|
Click here
to read Chapter 1
You probably think you know all there is to know about Elvis
Presley. Everyone knows about the King of Rock and Roll; he’s
been profiled and written about in hundreds of books, more than
any other entertainer or cultural icon in history. Who hasn’t
heard his music, seen his movies, or attended his concerts?
Many of you remember where you were the day you heard Elvis
had died. Some of you still don’t want to believe he’s gone.
What you hold in your hands is not a conventional Elvis book,
another version of the story that’s been told and retold. This
book looks into the nucleus, the very essence of the man; it’s
the unexplored dimension of his life, a story dramatically different
from any other. Yes, Elvis was a musical genius, an original
who burst upon the cultural scene like a powerful comet, disrupting
and transforming the course of music, style, and our lives forever.
Guitar slung over his shoulder, he radiated a magnetic sexual
force and soft smoldering sulkiness, inspiring and provoking
the imagination of generations to come. The rising generation
was enthralled by the freedom he represented, discovering in
him an antidote to the restraints of the puritanical fifties.
He articulated their dreams, their frustrations, their longings
for something more, and assuaged loneliness for so many.
His “sinful” hip-swinging music, with its radical black beat,
struck the first note of the coming youth revolution. Alice
Walker wrote in her novel The Temple of My Familiar, “In Elvis
white Americans found a reason to express their longing and
appreciation for the repressed Native American and black parts
of themselves.” The Godfather of soul, James Brown, said, “He
taught white America to get down.”
The great American conductor-composer Leonard Bernstein said
Elvis was “the greatest cultural force in the twentieth century…He
introduced the beat to everything, and he changed everything,
music, language, clothes; it’s a whole new social revolution—the
sixties comes from it. Because of him, a man like me barely
knows his musical grammar any more.”
Elvis, always the innocent in his heart, innately used his
almost magical power to engender ever more love from his audiences.
They gave up their energy to him as if he were the sun and they
were orbiting planets drawn to him for heat and light. His charisma
reached out to them like a bolt of lightning from the concert
stage, from records and the movie screen. He gave them the hillbilly
singer, the opera star, the sex symbol, the preacher; his voice
had a quality that transformed itself to the message of the
songs he sang, with a twang or a soft croon or a profound depth
of feeling for the holy. In return, they gave him their undying
love and adulation. Most importantly, he touched their souls
and they believed him.
We are not, however, our public persona, none of us. We are
all like icebergs, with little of our essence revealed above
the waterline. How much truer of Elvis, whose image was so powerful
and charismatic that it blinded his admirers and detractors
alike to any possibility of a man whose essential being was
so far from his projection on the worldwide stage.
His fabled, turbulent life and career are legendary and have
been covered extensively: from his humble birth and impoverished
childhood in a tiny wooden shotgun two-room house in Tupelo,
Mississippi; to his musical beginnings as a teenaged truck driver
discovered at Sun Records by Sam Phillips; to his meteoric rise
to international fame launched and managed by the flamboyant
Colonel Tom Parker. Many of the books written about Elvis are
interesting, insightful, and valuable in helping to satisfy
the need to learn everything we can about our cultural icons.
Regrettably, some of the books fall into the category of fallacious
tabloid “revelations.”
Despite this abundance of information, even the most dedicated
and ardent fan who knows every song, every movie, all the personal
and professional minutiae of his life likely does not know that
which is most intriguing and revealing: the very heart and soul
of the man born Elvis Aaron Presley.
Our lives are not a series of external events and their causal
and linear relationships. Each life is an assemblage, a gestalt
of countless pieces, patterned and formed like a jigsaw puzzle
into a distinctive characterization. And just as with a jigsaw
puzzle, there are certain key pieces without which the picture
is incomplete. The central theme of a puzzle is not found on
the pieces around the edges, the sky or the foliage in the foreground.
For Elvis, his growing need to be close to and understand the
nature of God and his own place in God’s universe was drawn
on those pieces that connect in the very center of his puzzle.
You will find in this book those revealing pieces that complete
the picture that is Elvis.
Most of Elvis’ days were filled with laughter, excitement,
and exuberance. He wore no mask, remaining always true to himself,
vulnerable and incandescent, serious and flippant. Most importantly,
he was totally committed to his spiritual search, neither a
dilettante nor a metaphysical dabbler.
Who was this man who changed music and culture forever? It’s
easy to see him as larger than life, a man of excessive talent
and beauty and of excessive weakness. What you see isn’t always
what you get. The Elvis I knew, the private Elvis, was an intelligent,
thoughtful man who embarked on a lifelong quest for meaning
and enlightenment. I was privileged to share that journey with
him. It’s a journey he wanted me to share with you.
Elvis charged me with this responsibility, empowering me and
inspiring me to write this book. “The world knows Elvis Presley
all right,” he said emotionally, “but they don’t know me,” poking
his chest. “I want them to know me, the real person.” We were
in the Detroit Hilton at the time; it was a few months before
he died.
“Larry, I’ve always been misunderstood my whole life. When
my career first took off, they didn’t know what to make of me;
Hollywood still hasn’t figured me out, and there’s a lot of
people who still don’t have a clue to what I’m really all about.
There’s more to me than that guy up there on the stage: You
know, Elvis the image. And that’s where you come in. I wouldn’t
ask anyone but you; it’s our special mission together. I know
my story’s been told before in a lotta different ways, but working
together, let’s write a true book about my life, everything.
What my fans and everyone else need to know is that I’m a spiritual
person. If they don’t know that, they’ll never really know who
I am, and what makes me tick. They need to know all about the
books I read—you know, about the path. And what about my baby
girl? How is Lisa Marie going to know the most important thing
about her daddy when she grows up? Man, you know as well as
I do that a half truth can be a distortion, even a lie, and
if my spiritual life isn’t known then my real story won’t ever
come out.”
Elvis looked me squarely in the eyes. “Larry, I’m counting
on you. If even one person can be led to God because of me,
it will be worth it. I’m the first to admit I’m not perfect,
and I’ve done things I’m not proud of. I’ve got a long way to
go—we all do. We’re all on Jacob’s ladder somewhere. And like
it says in the Bible, ‘and though I have the gift of prophecy,
and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge, and though
I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have
not love, I am nothing.’ God is love, Larry, that’s what it’s
all about. So I’m asking: are you with me?”
I have written the story of my years with Elvis before, in
If I Can Dream (Simon & Schuster, 1989). I participated
in the writing of two more books about Elvis and made small
contributions to others. All of these works spoke of Elvis’
spiritual life as part of the story. So why now? Why do I feel
the time is right to go into the depths of that essential, all-important
aspect of this man, to fully honor the promise I made to Elvis
so many years ago?
Since Elvis died, I have spoken before thousands of fans around
the world; I’ve been interviewed on television, in print, and
in documentaries; I receive e-mails every day from people all
over the world. While most express an interest in the work I
did for Elvis as his hair stylist and what it was like to be
part of his world, they always come to the same place. What
did Elvis believe? Was he a Christian? What were his favorite
books and philosophers? What did you and Elvis talk about during
all those hours you spent together? Did he pray? Did he meditate?
Did he believe in reincarnation and karma? Some of the e-mails
tell me about spiritual connections that the writer has to Elvis,
or how Elvis changed or even saved the person’s life.
Another impetus for me to write this book is the growing public
interest in Elvis’ spiritual life, which has led to a plethora
of misinformation and misunderstanding. For most of us, our
spiritual life is a private matter, shared only with those with
whom we are most intimate. It is, after all, the window to our
soul, the reflection of our deepest self that reveals the depth
of all our dimensions. Privacy, however, is a luxury not granted
to the famous, not even after they’ve passed away, and certainly
not to Elvis.
Perhaps the biblical saying applies here: “To everything there
is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven.” We are
living through the most exciting, challenging, and critical
time in human history. Never before has so much been possible,
and never before has so much been at stake. This time of uncertainty
and global angst has led to a spiritual awakening; people who
never before looked beyond the physical world are seeking answers
in religion and philosophy; belief in God and angels is growing
among formerly pragmatic doubters.
Elvis most certainly would have welcomed this spiritual resurgence
and would have been an eager participant in its expression.
He was a man ahead of his time, in his awareness and interest
in the metaphysical as much as in the vanguard of a new kind
of musical expression. He spoke to me often of developing charities
in his name, writing books on the spiritual journey we shared,
contributing even more to the world than his God-given talent.
He wanted to change the world, not as a prophet or a leader,
but as a man who could make his voice heard and his presence
felt on behalf of great causes.
So the question remains: what was the root meaning of Elvis’
life? Is it even possible to wrap words around a whole life,
to attempt to grasp the essence of its truth, especially one
as rich and as complicated as the life of Elvis Presley? That
is the mystery at the heart of this work, and it will take us
through a grand sweep of Elvis’ spiritual quest. We will explore
his hopes and dreams, struggles and frustrations, and his private
thoughts and feelings about that quest for ultimate meaning
and wholeness.
Psychologist and philosopher Dr. Viktor Frankl suggests in
his best-selling book Man’s Search For Meaning that man’s primary
motivation in life is his search for purpose and fulfillment.
Elvis and I read many hundreds of books together. We studied
and discussed, searched and probed, always looking for answers
to the unanswerable, each looking for his own purpose and helping
the other along the way. I’ve been called a guru and other,
less flattering, epithets. Yes, I was for the most part the
mentor and guide; I placed my feet on the spiritual path long
before Elvis and I met and discovered our kindred souls. I had
read all the books I brought him, and hundreds more. But the
sobriquet “guru” suggests a master or cultish leader, and that
I was not. I learned many things from Elvis, as together we
studied ancient wisdom and philosophy, religions of both East
and West, exoteric and esoteric. Nothing was off bounds for
our inquiring minds. We practiced meditation and spiritual healing.
We loved to play with numbers and words, creating new ways of
finding mystical meaning in the ordinary. Mysticism spoke directly
to Elvis’ fundamental desire to know what life was about, and
thus it emerged naturally from the very marrow of his being.
This book had to be written. How could I allow what is contained
within these pages to be lost forever? That would have been
a gross injustice. The planning and actual writing have been
years in the making, since I realized early on that previously
I had only touched upon the most essential portal into Elvis’
story.
We are nothing but our stories after we’re gone. Our identities
over time dissolve and fragment into loose collections of anecdotes
and yarns. For Elvis, these stories have grown into legends
and myths. Knowing what I know, I was compelled to convey the
more meaningful threads, to provide a unique view that shines
through a pastiche of fact and fable, innocent or purposeful
distortions.
In the past I’ve written with talented and creative collaborators;
the experience was rewarding in many ways, and I learned quite
a lot from them. This time is different; this is my book.
Working in my favor is the very good memory with which I have
been blessed, especially concerning those incredible, historical
years with Elvis. I made a deliberate effort to remember everything
I could, and thus many conversations and memories are still
fresh, deeply etched in my consciousness. Additionally, during
the last year of Elvis’ life, with events unfolding so quickly,
I jotted down copious notes. I always had writing material at
hand then, as I was writing a health book, and Elvis and I had
discussed writing a book about his life.
In the years since Elvis’ death, I’ve compiled volumes of notes,
meticulously reconstructing actual conversations, always relying
upon my ability to recall tone, texture, and context. I can
honestly and comfortably say that this book hits the mark. You
will see this reflected in the passages and ideas found in pages
of Elvis’ own books, notes he wrote in the margins, and phrases
and thoughts he underlined.
In these pages you will travel with Elvis on his journey from
a man with hidden, unexpressed longings, searching alone for
meaning to a life that seemed in many ways to be charmed to
a more fully realized spiritual seeker, well read, conversant
in an eclectic range of religious and Gnostic philosophies.
You will come to understand the intelligence and depth of this
man.
Since Elvis’ passing I’ve continued my own journey, deepening
and discovering new levels of understanding. I can’t give over
in this book what I don’t have myself: all the answers to all
the questions. What I can share with you is what I learned before
I met Elvis, in the time I shared with him, and in the years
since he’s gone. If you find answers in the leaves of this book,
I’m grateful; at the very least you’ll learn more about Elvis
Presley and his very personal, very spiritual journey.
Click here to read Chapter 1 |
HOME
