Elvis What Happened? Is a novel about Elvis Presley, a rock and roll idolized by millions, about the way the fame, glory and fans changed him from a mellow country boy to an alleged drug angered and fueled concert machine. It was written in part by his best friends/bodyguards for 20+ years Red West, Sonny West and Dave Hebler  as well as told through Steve Dudley. It wasn’t only to the fans of Elvis it was to Elvis himself to try to help him change his bad habits. This tells the alleged stories of a sick,drugged, overworked and used man who was and is loved by millions.

When I read this book I was very skeptical because Elvis is seen as such a loving caring pure man. I’m a fan and an avid listener, but when you are a fan of someone you want to know both sides of every story.

 This told a different story than most people think when they hear the name Elvis. It told of many personal accounts of Elvis’ actions of rage and drug use. But as many people saw, in Elvis’ final years, he didn’t look like “Elvis” he looked bloated, overweight and drugged so I did think there was a lot of truth in this novel based on the way Elvis looked. An example of one of the accounts was from Red West: “He takes pills to go to sleep. He takes pills to get up. He takes pills to go to the john, and he takes pills to stop him from going to the john.”His system doesn’t work anymore like a normal human being’s. The pills do all the work for him. He is a walking pharmaceutical shop.”. 

This told a different side of him, a side that even Elvis didn’t know of a man with a reliance on pills to keep him and others afloat.

It was said in the book that Elvis had trouble sleeping as a child and would sleep walk when asleep and as Elvis grew older the sleep worsen for him, he started to take pills to help him sleep, this then led to him taking upper drugs to wear off the sleeping pills. That combined with the insane amount of touring for months on end, it got him hooked.

An account from Elvis’ Girlfriend said when Elvis heard that this book was being written about he was furious, he then called Red West who then recorded the phone conversation. “ It was no secret that we were writing the book, and knowing Elvis as I did, I knew he would try to contact us. I also knew we would be called liars, Judases, traitors, and any other expletives by fans and even some people around him who we had been close to up until this time. I knew that he would reveal in this conversation enough information that would substantiate what we said in the book. It was even more than I had expected… and more than I wanted to hear. By this I mean I heard a sad and lonely man, a man I’d grown up with, and watched rise from near-poverty to become the greatest entertainer this would will ever see.”. 

This definitely changed my perspective on the Star Life of celebrities and how much you can slip into bad habits and be used overall as well as change your whole character.

Overall it was an amazing read and was for sure a page turner.