'He recognizes that these strangers are waiting to see him fail, and is desperate to prove them wrong, desperate to prove himself. 'He's thrown into a world where he's in the company of strangers,' Guralnick explains. Elvis genuinely felt that all of his success was for a purpose and if his mother is taken away from him at the moment of his greatest success, what does that say about the purpose of his life?' At the same time, Guralnick adds, the poor boy born in a shotgun shack in Tupelo, Miss., a cherished only child who spent hardly a night away from home until he started making records, suddenly finds himself alone, in the Army and overseas. It challenges his belief in the justice of the universe. One is Gladys dies, which is traumatic far beyond her being the person he was closest to in his lifetime. 'Things are falling into place in the way that they were meant to, in some mystical way, and then two things happen to really challenge that belief. 'If you look at Elvis before he goes into the Army, he has a true belief in himself,' Guralnick suggested on a recent book-signing stopover in Washington. It's at that crucial junction that 'Last Train to Memphis' ends and 'Careless Love' begins.

According to Guralnick, those two distinct acts were separated by a curtain that fell in 1958, when Presley's beloved mother, Gladys, died, and he went into the Army for two years. But the more he investigated the parameters of Presley's life, the more apparent it became that the story was best told as a two-act drama in which an initial arc of triumph and invention gives way to musical diminution and social dissolution.

Guralnick says he never intended to write two books totaling more than 1,300 pages. The book delineates the decline and fall of an American icon with musical, social and psychological details that will appeal to both Presley die-hards and doubters.

What started for Peter Guralnick as liner notes for the 1987 CD reissue of 'The Complete Sun Sessions' has ended 12 years later with the publication of 'Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley.' The new book, the second volume of Guralnick's massive biography, is a sobering follow-up to his 1994 critically acclaimed 'Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley.' Like its predecessor, 'Careless Love' is assiduously researched, meticulously assembled and beautifully written, equal parts Shakespearean tragedy and psychological mystery.

Elvis peter guralnick