On one of the last mornings of 1970, Elvis Presley arrived in Washington, D. C., to meet Richard Nixon. Or so the rock idol hoped. In a five-page letter to the president scrawled on American Airlines stationery, Presley introduced himself: “I am Elvis Presley and admire you and have great respect for your office.” While Presley’s sincerity may have grounded the letter’s more atmospheric flights of fancy (“I have done an in-depth study of drug abuse and Communist brainwashing techniques . . .”), what stands out years later is his instinctive awareness of his own tenuous relationship to both the bourgeois culture and the counterculture, specifically the culture of rock music. These two territories were still at war in 1970.

“The drug culture, the hippie elements, the SDS, Black Panthers, etc., do not consider me as their enemy, or, as they call it, The Establishment,” Presley wrote. “I call it America and I love it.” Hoping for some sort of ” Federal credentials” to add to his collection of law-enforcement badges, Presley offered to help with the nation’s drug problem “just so long as it is kept very Private.”