The Colonel

by Alanna Nash

  There, Presley hoped to visit some of the cities he’d longed to see since his army days (“Man, I’ll put on a disguise . . . I’ve got to get out of this country just to see the world,” he told Larry Geller), and maybe scout locales for a foreign tour. But Parker strongly argued that Elvis’s European fans would be insulted if he traveled the Continent before performing there and suggested that the entourage fly to the Bahamas instead. The Colonel had contacts there, he said. Besides, they’d enjoy the gambling. Elvis complied, though once there driving rain and hurricane winds forced him to stay indoors most of the trip, and the couples returned home a week earlier than expected.

  Priscilla, who objected to Elvis’s long absences and frequent womanizing, hoped a European holiday would smooth out the rougher bumps in the marriage, something Elvis would soon allude to in the press. But neither could have anticipated the Colonel’s virulent reaction, or how he interpreted a benign vacation plan as an impulsive and assertive act.

  Soon after the couple returned to Memphis, Elvis was visited by two formidable businessmen in suits and ties. The men, who identified themselves as employees of RCA, spoke politely but firmly. “They advised him of the dangers of his desire to travel to Europe because of his status and universal recognition,” says Larry Geller, who learned the story from Elvis when he came back into the entourage in 1972. “They told him he would be going eventually, but such things had to be planned out, that they took time and management. Underneath the veneer of cordiality, Elvis felt they were saying, ‘Hey, man, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ It made a deep impression upon him—he took it as a threat.”

  Believing that “Parker obviously manipulated the visit,” as Geller puts it, the episode must have reminded Elvis of the Colonel’s story of Sam Cooke’s fate at the hands of RCA’s disgruntled image makers and Mafia hit men. “It was common knowledge that Parker was deeply into the ‘people’ in Vegas because of his enormous gambling losses,” Geller reports. “Elvis became more aware of this as time went by and knew that he was Colonel Parker’s bait and ransom, that Parker owned him, and whatever losses Parker incurred, Elvis would ultimately pay off by performing.”

  When Presley opened his second Vegas engagement in January 1970, he appeared so trim and vibrant, with his cheekbones showing when he smiled, that Lamar Fike found him “damn near gorgeous.” But Fike, who had just rejoined the entourage after his stint with Hill and Range, was chagrined to learn that Elvis was now in the second phase of his drug use, with pills in him roughly 60 percent of the time. Fike knew it was only a matter of time before his body would show the effects, particularly as Presley was becoming bolder about what he would take. “Elvis loved downers, and he loved getting totally fucked up,” says Fike. “Downers will put weight on you pretty quick.” They also added to Elvis’s paranoia.

  During Presley’s next Vegas engagement that summer, an incident occurred that heightened Elvis’s fears about his safety, which had grown with Charles Manson’s horrific murders of actress Sharon Tate and hairdresser Jay Sebring, in whose Los Angeles shop Larry Geller once worked.

  On Wednesday, August 26, the International’s security department was notified that Elvis would be kidnapped that evening. The hotel added extra security, and nothing happened, but then the Colonel received a similar call the following day. What shook everyone up was the next message, which came to Joe Esposito in Los Angeles early Friday morning. This time the caller, who dialed Esposito’s unpublished home phone number, said that an individual planned to shoot Elvis on stage during his Saturday-night show, and demanded $50,000 in small bills to reveal the name of the assailant. Later, Elvis received a hotel menu with his picture on the front, defaced with a picture of a gun pointed at his head. Written backward were the words “Guess who, and where?”

  The Colonel phoned Elvis’s Beverly Hills lawyer, Ed Hookstratten, who notified the FBI. Then the attorney hired John O’Grady, a private detective and former L.A. police sergeant to come to Las Vegas to coordinate a ring of defense. Elvis, scared and shaken, called Jerry Schilling, then working as a film cutter at Paramount, and asked him to fly to Vegas to join the other bodyguards and security men who would surround the stage. Downstairs in his dressing room before the show, he told Schilling, “I don’t want any son of a bitch running around saying, ‘I killed Elvis Presley.’ If some guy shoots me, I want you to rip his goddamn eyes out!” Then he tucked a derringer in his boot and went upstairs.

  With an ambulance and a Vegas doctor, Thomas “Flash” Newman, standing by, a nervous Presley began his show. The only tense moment came several songs into the performance, when a man yelled out, “Elvis!” The singer dropped to one knee and reached for the pistol. Then the voice continued: “Would you sing ‘Don’t Be Cruel’?”

  Presley was never sure who was behind the hoax, but his mind raced at the possibilities. Maybe it was Parker, playing another trick to keep him in line. Or perhaps the Colonel was really the target. Maybe Parker owed a little bit too much at the tables and needed some incentive to pay up quick. Elvis knew the rumors that Parker borrowed heavily from the mob (“I’d say that Colonel Parker did a lot of stuff with people in this town that nobody is ever going to find out about,” echoes Frank Gorrell), and the latest gossip was even more frightening. Talk had it that Parker sold a percentage of Elvis’s earnings to the Mafia as payment for his debts.

  Whatever the truth, Elvis began to fixate on firearms, cops, and badass effrontery. The following year, inspired by the film Shaft, in which a black private eye tangles with a powerful racketeer, he started dressing in black hipster clothing from the wildest racks on Beale Street. In the next months, he would also obtain a badge to allow him to carry a pistol in Memphis, buy an arsenal of weapons—from small handguns to an M16 automatic assault rifle—and customize many of the handles with his TCB (“Taking Care of Business”) insignia. Eventually, his fascination would border on the ludicrous. Making friends with policemen throughout the country, he occasionally donned a captain’s uniform (a gift from the Denver Police Department) and installed a revolving blue light on the roof of his car, so that he might pull over speeders and offer assistance at accident scenes.

  As Elvis slipped deeper into a world of drugs and delusion, he distanced himself from the Colonel. Where earlier in the year Presley had introduced Parker to his Vegas audience, saying he was “not only my manager, but I love him very much,” they now spoke mostly through an intermediary, usually Esposito. Presley tried to avoid the Colonel at every turn.

  That became easier to arrange in September, when Elvis flew to Phoenix to kick off a six-city tour, his first extended string of road shows since 1957. Tickets for nearly all the dates sold out within hours, especially since Parker kept the price to $10, less than half of what other major performers commanded. On board to promote four of the concerts was a new company called Management III.

  The principal partners in the venture were Jerry Weintraub, a thirty-three-year-old former MCA talent agent who was managing the budding singer-songwriter John Denver, and Tom Hulett, whose company, Concerts West, had set the standard for contemporary rock tours with Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin. Management III paid the Colonel $240,000 for the four dates, but Parker insisted on handling all advertising and promotion. The two men had no trouble with that—they’d been writing Parker for nearly two years, wanting to put Elvis into all the big, new arenas that were opening up throughout the country. They met with the Colonel for dinners with their wives and even endured Parker’s famous steam room meltdowns (“I make ’em stay until they see things my way”) at the Spa in Palm Springs.

  “One of the things Jerry said,” remembered Denver, who followed his first big hit, 1971’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” with a string of chart-toppers, “was that if he did his job, and I did my job, I would always be able to work in whatever arena I chose, be it television, films, recordings, or concerts. He’s a very, very brilliant promoter. He went to the big arenas and said, ‘You want
Elvis Presley to come play this place? Then I want Concerts West to be involved in every concert that comes into this building.’ And as a result of his influence in the concert market, Jerry had an enormous amount of clout with RCA, and also with radio stations.”

  Just why and how Parker settled on Weintraub and Hulett isn’t clear, especially as he had rejected two other concert promoters, Steve Wolf and Jim Rissmiller of Concert Associates, who also attempted to woo the Colonel through a two-year letter-writing campaign, and finally wangled a meeting. The two found Parker charming, but a tough negotiator.

  “He wanted us to pay the costs of producing the show,” Wolf remembered, “and then he gave us a cushion and a percentage over a certain amount. He threw it out so fast we had to keep asking him over and over, and he kept saying, ‘I told you boys, now for the last time this is the deal.’ He really hits you. He doesn’t sit back and let it sink in. You’re sorry you asked a question.”

  After much back and forth, Parker finally told them Elvis had no plans to tour, as it might hurt business at the hotel. But if he did, he’d need to honor some obligations that went back to the late ’50s. Then, in a matter of months, he signed the deal with Weintraub.

  “Jerry was very well connected, and a lot went through him,” says Joe Delaney. He was a formidable guy—still is.”

  But Parker made him sweat for his power. The following month, when Weintraub went back to the Colonel to set up another eight-day tour, this time for Concerts West, Parker demanded a $1-million deposit against 65 percent of the gate. Within twenty-four hours. It was a test of both the company’s bank account and Weintraub’s resolve. “Jerry had to go out and bust his butt,” says Joe Shane. The money was late in arriving, though not really through Weintraub’s fault, and overall the Colonel’s student did not disappoint him.

  As reward, Parker gave Weintraub and Hulett a piece of the concessions, though the Colonel later felt a need to wire Weintraub regarding ticket accessibility. In guarding against such stunts as a box office manager pulling free tickets for the city council, he was also looking out for the fans “who made Elvis what he is today.” As he told Weintraub in a telegram, “We want our fans to be taken care of. When they wait in line for hours and hours they are privileged customers. They come first.”

  The Presley road show was now a major business, with huge grosses and attendance records, Elvis taking in more than $300,000 and beating the Rolling Stones’ numbers in two shows at the Inglewood Forum in Los Angeles that November. Most of the members of Elvis’s entourage traveled with him, Joe Esposito being in top command under Parker, Charlie Hodge acting as stage manager and general assistant, Lamar Fike handling the lighting, and Richard Davis taking care of Elvis’s wardrobe. Elvis also added a Memphis physician, Dr. George Nichopoulos, who had personally tended to nearly all of Elvis’s medical and pharmaceutical needs since treating him for a cold in 1966.

  At the age of sixty-one, Parker still personally advanced the tour, making a promotional trip two months (later cut down to a matter of weeks) ahead of the show. Sonny West, keeping his eyes and ears open for Elvis as Joe Esposito did for the Colonel, traveled with Parker as security chief. Together, they obtained the hotel rooms—Elvis and the Colonel each occupied a whole floor at a different location from the show group—and figured out which entrance Presley could use to get to his room without going through the lobby. They also worked with the local law enforcement, the Colonel picking either a captain or a detective to line up as many as sixty uniformed men to police Elvis’s hotel and travel route. The entourage was afforded the same protection as a presidential motorcade.

  “He would have it all mapped out, get as many as four limos for decoys, and time how long it would take to get to the airport, the hotel, and the venue,” remembers former RCA rep Gaylen Adams. “He planned such details, it would scare you.” By the time Parker’s friend Al Dvorin announced, “Elvis has left the building,” to calm a frenzied show crowd, Presley was, indeed, already on his way.

  Once the tour started, Parker returned to each town the day before the date. He checked on the souvenir sales first—arena rock of the ’70s ushered in the modern era of merchandising—then tended to the box office and promotion. A sellout was a must, and if ticket sales lagged, Parker counted on a pocketful of tricks to turn the tide. Regularly, he forced RCA to buy a block of tickets as giveaways, but most of the time he relied on carny cunning.

  One time in Salt Lake City, Parker remembered in the ’80s, “the rest of the auditorium was sold out, and we couldn’t sell the last two thousand seats for anything. Then on the Sunday before the show, Elder Stevens [head of the Mormon church] died. The show was set for Wednesday. I called the radio stations and canceled all the ads. We weren’t selling tickets anyway, and I figured we’d save $1,900.

  “What we did,” he went on, “was instead of taking the ads, we made an announcement that we were dropping the ads until after Elder - Stevens’s funeral on Tuesday. Of course, the radio stations gave us all of the announcements free. Then on Wednesday, the ads started again and we sold out all two thousand seats in two hours. It had to be the Mormons who bought the tickets.”

  Another time, much later, in Pittsburgh, they played a 20,000-seat arena and found themselves stuck with 1,100 tickets, all of them “way up in the attic, behind a post. We were selling maybe twelve or fifteen a day. So we pulled all our ads and put in new ones. We said, ‘We still have a few seats left. They aren’t very good, but it’s all we got.’ When that hit the air, we sold out right away. People liked the honesty.”

  For a man who still rose at 5:00 A.M., it was a grueling schedule, one that didn’t end until well after sundown. If Elvis was flying in that night after his show, as he always did on the later tours, since he had trouble winding down and falling asleep, Parker would wait for word that he had landed.

  The next day, the show plane arrived. “He made life rough for us on the road,” says Kathy Westmoreland, Elvis’s high harmony singer, “because we were going to bed at four in the morning and getting up at seven-thirty to fly to the next city.” Yet the musicians looked out their windows to see the Colonel leaning on his cane on the tarmac, knowing he would always be there to greet them, no matter the weather. Tom Diskin, standing at his side, handed each musician a key as he came off the ramp and boarded the bus to the hotel. Then as the group waved good-bye, Parker took off in his plane for the next town.

  Though he met Elvis and the entourage every evening prior to the first show in Vegas, pulling Elvis into another room to talk business if need be, and sometimes staying for the first show, only rarely did the Colonel wait to see Elvis perform on the road. Even if Parker spent the night, he never met with Presley before the concert.

  Nonetheless, the man who loved playing Santa Claus at Frank - Sinatra’s Christmas parties found time to entertain the children whose parents traveled with the show. As “Uncle Colonel,” he delighted the kids with stories of “the googala,” a giant centipede who resided in the - Colonel’s imagination, and whose likeness he sketched for the children to take home and tape up on their walls.

  It was just as well that Presley and Parker seldom met up on the tours, since Elvis was often furious about his accommodations. In Mobile, Alabama, they’d been booked into the Admiral Semmes Hotel, which may have been luxurious the last time Presley stayed there, in 1955, but was a dump by 1970, a total fleabag, without air-conditioning. The Colonel knew Elvis preferred any modern motel, even a Holiday Inn, to an older place. Hadn’t Parker checked it out when he advanced the tour? Presley raved. And why were they playing Mobile, anyway?

  Even Concerts West was confused about that one, and as the tours continued, Weintraub and Hulett, who brought the Colonel a list of cities and dates for him to approve, were equally puzzled about a number of towns Parker picked, such as Monroe, Louisiana, and Greensboro, North Carolina, that seemed off the beaten path for a megawatt rock star. Nobody else went there, which, the Colonel said, was precisely the
point. Fans in grassroots areas wanted to see Elvis, too, and he was guaranteed a sellout. If Elvis had to perform in basketball gymnasiums, or on three-foot stages—which he sometimes did—it helped pay the expenses between larger dates. Weintraub and Hulett weren’t the only promoters out there, and he’d set about proving it to them.

  What Parker failed to mention was that he yearned to return to the towns he’d first visited with the carnivals and tent shows, where he still had people in his pocket—from the mayor to the cops—and knew how to control just about anything. He loved going back to the old hotels, too, even if some of the rooms on the floors they stayed on were boarded up. Sometimes he did it to repay a favor. Besides, these old places were dirt cheap. Who could argue with that?

  While Elvis had initially been happy to return to live performance, his pill-fueled behavior had become more erratic in recent months. He obsessed about collecting police badges—bugging John O’Grady for how he could get one that would let him carry a gun across state lines—and schemed to get all the guys deputized to pack a weapon in Memphis, Las Vegas, and Palm Springs. Loaded on pharmaceuticals, he shot a .22 automatic at a car one night in Beverly Hills after the driver made a rude gesture, and even terrorized his friends if they mouthed off at him, sticking a loaded .44 Magnum in Lamar Fike’s nose one day and threatening to blow his brains out. In December 1970, as best man at Sonny West’s wedding, he would stand at the altar wearing five loaded firearms—two gold-plated guns in shoulder holsters, a pair of pearl-handled pistols in his pants, and a derringer in his boot.

  When he came off the road that November, Elvis began to fixate on the idea of becoming a federal agent. A federal agent’s badge would give him not only ultimate power, but also a feeling of invincibility. No one would dare mess with a federal agent, no matter what controlled substances he carried around with him in a little black bag.