The legendary relationship at the heart of a major motion picture.
In The Colonel, Alanna Nash, the author of Golden Girl: The Story
of Jessica Savitch, explores in depth the amazing story of Colonel Tom
Parker, the man behind the legend and the myth of Elvis Presley. The
result is a book that reads like the most riveting of real-life
detective stories--one that will completely change your view of
Presley's life, success, and death.
While scores of books have been written about Elvis Presley, this is the
first meticulously researched biography of Tom Parker written by someone
who knew him personally. And for anyone truly interested in the
performer many consider the greatest and most influential of the
twentieth century, it is impossible to understand how Elvis came to be
such a phenomenon without examining the life and mind of Parker, the man
who virtually controlled Elvis's every move.
Alanna Nash has been covering the story of Elvis Presley and Colonel Tom
Parker since the day of Presley's funeral in Memphis, Tennessee. She was
the first journalist allowed to view Presley's body, a compelling and
surprising sight. But the profile of Parker attending the funeral in a
Hawaiian shirt and a baseball cap was even stranger, and led her to
investigate the man behind the myth.
It has been known for years that Thomas Andrew Parker was, in fact, born
in Holland as Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk. But Nash has dug much deeper
and, in a masterpiece of reporting, unearthed never-before-seen
documents, including Parker's army records and psychiatric evaluations,
and the original police report of an unsolved murder case in Holland
that lies at the heart of the Parker mystery. In the process of weighing
the evidence, she answers the biggest riddle in the history of the music
industry, as it becomes clear that every move Parker made in the
handling of Elvis Presley--from why he never allowed Elvis to perform in
Europe, to why he didn't halt Elvis's drug use, to why he put him in so
many mediocre movies, and even the Colonel's direction of Presley's army
career--was designed to protect Parker's own secrets.
Filled with startling new material, her book challenges even the most
familiar precepts of the Presley saga--everything we presumed about
Parker's handling of the world's most famous entertainer must now be
reevaluated in the light of information Nash reveals about Parker, who
cared little for Presley beyond what the singer could do to bolster the
Colonel's precarious position as an illegal alien. Elvis Presley, as one
of Parker's unwitting victims, paid a major price for the Colonel's past
and his overwhelming need to be more important than his client. As a
result, Presley was never allowed to reach his potential and died in
drug-induced frustration over his stunted and mismanaged career.
In this astonishing, impeccably written, and vastly entertaining book,
Nash proves that the only figure in American popular culture as
fascinating as Elvis Presley is Colonel Tom Parker, the man who shaped
Elvis, who in turn helped shape us.
