Elvis in Vegas, Richard Zoglin
Elvis in Vegas, Richard Zoglin
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Elvis in Vegas
How the King Reinvented the Las Vegas Show

Author: Richard Zoglin

Narrator: Gibson Frazier

Unabridged: 8 hr 53 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/23/2019

Synopsis

*The inspiration for the CNN original series Vegas: The Story of Sin City*

“Outstanding pop-culture history.” —Newsday

The “smart and zippy account” (The Wall Street Journal) of how Las Vegas saved Elvis and Elvis saved Las Vegas in the greatest musical comeback of all time.

Elvis’s 1969 opening night in Vegas was his first time back on a live stage in more than eight years. His career had gone sour—bad movies, mediocre pop songs that no longer made the charts—and he’d been dismissed by most critics as over-the-hill. But in Vegas he played the biggest showroom in the biggest hotel in the city, drawing more people for his four-week engagement than any other show in Vegas history. His performance got rave reviews; “Suspicious Minds,” the song he introduced there, gave him his first number-one hit in seven years; and Elvis became Vegas’s biggest star. Over the next seven years, he performed more than 600 shows there, and sold out every one.

Las Vegas was changed, too. By the end of the ‘60s, Vegas’ golden age—when the Rat Pack led a glittering array of stars who made it the nation’s premier live-entertainment center—was losing its luster. Elvis created a new kind of Vegas show: an over-the-top, rock-concert extravaganza. He set a new bar for Vegas performers, with the biggest salary, the biggest musical production, and the biggest promotion campaign the city had ever seen. He opened the door to a new generation of pop/rock artists and brought a new audience to Vegas—not the traditional well-heeled older gamblers, but a mass audience from Middle America that Vegas depends on for its success to this day.

At once “a fascinating history of Vegas as gambling capital, celebrity playground, mob hangout, [and] entertainment Valhalla” (Rolling Stone) and the incredible “tale of how the King got his groove back” (Associated Press), Elvis in Vegas is a classic feel-good story for the ages.

About Richard Zoglin

Richard Zoglin is a contributor to Time magazine and the author of Hope: Entertainer of the Century, Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-up in the 1970s Changed America, and Elvis in Vegas: How the King Reinvented the Las Vegas Show. A native of Kansas City, Zoglin currently lives in New York City.

Reviews

Goodreads review by *TUDOR^QUEEN*

On a personal note, my husband is a huge Elvis fan. If it's the weekend and he decides to have a few beers and gets a bit maudlin, I'll find him watching an old VHS tape of "Elvis in Hawaii" or "The '68 Comeback Special" and crying...especially when Elvis sings the song "If I can Dream", the closer......more

Goodreads review by ☮ morgan ☮

This book feels like someone telling you a story of Vegas and Elvis's return. A majority of this book discusses how Vegas was started and a focus on the Rat Packs influence, which adds an interesting perspective into how Elvis changed the city.......more

Goodreads review by Sara

As someone who lives in Las Vegas and works at a museum celebrating Las Vegas history, this book was one that I knew I needed to read. While the title suggests that this is a book merely about Elvis, this is actually a comprehensive history of Sin City itself. From its humble railroad beginnings to......more

Quotes

“A smart and zippy account of the watershed moment when the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll came to Sin City to reclaim his squandered talent... Mr. Zoglin is in his element.”

“Zoglin’s smart and entertaining book… combines genuine affection for its subject with a keen sense of show-biz history and a lively style... [Elvis in Vegas] has snap and verve... This is outstanding pop-culture history.”

“Las Vegas is among the most American places in America, Elvis Presley was among the most American Americans ever, and the era chronicled here was the giddiest stretch of the American Century by far. Thank you, Richard Zoglin, for this brilliantly imagined, deftly written, perfectly delicious book about our perfectly weird country.”

“Zoglin is such a slick pop writer that his prose goes down like rainwater.”

“If you love Vegas-era Elvis — and who does not? — you will love this book. It’s packed with juicy stories — about The King, of course, but also about Frank and Dean and Sammy, Wayne Newton, Liberace, Sonny and Cher, Barbara Streisand, Howard Hughes, the mob and dozens of other outsized characters who played roles in the incredible transformation of a sleepy desert town into the glitziest city on Earth.”

“[A] fascinating tale of how the king got his groove back and Las Vegas refreshed its own image... Blending new interviews with top-drawer research focusing on how Las Vegas evolved as the pleasure capital, Zoglin produces a gem of pop culture history.”

“Zoglin perfectly captures a seismic moment in 1969 when Elvis tore the roof off the International Hotel and ended the reign of the Rat Pack. This is the story of a spectacular head-on collision.”

“Pizzazzy… [Zoglin] is among the best showbiz chroniclers… Elvis in Vegas is the story of American industry, but also a canny look at the price of commercial glory.”

“The author retraces the events that transformed Elvis into the sequin-jumpsuited hunka-hunka burning love we know today... [but] the real achievement of the book... is how Zoglin traces the evolution of Vegas itself.”

“[Elvis’s] spirit lives on in Las Vegas and in the pages of this enjoyable book.”

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