Elvis Presley

by Williamson, Joel

  The Book

  Elvis had good reason for his anxiety. Cast in the style of a tabloid exposé, the bodyguard book, published in August 1977, would depict Elvis as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The back cover of the paperback edition would say it succinctly:

  A devoted son. A generous friend. A model army recruit. A gifted entertainer. A beloved hero to millions. This is the Elvis Presley the world knows—and cherishes.

  Brooding. Violent. Obsessed with death. Strung out. Sexually driven. This is the other side of Elvis.

  In case the prospective reader found the bad Elvis unbelievable, the back cover ticked off real-life episodes described in the book:

  Charms a beautiful young fan into joining him on a drug binge for two that nearly kills her …

  Hurls a pool cue at a party guest who interrupts his game, injuring her breast …

  Talks with his bodyguard about a “hit on the man who stole his wife … ”

  Has for years leaned heavily on uppers, downers.

  The text lived up to the cover’s promise. The book opened with Elvis ordering Sonny West to kill Mike Stone. It went on to describe how Elvis threw his pool cue at a girl who interrupted his game in his Hollywood house, severely injuring her breast, and seduced a seventeen-year-old fan during a Tahoe engagement and ended by allowing her to overdose almost lethally in his house in Palm Springs. The girl suffered permanent brain damage but refused to sue out of loyalty to Elvis. He talked to her briefly on only one occasion after the event. The book included a long sequence of episodes in which Elvis molested and debauched very young girls, engaging young girls to perform for him by mud wrestling in white panties, spying on couples having sex in one of his Hollywood houses by installing a two-way mirror in a bedroom, and using the same device to watch young women undressing in the pool house of another of his Hollywood homes. The disturbing scenes went on and on, and there was very substantial basis in fact for each. The trouble with the forthcoming book was that it was all too revealing of the chasm that lay between the good Elvis in the popular image and the bad Elvis that really was.

  Elvis Wept

  During the late summer and fall of 1976, Elvis’s limited physical capacity was sorely taxed by three cycles of road tours. In late August and early September, he did thirteen shows in thirteen days in Deep South cities from San Antonio over to Jacksonville and back to Pine Bluff, Arkansas. In October, he did an exhausting run of fifteen shows in fourteen Midwestern cities. At the end of November he did a seven-day northwest coast tour, and then in December, after a one-week break, he rolled into fifteen shows in eleven days in Las Vegas.

  His exhaustion manifested itself in his first performances in the Showroom of the Hilton. He forgot lyrics; he had to sit down during the show; he had to leave the stage and let the Stamps and the Sweets sing while he recuperated. That he was able to perform at all had a lot to do with the drug protocol that Dr. Nick established for him—and a six-step process that provided three packets of uppers to get him up for a performance and three packets of downers to bring him down afterward, plus painkillers all along to combat the effects of chronic constipation and other conditions.

  During his run at the Hilton in December, the Reverend Rex Humbard, a leading evangelist, visited him in his dressing room. Recalling the meeting soon after Elvis’s death, he said that Elvis was much concerned with the last days on earth for unredeemed mankind.

  “Christ is gonna come real soon, isn’t he?” queried Elvis. Then he spoke of the biblical prediction of the Second Coming following famine and pestilence. “We don’t have long, do we?” he concluded.

  Reverend Humbard asked permission to pray for Elvis. “Please do,” Elvis replied, then “he started weeping.” The minister was moved and pleased by the depth of Elvis’s feeling. “He just emotionally shook and trembled,” Humbard said. At that point, eight-year-old Lisa Marie walked into the room.

  “Why is my daddy crying?” Lisa asked.

  “It’s all right, honey,” Elvis said.

  Soon after Elvis’s death, Rex Humbard claimed that Elvis had found something spiritual in their meeting, that he had come back to Jesus Christ again. Some of Elvis’s ardent fans have welcomed Reverend Humbard’s account as convincing evidence that Elvis was indeed born again as a Christian before he died. His performance with Humbard, however, did not square well with the life he actually led. How did he come to the conclusion that the Second Coming was near? He certainly saw no evidence of famine or pestilence.

  One might suspect that Elvis was doing to Reverend Humbard what he usually did to people he perceived as having some measure of power they could exercise over him in the world—politicians, journalists, Jaycees, and his fans. He told them what they wanted to hear. This is not to say that he thought he was deceiving them. For the moment, he not only played the part, he was the part.

  The quality of Elvis’s Christianity after his epiphany with the girls in the Overton Shell in July 1954 is murky. Thereafter, he was not at church every Sunday morning. He said that he did not go to church because his presence would be too disruptive. Clearly, he had a good knowledge of the Bible and sometimes preached to captive congregations of his friends and followers. His preaching, however, could not always be taken seriously by serious people. “Now listen all you sonsabitches,” he might begin and launch into a homily drawn from his readings of life and the scriptures.

  Elvis was not a model Christian, but he really did believe that he could lead others to true interpretations of the Bible. Priscilla had to attend his Bible study groups in his Hollywood mansion before they married. She would sit on the couch beside him, boiling with thinly hidden anger, while he offered guidance to flocks of young women sitting at his feet. She was particularly upset by the way they leaned forward to show their cleavage and squirmed eagerly in their tight skirts as they asked Elvis to share his saintly wisdom and satisfy their ardent desire to understand better the Holy Word. She was furious that he enjoyed his performance and theirs so much and seemed not to know what the girls were really doing. On one occasion, she was so outraged that she went into their bedroom and changed into the most sexually provocative attire she had, “a tight-fitting black sheath he had picked out himself.” Dressed in her Bible study outfit, she came back to sit beside him again, but he ignored her and continued to shower his priestly attention on the girls.

  Larry Geller and Eastern Thought

  Beginning in 1964, Elvis sought the ultimate answers not in Christian theology but in Eastern thinking. Moreover, his interest in final things became increasingly intense and was with him even on the morning he died. His tutor in these matters was a Hollywood hairdresser, Larry Geller. One day in April 1964, when he was summoned to Elvis’s house in Bel Air to do his hair, he began to tell Elvis about his interest in Eastern religions. Elvis kept him for more than four hours.

  Elvis’s early biographer Albert Goldman described Larry as “a tall, slender, good-looking New York Jew.” He was one of the first, Goldman said, in what became a common type: “the low-pressure, low-profile West Coast hippie spiritualist and health food faddist, who, as he labors every day at his manual craft, babbles endlessly about meditation, vitamin E, and the Third Eye.”

  For Elvis, it was as if a dam had broken and flooded his consciousness with a superior form of spirituality. Soon, Larry was prescribing books for Elvis to read, visiting him in Graceland, and having long philosophical discussions. Then he joined Elvis’s paid coterie and became his most favored companion. He got to ride in the front seat alongside Elvis as he drove his bus back and forth between Los Angeles and Memphis. They talked endlessly about final things. After Larry came, the guys rode in the back of the bus and hated him. The guys hated Larry, but Elvis could not have cared less about their feelings. He was saved. He was born again.

  Elvis was growing increasingly unhappy with his movie career as he contemplated the truly important things of life. Finally, in 1967, there came a time when he was scheduled to return to Hollyw
ood from Memphis to make a particularly bad movie, Clambake. His weight had recently ballooned to two hundred pounds. He threw up flimsy excuses to delay his return, costing everyone money. On the morning he was supposed to go into the studio, March 9, 1967, he fell in his bathroom and hit his head, causing still further delay and expense. Officially it was announced that he had suffered a severe brain concussion, but a doctor X-rayed him and declared that nothing serious was wrong.

  The Colonel had had enough. He called a meeting of Elvis and all the boys. He read the riot act to the guys and used the incident to blame Geller for the disruptions. Elvis cast his gaze down and would not even look at Larry as the Colonel hammered away at him. Colonel Parker summarily banned Larry from Elvis’s presence, and Elvis did not say a word. Pressured by the Colonel and assisted by a very willing Priscilla, Elvis tossed Geller’s books into an incinerator behind Graceland and burned them.

  During the 1970s, Larry began coming over to Las Vegas from Los Angeles to visit Elvis, and gradually they became intimate again. He claimed to be the last person to talk to Elvis alive—by phone. Elvis again built up his library of books on spiritual matters. Vera Stanley Alder’s The Initiation of the World was one of his favorites, and he insisted that Priscilla read it, a task she did not eagerly embrace and soon abandoned. “Are human beings potential gods, as they have been told, or are they merely the least of worms?” Alder posed this question in the introduction to The Finding of the Third Eye (1938) and devoted her writings to answering it. Modern science had devalued humanity, she insisted, but here and there among us is a seeker who, “while gathering his store of knowledge, may develop wisdom … and learn those few essential secrets through which he may attain the poise, power and creativeness which will ultimately develop him into a superman.” These seekers “will be the builders of the new and promised Golden Age,” she declared.

  Lying in his bed upstairs in Graceland, Elvis read and read, underlined and made notes. Never before had he been such an assiduous student. Visitors would be amazed to see this cavelike bedroom strewn with books—and guns. When he traveled, he took a suitcase full of his books with him. Elvis was an earnest seeker after the higher truths that would give him definition and power over himself and everything around him. Who was he? What was his great mission in life? He clearly believed that the answers lay in Eastern rather than Western thinking, if the answers lay anywhere.

  BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY

  I have spent my professional life working as an historian of American race relations. Themes involving race, class, and gender permeate Southern history, as they do this book. There are hundreds of books, a number of key ones used here, in English and other languages about Elvis. Of course there are thousands of newspaper and magazine articles. Everyone has a perspective on Elvis, often a personal one. Many of those around Elvis for a long time or for only a few days wrote books about him. Some of those who worked in his security detail or who knew him as a friend or as a romantic partner, however briefly, wrote books. His permanent home was Memphis, and local journalists knew him well, producing several excellent books from the Memphis perspective.

  I set out to tell the story in a popular rather than scholarly fashion and removed the scholarly footnotes in one of my early drafts. This essay is meant to allow readers to follow the major primary and secondary sources I drew on during the years I was working on this study. I have not cited many informal sources that influenced me, people I met in Tupelo or in Memphis. My wife’s mother, Mrs. Betty Carter Woodson, was a native of Memphis and had visited Graceland before Elvis acquired it. She and her friends shared with me many memories of Memphis in the 1940s and later. These conversations are not always cited, but they helped me gain insights into unique perspectives about Elvis. There are former neighbors, schoolteachers, church leaders, and school and family friends who still walk in the memory of those years when Elvis was finding his way as an artist. The Memphis Press-Scimitar is a repository of many items about Elvis from these years throughout the rest of his career, and afterward. The Memphis Public Library is a superb source for researching all aspects of the life of Elvis Presley, including the day of his death. The library has all the books, magazines, articles, and newspapers one might need in a special collection, along with an excellent staff. Of course the August 17, 1977, issue of the Memphis Press-Scimitar provides particularly detailed stories of that confused day. The New York Museum of Television and Radio is an invaluable source about Elvis, including a appearance of his on The Today Show, among other visual documents. Some special insights into Elvis’s life with Priscilla can be seen in the following source: Museum of Television and Radio, New York City, Barbara Walters Special #32, “Priscilla Presley,” ABC-TV, September 13, 1985.

  INTRODUCTION

  There are books and portions of books about his death, some by authors who knew Elvis. One excellent collection of stories comes from Charles C. Thompson II and James P. Cole’s The Death of Elvis: What Really Happened (New York: Dell Publishing, 1991). Charles Thompson produced a striking “you are there” story for television, with Geraldo Rivera as the central reporter for the story. James Cole, a longtime writer for the Memphis newspapers, knew the story of Elvis’s death well, and he also knew Memphis intimately. My “Introduction: The Death of Elvis” draws heavily upon this source. Thompson and Cole pages most used were 3, 22, 37–38, 42, 59–61, 70–71, 97–98, 104, 124, 126–27, 184–86, 240, 246, 260–64, 280–81, 295, 348, 350, 355–56, 374–77, 442–54, 469–74, 480. Richard H. Grob’s The Elvis Conspiracy (Las Vegas, NV: Fox Reflections Publishing, 1979) provides more details, as does Albert Goldman’s Elvis (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981). Grob pages used were 244, 349–50, 355–58. Goldman pages used were 568–69. One of the most insightful of Elvis’s biographers is Peter Guralnick, who wrote two seminal books about Elvis. Used here is his Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley (Boston: Little, Brown, 1999), which touches on all aspects of Elvis’s later life and is also rich on Elvis’s career in Memphis. See especially page 625. This introduction benefited from material assembled by some members of Elvis’s staff or security team in Steve Dunleavy’s Elvis Aaron Presley: Revelations from the Memphis Mafia (New York: HarperCollins, 1995). See especially page 752.

  PART I: THE BUBBLE

  CHAPTER ONE: THE DREAM

  Elvis made local tapes for his mother, and he had sessions with other players. One of his associates, Scotty Moore, contributed some of the early tapes to Memphis State University Library. There are people who contributed to a picture of Elvis in the early days, such as Gloria Roden, who with her husband, a physician, lived on Easter Egg Row in Memphis, and I talked to them as I was doing research in Memphis.

  Peter Guralnick produced a very detailed view of the emergence of Elvis as an artist in his Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley (Boston: Little, Brown, 1994), which provides quotes and details from Sam Phillips, a discoverer of Elvis, and some of Elvis’s early associates. Pages used were 109, 159–60, 170–71, 188–210, 213–18, 224–33. Scotty Moore revealed many details of Elvis’s early career in his That’s Alright, Elvis: The Untold Story of Elvis’s First Guitarist and Manager, Scotty Moore, as Told to James Dickerson (New York: Schirmer Books, 1997). Pages used were 54, 73, 75, 86, 91, 95, 96, 107–8. Another useful source about the early Elvis was Sam Wilder’s interview with TV Guide in September 1956, page 110. Jerry Hopkins contributed a useful biography before Elvis’s death, Elvis (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971). Pages used were 54, 75, 79, 90–91, 107–8. Michael Gray and Roger Osborne compiled a very detailed chart of Elvis’s life in their The Elvis Atlas: A Journey Through Elvis Presley’s America (New York: Holt, 1996). The chronicle approach is very useful for checking details of his professional and personal lives. See pages 46, 52–54, 60, 63, 79, 91–93, 178–80. Peter Guralnick joined with Ernst Jorgensen to produce a very detailed record of Elvis’s life with their Elvis: Day by Day (New York: Ballantine Books, 1999). See especially page 33. Former Elvis insid
ers also contributed some insights into the motivations of Elvis as an artist in Red West, Sonny West, and Dave Hebler, as told to Steve Dunleavy, Elvis: What Happened? (New York: Ballantine Books, 1977). See pages 20–21.

  CHAPTER TWO: KILLERS OF THE DREAM

  There was extensive coverage in newspapers and magazines as Elvis expanded his reach from the South to the nation and the world. Particularly useful in this chapter were the New York Times, October 28, 29, 1956; the Toronto Star, October 29, 1956; and the Memphis Press-Scimitar, November 6, 1956. Elvis’s films Loving You, Jailhouse Rock, and King Creole attempted to capture the youthful and handsome singer that Elvis was in his early career.

  The Elvis Atlas: A Journey Through Elvis Presley’s America (New York: Holt, 1996) by Michael Gray and Roger Osborne presents rich detail for these years when Elvis was evolving from poor Mississippi and Tennessee boy to stardom. Pages used were 74, 88, 93, 94–95, 99, 100–101, 126, 131, 178–81. Peter Guralnick’s Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley (Boston: Little, Brown, 1994) captures the development of Elvis in the early years. Pages used were 252, 254, 261–62, 284–85, 302–4, 338, 351–53, 356, 368–70, 379. With Ernst Jorgensen, Peter Guralnick put together the detailed daily summary of Elvis’s activities in Elvis: Day by Day (New York: Ballantine Books, 1999). This book highlights the intense activities that characterized Elvis in some periods of his life, especially the early years when he was building his career. Pages used were 62–63, 73, 83, 89, 93, 99, 131. He attracted the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which created a file on Elvis worth reviewing.