The quotes in this re-created interview are drawn from a wealth of reliable sources and involved extensive research into many rare articles, magazines and books

It’s hard to believe this is really happening. Look at it this way. As a boy I’d written a school essay about how ‘My Greatest Experience’ was meeting “my idol” Elvis Presley. That essay ended, prematurely, with me being greeted by the King outside his door in Graceland and freezing on the spot, “For months I had planned all the questions I would ask him,” I wrote, “and now I could barely speak my own name.” Now here I am, nearly a decade later, on August 15th 1977, telling Presley’s cousin, Billy Smith, at the door of Graceland, that Joe Jackson, from hotpress in Ireland is here to do the world’s first in-depth interview with Elvis Presley.

Elvis himself is singing at the grand piano in the music room, to the right, as I walk through the ante-bellum doorway. His voice sounds rich, resonant and soulful. And, as far as I can tell, his eyes are closed – just like they used to be when he was a kid singing gospel songs with his folks in church in Tupelo.