History:
Even a casual Elvis fan could have been forgiven for thinking that, as 1973 dawned, the King was on the verge of yet another career renaissance. Sure, he'd lost Priscilla, largely due to his pampered, privileged status and the Oedipal issues that prevented him from seeing her as anything other than the mother of his child; but he seemed to be moving past that somewhat, putting the fire back in stage shows, reclaiming the charts and his rightful place as a rock firebrand with "Burning Love," and redefining himself ever larger on the world stage with the Aloha From Hawaii extravaganza. The world, as it had been at least twice before, was his to lose.And yet he was beginning to do just that. Closer inspection reveals a broken, bored man, one for whom the road had become a grind and, having indulged in every pleasure known to man, offstage became unbearably boring. Thus began Elvis' descent into drugs -- they may have been legal addictions, proving only that the King was way ahead of the curve on this one, too, but they were no less real for that. 1973 is the year Elvis Presley began to get bloated, indifferent, and paranoid in the extreme -- and with absolutely no emotional center in his life and few insiders willing to challenge (or even, awed by his own still-potent charisma, to notice) his beginning descent, it was a spiral that was going to prove impossible to stop.
Next... Elvis 1973 timeline
