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It was October 1966. The Flamingo Club on Wardour Street smelled like cigarette smoke and ambition in equal measure. Low ceilings, brick walls painted black sometime around 1961, a stage barely large enough to hold four people without someone standing sideways. It seated 200 on a good night, and most nights were good nights. The…

Jimi Hendrix had just died. Dick Cavett asked Janis Joplin about it on live television. >> [clears throat] >> What she said in the next 40 seconds left the studio completely silent. 10 days later, Janis was gone, too. And the tape of that conversation, which anyone can watch right now, which has been sitting…

The alarm was set for 4:00 in the morning, but Priscilla was already awake by 3:00. She lay still in the dark for a few minutes, listening. Graceland was different at this hour, different from when it was lived in, the nights long, the rooms full, the whole place running on a schedule that had…

It was past 3:00 in the morning at Graceland, and the house had gone quiet in the way it only did when everyone else had finally surrendered to sleep. The security lights outside pressed faint amber lines through the curtains, thin pale stripes that lay across the carpet and reached the edge of the bed…

In 1974, a 12-year-old boy named Danny Roland lived with his parents in a small house in Memphis, Tennessee. His father worked at a printing company. His mother stayed home to look after Dany and his younger sister. They were not a wealthy family, but they had enough. They had a routine. They had plans….

The Las Vegas Hilton showroom held just over 2,000 people when it was full. And on the night of August 19th, 1974, it was full. It was always full. The summer festival engagement had been running for 3 weeks. Two shows a night, six nights a week, and every seat had been claimed before the…

The tour was scheduled to begin on August 17th. That date had been on the calendar for months, printed in itineraries, confirmed with promoters, announced to the press. 11 cities in 2 weeks, starting in Portland, Maine, ending in Memphis. A routine run by the standards of what Elvis Presley’s life had become. Not brutal…

The tour bus smelled of stale coffee and recycled air. The sealed, pressurized atmosphere of too many hours on too many highways. It was June 21st, 1977, and the bus was parked behind the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center in Rapid City, South Dakota, idling against a loading dock in the early evening. Outside, the sky…

Elvis Presley appeared on television more than almost any entertainer of his generation. From the moment he first walked onto a national broadcast in 1956, he understood what the camera could do for him. He used television to introduce himself to America, to rebuild his career after years away, and to connect with audiences who…

An 8-year-old sang Love Me Tender with Elvis on stage, and the crowd was amazed. But when Elvis asked how she learned it, her answer left no one with dry eyes. It was September 4th, 1975 at the Las Vegas Hilton. Elvis was in the middle of his late evening show, performing to a packed…