Elvis leaves the building

Joe Jackson: Dave Hebler, in Elvis What Happened says you seem ‘bent on death’ that you’re committing ‘slow suicide’ with drugs – which Red West, in the same book, claims you starting using around 1960, after your mother died.

Elvis Presley: (slamming fist off side of sofa) Those guys are trying to kill me. I can’t fathom it. My oldest friends – lifelong friends – are now trying to distort my image to the public and my fans. And daddy, my daddy, reading bullshit lies about me. It will kill him. If anybody hurts my daddy or Lisa, God help them, I’ll personally do God’s work for Him and send them where they belong. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate those guys; I hate what they’re doing. (Pause) But let’s not talk about all that shit. Lots of good things happened in 1960. I got out of the army, I got back into the studio for the first time in two years and made one of my favourite albums.

Elvis Is Back is also one of your best albums. It’s sort of like the fulfilment of the promise in that line you spoke to Marion Keisker of Sun Records, when you said, “I sing all kinds.” On the album you did things like Peggy Lee’s ‘Fever’, Jesse Stone’s ‘Like A Baby’, The Drifters, ‘Such A Night’ and a searing version of Lowell Fulson’s ‘Reconsider Baby’.

That was one of my favourites on the album. But don’t forget that, at the same sessions, I recorded my biggest selling single of all time! A song my mother played for me on the wind-up Victrola, recorded way-back-when by Enrico Caruso. Caruso did it as ‘O Sole Mio’ and I did it as ‘It’s Now Or Never’.

Gordon Stoker, Jordanaire, told me he felt there were so many musical styles on Elvis Is Back because you were searching, trying to mark out a new path, now that you were out of the army. Pulling in songs from all directions, blues, pop, jazz, rock semi-operatic, hungry to try something new, find your voice again.

And I felt did, when I nailed ‘It’s Now Or Never’. ‘And ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight’, though that took me 30 takes to get it right! But then what happened? The Colonel signed me up to do G.I Blues and the songs in it that weren’t worth a cat’s ass! I told him at least half should be cut but he said, “We’re locked into the thing. Already been paid.” I hated the songs and the script.

G.I Blues obviously wasn’t the movie you hoped to make after leaving the army.

I never liked musicals, man. Though I did make some pretty good movies before the army. King Creole is still my favourite. In Loving You, in some scenes I was pretty natural, but in other scenes I was trying to act and when you try to act you’re dead. But one of the happiest days in my life was when my mama phoned me when I was in the army and read the New York Times review of King Creole, where it said, “Elvis can act.” And the producer, Paul Nathan, also wired me telling me that sneak previews of King Creole proved I was accepted as great dramatic star as well as singer. He wrote, “We are all very proud of the way you came through.” That meant so much to me.

And King Creole was a challenge for me because it was written for a more experienced actor (James Dean). But from the start of my movie career I wanted to be accepted as a dramatic actor. Even then I said I hoped I wouldn’t be singing in movies. But you know what the main difference was between my pre-Army movies and G.I Blues? In the early movies I was an entertainer and it was natural to sing but in G.I Blues I was a soldier and felt like an idiot breaking into songs while I’m talking to some chick on the train.

You also, apparently, felt the same when you were asked to sing, on a horse, in Flaming Star.

Yeah, I told Don Siegal, “I can’t do that to this picture.” And he had the song cut. But the Colonel wanted songs so we could sell records. When I told him I didn’t want to sing in Flaming Star he said, “You’ll sing. There’s more money if you sing.” But there shouldn’t have been any songs in Flaming Star or Wild In The Country because those movies gave me a chance to prove myself as a dramatic actor.

So it must have broken your heart when fans rejected those ‘darker movies’ and went, instead, for Blue Hawaii, the ‘travelogue’ that, with its 14 songs, set up the pattern for the nearly 20 movies that was to follow.

It did. And the Colonel never stopped reminding me how the failure of those two movies proved the fans only wanted to see me in musicals. Even so, I enjoyed making Blue Hawaii because it seemed like a weight lifted from my shoulders whenever I landed in Hawaii. And I’d always liked Hawaiian music. But you know what really pissed me off in ‘61? I’d been offered West Side Story when I got out of the army and the Colonel said he didn’t want me playing a hoodlum again. So who did they get? Richard Beymer, who looked like a choir boy! Then West Side Story was voted Best Picture of 1961, or whenever. And, man, that guy wasn’t even singing his own songs! And around the same time I was asked to play the lead in Tennessee Williams’ Sweet Bird of Youth but the Colonel said “no” again and that damn role went to Paul Newman. Now, one of my favourite movies is Newman’s Cool Hand Luke. I know all the dialogue off-by-heart.

But most of my movies are second rate. The stories are dumb and the dialogue is worse than dumb. Do you think Newman would make movies like that? When I made Love Me Tender I didn’t know anything about movie-making or acting and it was a thrill for me just being there and doing it. But, damn it, by the time I made my tenth picture, I knew I could do better. But the Colonel would say, “Elvis, don’t mess with success.”

You did have a chance a few years back when Barbra Streisand wanted you to co-star with her in the remake of A Star Is Born – a role that, then, went to Kris Kristofferson.

And the Colonel, again, said no. Streisand offered me $500,000 plus 10% of the profits but Parker pushed for $1 million in salary, $100,000 in expenses and 50% of the profits so that was the end of that. And I really wanted to do that part, badly. Though I didn’t know if I could play the part of a loser who dies at the end of the movie, man.

Maybe Parker also felt the subject matter – a fading star who dies of drink and drugs – was too close to the bone. DJ Fontana told me you guys started taking No Doze – a kind of speed – back in the ’50s to keep awake during all those cross-country tours.

I gave this interview to come clean on drugs so I suppose I better do that right now. Yeah, I was using speed, or ‘trucker’s bennies’, for years. But I got my first real uppers – Dexedrine, sometimes Desbutals – by swiping them out of bottles my mother was given by her doctor to help her deal with the change of life. This was around 1957. I’d take two or three and get so ripped, my teeth would chatter!

But my big introduction to pills goes back to when I was doing guard duty in Germany and they gave us Benzedrine to stay awake. And we used ’em to stay awake and to increase our stamina, if you know what I mean, when we visited the fleshpots of Paris when I was in the Army. I remember telling Rex Mansfield, a buddy, “You should take ’em. They are totally harmless, prescribed by physicians and used the world over. Doctors even give them to children if they’re a little overweight.” And I used ’em, just like mama, from the start, to keep my weight in check. They were actually called diet pills.

Barbara Pitman also remembers that after your mother died you were in so much grief and so hysterical a doctor was called to help you. She remembers you and he going upstairs and says that when you came back you “were feeling no pain”.

I still would rather be unconscious than miserable. What I always said was that, with pills, I wanted to get the same feeling an alcoholic gets with booze except not be totally out of control. So I used them to get moving on mornings when you didn’t feel like it. And also when I was making movies I knew nobody cared for and recording songs the Colonel set up for me that I felt were not worth recording. But then so did all the guys.

What about LSD?

Only used it once, man. Around ’66. After reading The Psychedelic Experience and Doors Of Perception. A girl who hung around at the house in LA gave me a gift of windowpane acid. And the word around Hollywood was that an acid trip could open you up to new experiences and perceptions. Under the influence, some people even claimed to have seen, or experienced, God. And I was deeply into all my spiritual studies with Larry Geller at the time so one day at Graceland, Priscilla, myself, Geller, Jerry Schilling and Sonny West – he was our ‘monitor’ – dropped our hits of acid. And we were having a pleasant, mellow trip when suddenly Priscilla fell to her knees in front of me and began sobbing, “You don’t really love me, you just say you do.” I tried to convince her she was wrong. I thought she was having a bad trip. But she snapped out of it and we turned on the television and watched The Time Machine, sent out for some pizza and, as we were coming down, walked behind Graceland and marvelled at the beauty of nature, talked about how lucky we were to have good friends and about how much we cared for each other. But I never used it again.

Geller, apparently, changed your life.

Totally. Before I met Larry, the only religious book I’d read was the Bible. When I was a kid, if I had a problem, my mother would say, “Go read the Bible, son. You’ll find your answers there.” So I always had a deep belief in God. But just the other day my daddy and I were reminiscing recently about how when I was a kid, the First Assembly Church of God said it was a sin to go to the movies – that they undermined the morals of people? Well, one day daddy and I did go to see an Abbot and Costello movie and I never could figure out how that movie would damage my morals! So from that moments onwards I questioned my religion, I guess. And I never believed in all that hellfire and damnation stuff, old preachers tryin’ to make people feel guilty. I always knew that deep inside me there were answers that went beyond their rigid old closed minds.

So where did Geller come in?

Around ’64 my regular hairdresser, told me this guy, Geller – another hairdresser – was “interesting”. So when he came over to cut my hair I asked, “What are you into, man?” And he told me about how, five years earlier, he’d started wondering about life, asking himself, is there a purpose to it all? So I asked, “What is your purpose?” He told me, “If there is a purpose then my purpose is to discover my purpose. It doesn’t matter if it takes years or a lifetime that’s what we’re born to do.” And I said, “Whoa, Larry, I don’t believe it, what you’re talking about, I’ve been secretly thinking all the time. I’ve always known there had to be a purpose for my life.

I’ve always felt an unseen hand guiding my life. There’s got to be a reason I was chosen to be Elvis Presley. I never believed anything was a coincidence. There’s gotta be a meaning for it all. Then I told Geller, “I swear to God, no one knows how lonely I am. And how empty I really feel.” And tears streamed down my goddamn face.

Why?

Who knows? Maybe because I knew I couldn’t talk about these things with Priscillla or the Memphis Mafia or anyone, so I asked Larry to leave his job that day and come work for me. And he did. The very next morning he arrived on the set in Paramount, where I was making Roustabout, and brought me books like Autobiography Of A Yogi, The Initiation Of The World. And The Impersonal Life by Joseph Benner. That really was the book I needed. So bad. Because Benner said he didn’t write it, that it came from a higher divine self and that the truth lies within us, that we all are part of the Divinity. Now I know it off by heart.

The part that blew me away, is where it says, “I may be expressing through you beautiful symphonies of sound, colour or language that manifest as music, art, poetry… and which so affect others as to cause them to acclaim you as one of the great ones of the day… (and) hail you as a wonderful preacher or teacher.” And I’ve been devouring books like that ever since. That’s why I really was pissed, years later, when Parker said I was “on a religious kick”. This wasn’t a ‘kick’, it was my life. Whereas all he wanted me to do was make silly tennybopper movies that had no substance or truth.

There’s substance and truth in abundance in How Great Thou Art, the gospel album you recorded in ’66 which, to me, marks the start of your comeback.

I hope so! Well, what happened then was that I knew I was locked into those contracts for Hollywood movies until the late ’60s so, round about early ’66, I started thinking about getting back into the studio to cut some non-movie soundtrack sides. I even made some home recordings of things like Jimmy Reed’s ‘Baby What Do You Want Me To Do’ and Dylan’s ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ then, actually, went into the studio and cut Dylan’s ‘Tomorrow Is A Long Time’. As a kind of musical meditation. But my real point-of-focus was the gospel album. And, yeah, the ’68 Special followed that.

But, before that, you married Priscilla.

A marriage that I now see was ill-fated from the start. You know why? Priscilla, like Parker, had no time for my ‘soul-searching’. And Priscilla rejected the spiritual. She tried to get me to stop reading and studying. I think if it were up to her, she would have me stop my search for God. But no way. That’s my God-given right.

So Priscilla, I realised, was not my soul-mate. And yet I did love that woman. Still do. I said to someone recently, if I ever marry again, it will be to the mother of my child, Lisa. (Elvis shivers, suddenly overcome with emotion) I’ll never forget the day Lisa was born. I said to Priscilla, ‘I can’t believe I made part of this beautiful child.’ It was the happiest day of my life, man. And Lisa was the greatest thing that ever happened to me.

Even so, within four months of Lisa’s birth the ’68 Special became the focus of your life.

I know. And maybe that’s where I began to take Priscilla and my marriage for granted. When I re-focused on my career. But you gotta remember that I was scared to death at the start of making that Special. I’d decided I wanted this show to depart completely from the pattern of the movies and everything I’d done and show people what I really can do. But when I met Bones Howe, man, he reminded me we’d worked together in ’58 and said what impressed him most was that the quality of those recording sessions was dictated not by the clock but by my emotional commitment. And he said I’d have to rip myself raw for the Special, that the show had to come directly from my life, my music, my experience. I agreed with all that. And even told him I’d do a live section. My first live gig in seven years!

So you were nervous?

Well, yeah. I read an article that said, “The kids don’t scream for The King like they used to” and I got so terrified, thinking, “What if nobody likes me? What if they think I’m just some old guy trying to recapture his youth?” And even before I want out on stage that first night, I said to Binder, “I’ve changed my mind, I don’t want to go out there, what if I freeze and have nothing to say?” That’s why you see my hand trembling as I reach for the microphone to sing ‘Heartbereak Hotel’. I was terrified, man.

But the whole show was about just that, “getting back on the track” to cull a line from ‘Guitar Man’!

Yeah. And the guys who wrote it, told me the idea was based on a play called The Blue Bird, a saga of a search for meaning in a man’s life that is rewarded only after he comes full circle. I liked that idea from the start. And I’ll tell you, man, when I did that sit-down sequence with the guys and we cut loose on old blues tunes like ‘Tryin’ To Get To You’ I did feel like I was coming back home. But also, in a strange way, singing myself into the future. That’s why I punched the air at one point! In fact, I got so excited that Bill Belew had to go to Steve Binder after the performance and say, “We got a problem, this leather suit’s all wet inside!” What happened, man, I’ll leave to your imagination! (laughs).

You also insisted that there be a gospel sequence in the show.

Because, as I said during the filming, “Rock ’n’ roll music is basically gospel or rhythm ’n’ blues, it sprang from that.” And I couldn’t believe it when they gave me that great, gospel-like song to end the show. When Parker heard If I Can Dream he said, “That is not an Elvis song” but I told him, “I’d like to try it.” And when he was shouting, “Over my dead body will we put a new song at the end of the show”, I just said, “Guys, I’ll do it.” I told Binder to empty the studio and turn down the lights and I sang that song four times. The last time, man, I was curled in a foetal position, on the floor, just screaming out that lyric, “As long as a man has the strength to dream/He can redeem his soul and fly.” My boy, my boy, I really could feel those lines. And, y’know, after I watched the Special for the first time, I turned to Binder and said, “Steve, I will never sing another song, act in another movie or do anything I don’t believe in from here on out.” And I really meant that. So not long afterwards I got out of that damn movie contract and went back to Memphis to record for the first time in 14 years. And I said to the guys, “I want to see if I can get just one more number one.”

Which you did, of course, with songs like ‘In The Ghetto’ and ‘Suspicious Minds’ – some of the best recordings in your life.

I think so, man. In fact, I got more creative satisfaction from recording those songs than I got from anything I had done since 1960. In music or on film. And new, more mature songs like ‘In The Ghetto’ were exactly what I wanted to sing when I made my comeback in Vegas, not silly lyrics like ‘Hound Dog’. Sure, I extended the idea of the ’68 Special, doing a lot of old songs but what I really wanted to represent on stage in Vegas was the whole spectrum of American music. So when I started interviewing up to 180 musicians the one question I’d ask was, “Can you play any kind of music?” If they could they were in. That’s how I picked guys like James Burton. And a ‘weirdo’ named Jerry Scheff! And I’d loved The Sweet Inspiratons when they sang with Aretha Franklin, so I put them together with the white gospel sounds of the Imperials. And I wanted the orchestra to have a Big Band sound that could also be orchestral. In fact, the Colonel nearly had a heart attack when he saw that the payroll was $80,000 for the four weeks because of the 50 musicians and singers I used.

What about your own preparations?

But I was so serious about that show that I even cut out the pills I’d been using, cut out fried foods, went on a diet of vegetables and yoghurt and worked out with karate for weeks to get in shape. And I decided to drop the gyrations of the ’50s, draw on the grace and discipline of karate. I even styled my stage suits on karate suits. Man, I planned that Vegas show like I was General Patton going into war! But, y’know I still was terrified. I even told Joe Esposito to tell some of the guys back in Memphis not to come ‘til the second night. But, hell, when I walked out that first night the standing ovation – and the standing ovation at the end of every song – just blew me away. And made me even more aware of how much I’d missed the live contact with an audience, the electricity that’s generated back and forth when you’re on stage. I sure as hell didn’t get that feeling when I sang to turtles in movies!

So, Elvis, what happened? That was only eight years ago.

I know, and only last December at the end of a show at the Hilton I said to the audience, “I hate Las Vegas.” And I do, now. A week earlier I even wrote a note where I said something like: “I feel so alone sometimes. The night is quiet for me. I would love to be able to sleep. I am glad everyone is gone now, I will probably not rest tonight. I have no need for all this. Help me Lord.” But the goddamn Colonel will probably have me playing Vegas ’til I die, because he owes them so much money in gambling debts. Yet, like I said earlier, man, I need a challenge and Vegas just ain’t a challenge anymore. And maybe I hate it because, at some point, I realised I couldn’t face the public without being juiced up with drugs.

What drugs? I know you’ve been reading and updating, by the month, the Physician’s Desk Reference for maybe 15 years, so you had to know what you were taking.

But I was in denial. To myself. And everybody. That’s the God’s honest truth, man. I remember Dr. Nick confronted me after I was found here in Graceland, half hanging off my bed, my stomach swollen, my breathing all rasping and I was rushed to hospital. That was just a few days after I got my divorce from Priscilla. And let me tell you that the failure of my marriage and missing my little daughter definitely made me up my drug use. But anyway, Nick told me then, in October 1973, “Elvis, you are badly addicted to morphine – one of the strongest drugs in the world. You’ve been receiving it in the form of Demerol, a painkiller. Worse, your system has been poisoned by cortisone injections, masked by painkillers, Novocaine, I suspect.” He was right. I had been getting stuff from doctors all over the States but I just said, ‘Dr. Nick, I have no idea how this happened. It isn’t possible. You know what I’m taking – a little valium, some of those sleeping pills you gave me, some amphetamines when I have to do a show.” Either way, the hospital here in Memphis said I was suffering from pneumonia but I really went through detox. But when I got back to Graceland I had my own stash and even hid vials of pills in the seams of curtains, man. So what do I take when touring? Well, I’d wake at 3pm and maybe get Ionamin, Dexedrine, Biphetamine or Sanorex – all of which are amphetamines. Then maybe an hour later I’d get a shot of Halotestin, a Vitamin B12 injection and another Dexedrine Spansule to see me through the show. And I’d usually demand Dilaudid, an hour before I’d go on stage because that gave me one hell of a feeling of euphoria.

Isn’t Dilaudid called “drugstore heroin” even though it’s two and half times as strong?

Yeah. believe me, I need those drugs to get me through a show. And after it ends I’d get Inderal, to control my blood pressure, Periacton because of the itching caused by my costume, Sinequaan, an antidepressant and maybe – if I was really down, a quaalude. Then, back in my suite, I’d get my “bedtime packet number one”: sedatives, for insomnia, Carbital, Noludar – a hypnotic sleeping pill – maybe even another quaalude. And if one pack wouldn’t knock me out, I’d get another. Just like I probably will when we finish this interview, because I need to knock myself out before the tour starts tomorrow night in Portland. In fact, sometimes I’ve slept for three days on end here in Graceland after taking what we call my “attacks”.

Not exactly the state of “oceanic consciousness” you read drugs can bring about, in books like The Psychedelic Experience, is it?

That ain’t necessarily so, man. I remember, back around ’72, talking about this very subject with a girlfriend of mine called Joyce Bova. In fact, we were talking about what I had finally come to realise was my “purpose” in life. I would read to her passages from The Impersonal Life and one time I just said to her, “If you relax and open your mind, the heavens can tell you all kinds of things. Sometimes I even hear my mama talking to me out there. She’s the reason I got as far as I did in life. But sometimes I think God wants me to be greater than I am. I don’t mean as an entertainer, I mean as a person. I truly believe, Joyce, that God has a greater purpose in mind for me. That’s why I was the twin that survived. To carry a message for Him. I’m not just good ol’ good-time Elvis with his wild ‘Memphis Mafia’. I’m a serious man and I’ve a serious message for the world. I can help people. I have a vision, a purpose. We all have divinity inside us. Some of us just understand it more. But what I have been tryin’ to give – what I try to give – is that understanding.”

And she said, “Elvis, if we’re Gods, or at least have this ‘divinity’ in us, why do we need drugs.” So I told her, “Silence is the resting place of the soul. It’s sacred. And necessary for new thoughts to be born. That’s what my pills are for, Joyce. For me to get as close as possible to that silence.” But she pushed me, man, she said, “How can you reach out to the multitudes, if that’s your ‘purpose’ when you can’t control your own life without drugs?” But I wasn’t ready to hear questions like that back in ’72. So I just said – and this is true, too – “I have to experience everything, Joyce. The experience has to be in my voice for people to feel it, to be touched and moved by it.”

But Joyce was right, Elvis, when she asked how can you reach out to the multitudes if you can’t control your own life without drugs.

(Angrily) Don’t go misrepresenting me, man, when you go back to Ireland. You gotta tell the folks that when I’m here in Gracleand it is mostly just a mix of uppers and downers I take. Especially when I’d feelin’ lower than a snake’s belly, man. But pills also help me deal with ailments like high blood pressure, liver damage, and an enlarged colon. And insomnia. I’ve always had insomnia. But it’s gotten worse since I heard about that damn bodyguard book. I can’t sleep, man. And when I do, I have these nightmares. Like where I where I go out on stage and there is no one in the audience. And to tell you the truth, man, even when I’m awake I’m haunted by this idea that I’ll walk on stage during the next tour – the one that starts tomorrow night, the first one since that fuckin’ book came out – and someone will shout, “Hey, drug addict.” Or, “Aw, hell, you’re wiped out.”

If that happens what will you do?

At first I thought I’d just say, “No, I’m not a drug addict. Sure, I take certain things but I need them, And here’s my doctor, he’ll tell you.” But then I realised I should go ahead and say, “Yeah, I got a problem with drugs and after this tour I’m going to get myself straightened out.” That’s why this interview, with you, is the first of many I’ll be giving to tell the whole story. And to try kill that fucking bodyguard’s book. Though sometimes I would rather load my gun and go kill those motherfuckers themselves. But one thing I do know about myself is that I got the power of heaven and hell in me and I got to balance them both, I’ve got to learn to conquer the hell. (Presley pauses, starts crying, slightly) But you know what torments me most about Elvis: What Happened? The thought of ‘What is my little girl going to think when she grows up? What is she going to think of her daddy?' So I really do think I will take time off after this tour to analyse, re-evaluate and straighten myself out. (Elvis suddenly smiles) And here’s an exclusive for you, boy. I’m going to get rid of the Colonel."

I could say ‘about time’ but why this drastic decision when you seem to have needed him for so long?

No, man, he made me believe I needed him, that I’d be nothing without him. But the truth is that now, more than ever, he treats me like I am nothing. Nothing but a dollar sign. To him. Someone told me that one night, three months ago, after I overdosed in my dressing room and Dr. Nick was trying to revive me, ducking my head in and out of a bucket of iced water, Parker just walked in – totally unconcerned about my condition and said, “The only thing that’s important is that he’s on stage tonight. Nothing else matters.” So he’s out and Tom Hulett’s in. And here’s another exclusive, I’m finally coming to Europe. And Australia and Japan. I’ve already asked the pilot of the Lisa Marie if he’ll fly the plane for our World Tour and Bill Belew is designing a suit, with lasers in it, that’ll blow the world away man! And that bodyguard’s book!

And you know what else I’m gonna do? (Elvis stands up, stretches his arms, signalling it’s time for me to go) Disband the Memphis Mafia. I don’t like the term; it’s been an embarrassment to me my whole life. I don’t need all those people around me. All I need is a few people around me. I want to change my life; I want a whole new life. I want a new career, I want to be an actor again. I paid some guys to write a screenplay for me called Billy Easter, which will be a

non-singing role, and maybe that will get my movie career back on track. And I want to have a son, I want to have more children. After all, I am only 42. Hell, I feel better even just talking about all this. If I die tonight it will take them a year to wipe this smile off my face!

Red West did say today that you are hooked on so many medications, it’s inevitable you will die of an overdose.

I’m not afraid of death. Only the ignorant, the unenlightened person is afraid of death. And that’s because

they are afraid of living. People, man, they go to funerals and everyone

wears black, and everyone’s crying. They should be rejoicing. The soul’s free. The soul is going back to God, going home again.