Arena Season 1, Episode 452

Heartbreak Hotel · BBC Four · Saturday, April 24

The second documentary in this Arena series telling the true stories behind classic rock songs is devoted to Elvis Presley's first million-selling release, Heartbreak Hotel. This film tracks down the song's writers, schoolteacher Mae Axton and Country musician Tommy Durden, and discovers that Heartbreak Hotel was inspired by a real-life suicide in Miami in 1955. The lyrics of the song actually incorporate the suicide note found by police at the scene. Heartbreak Hotel launched Elvis into international stardom but the song came back to haunt him at the end of his life, which - alleges controversial biographer Albert Goldman - also ended in suicide. This documentary looks at both his meteoric success and his later decline, through the words and music of the song that made it all happen.