Latest news with #TomParker
Daily Mail
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Kelsey Parker breaks social media silence to share family photo as she heads off on holiday a month after tragically losing her third child
Kelsey Parker has taken a much-needed family holiday one month after tragically losing her third child. Tom Parker 's widow sadly suffered heartbreak in June after her unborn baby - Kelsey's first with boyfriend Will Lindsay - was 'born sleeping.' The last month has been incredibly tough for the family-of-four after the devastating news, with Kelsey sharing that they have taken some needed time out. Taking to Instagram on Sunday, she shared a family photo as she, Will and her two children with Tom - Aurelia, six, and Bodhi, four - looked out to sea in a hot location. Kelsey didn't confirm where they were, but she shouted out budget-friendly airline Jet2 for making the process so easy. The doting mum simply wrote: 'Exactly what we needed. Thank you @jet2 for making it so easy. X' In the comments section, she was showered with love by other stars, including Brooke Vincent and Gogglebox's Lisa Baggs. Last month, Kelsey took to Instagram to share her heartbreaking news. She confirmed the loss of her unborn third child, a son she had planned to name Phoenix, one week before his planned due date. Breaking the news in a poem, she wrote: 'The world grew quiet as you arrived, So loved, so longed for, yet not alive. Our precious boy, our angel light, Born with wings, took silent flight'. 'We named you Phoenix, brave and bright. A soul of love, of warmth and light Though we never heard you cry, You'll live in hearts that won't ask why. 'No breath you drew, no eyes to see, Still, you mean everything to me. You'll journey with us, softly near, in every sigh, in every tear. Taking to her Instagram stories: she added: 'Before I receive an influx of lovely messages and heartfelt wishes, I wanted to just say that I truly appreciate everything you are all going to say and share. 'But with the news being so raw, I would really like to ensure that we as a family are given space and time to process this devastating and earth-shattering news. 'I love you all and thank you for your understanding and space. Love always, Kelsey, Will, and the Parker Family'. Kelsey was left devastated after husband Tom lost his battle with brain cancer, but found love again last year, meeting Kent tree surgeon Will on a night out and announced their romance in September. The podcaster later admitted to being targeted by online trolls for moving on with her new partner. Speaking on ITV's Lorraine, in their first joint interview together in March, she explained: 'It's been three years, this is Tom's three year anniversary of his death and it's almost like people want me to feel guilty for moving on.' She added: 'I'm always going to have guilt but what's so hard is that Tom's not here anymore so what do people want me to do?', 'Our house was full of so much sadness but now it's full of happiness, the kids deserve that more than anything. 'They've been through so much, I feel like we are taking the steps forward to heal but I just want other women to feel like it's OK to move on, it's not taking anything away from the love I had for Tom.'
Irish Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
‘Elvis was, in many circles, considered an idiot savant... I wanted to take him seriously as a creative artist'
Now a grandmaster of American letters, at the age of 81, Peter Guralnick remains unique among his generation of music writers. His contemporaries – Nick Tosches, Paul Williams, Greil Marcus – leant heavily on voice, idiosyncrasy and myth, but the Boston-born biographer and critic (or, more often, evangelist) always placed himself beneath the narrative. I first learned of his work through reading Lester Bangs's speaking-in-tongues notes on Lost Highway: Journeys and Arrivals of American Musicians, Guralnick's book from 1979. The two couldn't have been more different; Guralnick is closer to a portrait artist, best known for his towering Elvis Presley biography, the exultant, inspiring Last Train to Memphis, which was published in 1994. 'The Elvis book was an extreme example of rigorous self-suppression,' Guralnick says with a laugh. 'I was determined to keep out of it completely. I don't think that's as true of any of the other books. What I was also determined to do was, to the best of my ability, rescue him from the mythicisation, the whole process of creating someone who was either a superhero or, in the case of the Colonel' – aka Tom Parker, Presley's manager – 'the way people perceived him as a super villain.' A stray phrase can create a universe. In his introduction to Last Train to Memphis Guralnick described a eureka moment, driving down McLemore Avenue in South Memphis in 1983, past the old Stax studio, when his friend Rose Clayton, a native Memphian, pointed out a drugstore where Presley's cousin used to work. READ MORE 'Elvis used to hang out there, she said; he would sit at the soda fountain, drumming his fingers on the countertop. 'Poor baby,' said Rose, and something went off in my head. This wasn't 'Elvis Presley'; this was a kid hanging out at a soda fountain in South Memphis, someone who could be observed, just like you or me, daydreaming, listening to the jukebox, drinking a milkshake, waiting for his cousin to get off work. 'Just to be there on that street where the First Assembly of God church was,' Guralnick says, 'and there's a boarded-up drugstore, and Rose says, 'Poor baby.' It just galvanised me, caused me to recognise the possibilities of not writing in this theoretical way about Elvis, which I had up until that time. 'I had that same kind of revelation when we got into the archives of Graceland through the good graces of Jack Soden' – president of Elvis Presley Enterprises, who opened the singer's mansion to the public – 'way back, and we started reading these letters. Then to have the advantage of the Colonel's widow, Loanne – I was just going to do [a book of] the letters, because I thought they offered a window into an interior story, but she became so caught up in the idea [of a biography], determined to do justice to Colonel.' And so, after Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley, which appeared in 1999, we come to the third instalment of Guralnick's trilogy, The Colonel and the King: Tom Parker, Elvis Presley and the Partnership That Rocked the World. Guralnick has a taste for stalking phantoms, whether in Searching for Robert Johnson or Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke. In many ways 'Colonel' Tom Parker, born Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk in the Netherlands in 1909, was the archetypal American dream chaser, the self-created migrant, a man with no past, who might have fallen off the back of a truck like Frank Chambers in The Postman Always Rings Twice, before quickly establishing himself as a carny, then as a talent manager and promoter. Elvis Presley and manager Colonel Tom Parker in Miami. Photograph: NBC/Getty Images 'This is the ultimate American self-invention,' Guralnick concedes. 'And the way in which he invented himself is he used all of the aspects of his real self, his real background, his birth date, his interests, his love of animals, his love of the carnivals. He used all of them but transposed them to an America he sought out from the time he was 16 years old. 'Really, he wanted to be American before he could even speak English. He stowed away, got sent back at 16, came right back again. Here's what I wonder – you might have an angle on this, because Ireland has developed such a passion for country music, and for dressing up country and everything – but did he read comic books? Did he see movies? You know, I try to get in touch with him; I call him up many times in my dreams. I have yet to get an answer!' It must be a bizarre experience, I suggest, to immerse oneself so completely in a subject's life for years at a time. 'So much of that derives from [the biographer] Richard Holmes, from [his book] Footsteps, his framing of it, the way the person you're trying to write about, the character you're pursuing, you feel like you're gaining, you're gaining, you're gaining, and then he or she disappears around the corner: 'Where'd they go?' 'When I finished the Sam Phillips biography' – Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock'n'Roll , from 2015, about the founder of Sun Records – 'I said, 'That's it. No more!' I was thrilled with the Elvis book. I was thrilled with Sam Cooke; that was an immersion in a world that was so extraordinary and wide-ranging. 'Sam Phillips was more of a self-invented world, but there were no limits to it. It was without boundaries. I was convinced I didn't want to do anything further, because it involves such total immersion. What are the specifics? What was the colour of the sky on that day?' This is not a question of blame, but Elvis began to stumble in public Phillips 'became a great friend, but I would ask him these questions which really were of no relevance to him, and he would touch his head and say, 'You're making my brain hurt.' But he would make the effort. People really want to tell their own stories.' Tom Parker had long threatened to write his autobiography. (How Much Does It Cost if It's Free? was one his pet titles.) He never got there, but he was a prolific – some would say compulsive – letter writer, and many of his dispatches are collected in the new book. In some ways Guralnick, who knew the Colonel as an old man, has charged himself with fulfilling that vow. The character he reveals is far more complex, and more sympathetic, than the Machiavellian plotter of matinee biopics. For one thing, the Colonel steadfastly refused to interfere with Presley's creative process, always confining himself to business negotiations. Why did he get such a bad reputation? 'People like to mythologise. Elvis was, in many circles, considered sort of an idiot savant. I started writing about him when he put out those singles in 1967 and then the [1968 comeback] special and then From Elvis in Memphis, but I wanted to take him seriously as a creative artist. That was something that was more difficult for people to get their head around, just like Jerry Lee Lewis . 'Jerry Lee Lewis was a f**king genius. He was perceptive; he was insightful ... He was also, as he would be the first to admit, an idiot when it came to money, when it came to women, when it came to taking care of himself. But he was not a cartoon figure. 'Why did the Colonel get this reputation? One [reason] was nobody had any idea what he did. He was totally uninvolved in Elvis's creative process, but he was totally committed to furthering Elvis's creative process, and he signed on to doing that almost from the moment they met. Elvis Presley and his manager Colonel Tom Parker in Hawaii, March 1961. Photograph: Michael'Except for Sam Phillips, who didn't have the money to promote him, nobody else saw what Colonel saw, which was not necessarily the music that Elvis was doing but the vision that Elvis had. He saw Elvis as being entirely apart, and was prepared to set aside all the conventional success that he had achieved – which was the greatest success that anyone could achieve at that time within the world, with Eddy Arnold and Hank Snow – and he was prepared to walk away from that in a minute for this untried, untested, unproven kid that he saw unlimited potential in not for money but for artistic self-expression. 'I would say, until the mid-1960s, maybe even until Las Vegas, he was seen as the smartest manager in the business, somebody whose imperious sense of humour set him apart and above. I mean, who did Brian Epstein seek out when he wanted advice? Nobody ever questioned his integrity.' So how did this trailblazing character end up adrift, lost, purposeless, prey to a gambling addiction? 'This is not a question of blame, but Elvis began to stumble in public. After the glorious Las Vegas debut, descriptions of him in the New Yorker and New York Times as a God come down from heaven, his performances began to suffer, his abuse of prescription drugs became more and more evident. And the sense that he was stuck,' Guralnick says. 'All of a sudden, who is there to blame? Well, Colonel: 'He didn't give him the artistic opportunities. Colonel is stealing his money,' all this kind of thing. It's understandable in a sense. Colonel's perspective was the artist wears the white hat, the manager wears the black hat; the manager takes all the blame. 'The thing that came as a shock to me was the extent of the tragedy of the ending, on both Elvis's side and on Colonel's side. If you look at the portrait that I drew in Looking to Get Lost' – a collection of Guralnick's profiles – 'or in Careless Love, Colonel is a Falstaffian figure. I thought of him as a character who was untouched by any of this. And it's absolutely crystal clear from what Loanne told me, which comes straight out of her diary, her journal, how devastated Colonel was by his own addiction.' [ Priscilla Presley on marriage to Elvis: 'I knew what I was in for. I saw it from a very young age' Opens in new window ] In fact, The Colonel and the King contains a desperately sad photograph of Presley and Parker taken in Las Vegas in 1972. The singer looks completely out of it, and for the first time his manager appears fragile and frail. 'Isn't that awful? At first I said, 'I can't put that in the book.' And then I thought, it has to be in the book, because whatever was happening at that moment, it expressed so much of what you just described. It was like I thought Colonel was a lovable rapscallion, and as foolish as what he was doing was, he never overextended himself. He lost a lot of money, but he left Loanne with $1 million in the bank. He always had $1 million in the bank to cover both his and Elvis's potential losses. 'But, jeez, I mean, to be up three days in the casino and then just to go to bed, to be so overwhelmed, the devastation of the [final] tours – and again, this is not putting the blame on Elvis, but I think I may have used the words in Careless Love: it was like a folie a deux. Everybody was living in a fool's paradise. Everybody seemed to believe that Elvis could rise to the challenge. That was the crippling illusion that Colonel was under.' The Colonel and the King: Tom Parker, Elvis Presley and the Partnership That Rocked the World is published by White Rabbit on Tuesday, August 5th
Scottish Sun
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scottish Sun
Boyband will perform two Scots shows in just weeks for the first time since bandmate died
They will be joined by festival favourites Scouting For Girls and the Symphonic Ibiza BACK AT IT Boyband will perform two Scots shows in just weeks for the first time since bandmate died Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) A FAMOUS boyband is set to reunite for the first time in Scotland since their bandmate's tragic death. The Wanted 2.0, now made up of Max George and Siva Kaneswaran, will take to the stage at the Foodies Festival in Edinburgh and Glasgow as part of the UK tour. Sign up for the Entertainment newsletter Sign up 3 The Wanted last performed in Scotland in 2022 Credit: Getty 3 Bandmates Max George and Siva Kaneswaran will play two Scots shows in the coming weeks Credit: Splash 3 Tragic Tom Parker died after a brave battle with brain cancer aged 33 in March 2022 Credit: AP It's the first time the duo will perform north of the border since the devastating loss of their bandmate Tom Parker, who died in March 2022 after a brave battle with brain cancer. Fans of the Glad You Came hitmakers can catch them at Edinburgh's Inverleith Park on Saturday, August 2, and Glasgow's Rouken Glen Park on Saturday, August 10, as part of the three-day extravaganzas packed with celebrity chefs, cooking demos and top-tier live music. The Wanted 2.0 will be joined by festival favourites Scouting For Girls and the sensational Symphonic Ibiza. The band last performed in Scotland in 2022, just weeks before Tom's heartbreaking death at the age of 33. Max and Siva reunited with bandmates Nathan Sykes, Jay McGuiness and Tom Parker for a greatest hits album and a one-off reunion show in 2021, which was followed by an emotional tour in early 2022. The final gig, in Liverpool, took place just two weeks before Tom tragically passed away. Reflecting on the tour, Nathan said: 'Obviously you'd give anything for it not to have happened. 'But, equally, I'm so grateful that we were able to have that time given that it did happen." However, a four-piece reunion with Nathan and Jay seems unlikely. Nathan, who is now focusing on his solo career, said: 'I'm really happy for them. Max George shares health update as he leaves hospital after latest surgery 'They get a lot of enjoyment in performing the music, and they see it as a tribute to Tom. 'Whereas Jay and I's approach to it is that there's a lot of emotion attached to that still. And I think we would find that really difficult. 'It's just two different approaches, and neither one is wrong. 'I think it's really difficult imagining The Wanted as a four-piece because The Wanted has been and will only ever be a five-piece." Max, 36, has also had a tough journey back to the stage. The singer was fitted with a pacemaker in December after his mum, Babs, noticed he had 'turned blue' and insisted he go to A&E. Fearing he wouldn't make it through Christmas, Max even wrote out a will on his iPhone. Weeks later, he underwent a second secret surgery after the pacemaker wires were fitted too deeply, causing painful 'flickering sensations' in his chest. Max admitted the ordeal left him shaken, saying: 'The night before, I was really nervous. I didn't sleep much.' The health scare forced Max and Siva to postpone a gig at Manchester Cathedral in February, but now the pair are back and ready to hit the stage. Siva, 34, said: 'Max and I are buzzing to be joining the Foodies Festival tour in Scotland. Scottish audiences are the best! 'It's exciting to be back out performing all The Wanted hits and seeing our lovely fans again. 'We're both big food lovers and have tried some amazing cuisine around the world on our tours—but having it all in one place to try? Amazing!"
Time Out
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
Elvis Evolution
First announced aeons ago and presumably costing a bob or two to create, this Elvis Presley-based immersive show is a slick affair, heartfelt in its admiration for The King. It's by Layered Reality, who have had notable immersive successes with the ongoing adaptation of The War of the Worlds and the Tower of London-based The Gunpowder Plot. It's also somewhat structurally eccentric, comes with a difficult-to-defend ticket price, and – when I visited anyway – clearly suffered from its audience not being crystal clear about what it involved from the off. The hook is Elvis's legendary 1968 comeback TV special, wherein the man who changed music forever in the '50s successfully blew off the schmaltzy MOR cobwebs that had engulfed his '60s career and showed the world that old fire again. But there's quite a bit of other stuff before that. For the first half it's essentially straight up theatre. We're cast as audience members for the comeback special, who have been rounded up at the last minute after Elvis's infamous manager Tom Parker failed to distribute any tickets himself (this really happened). A nervous Elvis hasn't played live in seven years and is refusing to leave his dressing room (this also happened). And Elvis's BFF from childhood Sam Bell has randomly turned up and offered to help talk his old pal out of his room. This did not happen, although Bell was a real figure. But his arrival provides a jumping-off point for the story, wherein Sam conjures a train that takes us back through time to his and Elvis's childhood in Tupelo, Mississippi. This would be weird in a straight play but is fine in immersive theatre, which is always one part theme park ride. It prompts a glossy, techy, reasonably informative journey through the boys' formative years: we see how Bell (who was Black) invites Elvis (one of the few white kids in town) to come play with him, and how that leads to an inseparable friendship that gives the future rock'n'roll icon closer proximity to the blues musicians who inspired him. Eventually Elvis moves to Memphis and some years later records a song for his mum's birthday at the legendary Sun Studio… and the rest is history. And that is pretty much the attitude the show takes: Elvis's peak popularity years, his stint in the army, his film career, Tom Parker… they're all just vaguely waved at as we head to the inevitable interval bar break and re-emerge to be informed that it's now 1968 and Elvis is regarded as yesterday's man. I get why the show would take a somewhat oblique angle: Elvis's biography is well known, and there's only so much time. What feels jarring is that Elvis is so absent from the first half of his own show: he's played by the child actor Alexander Bayles in filmed flashbacks, but unlike other characters there's no live actor playing him as well. There's perhaps something vexing about the fact so much of the show's budget has been ploughed into three detailed bar areas where you can spend yet more money, when we could have seen a bit more of Elvis's life instead. The second half is the comeback special, and while Elvis does at last enter the building, here's where things got a little awkward when I saw it. Herded together in front of a stage like a standing gig audience, it was clear from the crowd conversations around me that expectations were unhelpfully high. I heard more than one person specifically say they were hoping for something like the lavish ABBA Voyage concert experience. Which was clearly never going to happen: that was only possible with the enthusiastic participation of the still alive ABBA. What we get is enhanced footage from the special projected at large scale with a decent soundsystem and a trio of live musicians accompanying. The special was a genuinely great performance and it's a pleasure to watch… provided you're braced for it not being some sort of revolutionary technological marvel. But my fellow audience members had paid a minimum of £68 each, were mostly a cocktail down and certain vocal segments had clearly not particularly enjoyed the theatre section, and were hoping for something impossibly spectacular to follow. They were in the market for a little less conversation, a little more action, if you will. There was a noticeable amount of booing. A final run of songs where the live band rearranged into a harder rocking set up did seem to win the room over more or less. But unless my experience was entirely unrepresentative there needs to be some serious audience expectation management.
Condé Nast Traveler
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Condé Nast Traveler
In Tbilisi, Georgia, Food Is a Language of Resistance
Blissed out on khinkali, I feel the need for a shvitz. From Istanbul to the Caspian, this region is known for its high-quality bathhouses. I head past the picturesque wood balconies of the Old Town to the Abanotubani, or Bath District, where the underground hot sulfur springs have kept such visitors as Alexandre Dumas and Alexander Pushkin happy and clean. I choose the Persian-flavored, blue-tiled architecture of the Orbeliani baths. Before I know it, I am soaking in a private mosaicked bath, the smell of sulfur surrounding me. A large Georgian man walks in to bathe me. After some friendly waterboarding, he begins to scrub my skin with what looks like a coarse sponge lost within a giant soap bubble. He takes off a piece of my chest, but the bleeding will stop eventually, and I feel cleaner than I have ever been. I have been speaking in English in deference to Georgia's difficult recent relationship with Russia, but the bath attendant seems to smell the Soviet residue on me and asks in Russian where I'm from. 'Leningrad,' I tell him. 'Which neighborhood?' 'Moskovskiy Prospekt.' 'My brother lives there!' It is hard to escape the intersection of food and hospitality with politics in Georgia, which for centuries has been a target of Russian and Persian aggression, in addition to being the birthplace of Joseph Stalin. I am sitting in one of the prettiest courtyards in Tbilisi, if not the world: the old Writers' House of Georgia, now also home to Café Littera, Tekuna's restaurant. I am dining with Giorgi Lomsadze, a local journalist, and some of his friends. There's dry white Mtsvane in a bucket of ice and veal tartare with Georgian truffles. But the ghosts of the past are never far in Tbilisi, even on a glorious summer afternoon, with the restaurant's cats traipsing past the shrubbery and a lone palm tree. 'Beria'—one of Stalin's henchmen—'had a torture dungeon on the other side of this wall,' Giorgi tells me. 'Rumor was he put it there so that the writers could hear the others scream.' This is often the rhythm of a Georgian evening: friendship, the clinking of glasses, and horror close by. Apotheka, a bar in a former pharmacy Tom Parker Meriko Gubeladze at her restaurant Shavi Lomi Tom Parker As the days pass, my beltline expands with help from many new friends. At the city's restaurants I chase all the garlic and walnut and pork fat with chilled summer qvevri wine made by a Georgian method that involves pressing the full uncircumcised grape, skins and stalks included, into an ancient jug where it is fermented for around half a year.
