In October 1995, O.J. Simpson walked out of one of the most watched criminal trials in American history after being acquitted of murdering Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. The media frenzy did not disappear with the verdict. Yet according to an extraordinary story Michael Jackson later told his bodyguards, Simpson had access to one … Read more
By early 1984, Michael Jackson was experiencing a level of success few recording artists had ever seen. At a lavish celebration in New York, CBS Records and Guinness were honoring the extraordinary success of Thriller. Walter Yetnikoff, the powerful head of CBS Records, was preparing to introduce Michael to the room as the “greatest artist … Read more
Every year at Graceland, on holidays and especially around Christmas and New Year, the King of Rock and Roll organized something that would give a modern safety inspector a heart attack. He bought thousands of dollars’ worth of fireworks, split his friends into two teams, sent them out into the field behind the house, and … Read more
There is a piece of film from July 1, 1956, in which a 21-year-old Elvis Presley sits alone in a hotel room, talking down a telephone line to a New York newspaper columnist. It looks like nothing much. It is, in fact, extraordinary — because in a career of more than twenty years, that broadcast … Read more
On June 9, 1972, Elvis Presley sat down in a ballroom at the New York Hilton to face a room full of reporters. It was a big moment: he was about to play Madison Square Garden, and he hadn’t performed live in New York since his television appearances back in the 1950s. Everyone expected the … Read more
In March 1972, Elvis Presley walked into a Hollywood studio in one of the worst slumps of his career. He hadn’t had a Top 10 single in nearly two years. His marriage had collapsed the month before. Somebody put a rocking, up-tempo song in front of him called “Burning Love” — and Elvis flatly didn’t … Read more
Ask most people to name Elvis Presley’s biggest song, and they’ll say “Hound Dog,” or “Jailhouse Rock,” or “Suspicious Minds.” All wrong. The biggest-selling single of his entire career — around 20 million copies worldwide — is a slow, sweeping love song where he sings almost like an opera tenor. It’s called “It’s Now or … Read more
Elvis Presley died on August 16, 1977. His daughter Lisa Marie was nine years old. Twenty years later, she walked into a recording studio, put on a pair of headphones, and did something almost nobody has ever done. She sang a duet with her father — his voice from the past, hers in the present, … Read more
It was 1955. Elvis Presley was 20 years old, and almost nobody outside the South knew his name yet. He was riding around in a car with two other musicians, playing in high school gyms, at county fairs, and at little country music shows. Most nights the crowd came to see somebody else, not Elvis. … Read more
In 1968, Elvis Presley was in trouble. Not money trouble. Not health trouble. Something worse for a singer. People had stopped taking him seriously. For years he had been making movies instead of music, and the wild young man who once shook up America had turned into a face on a poster. So Elvis picked … Read more
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