help Elvis but the line between friend and doctor got blurred. One of the reasons Elvis turned to the medication was pain. He took too much at times but he was self-medicating because he was trying to find a way to be Elvis Presley.”
Hoedel reverses the widely held view that Elvis was simply a drug addict engulfed by fame and excess. She takes a more sociological standpoint, regarding him as someone surviving through extreme health issues and poverty.
She explains: “Elvis’s story is looked on as one of destruction, but it is a futile struggle to survive, through poverty and then through health issues.” Hoedel maintains: “It was hard to be Elvis, no one had done fame like that before, and no one else could do it for him. He was trying to function within his reality.”
Elvis: Destined To Die Young, was published in December 2020 and is available from all good bookstores. Watch the rock ‘n’ roll icon perform ‘If I Can Dream’, below.
