By Dave Shiflett Elvis wasn’t nothing but a horndog. That’s the word from country music journalist Alanna Nash, who has produced a blow-by-blow and sometimes lurid account of the King’s sex life (“Baby, Let’s Play House: Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him” (!T – Harper Collins, 704 pages, $27.99). Another book, by Presley friend and subaltern George Klein ( “Elvis, My Best Man; Radio Days, Rock ‘n’ Roll Nights, and My Lifelong Friendship with Elvis Presley;” Crown, 320 pages, $25), makes something of the same point, though in a vastly more understated way. Elvis, who would have been 75 last week, was blessed with golden pipes – though Nash is primarily interested in the one south of his beltline. It seems no thrust or parry goes unrecorded in this massive book, based in part on interviews with former flames – all of whom, if laid end to end, would likely have circled Vegas a few dozen times. Nash, hailed as the first journalist to see Elvis in his casket and who has also written about Jessica Savitch, Dolly Parton, Col. Tom Parker and other luminaries, provides enough detail to gag all but the most intense fans, including an anatomical description of the king’s mighty staff, its given name (Little Elvis) and accounts of early arousals and latter peccadilloes, including a fondness for 14-year-old girls and lesbian sex, including simulated versions featuring his young wife Priscilla, whose legendary status as a virgin bride is also given intense scrutiny. We even learn that inanimate objects could get Elvis’s motor running: he would sometimes become aroused, Nash informs us, “when his pants rubbed him just so” (90 ). There are no doubt readers, and perhaps lots of them, who will pant while absorbing this information. For those who wonder if reading Nash’s book represents a prolonged act of voyeurism, she argues that Elvis’s famed pelvis was a culture-shaking machine and that he was “the most important star of all time.” (74). Yet the book can be numbing – the flames’ names change but the game remains the same – though thankfully Nash comes up for air from time to time to revisit Elvis’s tough upbringing and some of the interesting people he met along the way, including his rapacious manager, Col. Tom Parker, a Dutchman without a passport or excessive scruples. Prior to hooking up with Elvis, Nash writes, he ran several scams, including selling foot-long hot dogs that were meat on the tips with slaw in between. Yet the main thrust is sex and intimacy. “How could Elvis Presley, one of the most sexual and romantic icons of his time, never have enjoyed a long-lasting, meaningful relationship with a woman?” (Intro, xvii) Nash wonders. She blames an overly-close relationship with mother Gladys – no woman could compete with Ma – enduring grief over the death, during birth, of his twin, and, eventually, a debilitating drug habit. Whatever the reasons, Elvis definitely makes Tiger look like a monk, though not all his women came away satisfied, especially when the King restrained himself to “heavy petting,” which he apparently did with some regularity. “I thought he was supposed to be the king of the sack!’ Natalie Wood railed after an encounter at the Beverly Wilshire. “But he doesn’t want to screw me.” (182). Wood also wondered aloud if Elvis and members of his entourage were gay, though Nash insists otherwise. “Elvis was not homosexual,” she states, explaining somewhat cryptically that his “testosterone levels, coupled with his grounding in the importance of the southern male, never tempted him to act out sexually with another man.” (24). George Klein, who knew Elvis from childhood, provides an alternate view of why his pal and later benefactor bedded so many women: He simply could. In his much thinner and breezier book (written with help from Chuck Crisafulli), Klein explains that one of his jobs was to procure babes for the boss, which did not constitute heavy lifting. Even early in Presley’s career, Klein writes, women would scratch at the walls of his house and beg to be let in. He was simply letting nature take its course. Klein’s is more interesting for his insider’s view of how Elvis was ill-served by his managers, especially Parker, who didn’t care that Presley’s films were often most notable for their mediocre songs and lame scripts. So long as the money flowed, Parker was pleased. While it’s impossible to kick this colonel too often, Klein’s book will likely to be overshadowed by Nash’s, despite its chirpy blurb from Priscilla: “You told your story with class, mister. Elvis would be proud.” Priscilla, both authors agree, was the love of his life (Ann- Margret ran a close second). She had lots going for her: She was 14 when they met (he was 24) and appeared to make a serious go at pleasing her husband after their 1967 Vegas marriage, including co-starring in videotaped performances of simulated sex with a woman hairdresser. Despite such efforts he would not be converted to monogamy. Their divorce became final in 1973. Presley had other passions, including drugs, not all of which were acquired by prescription. He’d smoke pot on occasion, Klein and Nash write, and even dropped acid. But he could be very strange without the help of psychedelics. Raised in the Pentecostal tradition and later developing an interest in Eastern religions, Elvis had his own “road to Damascus” experience, according to Nash, though it happened during a drive through Arizona, where he looked up in the sky and suddenly proclaimed: “What the hell is Joseph Stalin doing in that cloud?” 407. Elvis, in a highly excited state, surrendered his “ego” to God, at which point Stalin turned into Jesus. An arresting topic for a hymn, though none was forthcoming. Nash provides a gruesome telling of his terrible decline, which included an increasingly ravaging drug habit and disorder of the bowels. He also took to wearing hideous jumpsuits and capes that could make him look like a cream-puff done up as a superhero. On his final night, she writes, he apparently fell off the toilet and nearly bit his tongue off before expiring, age 42. Yet his charms are still very much with us. Nash reports that in 2009, Elvis raked in $55 million, putting him in fourth place on Forbes magazine's "Top-Earning Dead Celebrities list" -- an amount that is "more than many of the music industry's most popular living acts command." The King may be dead, but his mojo is still working overtime.
