{"id":25651,"date":"2025-08-27T03:19:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T03:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/25651\/"},"modified":"2025-08-27T03:19:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T03:19:08","slug":"new-book-claims-elvis-presley-and-manager-colonel-tom-parker-made-a-deal-to-keep-addictions-a-secret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/25651\/","title":{"rendered":"New Book Claims Elvis Presley and Manager Colonel Tom Parker Made a Deal to Keep Addictions a Secret"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elvis Presley<\/strong> made a wicked deal with the devil: He kept his mouth shut about his manager Colonel Tom Parker<\/strong>\u2019s destructive gambling addiction because Parker was keeping Elvis\u2019 drug habit hush-hush.<\/p>\n

Music historian Peter Guralnick<\/strong>\u2019s blockbuster new book, The Colonel and the King<\/a>, reveals that the two had a volatile relationship and attempted to split several times, including one infamous instance \u2014 when Elvis lashed out at Parker from the stage while performing at the Hilton Hotel in Las Vegas in 1973.<\/p>\n

But their shared secrets held them together.<\/p>\n

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\u201cEach of them was aware of the other\u2019s addiction, the other\u2019s failures, and neither one of them was going to bring up the other\u2019s failure for fear that the other would then bring up his own \u2014 and they were stuck,\u201d explains Guralnick.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe colonel became in a sense not a tragic figure, because he was a life force overall, so full of vitality and creativity,\u201d adds the author, \u201cbut I came to see those last years with Elvis as a linked tragedy, in which each of them has their own addictions, and I just didn\u2019t see that before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Priscilla Presley<\/strong> saw a lot. On the 45th anniversary of Elvis\u2019 death, she said the hardest part of watching Baz Luhrmann<\/strong>\u2019s biopic Elvis was reliving his relationship with Parker. She believes Elvis wanted to take his career further than music. \u201cHe wanted to do movies, serious movies, and Colonel Parker probably should have stayed a publicist,\u201d she said in an interview with Today<\/a>. \u201cHe didn\u2019t take Elvis where he wanted to be, and that was hard because I lived it. I lived the arguments that they had, I lived Elvis trying to explain he didn\u2019t want to do the movies with all the girls and the beaches and everything, that he really wanted to do serious things. So living that, with him, and watching the movie, it brought back a lot of memories.\u201d<\/p>\n

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How much she knew about their twisted alliance is unknown. \u201cShe may have known and turned the other way, or Parker and Elvis could have been so good at keeping their secret \u2014 in order to feed their addictions \u2014 that it\u2019s possible she knew absolutely nothing,\u201d says a source. \u201cIf she had had a clue, maybe things would have turned out differently. Maybe Elvis would have broken free from Parker and gotten help.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Parker\u2019s death in 1997, Priscilla attended his funeral and even delivered a light- hearted eulogy, suggesting there\u2019s a level of complexity in how she viewed him. She also reportedly noted that Elvis was willing to pay Parker 50 percent of his earnings to manage him. \u201cThat could point to how severely Elvis was in the throes of addiction,\u201d says the source. \u201cIt was as if Parker was his dealer, in the figurative sense, and their secret ended up being a deadly one.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Getty Images<\/p>\n

Guralnick believes the King knew another bombshell secret about the Colonel and kept it under wraps: Parker was born Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk in Holland and came to the United States as a stowaway.<\/p>\n

At one point, Parker\u2019s brother Ad visited from Holland and was allegedly introduced to Elvis, who as Guralnick points out, may have wondered why his \u201cAmerican\u201d manager\u2019s brother spoke very little English.<\/p>\n

Parker may have passed Ad off as someone he knew from his earlier carnival or circus days, but Guralnick says, \u201cI\u2019d like to think he introduced him as his brother and that Elvis knew.\u201d<\/p>\n

That hush-hush information combined with Elvis\u2019 drug habit prevented the King from taking his show on the road outside the United States.<\/p>\n

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Getty Images<\/p>\n

Elvis\u2019 close Memphis Mafia buddies were convinced that he desperately wanted to tour the world, but he was sure Parker feared deportation \u2014 while the Colonel was actually concerned about security \u2026 and Elvis\u2019 drug addiction.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody thought he meant you can\u2019t get armed guards to protect Elvis from the crowds,\u201d explains Guralnick. \u201cThat wasn\u2019t what he meant at all \u2014 he meant the security to keep Elvis from getting busted. Who was going to carry the drugs? Who was going to carry the guns?\u201d<\/p>\n

Their secrets were safe with each other \u2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elvis Presley made a wicked deal with the devil: He kept his mouth shut about his manager Colonel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25652,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[266],"tags":[359,21208,18,3584,21207,117,2445,19,17,21206,5479],"class_list":{"0":"post-25651","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-colonel-tom-parker","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-elvis-presley","12":"tag-elvis-death","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-getty-images","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-peter-guralnick","18":"tag-priscilla-presley"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}