Audiobook8 hours
Elvis in Vegas: How the King Reinvented the Las Vegas Show
Written by Richard Zoglin
Narrated by Gibson Frazier
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
*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.
“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.
Author
Richard Zoglin
Richard Zoglin has spent more than thirty years as a writer and editor for Time and is currently the magazine’s theater critic. His book Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-Up in the 1970s Changed America is considered the definitive history of that seminal era in stand-up comedy. Zoglin is a native of Kansas City, Missouri, and currently lives in New York City.
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Reviews for Elvis in Vegas
Rating: 4.4772727272727275 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
22 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It was not all about Elvis but a history of Las Vegas show business.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5The history of las Vegas without Elvis. Stick Elvis on the cover and write about anything but the subject. Avoid
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5It's a great book.. very interesting. I thought it was going to be 'only' about Elvis. When I realized it instead was about the history of Vegas I was going to find something else. But to my surprise it became 'unputdownable' and im so glad I stayed with it. It did lead up to the Elvis Vegas years.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book could just as well be titled "Great Entertainers in Las Vegas", because so much of it covers the Rat Pack, collectively and separately, in their Vegas performances and personal lives. The author also looks at the casino lounge acts who did very well, such as Keely Smith and Louis Prima, and the comedians who headlined in Vegas. The book explores the change in taste from the 50's, when Liberace was the hottest act, through the 70's, and some of the acts that were popular across decades, like Wayne Newton. Woven throughout the book is the story of Elvis and his ongoing connection to the city, from his first unsuccessful performances as a teen idol, to the shows of 1969-1971 that jump started his comeback.The last seventy-five pages or so are solidly Elvis, discussing the musicians, casino owners and others who were involved in the shows at The International. A reader picking up a book with this title might have been disappointed by how much of it was about other performers, but I was interested in all of it and enjoyed all the chapters that were devoted to the Rat Pack, but also enjoyed learning more about the mob, various casino owners, show producers, and how Howard Hughes changed the way casinos ran and how entertainers were treated. There are little quibbles. A native of California is not a Yankee, and sometimes it seems like the author is laying the criticism on too thick to prove he's a journalist, but overall I really enjoyed this very informative book. I recommend it not just for a fan of these entertainers, but also for someone looking for Vegas history.