Blog Posts by Tom Graves

It takes a brave soul to stick up for Albert Goldman, the abhorred biographer of Elvis, Lennon, Jim Morrison and others. More power, then, to Tom Graves for laying his neck on the line in this fine apologia for an underrated writer.--Barney Hoskyns, Editorial Director, Rock's Backpages

Albert Harry Goldman is inarguably the most controversial music biographer of the last generation. His biographies of first Elvis, then John Lennon, have been spit on by the best and worst critics on both sides of the Atlantic. "Bio-porn," Gore Vidal called his writing. And when Goldman veered off into wild sensationalism, as when he referred to Elvis' uncircumcised penis as a "hillbilly pecker," who could argue?

Yet I have a confession to make. I like the work of Albert Goldman, rotting carcasses and all, and I liked the man himself. To be philosophical about the Elvis book, I believe his scabrous take on the man was necessary, an antidote to the agitprop nonsense written about the man his whole career,