{"id":682286,"date":"2026-01-08T13:26:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T13:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/682286\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T13:26:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T13:26:11","slug":"how-a-music-fan-from-heanor-helped-elvis-presley-rise-to-fame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/682286\/","title":{"rendered":"How a music fan from Heanor helped Elvis Presley rise to fame"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Hand was a printer at A. Gaunt &amp; Sons, in Heanor, with a passion for popular music.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In April 1959, he persuaded his boss to allow him to print a batch of fanzines about his favourite artist, Elvis Presley, which included hand drawings of the star.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The first edition was printed while Presley was taking a break from recording music to serve with the military. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It sold out within a week and gave Hand the confidence to run a monthly publication.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">These magazines grew in popularity, distributing 90,000 copies across the continent each month by December 1962.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Hand also became the president of the Official Elvis Presley Fan Club of Great Britain in that year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;He created a community of Elvis fans that&#8217;s still here today,&#8221; said self-confessed Elvis fanatic, Matt Hill.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It was the social media of its day,&#8221; he added. &#8220;You could put an advert in the back of his magazine so you could connect with other fans and write to them.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hand was a printer at A. Gaunt &amp; Sons, in Heanor, with a passion for popular music. In&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":682287,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,269,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-682286","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115859710613840424","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=682286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/682287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}