Revising the reputation of the most reviled man in rock 'n 'roll history

Boston Globe

9 hours ago

He wasn't American. Born in the Netherlands, in 1909, he twice stowed away on ships sailing to the United States (the first time he got sent back) and never became a US citizen.
Colonel Tom Parker, left, and Elvis Presley on the set of "Wild in the Country."
© Graceland Archives
True, he was show business, and a manager. But he wasn't rock 'n' roll, which was problematic since his most celebrated client was Elvis Presley. It was their relationship that made Parker a legend. More to the point, it was Parker's management that helped neuter Presley artistically. Or so conventional wisdom has it.
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That view might be a further example of Parker not being as he seemed. In his new book, 'The Colonel and the King,' Peter Guralnick shows a Parker far more complex and creative than commonly understood. Yes, the bald, rotund, cigar-chomping Parker looked the part of the onetime carny he'd been: more folk villain than folk hero. Yet he was also much more than that, a latter-day Gatsby, a classic case of American self-invention – as was Presley.
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'Each of them believed in the other,' Guralnick said in an interview last month. 'Each of them believed there were no limits to what the two of them could achieve together.'
Colonel Tom Parker, left, Elvis Presley, and Ed Sullivan.
© Graceland Archives
Guralnick, 81, knew Parker. He also knew Sam Phillips, who discovered Presley. He's written biographies of Phillips, the singer Sam Cooke, and, most famously, a two-volume life of Presley. Of the first volume, 'Last Train to Memphis,' Bob Dylan said, 'This book cancels out all others.' A revisionist view of Parker from someone else might make readers shake their heads. From Guralnick, it promises to open their eyes.
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On Wednesday, Guralnick will be in conversation at the Cambridge Public Library with his friend Peter Wolf, of J. Geils Band fame. Admission is free, but
Last month, Guralnick sat at the dining-room table in the 18th-century house where he and his wife, Alexandra, have lived since 1971 and talked about the new book, half of which is a standard biography and half a collection of Parker's letters.
From left to right, Peter Guralnick, Colonel Tom Parker, and Sam Phillips at Parker's 80th birthday party.
Sally Wilbourn/courtesy © Peter Guralnick
Q.
The two most reviled figures in rock 'n' roll history, whether fairly or not, are Yoko Ono and the Colonel.
A.
Sure, okay, absolutely.
Q.
Do you think you're going to catch a lot of flak from people who'll see you as an apologist for him?
A.
The likelihood is that I will. I'm not trying to dictate what their conclusions will be, but I think if they read the book and they leave themselves open to seeing the truth of what lies there in the pages then I hope they'll change their minds some.
Colonel Tom Parker, left, and Elvis Presley on the set of Presley's first movie, "Love Me Tender."
AP Photo
Q.
The book didn't begin as a biography.
A.
It evolved, in a sense, from a book that was going to be a book of letters, 30 years ago, and it never occurred to me to do a biography and that the letters would provide an entry point.
Q.
What was the motivation for the book in that first stage?
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A.
Alexandra and I get into the [Graceland] archives. We're there amidst all these trunks, travel trunks, you know, the trunks every trouper would carry on the road, and these battered old file cabinets. And we see these letters that he's written, from every stage of his life. Our reaction was immediate: This is not the Colonel that people think they know. I said to Jack Soden [head of Elvis Presley Enterprises], we've got to do a book of Colonel's letters. Then I proposed it to Colonel. 'You're a great letter writer,' I told him. 'I know I am.' he said.
Q.
'Last Train to Memphis' came out a few years before he died. Do you know if he read it, and if so --
A.
Oh, yeah, he read the book carefully. He talked to me about it. He had all these ideas for how I could market it. A review came out in the Los Angeles Times that I wouldn't call a rave, but it was a lot of space, and he said, 'How did you get them to run that big an advertisement?'
Peter Guralnick in his West Newbury home.
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff
Q.
What do you think he would have thought of this book?
A
. Oh, he'd wag his finger at me, 'You should not have written anything if you didn't know how it was completely.' And I'd say back to him, as I did in life [
laughing]
, 'But, Colonel, if you'd
told
me how it was then I would have a perspective on how it was exactly. But you can't expect me not to write about something simply because you withhold the information.' Overall, I think he would be very pleased, because he took himself seriously and he recognized that he couldn't make the claims for himself that I made.
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Q.
An important point to clarify: It's 'Colonel' not 'the Colonel.'
A.
Right, Colonel took the place of his first name, although he was 'Tom' to many of his old friends. If you want to reference the dignity of his position it's 'the Colonel.' But for Colonel there was no dignity to the position. He referred to himself again and again as a phony colonel and laughed about it.
At the same time, although he carried himself with great
élan
, dignity, whatever, there was also insecurity. So I think to some extent having people call him by this title [countered that] but it did not outweigh the sense of extreme irony that he felt at the title and at the foolishness of the title.
Colonel Tom Parker, c. 1955.
Keystone Features/Q.
The Colonel business helped give him a persona, and the humorousness of the title, the foolishness of it, furthered that persona.
A.
Absolutely. Colonel was a fabulator. He was a mythmaker. That was part of his creative bent. He was an extremely creative person, if not in the forms that you think of ordinarily. He spent his whole life developing the persona -- you know, the way he looks, the way he acts. Throughout the industry, he was taken very seriously, but it served his purpose to say, I've made up this persona, I've cast myself in this role, it saves me all this time.
Colonel didn't believe in an afterlife. He didn't believe in organized religion. He didn't believe in salvation, I think. He believed in process, and that's what he was caught up in, the process.
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Q.
He believed in Elvis
--
A.
He totally believed in Elvis.
Q.
-- but he didn't believe in rock 'n' roll, and his not believing in rock 'n' roll is a lot of what people hold against him and why they see him as ultimately having betrayed the promise of Elvis.
A.
He believed in Elvis as a figure in the firmament of show business. He believed in show business. He loved show business. With Elvis, he saw someone for whom there were no limits, and it was because of both Elvis's creative imagination and his own. And I think that's something they shared. I think he would have seen a belief in rock 'n' roll or any one thing as being a limiting factor. But I'll go back to what you said. I don't think anybody saw Colonel in the way that he came to be seen after Elvis's death until probably the late '60s. I think until that time he was [considered] an entertaining sideshow.
It was when people began to perceive Elvis as stumbling. That took place, really, in the 70s, but before then there were signs of it.
Q.
A.
The movies, but most of all it just -- he was not Elvis. And it was at that point that Colonel. . . . You know, you could say he deserved the blame, but he was prepared to take the blame.
Q.
If you loved Elvis but you didn't love what he was presently doing, you could blame the Colonel.
A.
Yes, yeah.
Q.
You've done four major biographies, two of people you never met, Elvis and Sam Cooke, and two of people you knew, Sam Phillips and Colonel. Was there a difference?
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A.
It's not that different, for me, whether you know the person or you don't know the person. How well do you ever know anybody? Was it [the French novelist]
TOM HANKS as Colonel Tom Parker in Warner Bros. Pictures' drama 'ELVIS.'
Hugh Stewart
Q.
Tom Hanks played Colonel in
A.
John Goodman could. Tom Hanks could be cast [again]; he'd just need different direction. When I spoke to the guy who read the audiobook, I said, 'You want to get a sense of whimsicality. You want to get a sense of self-amusement.' It's not that that's the whole thing, by any means. There are plenty of sober moments in the book. But Colonel, you know, was so playful. Sam Phillips said to me [when Guralnick was writing his biography], 'I just want it to be another swinging day at the fair.' And, you know, that just seemed so perfect. This is even more applicable to Colonel's story. It's another swinging day at the fair.
Interview has been edited and condensed.
Mark Feeney can be reached at