Wealth and fame can be very tricky things to juggle, as Elvis Presley would realize late in his life. He used to be a simple country boy, naïve and shy, who only wanted to share his talents with the world. He wasn’t always zany, though he sometimes appeared so, and he was too trustful of the people he employed to protect him, who clustered around him wherever he went.
A fortnight before Presley’s death, the shrinking star was already weak, in a terminal condition. Three of his former bodyguards were privy to this and many other secrets. The trio wasted no time cashing in on his rise and fall, penning the book “Elvis: What Happened?”. The telling tome contained deeply private matters that the king had tried his hardest to keep away from the prying public. He tried to stop its publication to no avail, and the stress of it only exacerbated his ailments: an enlarged colon, glaucoma, blood pressure, and liver damage. It was a nail in the coffin, sadly consummated by people who were in a position to do it because of the late singer’s trust.
He Has Become a Popular Password
It’s funny how things turn out sometimes. Future scenarios materialize into the present, bringing events you would never have imagined to happen to you at an earlier point in life. Some things you can see your responsibility for, while others seem random.
Elvis Presley’s legacy in music transcends the boundaries of genre and style. He changed the scene forever, opening doors to new ways of expression that just weren’t acceptable before he took to the stage. Imagine how much he could have attained had he not messed up his life and lived to fully exhaust his talents. Many of his fans refused to let him drift into the past without taking a piece of him with them and passing it on to the generations that follow. One small way of holding onto his memory cropped up when computers became a household staple. The name “Elvis” is still a popular inclusion in passwords.
The King Dyed His Eyelashes
Elvis Presley’s shiny black hair made him look debonair, a shade of mystery afloat his deep rhythmic voice and sparkling blue eyes. Very few people knew, except those close to him, old friends from Mississippi perhaps, that he was blonde.
This meant he had to dye not just his hair but his eyelashes to look natural. And, since his true hair color was one of his best-kept secrets, there was no way he was prepared to do it in a parlor or anywhere other than the privacy of his home. This ended up being yet another habit that caused him health problems later on, as he concocted his dying techniques himself without expert advice on the matter.
A VIP Hairdresser
The king of rock knew the importance of his hair color and style and what role it played in keeping up his popularity. He was very finicky when it came to his looks, and so he took care of his hair like a king would his crown.
Only one man was trusted to trim it, and his designated hairdresser had to be plucked from his family’s history, being his mother’s hairdresser when she was alive. Mr. Gill was a loyal man, having served the Presleys for some time. He was willing to travel anywhere at Elvis’s beck and call. This kind of hairdresser didn’t seem odd at all... until we learned he’d kept trimmings of the legend’s hair and auctioned them after his death.
He Was a Big Fan of Johnny Cash
The king of rock had a mountain of talent and creativity constantly flowing through him. He was also a guy who knew how to appreciate the beauty of other artists that surrounded him. He knew Johnny Cash was a load of talent himself: a country music icon, actor, author, and guitarist, just like Elvis. As it turned out, Cash was equally impressed by Presley’s talents.
This mutual appreciation quickly bloomed into a bromance between these two cultural icons, the two trying even to impersonate each other, a manifestation of mutual respect and adoration. Both would take part in impromptu jamming sessions – called “the Million Dollar Quartet” – along with Jerry Lee Lewis in 1956, at Sun Record Studios, in Memphis, Tennessee.