The Colonel and The King by Peter Guralnick review – behind the myth of Elvis and his manager

Colonel Tom Parker is the most infamous manager in rock history. Widely regarded as a profligate conman who derailed the career of his legendary client Elvis Presley, his name is a byword for crass showbiz exploitation and mercenary greed.

He is, and always will be, the arch-villain of the Elvis saga. Right? Well, no. Not really. The truth of the matter is far more complicated than that, as pre-eminent music critic/historian Peter Guralnick argues in his painstakingly researched and undeniably persuasive biography The Colonel and The King.

Guralnick is a leading authority on all things Elvis. His books Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love are definitive accounts of the King’s life. So when he begs to differ with received wisdom, I’m inclined to listen. And I certainly came away from this weighty tome – almost half of which is devoted to copious letters written by Parker over the years – with a more nuanced view of its slippery subject.

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One of Guralnick’s great gifts as a biographer is his ability to strip away layers of myth to reveal the three-dimensional human being underneath. That’s a tall order when it comes to an inveterate self-mythologiser like Parker, but Guralnick more or less succeeds against the odds.

Born Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk in the Netherlands in 1909, Parker – his ‘Colonel’ title was honorific – stowed away to the United States in the late 1920s and forged a colourful new life as a travelling carnival promoter and talent manager.

When he ‘discovered’ Elvis in 1955, Parker found the explosive money-spinning circus act he was always destined to manage. As Guralnick makes clear, Parker was an astute businessman and fearless dealmaker who amassed untold riches for himself and ‘his boy’. He was no fool.

He also wasn’t as creatively stifling as we’ve been led to believe. Guralnick uncovers documents which prove that Parker was initially on board with Elvis’s desire to be a serious dramatic actor, and he didn’t actually interfere at all with Elvis’s vision for the triumphant ’68 comeback special.

It also transpires that Parker was keen for Elvis to tour overseas (famously, he never did). The standard narrative decrees that Parker – an illegal immigrant – was afraid of being deported, but that wasn’t really the case. What is true, however, is that Parker became a gambling addict in the 70s, which severely impaired his decision-making. Elvis was a different kind of addict. They were, as Guralnick writes, “locked in a relationship of mutual denial”.

A portrait emerges of a genuinely eccentric man who was simultaneously cynical, generous, cunning, sentimental, bullish and vulnerable. A fascinating mass of contradictions. Guralnick is perhaps a little bit too lenient at times, and I challenge anyone to read Parker’s stream-of-consciousness missives without skimming, but I cannot fault his dedication to presenting a fair, fact-checked study of such a strange, elusive character.

The Colonel and The King: Tom Parker, Elvis Presley and the Partnership that Rocked the World by Peter Guralnick is out now (White Rabbit, £35).

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