Is it possible that Elvis lived his brief 42 years and never knew true unconditional love? Could Elvis even recognize true unconditional love if he saw it?
I think this question is much too deep and complicated to cover under one blog so this is merely an introduction to the subject. I will be exploring it in more depth in upcoming blogs.
But first, what is true unconditional love? Click here to read what I think are probably the best definitions although everyone’s idea will be different for sure.
I suspect Elvis didn’t really know what true love was despite the hundreds of songs he sang about the subject, despite the millions of fans who never wavered in their undying love and support of him even after his passing, despite the numerous people he kept close to him who “claimed” to have loved him but made no effort to save him and despite the numerous women who passed through his life who also claimed to have loved him but only if he changed his “evil ways” for them.
It may be that these people did in fact love him but was it unconditional and did he know it to be true? Did Elvis actually love anybody besides his mother unconditionally? Did he know true love in his lifetime? So many questions, where shall I find the answers?
The Women in Elvis’ Life:
It is my opinion that Elvis did not really love Priscilla nor do I believe that she ever truly loved him. She loved Elvis Presley the rock star, she didn’t really love Elvis the man until possibly after he died. To understand Elvis’ attraction to Priscilla we have to understand a darker side of Elvis that seemed to enjoy being with young girls. There seemed to be a part of him that enjoyed the control and power he had with younger girls. Of note is the molding of Priscilla into a girl barely recognizable when she married Elvis from the young girl he met in Germany.
There were a lot of significant women in Elvis’s life and this subject will be lengthy and complicated. I look forward to exploring it further.
The Friends Elvis Surrounded Himself With:
Elvis also depended on his Memphis Mafia buddies to protect him from harm, but more importantly I think it was to feed his gigantic ego and to keep him from ever being lonely. Loneliness was something Elvis suffered his whole life as ironic as that may seem. Did he love any of these men? Was that love unconditional? My research so far indicates the answer is no and I will explore that more deeply later as well.
Elvis’ Family:
I’m sure just about everybody has heard the story of how one Christmas, shortly after Elvis purchased Graceland, he decided to test every family member who was hanging around the house. After inviting them individually up to his bedroom for a chat, he excused himself to go to the bathroom. After being in the bathroom awhile, he’d come out, end his conversation with the family member and show them out. Then he counted the stack of money he’d left out on his bed. I don’t think he ever revealed to anyone who if anyone actually snatched a bill or two but he was always wary of letting certain family members hang around after that, so the story goes.
This is not a good sign of unconditional love which you might actually expect in a large, Southern, closely knit family such as the Presley/Smith clan. These families all lived together mostly before Elvis became famous because they were all too poor to support their own homes. So they were close. Apparently close didn’t mean trustworthy necessarily.
I will also being exploring whether or not Elvis loved his father, Vernon Presley. There wasn’t much there to love. We know Elvis felt obligated but did he feel love?
Elvis’s Manager:
There’s no doubt that Elvis put his entire career in the hands of a flim flam man who had the entire world fooled about his credibility, his citizenship and his intentions. Some people claim that Elvis loved Tom Parker but I completely disagree with that theory and will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that not only did Elvis not love Parker but that he actually despised him. Parker had something on Elvis and it was that something that kept Elvis from firing the circus man. It certainly wasn’t love.
So sign up and join me as we explore this mystery.
Today when I arrived at work I had three new books waiting for me. Elvis and Me, the Priscilla biography that I had at one time swore I would never read, Child Bride by Suzanne Finstad who apparently puts Priscilla in a pretty bad light, (I already have Priscilla in a pretty bad light so no big leap there) and Elvis, In the Twilight of Memory by June Juanico.
