"Unlike wilder rockers, they wore stiff suits and Brylcreemed, duck's-ass haircuts, never moving an inch out of their stage pose, their lower bodies inert.…Some oddly disconcerted critics believed they lacked manliness-one insisting they had 'an androgynous tone, strange and somewhat surreal.' But that overlooked a James-Deanish diffidence, contrasting the untempered flames of Elvis, Jerry Lee, Little Richard, and Chuck Berry, all of whom can be credited with unleashing rock-though in Bob Dylan's estimation, the Everlys 'started it all.' They would change with the times but never seemed to lose teenage angst, the kind that created the coolest breakup song ever, 'Cathy's Clown' … They also, for a while, hid a secret-that they were coping with the pressures of fame in ways their fans could not have imagined, including, in Don's case, committing spousal abuse, abandoning his children, becoming alienated from his parents, being addicted to drugs and booze, trying to commit suicide, and undergoing electroshock therapy. Actually, both Everlys lived in perpetual agony, unable to stand each other, each harboring grievances. Don that he had to make room for Phil, Phil that Don was a petty tyrant. And it never really eased or ceased, even in the best of times. And after Phil died in 2014, Don's last years were still so disordered that he lived out his life with an often-arrested women who, though it was little known, apparently tried to kill him and against whom he had to file two orders of protection.

He also sued Phil after Phil died, his own mother sued him, and the brothers' estates were suing each other after both had died. Yes, this is no ordinary story.".