Sixty-four years ago, on Jan. 8, 1946, Gladys Presley gave her beloved only son a guitar for his 11th birthday. The high-spirited boy had wanted a bicycle, but his ever-protective mother feared he might hurt himself.
A decade later, Elvis rehearsed “Heartbreak Hotel” on his birthday and, two days later, recorded it at RCA Studios in Nashville. The tune became the biggest hit of 1956, turning the former Crown Electric truck driver into the King of Rock 'n' Roll himself.
Thomas Durden, a Nashville steel-guitarist, had composed the historic song after reading a Miami Herald story about a man who killed himself over a lost love. His suicide note simply read: “I walk lonely street.”
“Well, since my baby left me, I found a new place to dwell,” sang Elvis. “It’s down at the end of lonely street at Heartbreak Hotel.”
After the release of his birthday song, the young King – every man’s envy, every girl’s dream – seemed the least 
lonely mortal in the world.
Then, in 1958, he lost his mother. “Please don’t take my baby away!” he had sobbed, throwing himself over her coffin and refusing to let go. “She’s not dead. She’s just sleeping.” Then as she was lowered to her resting place, “Goodbye, darling. I love you so much. I lived my whole life just for you.”
Later, Elvis said, “I lost the only person I ever loved.”
At last his grief subsided when he met Priscilla Beaulieu. His family and friends marveled at how the beautiful 14-year-old ingénue resembled Gladys in her own youth.
Priscilla became what she called Elvis’ “Pygmalion.” “He relished the role of re-creating me,” she later wrote. “Like a sculptor, he could shape my image and design my demeanor in ways that would bring him delight.”
After an eight-year courtship, the King at last tied the knot with his completed creation. “I’ll give you Elvis’ relationship with her in a nutshell,” later wrote his Man Friday, Lamar Fike. “You create a statue. And then you get tired of looking at it.”
But that wasn’t all. Elvis had confided to other friends that he could not consummate with a mother. Within a year of the marriage, Priscilla had given birth to their daughter, Lisa Marie. By this time Elvis was calling her “Satin,” his nickname for his satin-skinned mother.
On his 37th birthday, the King announced that Priscilla was leaving Graceland and taking Lisa Marie with her. On his 39th birthday, he signed the final divorce papers.
Perhaps then he recalled “I Was the One,” the flipside of “Heartbreak Hotel.” Though he taught her how to kiss and how to cry, he sang, “I’ll never know who taught her to lie. Now that it’s over and done, who learned the lesson when she broke my heart? I was the one.”
Elvis had been repeatedly unfaithful to Priscilla, driving her at last into the arms of her karate instructor.
The King burned with jealousy. Though almost any other woman could still be his, he now walked Lonely Street.
