Has anyone seen this book by Paul Lichter? http://www.amazon.com/Elvis-Vegas-P...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325866830&sr=1-1 It's a mostly pictorial account of Elvis's years in Las Vegas, in 1956 and from 1969 to 1976. Quite interesting, and has some of the best and most distressing pictures of Elvis I've ever seen. Some shots where he looks good are from the same time as other shots where he looks terrible. For instance, from the summer 1974 Vegas shows, there's a horrific posed shot of with Sergio Mendes in which Elvis looks totally wiped out/stoned. And yet, from the same run, there are photos of Elvis with his 1969 hairstyle where he looks thin as a rail (although he holds his guitar near his stomach, so who knows) and he looks happy and playful.
I've always noticed too how different Elvis could look from month to month from about 1972-1977. There are photos even in the last few years where he looks pretty good and then you see others where it hardly looks like the same person. I think many people that just have a vision of the wasted, fat, etc. Elvis from the last three or four years would be shocked how different it could be from tour to tour and how good he was still capable of looking at points in time. Really, to be honest, when you look at many of the photos of Elvis from the last few years when compared to today's "larger" society he really doesn't even look all that big relative to what passes for a normal guy in his 40's today.
It's unbelievable that Elvis looked this good in July 1974. His weight fluctuations were really fast.
