Synopsis:
"This is not just another Elvis Presley biography, although it gets closer to the real Elvis story than many of the hundreds of other books that have dealt with the life of the man his contemporaries have called 'The King'. As the author Michael Freedland puts it in his introduction, "Everyone knows Elvis".
But not the way his close friends, employees and others who entered his life knew him. For this is their story, told in their words. He interviews those who knew Elvis intimately, from the now elderly woman who was at school with him and whose parents foreclosed on the shack they rented to Elvis' mother when his father was in jail, to the maid who prepared his peanut butter sandwiches and hamburgers and watched him line up the girls he wanted to take to his bed.
In between, we meet the black man who remembered sneaking into a local cinema with his pal in defiance of most of the Deep South race laws, members of the so-called 'Memphis Mafia' who went where he went, laughed when he laughed and suffered when he suffered - and usually received a brand new Cadillac for their troubles.
There's also his doctor who denies giving him fatal doses of the drugs he collected along with the hamburgers. Writer and broadcaster Michael Freedland went all over the West Coast and Southland to talk to these people who shared Elvis' life, telling the complex Elvis Presley story in a way more true to the real man than the usual collection of dates, film and song titles."
The 100 Greatest Debut Albums of All Time
It was fifty years ago today that the Beatles’ released their first album, Please Please Me. In honor of that world-changing LP, Rolling Stone Magazine compiled a list of the 100 Greatest Debut Albums of All Time.
A note on how we made the list: Albums got docked points if the artist went on to far greater achievements (which is why Please, Please Me and Greetings from Asbury Park, great as they are, didn't made the top ten); conversely, we gave a little extra recognition to great debut albums that the artist never matched (hello, Is This It and Illmatic!). They also skipped solo debuts by artists who were already in well-known bands, which is why you won’t see John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band or Paul Simon. The magazine focused, instead, on debuts that gave you the thrill of an act arriving fully-formed, ready to reinvent the world in its own image.
Elvis Presley's debut album, simply titled "Elvis Presley" was listed at #79. This is what the magazine says about it:
"In November 1955, RCA Records bought Presley's contract, singles and unreleased master tapes from Sun Records for $35,000. His first full-length album came out six months later, with tracks drawn from both the Sun sessions and from further recording at RCA's studios in New York and Nashville. "There wasn't any pressure," guitarist Scotty Moore said of the first RCA sessions. "They were just bigger studios with different equipment. We basically just went in and did the same thing we always did." On tracks such as "Blue Suede Shoes," that meant revved-up country music with the sexiest voice anyone had ever heard."
The Top 5:
5: The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground and Nico
4: Guns N' Roses - Appetite for Destruction
3: Jimi Hendrix Experience - Are You Experienced
2: The Ramones - The Ramones
1: The Beasty Boys - Licence To Ill
(Source: Elvis Club Berlin / Rolling Stone)