Remember
the King on our Elvis anniversary microsite
In the early Seventies Elvis Presley’s record label, RCA, released an album of
unreleased outtakes called A Legendary Performer. When it outsold his new
album of maudlin country ballads the singer must have felt he had begun to
lose the battle with his own myth. Trapped inside Graceland, the Memphis
mansion that was half home, half prison, the humble country boy who had done
more than anyone to invent teen culture became overweight and suffered
severe depression. To the outside world, though, he was still the ultimate
superstar, the invincible King of Rock‘n’Roll.
Eighteen months before he died Elvis told his producer, Felton Jarvis: “I’m so
tired of being Elvis Presley.” Thirty years after the death of the man, the
icon remains as strong as a crucifix.
The person behind the curling lip, the real Elvis, remains nothing as
straightforward as the image. In innumerous books, he is variously described
as generous, charming, sensitive, narcissistic, self-destructive and
paranoid. Sam Phillips, the producer at Sun Records who first recorded him
in 1954, remembered Elvis, even at the outset, as having “the greatest
inferiority complex of any person, black or white, that I had worked with.
He was a total loner. He kind of felt locked out.”
The fact that he survived his stillborn twin brother may have led to feelings
of guilt and incompleteness from the beginning. It could also explain the
strong ties Elvis had to his mother (who almost died giving birth) and his
pack of surrogate brothers – the Memphis Mafia – who lived with him at
Graceland even after he married. When his mother died at 42, just as Elvis
was set to do a stint in the Army that he was convinced would destroy his
career, the sense of isolation grew.
One of his Memphis brethren was Jerry Schilling, who met Elvis playing
football when he was just 12 in 1954. By 1965 Schilling was in his hero’s
employ, at a time when Elvis had been eclipsed by the Beatles and Bob Dylan
and was rapidly becoming an anachronism who churned out vapid movies. “He
wanted to grow like any of us,” says Schilling, “but the machinery wasn’t
built that way.”
Trapped by his manager Colonel Tom Parker into a Hollywood contract that
required three movies a year, there was barely time to sing enough songs for
the soundtracks, let alone anything worthwhile. In the year of Rubber Soul
and Like a Rolling Stone, the King Rocker was singing Do the Clamand Petunia
the Gardener’s Daughter. No wonder he was looking for a way out.
That option arrived in the unlikely guise of a hairdresser called Larry
Geller. “We were just good old boys,” says Schilling of the Memphis Mafia.
“We talked about girls, football, but Elvis was a real thinker.
Larry gave him an outlet. He could explore his spiritual side.” Soon Geller
and Elvis were investigating astrologyand philosophy. “Most of the guys
didn’t want to read a book. They gave Larry a rough time.”
One day in 1966, staring at clouds, Elvis became overcome with emotion – a
cloud had begun looking like Joseph Stalin, then mutated into Jesus. How
could he carry on making those dumb movies, he asked Geller, after seeing
the face of God? When the story got back to Colonel Parker, he told Elvis to
get off his religious kick. A hurt Elvis snarled back: “My life is not a
kick.” The Colonel’s response was to oust Geller and force his singer to
perform the demeaning Yoga is as Yoga Does in his next movie.
While girls fell at his feet, Elvis was unlucky in love. He thought he had
found the real thing with a young teenager called Priscilla Beaulieu but,
just as he promised himself to her, met the actress Ann-Margret on the set
of Viva Las Vegas in 1964 and, according to many, discovered what true love
was all about. They even discussed marriage.
“Elvis wanted the Colonel to manage Ann-Margret,” says Ernst Jorgenson,
sleevenote writer and the man entrusted with the Elvis tape vaults. “But
when the Colonel explained that his time would be split 50-50 between them,
Elvis thought it was not such a good idea.”
Elvis and Priscilla married in 1967 and divorced in ’72. A biographer, Paul
Simpson, calls this the “golden age of Elvisness”. It included his first
(and only significant) refusal to bow to the Colonel’s demands, when he made
the electrifying 1968 “comeback special” rather than sing a bunch of corny
Christmas songs, as well as his return to Memphis to record such classics as
In the Ghetto and Suspicious Minds.
The divorce, though, seemed to be a tipping point. He began to immerse himself
in autobiographical ballads ( Always on my Mind, Separate Ways) and
self-pity. At one of his Vegas shows the spotlight fell on Ann-Margret in
the audience. “Leave the light on her, man,” mumbled Elvis, “I just want to
look at her.”
While the songs of these twilight years are often dismissed as schmaltz, they
are just as much a part of the real Elvis as Jailhouse Rock or Hound Dog.
Elvis’s taste in music extended way beyond the R&B/hillbilly
fusion that made his name. His record collection stretched from Eddy Arnold,
Mario Lanza and Judy Garland to the Animals and Otis Redding. But-gospel
remained his music of choice and often brought out his best performances –
the fire he poured into mid-Seventies renditions of Hurt and Unchained
Melody was normally reserved for numbers such as How Great Thou Art and the
show-stopping American Trilogy.
Something first touched upon in Albert Goldman’s scurrilous biography Elviswas
the King’s odd relationship with women. In Peter Guralnick’s Careless Lovea
queue of women tell similar stories of arrested development, openness and
naivety. He tells Barbara Leigh “his entire life story, from the first time
he wrestled with a girl in the yard and saw her little white panties”; he
calls Linda Thompson “Mommy”. Sheila Carter tells Guralnick: “He was into
the romance. We would go out onto the balcony and he would sing songs to me.
We had sex, but what he liked best was the petting, the kissing. It was
adolescent.”
Priscilla undoubtedly would have received the same treatment. When she left
her husband in 1971 for Mike Stone she said publicly that her new beau was
“a real man” who treated her “like a woman”. Elvis – who gave her the pet
name Little – unsurprisingly freaked, and toyed with the idea of taking out
a contract on Stone. Maybe this public humiliation explains his distaste for
performing one of his biggest latterday hits, I’m just a hunka hunka burning
love. Teddy Bear would have seemed more appropriate.
By the Seventies, his obsession with philosophy had morphed into one with
karate. He had leading practitioner, Kang Rhee, flown in to Las Vegas for
round-the-clock instruction. As the possibility of touring outside the
States was continually thwarted by Colonel Parker (an illegal immigrant, as
Elvis discovered very late in his career), his frequent Vegas shows became
punctuated by weird monologues, karate exhibitions and comedy. Once he rode
on stage on the back of the Mafia man Lamar Fike with a toy monkey attached
to his neck and sang an X-rated version of Love Me Tender. In 1970 he even
forced a meeting at the White House with Nixon, in which he ranted about the
Beatles and gave the President a Colt .45 pistol as a gift. Such incidents
laid bare the medication abuse that insiders had known about for years.
After the Aloha From Hawaii show, his last real success, broadcast live by
satellite to more than a billion people, a combination of pain pills, liquid
Demerol and heavy-duty depressants, caused a reaction that led to throat and
lung congestion, and so to further medication.
Red West once asked: “How do you protect a man from himself? The wonder was
not when he died, but the fact that Elvis could die at all. Only the death
of Diana, Princess of Wales, has caused such shock and bewilderment since.
Looking at the reissued documentary This is Elvis, his later performances
are almost physically painful to watch. The only explanation for why he is
performing in public rather than lying in a hospital bed is that no one
could entertain the idea of Elvis ever dying. As you hear him struggle
through My Way, it seems that Elvis Presley was the only person in the world
who was aware of his mortality.
— Jerry Schilling’s Me and a Guy Named Elvis is published by Viking. The
single Heartbreak Hotel is reissued on August 13 (SonyBMG)
I'am a big Elvis fan I was lucky enough to see Elvis in Concert twice with my older sister and my mother .In 69 & 70 I was 9 years old in 1969 .Talk about a head rush . I was in love with Elvis then and I still am now at 49. I will never forget him or the day we went to Las Vegas to see the show
Charloene, Las Vegas, USA
I have and will always love that beautiful voice still stands out above the rest. The greatest singer entertainer. few if any days go by that I don't listen to his music. I feel deeply touched by his life. Some people criticize him or only see his faults, but I see a generous man who was human
jennifer, ville platte , usa
I agreed with Candy from Canroe, TX. Elvis had to have known tthat he needed help. I guess it was shame that kept him from getting help to deal with the effects of growing up in a home where the parents had so many adverse and influential issues as well as enduring rejection and avoidance by his peers as if he was some kind of freak. I guess eveybody who claimed they loved him was too wrapped up in their pursuit of pleasure ... and didn't want to risk igniting Elvis' wrath by legally having him committed for treatment. I read that Dr. Nick on several ocassions tried to trick him into seeing a psychiatrist, but he always found out and wouldn't go. I guess his father just didn't have the will, and Priscilla didn't have a clue even for the sake of their daughter who would have loved to have grown up with her father. If Col. Parker had been a Christian, he would have had the courage to TCB. Sadly, Elvis didn't see God was trying to heal his wound and bind up his spirit.
Mary, Terry, MS
I am young and living in scotland miles away from anywhere Elvis would have called home... and yet i feel a connection with Elvis' music that i have found in no other areas of my life. I find it really difficult talking to anyone i know about this as i don't know anyone who would share that same kind of feelins towards him other than perhaps you people. I was born in 1989 years after Elvis was already dead which totally frustrates me as i don't have any actual connection with him other than gut instinct. I don't know why i have been enchanted by him but it seems to have just happened, i only started to really look into Elvis this August 16th (2007) i now all of a sudden i feel this connection and want to know everything about him, do any of you people remember a moment like that? I am in love with Elvis Presely
Marolyn , Edinburgh, Scotland
I am from a similiar background as Elvis and having said that, I understand the "mental anguish" he suffered. He imprisoned himself with faulty thinking,,as I have on occasion. It is so sad that he was too ashamed to ask for help. He needed therapy,to let go of the demons of his childhood. One can see "now' that he was haunted by guilt and self loathing...All we can all know now is that he is at peace with GOD.
I love you Elvis
Candy
candy, conroe, texas
Thank you, Mr Richard Moreno, for sharing your beautiful memories of Elvis. Alone on this page, your words have the unmistakeable ring of truth, a sound which remains silent in 99% of what is now written about this amazing human being. It is verbal pictures like yours that keep the spirit of Elvis alive today in a world full of self-righteous, pop-psychologising, know-nothing, mental-wanking pontificaters who write utter garbage about a man whose likes the world will only ever see once.
Diane Jones, Brisbane, Australia
1969-1973 were some of the most precious times of my life. I was a security guard at the International Hotel in Las Vegas and was one of 12 guards assigned to protect and escort Elvis around the Hotel. I saw all sides of this fabulous man. I saw the happy times and I saw the sad times. The happy times are so deeply embeded in my memory. I witnessed a grown man acting like a giddy child running and joking with his friends and the other guards. I was often the brunt of his jokes. There were times that we would laugh so hard, tears were pouring from our eyes. We were supposed to act professional around him, but he made it an imposibility. The area from the 30th floor suite to the basement dressing rooms became his personal playground. I was back at the Hotel recently and walked the route that we took on the escorts. The halls have changed slightly but one thing remained the same. I could hear Elvis' laughter echoing through the halls. Believe me, Elvis has not left the building.
Richard Moreno, Las Vegas, Nevada
It must have been hard for Elvis, he had no one to say no to him, and when they did he didn't listen. He had everything he wanted, but to him he had nothing at all.
Mark, Widnes,