(3/20/2009) Full disclosure, I am an Elvis Presley fan. I own all of his albums from "The Sun Sessions" on down to "From Elvis Presley Boulevard". I've read more than a few biographies of the man over the years, my favorite being Peter Guralnick's masterful two-volume deconstruction of Elvis' life and music. Every one of them at least mentioned the publication of this book, "Elvis: What Happened?", written/dictated by 3 of Elvis' closest friends and former employees (Dave Hebler along with Sonny & Red West) as being one of the seminal events that more or less sent Elvis off the deep end for good. To my way of thinking, I didn't really want to read another book trashing Elvis' legacy (I get enough of that arguing with my friends, whose tastes run more toward 50 Cent, T.I. and Nickelback), and so I just never read the thing.

Eventually, though, my curiosity did get the better of me, and so I set about tracking down the book which, at that point, had been out of print for quite a while. Luckily, an older lady neighbor of mine happens to be one of those obsessive Elvis fans you see in the documentaries that save every scrap of memorabilia they obtain, and she happily provided me with her copy. I could tell by the wrinkling of her nose as she indicated I could, in her words, "just take the thing" that everything I'd heard about the book was probably true. So I took the book home, and I started to read.

What I found was somewhat surprising. Far from being the vitriolic rant of loyal ex-employees vengeful at being fired (as the Wests were), the anecdotes - most of them, anyway - revealed a group of guys who were genuinely concerned for and wanted to help their friend/employer/idol. There is bitterness at being dismissed so suddenly after 20 years, don't get me wrong; how could there not be? But for the most part, the Wests (Red in particular) come off as really caring about Elvis, even with their obvious jealousy of the man, and their equally obvious anger at being let go so abruptly. Their anecdotes illustrate this somewhat clearly.

The problem with all this, however, is that these direct accounts are couched in the spurious, sensationalistic prose of Steve Dunleavy, the "as-told-to" author of this book. Dunleavy (who, by all accounts that I've read, is a tabloid sleazebag) is clearly uninterested in either helping or at least understanding Elvis Presley; indeed, it almost seems as Dunleavy himself has an axe to grind against Elvis. Rather than being the objective transcriber of the Wests' firsthand accounts and stories, he wraps his insinuating tabloid pap around them. For example, he explores the notion of Elvis' singing sounding like a "black voice in a white body". He then goes on to espouse that "Elvis was never pleased with this; he had his own definite ideas about blacks, Catholics, and Jews." Of course, Dunleavy does not deign to elaborate on what those "definite" ideas were, but is only interested in tarnishing Elvis' image. Never mind that nearly every person, black or white, who actually knew Elvis commented on his remarkably open-minded approach to people of other races and his general "color-blindness", if you will; or that Elvis' own comments about aspiring to perform as well as Arthur Gunter, Fats Domino & Clyde McPhatter completely negate Dunleavy's nasty inference. There are a number of passages like this in the book. Granted, Dunleavy doesn't reach the level of pure disdain that Albert Goldman's 1981 waste-of-trees-and-ink did, but it's pretty damned close.

The motives of the Wests & Hebler themselves can also be called into question. Were their aims really so noble? They say they wanted to help Elvis, or at least make him take a hard look in the mirror and get himself some help. Was that the case? Or were they just so mad at being fired that they simply desired to burn Elvis in the public eye (and make a nice bit of money while doing so)? The fact that they chose a writer of dubious quality like Dunleavy to take down their story, and tape recorded their private conversations with Elvis under the auspices of friendship speaks to the latter. I don't think we'll ever have a definitive answer. For my own two cents, I think that it was a mixture of both; the motivations of human beings are rarely so simple as to be one thing or the other. I think the West cousins (and to a lesser extent, Dave Hebler) loved and admired Elvis, and desperately wanted him to get help with his inner demons. At the same time, it's not too hard to think that they were so angry at being dismissed after 20 years of what I sure they thought was loyal service that they wanted to get back at Elvis somehow.

I remember reading some time ago that the West boys were not very happy with how this book turned out; they apparently didn't intend for it to be the vicious attack that it turned out to be (which, if true, indicates a stunning naiveté on their part). Sonny West tried to clear the matter up in a couple of additional books written years afterward...but by then, of course, it was far too late.

Interested in buying this? Support Writing.Com by making your purchase of Elvis: What Happened?   from Amazon.Com!

Created May 05, 2009 at 9:12pm • Submit your own review...