It began as an unexceptional incident, the sort of thing that filled police blotters in the crime-ridden 1970s but otherwise attracted little notice. Shortly after midnight on June 24, 1977, two young toughs began roughing up the lone attendant at an all-night gas station in Madison, Wisconsin. Before they could get very far, a limousine pulled up. Its back passenger door swung open, and a large man in a tracksuit and oversize sunglasses jumped out and strode toward them. He assumed a karate pose. Bewildered, the bullies strained to get a better look at the interloper. What they saw made them stop in their tracks. It was Elvis Presley, the singer and movie star. Having just arrived in Madison for a concert that evening, he was on his way to his hotel when he saw the altercation and resolved to help the attendant.
 
            The shock of seeing Elvis completely changed the situation. The young toughs backed away from their victim, who was just as stunned as they were when he recognized his rescuer. Police officers accompanying Presley’s limousine then intervened. But Elvis hung around for some time afterward, talking to the officers as well as the victim and his assailants. He shook hands with everyone and even posed for pictures. “He was willing to fight,” one of the police officers in his security detail told a reporter. “That was the bad part.”1 The officer’s disapproval was understandable. Why would Presley do something so rash and foolhardy? What business did an entertainer, one of the world’s most famous celebrities, have coming to the rescue of a gas-station attendant, especially with the police so close at hand?
 
            This minor incident, one of countless Elvis anecdotes that constitute the Presley lore, speaks volumes about the man and the peculiar status he came to acquire during his relatively short yet illustrious career as a performer, recording artist, and movie actor. As the reaction of the men at the gas station demonstrated, Presley had already become something of a recluse by the mid-1970s—even while regularly appearing before thousands of fans on concert tours that sent him to cities throughout the country. Since the early 1960s he had inhabited a cloistered world outside the public eye, but in recent years his interest in protecting his privacy had become stronger than ever. Stung by press criticism of his poor performances and portly, debauched appearance, Presley rarely went out in public, except late at night, when he knew few people would be around. Even when he was alive, an Elvis sighting was an exceptional occurrence. It was as if he had emerged from a parallel universe and the rarity of such an event demanded special commemoration. He was already an icon, a living legend.
 
            Elvis was aware of this, and it was recognition of his iconic power that led him to stop the limo and go to the attendant’s aid. Though Presley was in many ways an unpretentious man, he was also convinced that his success was evidence of some divine calling and that he was obliged to use his star power for good. This belief inspired his perception of himself as a performer and encouraged him to chart a career path that remained remarkably consistent in its fixation on mainstream success and conventional show-business values. Over time, it also led him to see his celebrity in more grandiose terms, as a pulpit from which he could reach the public and heal the divisions created by the fractious social and political conflicts of the 1960s. Elvis thought of himself as a “good guy,” like the heroes in the comic books and B movies he loved as a boy. And by the early 1970s this understanding of himself had made him sympathetic to political conservatism and a self-righteous advocate of law and order. It was no coincidence that when he jumped out of the limo in Madison, he was carrying his badge from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, or that in the car was an assortment of firearms that he and his bodyguards took with them nearly everywhere. Like the FBI or the vigilante crime fighters who dominated the era’s popular culture, he was protecting the weak from the forces of anarchy that seemed to be engulfing the nation.
 
            As Elvis saw it, he was a “fortunate son,” a child of the Depression-ravaged South who had become successful beyond his wildest dreams. Grateful for his success, he was determined to give something back to the nation that had made it possible. Doing so would not only honor America, the land of opportunity; it would also honor his parents. Humble, working-class Southerners, they had struggled to provide him with a decent life. They had also raised him to be “respectable”: a wholesome, law-abiding, God-fearing young man. Elvis revered these values. He regarded himself as someone who lived by them, and he was certain they had been instrumental to his success, enabling him to gain the affection and loyalty of fans from a variety of backgrounds. Making people happy with his music, setting a good example for the public, serving the cause of law and order as best he could—this was Elvis’s way of paying homage to his upbringing and the respectable working-class culture from which he sprang. It was also a way for him to reconnect with this culture and conceive of himself as its apotheosis, the poor boy from Mississippi who had achieved the American Dream yet remained faithful to his small-town roots.
 
            By the summer of 1977, however, the real Elvis bore little resemblance to this image, and Presley was increasingly troubled by the disjunction between the two. After twenty years as a celebrity, subjected to the pressures of fame and with virtually anything he desired at his fingertips, he had become a self-indulgent libertine, a chronic womanizer, and a man plagued by doubts about the loyalty of his closest friends and associates. Convinced he was a target of “bad guys,” he was often armed to the teeth and prone to carelessly firing his weapons, a habit that had already gotten him into minor scrapes and seemed destined to result in a serious accident. He was a drug addict, dangerously dependent on several potent prescription medications, despite his professed hatred for the drug culture and his identification with the police and organizations engaged in the “war on drugs.” And he was suffering from depression, a condition exacerbated by his abuse of drugs that heightened his paranoia and eccentric behavior.
 
            Worst of all, these details, which had been published in bits and pieces in the tabloid press, were about to be splashed across the headlines. Three of Elvis’s former bodyguards had just finished a tell-all exposé, the first to appear from within Presley’s camp, and its impending publication greatly concerned Elvis. He feared that the book would destroy his reputation and, as fans came to learn the truth about him, force him to confront the gulf that had developed between the reality of his life and his revered self-image.
 
            Is it any wonder, then, that Presley jumped out of his limo and rushed to the filling-station attendant’s aid? Here was a perfect opportunity to act like the man he liked to think he was, to shore up his faltering self-image, and to remind the public that no matter what they might hear about him in the near future, he was admirable, a good guy.
 
            Unfortunately, less than two months after his escapade in Madison, Elvis Presley was dead, and the unflattering information contained in the dreaded “bodyguard book” became common knowledge. Thanks in part to the publicity sparked by his death, the book became a bestseller, and in the months afterward new questions were raised about the real Elvis and the cause of his death.2
 
            But these revelations didn’t destroy Presley’s image so much as transform it. While some fans refused to believe the sordid and at times exaggerated claims contained in the book and in subsequent exposés, others found ways of accepting them. In due course they were incorporated into a new understanding of Elvis that proved even more compelling than the conventional version that had been widely embraced during his lifetime. It was this new version of Elvis that became the basis for the fervent posthumous devotion displayed by large numbers of his fans, a devotion almost religious in its intensity. And it was this new version that made Elvis a continued object of fascination to the wider public and an all-purpose icon of American popular culture.3
 
            Elvis’s story, from this perspective, is a tragedy, a story familiar in its essentials to many other accounts of celebrities’ lives. At its core is the belief that material success breeds unhappiness and corruption, and that the central drama of Presley’s life was an ultimately unsuccessful effort to prevent this from occurring—to ward off the forces that could turn the American Dream into a nightmare. Ironically, Presley’s image while he was living emphasized his success at this endeavor. His fans and the wider public were encouraged to believe that despite his fame and riches, he was still the same wholesome, law-abiding, God-fearing man who had risen to stardom so suddenly in the mid-1950s. His lapses were attributed to the difficulties involved in remaining committed to one’s values amid the temptations and snares of a secular consumer culture—something large numbers of Americans could readily appreciate.
 
            After his death, the story was turned on its head. His decline into libertinism and moral corruption became further proof that these difficulties were indeed serious. They were particularly serious for celebrities like Elvis, whose very riches and privileged status gave them access to things beyond the reach of ordinary people. Here lay the dramatic resonance of Presley’s story, the hook that linked it to one of the master narratives of American culture. It is a story we have been telling and retelling since the era of the Puritans.4
 
            Conflating Elvis’s story with larger narratives about the pitfalls of success and celebrity is easy. Many of the facts of his life encourage such an interpretation, and it is not surprising that most of his biographers, as well as the vast majority of his fans and the public, see him as a tragic figure, laid low by flaws that epitomize America as a whole.
 
            But the conventional story is too pat, and it downplays Presley’s own role as its instigator. Elvis’s life took the shape it did because of decisions he made in the course of it, decisions influenced in equal part by his temperament, background, and life experiences. They were also affected, to a degree that hasn’t fully been acknowledged, by the times in which he lived. Elvis Presley may have been a singular individual. But he was also a product of history, of a specific time and place.
 
            His tremendous success in the 1950s, as numerous critics and commentators have noted, was a result of his plasticity, his ability to incorporate—in his personal style and public persona as well as in his musical repertoire—a wide variety of influences. This enabled him to attract many different Americans, yet it also made it possible for him to be appreciated in distinct ways. Though Presley appealed to the masses and was one of the quintessential icons of a new national mass culture, it was never in a simple, clear-cut way. He possessed qualities that encouraged particularistic responses, and because of this his following was not merely wide but deeply, personally invested in him.
 
            Some of these qualities can only be attributed to his inborn temperament and psychological disposition, the mysterious things that make individual human beings unique. Smart, naturally inquisitive, and restless, with an intellectual curiosity that, without much formal schooling, found some unorthodox outlets, Presley easily developed great passions and enthusiasms. Among these was an abiding interest in all kinds of music, including the music of African-Americans, an unusual avocation for a poor white man in the Jim Crow South. When inspired by these passions, Elvis did some of his best work. Yet he was also predisposed to depression, and he found it very difficult to persevere in his commitments. As a result, he often fell into routines that were unfulfilling and ultimately self-destructive. This might have happened to him even if he had never become rich and famous. But because he was, and because the routines he fell into were easily rationalized by career strategies that were familiar and personally gratifying, Presley was able to respond to his boredom and frustration in extraordinary ways that undoubtedly contributed to his early death.
 
            Just as important as Elvis’s temperament were his family background and his parents’ influence. Though Presley, like many Southerners of his generation, spent a lot of time around extended kin, his nuclear family was unusually close-knit. Because of a series of misfortunes during his childhood, he and his parents, Gladys and Vernon Presley, developed an insular, defensive outlook toward the world that Elvis carried with him throughout his life. Within the family circle, Elvis was the cherished only child. His parents spoiled him and convinced him he was special, a belief that would prove useful when he embarked on a career in show business and had to tap wellsprings of ambition and courage his parents had implanted in his psyche. Presley’s sense of himself as a unique individual with special talents and powers, worthy of public acclaim and admiration but also besieged by hostile forces on the outside, arose from the dynamics of his nuclear family.
 
            His parents were also determined that Elvis be respectable and achieve a measure of economic security, and so they raised him to be polite, deferential, religious, and clean-living, the antithesis of “white trash.” Internalized from an early age, these values remained with him when he became a success, influencing his career decisions as well as his lifestyle. Elvis’s commitment to respectability enabled him to overcome the criticism that his music first sparked and gain the approval of the media and important show-business figures. It was the key to his transformation from a controversial rock and roller to a mainstream entertainer. Even as he strayed from this ideal in real life, a development carefully hidden from the public and the press, it remained a source of inspiration and self-identity, a touchstone that allowed him to reconnect to his roots and the emotional security he associated with them.
 
            Equally important, and often overlooked, was the historical context in which he was reared and grew to adulthood. As a child in Tupelo, Mississippi, and as a teenager in booming postwar Memphis, Presley encountered circumstances that had a formative influence on his personality and a decisive impact on the trajectory of his career. These circumstances were temporal as well as geographical—a matter of being in the right place at the right time—and they endowed him with a sensibility that was integral to his success. Owing largely to his unique personality and background, the sensibility he developed was unusually inclusive, democratic, and commercial. It made him receptive to things that most of his peers could not appreciate and eventually allowed him to interpret all kinds of music with a power and sincerity that few performers have matched. Equipped with extraordinary charisma, remarkable talent, and this capacious populist sensibility, which inspired him to move across various musical fields, Elvis appeared on the scene when the major popular culture industries were undergoing dramatic changes and were open to something new.
 
            But if Presley’s populism helped him succeed in the 1950s, in later years it held him back. As social, political, and economic conditions in America changed, his continued attachment to it made it difficult for him to adapt. Determined to perform the full range of music he loved, he refused to specialize, unlike the vast majority of other musical artists. By the mid-1970s no other performer had such a diverse repertoire, and while this was crucial in cementing the allegiance of Presley loyalists, who loved him precisely because of his catholic tastes, it made it hard for him to attract new fans, particularly younger ones whose tastes ran to the new post-Beatles rock music that explicitly eschewed many of the show-business conventions Elvis continued to follow. Not exactly an oldies act, but no longer a contemporary performer engaged with the musical trends of the era, Presley came to occupy a unique niche in the popular music marketplace that reinforced the bonds between the singer and his audience and prepared the ground for the latter’s transformation into a quasi-religious subculture.5
 
            To understand Elvis Presley, we need to begin by exploring this context, and turn our gaze away from the trappings of show business and toward his birthplace in Tupelo and a now-vanished world of sharecroppers, gravel roads, and old-time religion. For it was here, in a world barely removed from the nineteenth century, that his remarkable life and career began.
 
Excerpted from Fortunate Son by Charles L. Ponce de Leon. Copyright © 2006 by Charles L. Ponce de Leon. Published in July 2006 by Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved.