. Okay, so the books we're talking about this week are Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love by Peter Guralnik. You can read them as one long book of 1,300 pages or you can read them as two separate books. We're going to talk about them in both those ways as we go along. But first, before we get on to that,

Bethan, I wonder whether you would, given that we're at the beginning of the story, the Arthurian legend, you might read us the appropriate part of your novel of Graceland that deals with this. Sure. Yeah, so this is the birth scene, the iconic Elvis birth scene.

It's from Gladys' point of view. Vernon Presley apparently told a lot of stories about the birth scene and he liked to say there was a blue light in the sky when elvis was born that doesn't appear anyway on that january night seven years ago it had taken 35 minutes between death and life the dead one came first his silence when the midwife lifted and slapped him seemed to make the world stop. Mini Mae had to shout at Gladys to make her listen. There's another one coming, Glad. You've got to get on with it, gal. But Gladys was looking at her dead child, trying to see something other than the blueness around his slack lips, the pallor of his washed-out body. He looked like

something pickled. She could hardly breathe, let alone push. She wanted nothing other than sleep. Give the other one a chance, cried Mini-Maid, taking her by the shoulders and shaking her. Get on with it! As if she had any control over this thing. Frost on the glass, her breath and flesh misting the air, she thought of cows in a barn helpless against the cold but still steaming. Vernon and his daddy and uncle had built this two-room place for them, right next to her father-in-law's house, and it felt so homely with the smell of the new wood and the bright drapes she'd run up on Minnie Mae's machine. Even the oil lamps had seemed quaint. They'd gathered wild roses and honeysuckle from the woods behind and planted them around the place but now it smelled of blood and

urine and fear. Glad I ain't gonna tell you again gal. Push! She'd hollered only twice during the whole thing. Mini Mae had thought to wrap the dead child, they'd already called him Jesse, after Vernon's father, in a dishcloth and pass him to Vernon, who was in the next room, not in the bar, which is where Gladys wished he was, so he wouldn't have to lay eyes on his dead son. When she imagined Vernon holding the grey lump, she hollered. Then she raised herself from the bed and crouched over the rug for the next contraction, thinking she wanted it over now, for this baby to be out and done with. It might as well fall to the floor if it was going to be wrapped in a dishcloth and buried in the earth. Mini Mae hurried to protect the rug with an old sheet and as she did

so Gladys hollered again so loud and raw that Vernon was knocking on the door to come in and Minnie Mae was yelling she's all right it's just the other one coming don't you dare come in here Vernon Presley. Minnie Mae caught the second child and Gladys collapsed on the rug and then his sound filled the place and the door was opening and Vernon was coming over, pushing his wiry mum out of the way, which Gladys had never seen him do before, but she couldn't look at her husband for long because she was gazing at her boy who was alive. Minnie May cut the cord with a deft snick. When Gladys had the child in her arms, he quietened and looked at her as if she were the only light in the room. He was, as Minnie Mae said, no bigger than a minute.

I thought I'd lost you, Vernon said, his hand trembling on her shoulder. A spike of rage rose in her. Was that all he'd thought about in all this, his own loss? She handed him his son. Take him, she said, and quit your crying. We got a son. There ain't nothing to cry about now. Thank you. That was brilliant. Welcome.

Elvis Aaron Presley there, arriving into the world. Thanks, Bethan. There's a thing I learned from Peter Goralnik. It's not Elvis Aaron Presley. It's Elvis Aaron Presley. Which is weird because it's supposed to rhyme with Jesse Garan, isn't it? Did you say it Jesse Garan then? Garan?

I don't know. I think it was really interesting, that little clip of Elvis that we heard. You hear what a hillbilly accent he has in 1994, right? So these two books were published 20 20 and 25 years ago last train to memphis came out in 94 david peter guralnik if you are a listener or you are a music you like reading about music or you are a music writer peter guralnik is a a really important figure right when can you remember where you were when you first read something by Peter Goralnik?

I first read something by Peter Goralnik in the context of a review of a Peter Goralnik book by Lester Bangs, which appeared in Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, which was really a book. I have the first edition here, actually. Came out in 1988. This is one of these books

literally a life-changing book because i was a rabid fan of rock and roll big fan of literature hadn't really put the two together that well lester it says in the front the work of a legendary critic rock and roll was literature and literature is rock and roll i was like that's my middle name you know what i mean so inside there's a beautiful review by Lester of a book by Peter Guralnik called Lost Highways. It's an absolutely beautiful book. And the thing that struck me is there's a couple of just little lines that Lester mentions

from Lost Highway that Guralnik had written. And they're just tiny little lines, but they're so perfect to Guralnik. And they intrigued me so much to go and check out the rest of his work. One of them is from the introduction to Lost Highway Guralnik says I love the music as much as I ever did but I have a public confession to make I don't want to be a rock and roll star anymore and I thought

what an incredible thing to say for a guy who spent his entire life researching the lives of rock and roll stars brilliant and here's another one this is the one that even stuck with me even further a musician called stoney edwards is confessing in the book to peter gralnick talking about his career in music and he says to be honest i never found anything that was more exciting than making corn whiskey and i just loved that as well because that's what gralnick has the ear for. Guralnik, and all Guralnik's books, as I ploughed my way through them all, you know, they've got titles, Fuel It Going Home, Lost Highway,

Last Train to Memphis. There's so many of the themes are about, you can't go home anymore. They're about being dislocated from your background. And his fascination with the early rock and roll stars were, these are the first people to move from a vernacular music black musicians white hillbilly musicians to suddenly be thrust into this incredible revolution of entertainment and rock and roll as capital as entertainment industry and to be totally torn from their roots and all of these this is what all these titles

are about even last train to mem. It's the final train. There's no train back to Tupelo at this point, you know? Granik talks about American vernacular culture, and this totally ties in with what you were just saying. I think that Elvis was a focal point. And, in fact, on some level, I don't know that Elvis would agree with that. I would say, more so than Elvis, that the 20th century really witnessed the triumph of American vernacular culture, and that Elvis was part of a movement, part of a continuum.

And you can include Duke Ellington, you could include Louis Armstrong, you could include Hank Williams, Howlin' Wolf, Bo Diddley. And for Elvis, I think he saw, he just had the widest scope imaginable. And this encompassed every major social, racial, cultural development. And it also went on in a sense, I think, the entire movement to create as great a cultural contribution as America has ever made to the world. It won over the world. So it extends beyond our borders.

And I think that, for me, is what it is. But no, Elvis, there's no limit, in a sense, to what you can put into Elvis' achievement, whether intended or not. So Last Strange Memphis and Careless Love are, and I hate using a publishing word but i'm going to definitive and we should recall that before goralnik wrote these books it was like the wild west in terms of who wrote about elvis and how they wrote about him beth and when can you remember where when you first read Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love or Careless Love, whichever, you know,

was it for research for Graceland or had you already read them? So I had never read Peter Gronick before. I'm not a kind of muso in any sense of that word. So I read them for research. And at the time, I think I was thinking about writing a book about going to Graceland, because I'd been to Graceland with my mum. And I thought I'll write a contemporary novel about a woman who goes to Graceland looking for her estranged mother. And as part of that, I started reading about Elvis so I picked up Last Train to Memphis and was hooked and fascinated and I think that reading that book I mean that would

have been about I don't know five or six years ago I guess when I first read it what what I got from it was the sense that it was possible to write a novel about Elvis because in a way that's what Peter Granik does I mean I think he was a fiction writer first that's right yeah and um I guess a lot of what I loved about it and love about it now is that you know he gives you so much information obviously the, the research is immense. But also, with a kind of novelist eye, he's very good at putting you in Elvis' shoes. You're with him for his entire life. And what I love about it is that, you know, Goranek picks out those beautiful details

that really put you in the scene. So, you know, what people are wearing, what the weather is. As he says, I think he says it in his um intro to Careless Love what what was being said down the hallway um and I guess that gave me a sense of okay this this is possible it's interesting I think um I said at the top that I was interested in the books as one book but it was also as two separate books and one of the distinctions I think between the two books as one book, but I was also as two separate books. And one of the distinctions, I think, between the two books is that Last Train to Memphis covers the period from Elvis's birth

up until he goes into the army in the late 1950s. Careless Love runs from when he comes out of the army through to his death and no further. And it struck me that one of the differences is Guralnik is interested in giving you detail in both books, but the use of detail is novelistic. In the first book, detail is there to paint the world in which Elvis emerged, as you just said.

In the second book, detail is used to paint the world in which elvis was trapped so you don't see much of the outside world in careless love because for elvis there was no outside world once he's famous that's it he's not trapped straight away but the horizons are shrinking and i think that is novelistic as you say yeah there's a great sense of in the first book opening out and in the second book shrinking down you know I like you say in the second book it is Elvis in his room a lot isn't it so one of the things we we didn't want to do this episode without hearing little bits of music. What I've done is I've asked everybody here today to, I asked them to tell me what their favourite piece of music

by Elvis Presley was. David is going to tell you why he chose this piece of music. It's Blue Moon from the original Sun Sessions. And to me, that's holy music, absolutely holy music. And it's funny because it's also prophetic music. And Andy, it's very interesting because I think that track kind of forms an art and bridges and its prophecy does last train to Memphis and careless love because Elvis at the beginning of his career singing about Elvis at

the end of his career lonely without a love of his own but also experiencing that transcendent magic of Elvis's music you can almost almost feel Elvis. And when I say transcendent, I kind of mean the feeling you get when you recognise yourself in the world and your surroundings and your story is completely part of it. And so the moon looks down and sees him. And that bit where he sings that vocalise, the wordless vocal, to me, that is the moon speaking Elvis's name all great singers sing the band right yeah the band isn't accompanying him he is bringing the record into being by singing and imagine hearing that in 1950 blah right it doesn't one of the things that ground it's so brilliant on I think you might have a bit about this John is the things that Goralnik's so brilliant on, I think you might have a bit about this, John, is the sense that everything happened so fast

because nothing like it had ever happened before. I was trying to think what it would be like if you read this book, you know, if you'd never heard of Elvis Presley, if you'd never had, I mean, because it was one of the things is that his story is sort of, and it's interesting what you say about writing a novel, Bethany. We kind of are allowed to write about Elvis because Elvis is popular culture. It is the 20th century.

There's nowhere that wasn't touched by this. It was unprecedented, the popularity. I mean, it was kind of a madness that had never been seen before. And I wondered, what would you make of this story? Because the Elvis that comes out, the early Elvis, I mean, the late Elvis is obviously more problematic on all kinds of levels, but the early Elvis, this idea that he soaked up everything,

that he was, there's a brilliant bit. I love this, that he was up everything that he was there's a there's a brilliant bit i love this that he was this is from from one of his managers bob neal this is from the chapter in the first book he said he was serious about his work uh whenever neil went by the house he found him with a stack of records ray charles big joe turner and big mama thornton arthur big boy crudup that he studied with all the avidity that other kids focused on their college exams. And this is the other thing about, you know, that you can't all the great bands sing the band,

but they're also, they're so, Elvis was just music. You know, he'd sing for hours. He'd sing all night. He just was, he just, all he wanted to do was to sing. And he listened and he was incredibly generous. There's a brilliant detail in the book. Well, I can't remember if Guralnik says it or one of his interviewees says it,

but it made me, every time I listen to an Elvis record in the last fortnight, this is what I've thought about. It's so accurate. They couldn't understand why Elvis never did it the same way twice. And one of the reasons they felt after they'd spent time with him and worked with him is the sense of someone who was a conduit for music and was a conduit for all the music that they'd ever heard

and so every time he sang a performance, he was trying to channel every music that he'd heard up to that point into that moment, into that three minutes get it on wax before it's gone and and when it comes around again you won't be the same person because three minutes later you'll be a person who's already sung it once so you have to find something different to say it also explains why i think presley is often not a brilliant interpreter of a lyric, but a magnificent interpreter of a feeling, of a musical feeling. What he's trying to dig into is the space between the lyric and the music.

He's not trying to sell the lyric in a way that, say, Glenn Campbell, who I love, who I think is a brilliant singer, would sell the song. It's a different musical process. I think Elvis is also very reliant on time, place, setting, all of these things. It's all to do with spontaneity, but also intimacy. He works well when he's in an intimate setting with his group. I mean, when they record That's Alright Mama,

there's an amazing section in Last Train to Memphis talking about the recording of that, because they all sort of look around, and Sam Phillips says, what are you doing? And they're all saying, we don't know know we don't even know what just happened but they're all aware something incredible just happened something beamed into the room and elvis caught it and just on a note when you mentioned dino um which is i get i get i agree one of the other great biographies there's a lot of similarities because dino has the greatest index of any book

ever it's hilarious but the notes in the back of The Last Trade of Memes and Careless Love are up there. They're a little bit harder to access. He has numbers in the text, but if you follow them, you get some great things. For instance, there's a quote from Scotty Moore only in the index about the recording for That's Alright Mama,

where he says, we were the only band directed by an ass. And what he means is, they're watching Elvis's butt and they're taking their moves from that. So he is literally, it's like the lightning rod is rising through him and they're following his body. One of the things, Beth, that Goralnik does in these books is it seems to me that he is scrupulously fair.

And David was talking about the footnote. Sam Phillips, the record producer at sun who put elvis out elvis's early records famously is said if i could find a white kid who could sing like a black guy i'd make a million dollars or words that effect that isn't in the main text of the book garaling has a very thoughtful footnote where he he presents that in context he says you know that's always been presented as a almost as an exploitative thing that's not how sam phillips meant it you know sam phillips meant you've got to give opportunity you've got to and so goralnik wants to present

his characters fairly and he does that with colonel tom parker doesn't he? So, yes. I mean, he is incredibly even-handed about everybody, including the Colonel Tom Parker, who, I mean, you know, was literally a kind of cartoon, carny figure. He looked like Elmer Fudd. He sounded like Elmer Fudd. He waddles around. He's always got the cigar in his mouth. You know, he

only cares about dollars. He used to be a dog catcher. Chief dog catcher, as he says. Very important. Nice detail. Distinction. But Goranek does an amazing thing in that I think I don't think I've read any other book

about Elvis that has been even-handed about the Colonel you know often he is the villain because he's a very easy villain and I think in my novel he probably is the villain as well because it's it's very hard to resist that because he presents himself as a villain so completely um but Gouronik does this thing where he makes you see what Elvis saw in the colonel which is that the colonel made promises he said I'll make you a million dollars I'll get you in the movies I'll get you a record contract with RCA and everything that he said Goranek says came true so you know he delivered on his promises and I think what he makes you see is that the Colonel's way

of honouring Elvis was to make him money because the Colonel loved money. And what better way could he honour Elvis than to make him money and make a lot of money himself, obviously. And there's that lovely moment in Careless Love where he is allowed, Garonic allows us to see the Colonel and Elvis embracing, which, you know, you don't often read about or hear about.

So it's after the first Vegas show, I think, in 69. That's right. So Elvis has made this triumphant comeback to live performing. Everybody loves it and it is you know totally amazing and afterwards the colonel is lost for words and they embrace and i think granik says something like the colonel's body shook with emotion and i thought how amazing to allow us to see that you know to suggest that about the colonel the other the other thing he granik loves pointing out, and truthfully, he says all these big shot record guys from New York, all the film producers from Hollywood would meet with Colonel Parker

and come out going, this guy's an idiot. And then Colonel Parker would take them for every cent they had. Yeah. Right? He said if you read the film producer Hal Wallace's correspondence of dealing with Parker over a 10-year period, he basically kills Hal Wallace. Hal Wallace is like, always finds a new way of taking

Hal Wallace's money, you know? I think it's also, you know, you have to say, in an industry where artists were being ripped off mercilessly, yeah, he took his 50%, but it was 50%, you know, Elvis made a hell of a lot of money, Tom Parker made a hell of a lot of money, and Goralnik, one of the many things that's beautiful about these books is that forensic detail that he builds up

about exactly how the deals worked. you and he's such a good writer you might not think you're interested in in contracts but he makes you interested in them there's also amazing scene at the end when elvis is lying in an open casket the end of careless love and the end of careless love i mean no spoilers you know he, badly. And he's in the kitchen basically getting Vernon, Elvis' dad, to focus. We've got a job to do here. They're going to come after us. This is what I need you to do. And Bagramic says he'd had a lot of people die on him before.

And Elvis in the end is just another one. He's just got to get on with the business. And there is something kind of weirdly magnificent about that. TCB, taking care of business can we hear peter goranek talking about his first burst of inspiration for last train to memphis i mean the intention really was to go back to a time when you didn't know how it was all going to come out and the funny thing is two things that inspired it uh were one i I was driving down Macklemore Avenue in South Memphis, where Stax Records was and where the Stax Museum is now, and

I was driving down with a friend who had grown up in South Memphis, and she pointed out right across the street from the old movie theater that was Stax, a boarded-up drug store where Elvis' cousin, Gene, used to work. And she just described how Elvis would be in there waiting for Gene to get off work. And she said, you know, he'd be sitting at the counter and his fingers would just be drumming. You know, he was just so, he was hyperactive. And she said, and then she just said, poor baby. And I just had this flash of inspiration. I mean, this was a kid. He was just consumed with music. I mean, any kid who was into music, or in a sense,

who's consumed with anything like that should be able to understand it. He was just absolutely, but he was also just a kid who had dreams, but had no means of achieving them. And that was the kid that I really wanted to get back to. Now, Guralnik there is talking about how much music elvis channeled how much he he heard beth and you've chosen a very specific type of elvis music i feel like a dj now so that was milky white way by elvis which he recorded in 1960 um for the album his hand in mine which was his gospel album and it's his tribute i, to the gospel music of his childhood,

which he loved probably the most, although he loved lots of different types of music. But I think the gospel music was probably the most important to him. And the reason I love it is that it's so joyful and it's so beautiful and he sings it so delicately. You know, it's before he gets into the kind of later gospel stuff where he belts it out, you know, the how great thou art stuff. And yet it has this sadness and longing in it

because it's about he's going to meet his mother in heaven. Is Gladys still alive at that point? Gladys is dead. So Gladys died about a year and a half ago. So how he sang that, I kind of don't know. One of the things that Goralnik says, doesn't he, David, in the books, the worst thing that happened to Elvis early on is not his mother dying, but his mother dying and him going into the army.

Yeah. That it's the combination combination of fame not being grounded his mother dying joining the army being bored and very significantly just in a passing line it's mentioned give them pills for the first time the way that goranik does that often through the book just just introduces things very quietly no not so elvis and drugs now here's a chapter on ever it's just um you know amphetamines get mentioned or he'll he'll mention some musician at this wonderful bit at one point where he mentions roy alberson and roy al Orbison says this thing that listening to Elvis he said was like seeing Blue Velvet by David Lynch for the first time which is it's just one of those

what what what yeah he's kind of right he said you know he you can't you don't know what you're listening to with Elvis that that captures that early what the hell is this David did you feel like Guralnik was so happy for Elvis whenever Elvis went into the studio? Yeah. It's true, isn't it? That is so true. Well, everyone becomes so frustrated. There's a lot of frustration from Priscilla and people in Careless Love as well,

because as you say, he's got a tendency to start taking pills and obsessively watching Monty Python, which is another little great little detail in there, which I really enjoyed. But what does Goralnik do in terms of how he writes about music in these books? Well, I think what happens is how Elvis's approach to music changes after the army and the death of his mother.

Because I think the first book, although we were talking earlier on about the first book opening up, it's actually also about Elvis existing in a very small circle of his family where he feels very very safe and he brings his family with him. Careless Love is his attempt to individuate everyone has to individuate it's one of the challenges of our life the only difference is Elvis had to do it in public as the greatest star in the world and I think this is one of the big challenges and that's what Careless Love is about in a way and Elvis begins to develop a sort of a slightly messianic personality and he begins to think he says all these remarkable things like what we need to do is we need to teach the children

how to love God and you're like my God what an incredible artistic ambition to teach children to love God and it's quite touching I'm not cynical about this because i think elvis really did think of himself as blessed that he'd lived a magical life very unexpectedly and i think by the time we get to careless love he's now thinking how do i not only redeem my own life but how do i use my position to redeem the world almost also around it's quite clear to point out you know we were talking about colonel tom parker he says the frustration that you know you you the reader might have that elvis isn't in the studio for two and a half years at his peak that's not colonel parker keeping him out of the studio it's because elvis wants

to read books about god yeah you know he he's on another path and practice karate and you might say too that this is where the colonel serves him ill because what he really really wanted to do was to act in in movies proper movies and he maybe achieves it i watched kid creole last night which is i still think a pretty damn good movie and you get a bit of the energy of elvis in there but the movies were bad and got worse and you can sort of see his ambition his ambition to want to be James Dean Marlon Brando he was a he was a an obsessive watcher of movies he worked on his craft as an actor but it didn't happen for him and and that was because in the end Parker just knew that this was this was entertainment I just want to return

to this idea about Elvis in the studio though because i think this is what goranik captures so brilliantly the idea of somebody who is uh who can't one of the great sadnesses of elvis's professional career is he learns how to phone it in for the first five years he's incapable of doing it he's so excited to be there right he talks about the first session that he comes out after he comes out of doing it he's so excited to be there right he talks about the first session that he comes out after he comes out of the army some of which gets released on the lp elvis is back and granik is so persuasive he's saying this isn't you know sun era rock and roll this isn't late 60s memphis this is this incredible this kid who is presenting to you a portfolio of every musical style imaginable that he is expert at without being trained yeah wants to sing arias in the

italian style he can do it wants to sing gospel he can do it rock and roll if he wants to channel that he can do it he's so talented he's he's just you know he's got to get real going before he can do it the situation needs to be right and again um talking about guralny's year guralny's year for little detail at the moment that session turns there's a whole great section where they're trying to cut a version of guitar man jerry reed they can't get it they can't get it and there's so many little well observed moments in this whole conversation

so somebody says we've got to get Jerry Reid himself because we can't do it unless we get this guy and somebody says I don't know if we'll be able to get him

because I think he's gone fishing brilliant you know but they eventually get him in and Jerry Reid turns in looking like the

original Alabama wild man and Elvis when he walks in said Lord have mercy Alabama Wildman and Elvis when he walks in said Lord have mercy what's that and it's Jerry and so Jerry comes in

and he talks about re-stripping down tuning his guitar and he's saying I hooked up that electric gut string that electric gut string you know it's so real

and then they rip into it they rip into Guitar Man and you can see Elvis is feeling it and Peter Guralnik says on the seventh take was an amazing moment where Elvis just shouts out go ape shit you know and just look he's on and another version of this just in the terms how you can see the studio turns when he's recording another version of a song that also Como recorded and I love you so it's an RCA session 74 it's not

going that well it's pretty dull but sings, and I love you so. And he mentions at one point that his girlfriend, Sheila Ryan, is in the room at the time. And he says to her, step up. Let me sing to you, baby. And she walks out of the room and stands in front of the mic. And then he nails, and I love you so. And so you realize all the magic that once all the pieces are in place,

once he's able to get real going, there's nothing that can possibly touch him. Oh, you lonesome tonight. He turns all the lights are in place, once he's able to get real going, there's nothing that can possibly touch him. Oh, you lonesome tonight. He turns all the lights off in the studio, so they're having to record in the dark. What I like about Guralnik is the music critic in Guralnik, first of all, he believes, as we heard him say, in the great fusion of American styles

that is sole rock and roll folk country. And I think what really turns Goralnik on is when Elvis is channeling that fusion of musics. So he does it at Sun, and he does it in the sessions that produce Suspicious Minds. And Goralnik's description of those sessions, as I talk to you about it, is giving me goosebumps. The music will give me goosebumps, but the writing about the music.

It's the same sessions as he did in the ghetto, Goralnik says. The singing is of such unassuming, almost translucent eloquence. It is so quietly confident in its simplicity, so well supported by the kind of elegant, no-frills, small group backing that was the hallmark of the American style. It makes a statement almost impossible to deny. Later, horns and voices will be overdubbed to add dramatic flourish, but you can hear a kind of tenderness in these early takes

that most recalls the Elvis who first encountered Sam Phillips' son's studio, offering equal parts yearning and social compassion. Yeah, it's pretty good. But he also, Goralik also says about in the ghetto this is one of the things that peter granik is so good at recontextualizing yeah he says for elvis to record this song we're used to hearing it but that it was politically it was genuinely considered politically challenging for anyone to have a hit on this song, but particularly Elvis Presley.

Yeah. Now let's listen to Peter Goranek say something I can't remember anything about. I started working on this documentary about Elvis. This was at a time, you know, pre-internet when all the interviews that Elvis did, I mean, I just wasn't aware of them. They were not accessible. And the documentarians, the two people who did, I mean, I just wasn't aware of them. They were not accessible. And the documentarians, the two people who were making the thing, got together all these interviews he had done in 55 and 56. And suddenly it struck me as, oh my God, Elvis can speak for

himself. And that was really the intention of the book, was to have him speak for himself and to write a book that was written. I mean, this is what I've tried to do with everything I've ever written, to write a book that was written from the inside out, that wasn't just looking at some mythic thing or, oh, look, this guy came down from another planet. It basically was trying to understand the world that he was looking at and how he responded to it. I read these books in the 90s. I absolutely loved them. One of the big differences coming back to them in the last couple of weeks when i was rereading them was in 94 and 99 we didn't have youtube right that's actually not a not a whimsical thing but i would i i what i found fascinatingly was suddenly you have this opportunity

to go straight to the internet and here take eight of whatever. And always, without exception, Gralnick was right. You know, his description is appropriate. And those critical judgments that he's making were pitch perfect. I knew about the Ed Sullivan appearance. I'd never seen it because in those days you used to have to wait for documentaries every now and then to come out on BBC Two to actually see these clips. Now you can go and look at them.

I wondered whether growing up in an Elvis household, whether you had any strong thoughts about what it was about Elvis that made him so attractive to a whole generation of women. I mean, I have the same thing. I've got all my auntie's houses are shrines to Elvis, and I guess they were all teenagers in the late 50s, early 60s. But, I mean, Elvis nuts. I mean, beyond the Beatles, beyond anything.

I mean, it's a very particular thing. Yeah, it is a very particular thing. And I think part of it is the thing, actually, that Goranik talks about quite a lot in Last Train to Memphis, which is this kind of wistful longing about Elvis, this kind of vulnerability that he showed. I'm going to read this bit, which is about Elvis and the women. The young Elvis, though.

That's got to be a novel title. I know, yeah, yeah. I'm working on it. So this is Elvis. It's the very early 50s, so he's an early teenager and he's in Lauderdale Courts, which is a public housing project that the family have moved to. It's a rather nice public housing project, actually.

And he's just been sitting on the apartment steps, kind of singing and kind of playing some chords on his guitar. And Garonic writes, He likes the company of women. He loves to be around women, women of all ages. He feels more comfortable with them. It isn't something he would want to admit to his friends or even perhaps to himself.

His aunt Lillian notices it. He'd get out there at night with the girls and he just sang his head off. He was different with the girls, I'm embarrassed to tell, but he'd rather have a whole bunch of girls around him than the boys. He didn't care a thing about the boys. The women seemed to sense something coming out of him, something he himself may not even know he possesses. It is an aching kind of vulnerability, an unspecified yearning. When Sam Phillips meets him just two or three years later in 1953, he senses much of the same quality but calls it insecurity.

And then he talks about, he's singing and he says, he sings soft sweet songs in a soft slightly quavering voice and then satisfied, takes his comb out of his back pocket and runs it through his hair in a practice gesture, clearly at odds with his hesitancy of manner. With the women, though, he can do no wrong. Young girls or old ladies, they seem drawn to his quiet, hesitant approach, his decorous humility, his respectful scrutiny. The men may have their doubts, but to the women, he is a nice boy, a kind boy, someone both thoughtful and attentive, someone who truly cares. What Bethan just read, that isn't rock writing. Great though rock writing can be, right? I totally agree. Now, it's very hard to recreate

a time and place where you've not been there and it can be very clunky and awkward. You know, you make all these presumptions, you know, the sun rose on Thursday and such and such, there was a little breeze in the air, but somehow like Elvis, Guralnik has a sort of lightness of touch where he can fill in the background so slightly and easily

that you're never in any doubt that it's real, that he's feeling it and he's seeing it. But then he also gives space, like in that last clip he talked about, he also gives space to take the musicians and the people there at their word and to believe them to be able to articulate themselves really, really well.

And when I talk about the ear, you can just hear the relevant sentences or the little moments that give things away in otherwise fairly ordinary texts or conversation. He has an incredible ear for it. It is novelistic in one way, but he doesn't push it too far. He doesn't impose himself on it that much

and he's brilliant at drawing in this background. I mean, just as pure examples of literary scholarship, far. He doesn't impose himself on it that much and he's brilliant at drawing in this background. I mean just as pure examples of literary scholarship, of checking sources, of being of the best, the highest qualities of journalism. These are magnificent. I mean it's 15 years of work. I mean an incredible thing but what you've got is as bob dylan said you know this is the real thing it renders every every other life of of elvis this is the one that you kind of have to go to but he still has that thing of how do you write biography how do you ever get inside i mean fiction is one way he quotes richard holmes saying that a biographer is a sort of tramp permanently knocking at the kitchen window and secretly hoping he might be invited in to supper which is such a

lovely idea you read um you name check elvis and gladys by um dundee elaine dundee who we covered on that listed about six months ago and goralic received a lot of help from elaine dundee for last train to memphis right in particular now I haven't read Elvis and Gladys. Could you tell us a bit about that book? Because that book is very important in the history of the story as we understand it now. Yeah, so Elaine Dundee's book, it is about the music, but it's more about the kind of psychodrama

between Elvis and his mother. It goes into a lot of detail about Elvis's family line, so the kind of the history of the family. There's some really interesting stuff actually about Elvis's grandmother, Doll, who is Gladys's mother. And Doll was kind of quite sickly and no one quite knew why she was ill and she took to her bed for long periods. But she was also very vain and spendthrift.

So it's reminding us a bit, isn't it, of the late Elvis? Because there she is, she's kind of holding court in her bed and everybody's running around after her. She's very good at the relationship between Elvis and Gladys and giving Gladys a voice. So, you know, she's talked to a lot of people about Gladys, particularly Aunt Lillian, who's also in Last Train to Memphis a lot. And she's very good at putting you on the ground in East Tupelo,

as it would have been then, because she spent a lot of time there and talked to a lot of local historians, I think. She does have a kind of mad chapter about Jailhouse Rock and how it was all a conspiracy by the Colonel to shame Elvis about Vernon's incarceration in Parchman Penitentiary, which is, you know... That's reaching, but I love it. It's reaching, but it's interesting, right?

So this is the track that John nominated as his favourite Elvis record. Two reasons I chose it. One is I felt that I wanted to choose something from the disparaged early 70s because it is quite hard to love all of Elvis's output from that period. It is a great, great, great song and I also had an anecdotal connection to it. I was flying back from New Orleans and I was sitting next to an extremely large man and he said guess you and I better get to talking

because we're going to be sitting on one another's laps for the next day down. And I said, you know, as you do, great, what do you do? He said, I'm a musician and a song writer. And I said, oh great, fantastic. You know, he said, I've played with a lot of people, played with people you

probably heard of. Elvis. He said, yeah, I've heard of Elvis. So, you know, thinking great, fantastic. You know, he said, yeah, I've played with a lot of people, played with people you've probably heard of. Elvis. He said, yeah, I've heard of Elvis. I said, so, you know, thinking, great. I said, so what songs? Tell me any songs you've written. He said, I've written a couple of songs. Wrote a song for Elvis.

I said, which song for Elvis? He said, what was on my mind? I said, hang on. Whoa. What? So it's Wayne Carson Thompson who wrote, not only wrote this Which I think it is a great, great song And he just said, the thing about Elvis The thing about Elvis

Is you don't write Whatever song you wrote He said, I know that song is a good song Because good people, Willie Nelson, Brenda Lee He said But it's An Elvis song now because that's what Elvis did to songs. He made them his songs.

And I just thought, well, for a songwriter, there's kind of an element of truth in it. And this is also, by the way, Elvis, the separation from Priscilla. He's kind of, you know, 1972. He's at his lowest ebb. And it is, of course, saccharine. The production's horrible on it. But the voice, the voice.

And it's hard not to be choked up listening to it. Guralnik makes a really good case that the real problem with Elvis, apart from all the problems, you know, apart from the addiction to yes men, medication, was in the last five years of his life depression depression actually he said this guy's depressed what fails him in the end is depression you know he can't find any way out it's interesting you use the term no way out because that's exactly what guralnik says that elvis comes to the understanding of at the death of Gladys, when he's sitting back in Graceland,

he says he comes to the realisation that there's now no way out. And I think what he means is he's stuck with himself. There's no escape from himself after Gladys a little bit as well. And I think that the death of Gladys and the funeral scene is absolutely heart-wrenching, jaw-dropping, and the accumulation of details

is almost symphonic, the way he plays it. It's orchestral, the way he plays it it's orchestral the way he puts it all together it is orchestral or like a genuinely greek tragedy yeah you just feel you feel that the chorus and that and the kind of and the and the rending of the garments you say it's like a greek chorus and it's there's an accumulation of all these different links here's a couple of lines from the funeral uh scene just taking out of context, absolutely incredible. Mama won't never feed them chickens no more. Incredible. I would

go back to digging ditches to have you alive again. She was all... No, he keeps, and he keeps, at one point he says, look at her little sooties. He means her feet. He touches her feet and says, look at her little sooties. But then there's this incredible scene. Well, Sam Phelps has got a good line as well he says something like I'll

never forget the dead leaves by the pool I mean look at these lines these are absolutely dynamite and then it ends with his girlfriend Dixie Locke coming up to Graceland everyone has been dismissed Elvis sits at the piano with Dixie Locke and he plays the song, I'm Walking Behind You on Your Wedding Day by Eddie Fisher, covered by Sinatra. I'm walking behind you on your wedding day. He's lost his mother because his mother is now betrothed to death. It's incredible.

And it's lovely how he allows Dixie to come in and tell the story. Yeah, and she doesn't want to come because she turns up on a horse, doesn't she? She's got her curlers in and her shorts. But Goralnik allows Dixie to in a horse, doesn't she? No, she's got her curlers in and her shorts, but Goranek allows Dixie to tell that bit, doesn't he? You know, that's one of the things

he does really well throughout, actually, because a lot of the girls, usually when you're reading books about Elvis, the girls are secondary, because they were secondary to Elvis, let's face it, and you know, he probably never saw a woman as a whole human being, but Goranek does, you know, and he allows Dixie her voice there

and you know allows her that kind of respect he does it with the women in the story and he does i think the great he does it with the members of the memphis mafia as well these this this group of guys who again have had a bad press perhaps that they did some of which they deserve but he's very good at delineating them and saying what each individual meant to Elvis what each individual thought about Elvis how ashamed each individual felt of being at times part of this lavished with Cadillacs and you know presence and that's one of the details, John, you were saying, the way incidental details get introduced in these books, where you suddenly think, well, that's not good.

You know, he never comments on them. But near the end of his life, he talks about Elvis's, the way Elvis would bestow gifts in a way which is just wildly out of control the spending is out of control as much as the the uh intake of medication you know and the sense of this man being weighed down by all this stuff you know literally weight but also psychological damage and the book minors that with its intense accumulation of details i mean the books we should say they have a biblical heft to them you know i mean they genuinely do you know it's accumulation of details i was going to ask you beth and i believe there

was another title at one point for graceland that comes from a beautiful section in last train in memphis when he talks about how he's going to, his vision for decorating Graceland. Yeah. So Elvis was interviewed about Graceland, how he was going to decorate it. And he said he wanted his bedroom to be the darkest blue there is, which I loved. And for a long time, yeah, the novel was called The Darkest Blue.

But, you know, it's a suggestion of he's just going to retreat into this magical, but deathly space of his room which he did yeah don't think you're getting away with this come on what your song okay so uh i i uh i chose it's your baby you rock it from elvis country i'm 10 000 years old which is an early 70s lp probably the last great Elvis LP. And I chose it for two reasons. First, because I just really love the song. It's a bit of fluff, right?

But what you hear is what I was talking about earlier, which is Elvis's feel. Elvis is finding his way into what's quite a light, bubblegum-y country song. It all hinges on the way he bites into the words rocket. Right? It's your baby, you rocket. And also because he's in these, he's having,

this is the point I don't like to get the biographical element, but it's true. He's beginning to the marriage is problematic. You know, with Elvis, it seems, and Guralnick makes this case so brilliantly. You could give him a song that seemed like it would fit, but if he wasn't feeling it, he couldn't find it. Whereas that, there's something about that song, that little bubblegum-y kind of...

Gouronik calls it heart music, doesn't he? He just kind of... He can do everything. He can do hillbilly, he can do rock and roll, he can do gospel. I think you're right, Bethan, that gospel is kind of the bedrock on which he sort of built everything. But it was everything had to be from the heart. He loves Elvis, doesn't he? He loves Elvis.

I love what he says towards the end of the book. This is what we have to remember. In the face of facts, for all that we've come to know, it is necessary to listen, unprejudiced and unencumbered, if we are to hear Elvis's message, the culturally denied, the unabashed strike what is it the mess if we are to hear elvis's message the proclamation of emotions long suppressed the embrace of a vulnerability culturally denied the unabashed striving for freedom i mean freedom

freedom yeah yeah and that's why that's what drove everybody mad it was kind of the lid taken off a culture wasn't it amazing it was this lid taken off a culture, wasn't it? It was amazing. And it was this constant pushing forward. Although perhaps it wasn't, Elvis wasn't perhaps as formally inventive as a lot of the other rock stars we perhaps love, but he was constantly pushing. And there was a quality of soul that he always had.

That sort of soul. And Sam Phillips has this great line, which I think applies to all of Elvis's career. He says after he heard the famous take of That's All Right Mama, Sam is an oracular. I don't know if it's in the hands of Guralnik, because I don't think Sam comes across quite as oracular in any other book or in TV interviews in the way that he does in these books, but he comes out with these remarkable things. So he says this after That's Alright Mama has been recorded. He says, this is where the soul of man never dies.

What a comment. That is so... About That's Alright Mama. But you know, I'd say the same thing when I see Elvis sweating his way through this really

terrifyingly difficult, awkward, but momentarily beautiful performance in Las Vegas. You think, this is where the soul of man never dies? Can I just say, I always knew that

the Vegas stuff was great, because when I was little, me and mum used to watch That's The Way It Is, which is that amazing documentary about those early... So I didn't need Gronach to convince me. I knew. Unfortunately, we've run out of studio time. This is our only take, and Nicky's printing

the acetate as we speak. I'd like to say thank you very much to Bethan and to David, to our very own Sam Phillips, Nicky Birch, and to that noted indie label and sponsor, Unbound. Sunbound. You can download all 89 of our shows, plus follow links, clips, and suggestions for further reading, because you don't have enough to read,

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two extra episodes of what we call lock listed which is andy me and nicky talking about the books music and films we've enjoyed in the previous fortnight