Elvis Australia - Guralnick interview
Posted: October 15th, 2025, 8:17 pm
https://www.elvis.com.au/presley/interv ... llis.shtml
it's too bad Eddy did not warn Elvis about Parker, eh?
Vallis: Were some subjects omitted (i.e. Scotty Moore & Bill Black, Leiber & Stoller) because they were previously covered in your two Elvis bios? How important is it for the reader to be familiar with your earlier works?
Guralnick: This was intended to be a biographical portrait of Colonel, not of Elvis or Sam Phillips, say, or anyone else. You tell the story, and when you tell any story, you have to choose the details that bring out the character best and move the narrative along. If you look at Last Train to Memphis, for example, you'll find lots of subjects omitted, I'm sure, either because they would be thematically repetitious or, in some cases because they are more revealing of the storyteller, or a metaphorical truth (I don't mean by that that they are untrue) than they are of the literal unfolding of events. Jerry Leiber plays less of a role in The Colonel and the King than he and Mike do in Last Train. Scotty and Bill are perceived here from a different angle, too. It has always been thought (Scotty certainly thought) that Colonel was against Scotty and Bill – I go into this a little bit in Last Train. But here we see Colonel and Tom Diskin essentially defending Scotty and Bill, while Hal Wallis and Steve Sholes were all for dropping them. But really, the whole point of telling Colonel's story is to tell Colonel's story – and to do the best you can to present in full the view you get from what amounts to the other side of the mirror.
Vallis: The Colonel and the King documents how hard Parker worked for Elvis' interests, but by limiting song selections to those he held publishing on, and putting him in more cheaply made movies, wasn't he actually undermining his client's potential at the same time?
Guralnick: To get full-fledged answers to this, I think you'd have to read the book. But you have only to take a look at some of the letters – Colonel writing to Elvis in 1957 ('The money is not as important right now to make a picture if the story is not right for you'); to William Morris head Abe Lastfogel ('I know he is not at all interested in doing a repeat of the type of pictures we have just made... I cant understand the thinking of any studio to want to keep on this same idea') – to understand that the picture is not as simple as it might at first appear. And consider Elvis' complete drop-out from doing any recording except movie soundtracks for almost 2 1/2 years – from 1964-1966 – while he chose to pursue his spiritual studies. I mean, this was someone for whom music had been the central element of his life from the time he was a young child – and look at the amazing recordings he made from 1960-1963 before dropping out to read his books. (See Elvis Day By Day (Book by Peter Guralnick and Ernst Jorgensen 1999) for illustrations of some of his notations of those books.) During this time period, it seems, all he wanted to do was make as much money as he could in as short a time period as possible and return home to Graceland to pursue his studies. And in the end, it was a business deal by Colonel that motivated him to return to the studio and record How Great Thou Art, and to set out upon the second (well, third, really) great arc of his career. As for song publishing, anyone who has ever been in the music business knows that publishing is the very foundation of the business, that is where the money is made, and everyone from the beginning of time to the present moment has always sought to control it.
it's too bad Eddy did not warn Elvis about Parker, eh?
Vallis: Were some subjects omitted (i.e. Scotty Moore & Bill Black, Leiber & Stoller) because they were previously covered in your two Elvis bios? How important is it for the reader to be familiar with your earlier works?
Guralnick: This was intended to be a biographical portrait of Colonel, not of Elvis or Sam Phillips, say, or anyone else. You tell the story, and when you tell any story, you have to choose the details that bring out the character best and move the narrative along. If you look at Last Train to Memphis, for example, you'll find lots of subjects omitted, I'm sure, either because they would be thematically repetitious or, in some cases because they are more revealing of the storyteller, or a metaphorical truth (I don't mean by that that they are untrue) than they are of the literal unfolding of events. Jerry Leiber plays less of a role in The Colonel and the King than he and Mike do in Last Train. Scotty and Bill are perceived here from a different angle, too. It has always been thought (Scotty certainly thought) that Colonel was against Scotty and Bill – I go into this a little bit in Last Train. But here we see Colonel and Tom Diskin essentially defending Scotty and Bill, while Hal Wallis and Steve Sholes were all for dropping them. But really, the whole point of telling Colonel's story is to tell Colonel's story – and to do the best you can to present in full the view you get from what amounts to the other side of the mirror.
Vallis: The Colonel and the King documents how hard Parker worked for Elvis' interests, but by limiting song selections to those he held publishing on, and putting him in more cheaply made movies, wasn't he actually undermining his client's potential at the same time?
Guralnick: To get full-fledged answers to this, I think you'd have to read the book. But you have only to take a look at some of the letters – Colonel writing to Elvis in 1957 ('The money is not as important right now to make a picture if the story is not right for you'); to William Morris head Abe Lastfogel ('I know he is not at all interested in doing a repeat of the type of pictures we have just made... I cant understand the thinking of any studio to want to keep on this same idea') – to understand that the picture is not as simple as it might at first appear. And consider Elvis' complete drop-out from doing any recording except movie soundtracks for almost 2 1/2 years – from 1964-1966 – while he chose to pursue his spiritual studies. I mean, this was someone for whom music had been the central element of his life from the time he was a young child – and look at the amazing recordings he made from 1960-1963 before dropping out to read his books. (See Elvis Day By Day (Book by Peter Guralnick and Ernst Jorgensen 1999) for illustrations of some of his notations of those books.) During this time period, it seems, all he wanted to do was make as much money as he could in as short a time period as possible and return home to Graceland to pursue his studies. And in the end, it was a business deal by Colonel that motivated him to return to the studio and record How Great Thou Art, and to set out upon the second (well, third, really) great arc of his career. As for song publishing, anyone who has ever been in the music business knows that publishing is the very foundation of the business, that is where the money is made, and everyone from the beginning of time to the present moment has always sought to control it.
