| |
by Bryan
Hollerbach
Writer Alanna Nash should need no introduction to readers
of such popular periodicals as Entertainment Weekly,
for which she covers country music. The Louisville native
has also authored such volumes as
Dolly: The Biography (a look at the peerless Ms.
Parton) and
Behind Closed Doors (a collection of country
interviews), both recently reviewed in these pages. On July
15, Simon & Schuster will publish her latest book, The
Colonel, which analyzes Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis
Presley’s controversial manager. By e-mail last month, Nash
discussed that bio (on which further information appears at
www.colonelparker.com) and related topics:
1. What inspired you to write this biography of Colonel
Tom Parker?
I have been curious about him since I was a small child,
ever since I saw a picture of him handing out Elvis pictures
to kids who looked remarkably like me. Then in the ’90s, I
had three meetings with him in Las Vegas, trying to get him
to comment for a previous book I did, Elvis Aaron
Presley: Revelations From the Memphis Mafia, a
collaboration with three members of Elvis’s entourage. In
each of those meetings, I looked across the lunch table at
him and wondered, “Just who are you? Who are you really?”
When he died in ’97, I thought, “Now we’ll never know.” Then
my agent convinced me to try to answer that question myself.
2. In brief—at the risk of using an almost ludicrous
phrase—what did your six years of work on the biography
entail?
I was on a quest to answer two larger questions: One, why
did he make certain decisions in guiding Elvis’s career that
didn’t really make a lot of sense, and two, why did he leave
his native Holland without telling his family goodbye, and
then never become a U.S. citizen? The ripple effect of that
had enormous impact on the life and career of his most
famous client. To answer those questions, I traveled to
Holland, interviewed his family, met more of his family and
friends here in the States, and was able to uncover several
previously unseen documents that led me to believe that he
got into some very big trouble in the Netherlands—trouble
that made him either rewrite or attempt to obscure his past.
The thing is, Elvis Presley paid almost as big a price as he
did for whatever happened over there.
3. What distinguishes your book from earlier bios of
Parker, like James L. Dickerson’s Colonel Tom Parker,
Sean O’Neal’s My Boy Elvis, and Dirk Vellenga and
Mick Farren’s Elvis and the Colonel?
I cannot pay enough homage to the Vellenga/Farren book. Both
authors were helpful to me personally, especially Mick
Farren, who is both a genius and a sweetheart. Any serious
research into the life of Tom Parker has to start with their
work. I just took Vellenga’s findings deeper. To my
knowledge, Sean O’Neal didn’t do a lot of primary research,
as he was under an extremely tight deadline to get his book
out as soon as he could after Parker died; Jim Dickerson
focused on different things than I did. I was searching for
cause and effect, and attempting to construct a
psychological profile of a very complex man.
4. Of all the bios of Elvis Presley, the man who made
Parker famous and vice versa, which do you regard as the
best—and why?
You can’t discredit the Peter Guralnick volumes [Last
Train to Memphis and Careless Love] for
thoroughness about Elvis, if not Parker, but there are other
books which are essential to understanding the story: Elaine
Dundy’s Elvis and Gladys, for one, Bill Burk’s
numerous books [Early Elvis: The Sun Years, among
many others] for “you are there” details, and more recently,
Bobbie Ann Mason’s abbreviated look at Elvis as deep-dish
Southerner [Elvis Presley].
5. If we lived in a time less supersaturated by media
coverage, which contemporary musician or musicians could you
see matching the impact of Elvis?
You’d have to name the Beatles for cultural significance and
change, but after that, perhaps only Bruce Springsteen comes
close. If we’re speaking of white artists, that is, in
mainstream America. Black culture has its own super icons,
and to their own audiences, they have been just as powerful
as Elvis. In his heyday, of course, Presley bridged those
two camps as never before. We need him back!
|
