``Dead or alive, the magic of Elvis lives on'' claims the original dust jacket of this British import, emblazoning the words above a close-up of the King—a deliciously ironic sentiment given that here, as in his earlier books, Parker (Prince Philip, 1991, etc.) does his best, none too successfully, to stir up mud. Parker's angle is that the rock star may have been murdered by the Mafia, a conclusion he builds on stilts constructed primarily of previously unreleased interviews with Elvis associates (interviews not conducted by Parker), as well as of info gleaned from his ferreting through 663 pages of the ``FBI general file'' on Elvis. Parker digs out little that's not been revealed before, though he does highlight much that's not well known: particularly that J. Edgar Hoover began tracking Elvis as early as spring 1956, and that Elvis suffered constant money problems that, in 1976, prompted his father to succumb to a scam involving the leasing of the singer's jet—a scam that soon came to the attention of the Bureau. Moreover, this scam allegedly was only a small part of a multimillion-dollar mob operation that was threatened when it became ``likely that Elvis and Vernon Presley...would be required to give testimony at [an] eventual trial.'' Parker dregs up the many minor mysteries surrounding the star's death—including the locking-away of the autopsy report—to support his case. Throughout, the author also manages to provide a lurid account of Elvis's decline into drug-decay, and speculates that his 1970 Oval Office meeting with Richard Nixon prompted—through the singer's envy of the Beatles—Nixon's persecution of John Lennon. Not bad as a concise chronicle of the superstar's dark side, but Parker's case that Elvis may have been murdered will convince few—after all, we all know that he's hiding out in Kalamazoo.... (Forty-two b&w photographs)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1994
ISBN: 1-85470-039-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Collins & Brown/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1993
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
