Elvis Presley: Caught in a Trap

Seeing Elvis in the Rearview Mirror

On August 16, 1977, I was driving down the Garden State Parkway with my girlfriend, looking forward to our first vacation together. I was meeting her family in her native Atlantic City, where she had grown up.

We were both Newsday reporters at the beginning of our careers. Before leaving I had just finished a 2,000 word cover story for the Sunday, August 21, entertainment section. The story was about Elvis Presley, a deeply reported essay about his career to date. It was timely, known in newspaper parlance as an "advance," since Elvis was coming to Nassau Coliseum the day after the story ran: Monday, August 22. I had the tickets in my wallet.

Presley had been in the news again, and not just because he was starting the next leg of his tour. There were books being published that pierced the controlled bubble established by manager Colonel Tom Parker and his bodyguards and go-fers known as the Memphis Mafia. In fact, three members of that Memphis Mafia--Sonny West, Red West, and Bill Hebler--close to Elvis since high school, had been fired by Vernon Presley. They wrote an explosive book Elvis: What Happened? to gossip writer and soon to be emblematic New York Post ranter Steve Dunleavy. The book told of Presley's alleged abuse of prescription drugs, his junk food diet, his increasing isolation.

For the advance story, I interviewed one of the bodyguard authors. I spoke to long time Presley friend, the Memphis disc jockey George Klein. Musicians and producers in Nashville and Memphis and L.A., people who had songs recorded by him. I spoke to anyone who would speak to me as close to Elvis' inner circle I could get, Elvis watchers in the music and entertainment business all over the country. It was a very solid assessment of what was known about Elvis' life and career.

When we walked into Marjorie's grandparents house in Ventnor, N.J., next to Atlantic City, I got a strange welcome from her grandfather. He reached out to shake my hand and said, "Elvis is dead." I said, "What?" He repeated that Elvis was dead. "Come look at the TV," he said. And there it was, on every channel. Elvis was dead.

My first thought was to call the news desk at Newsday and go back and write the obituary. I wondered if the paper would pay for a helicopter: Deadline would be tight. I had been on staff since January, and I was eager to be considered a solid newspaper journalist and not just a rock critic.

The guy on the news desk laughed: Not necessary to come back. They had pulled my "advance" from the Sunday section, would worry later about replating the Sunday entertainment cover with some wire copy. They were running my entire story starting on the front cover the next day. It was no longer an advance: it was now an "appreciation," the lengthy analysis and feature about the work and career of a famous person that goes beyond the obituary. "All we did," said the news editor, "was change your current tense to past tense. It works great."

History had not robbed me of the chance to see Elvis Presley in concert; it did rob me of better seats. When I moved to Boulder, Colorado, in the summer of 1970 after what is now called a "gap year" but which was then called "dropping out," I had two immediate tasks. I had to find a psychiatrist who would write a letter to keep me out of Vietnam, because when I left Bard a year earlier I had lost my student deferment. The draft lottery instituted in 1970--every birthday was on a slip of paper, and your availability for call up depended on what random order your birthday fell. I have never been a lucky lottery player, and this was no exception: my birthday came up No. 26, which meant I could expect to hear from the Selective Service (the draft people) soon.

I got a six-month deferment because of allergies, but I knew I needed a psych letter to stay out. I started to see an anti-war psychiatrist in Boulder, who had gotten so many people out of the army that his letters were no longer recognized by Colorado draft boards. My draft board was at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, so when the letter for a new physical came six months to the day after my deferment expired, I flew back home for the final physical. It was likely October 5, 1970. I remember that because the only thing to read as I sat for hours waiting for the Army doctor was a copy of the Daily News with the headline Janis Joplin, dead of a drug overdose. I didn't have to act depressed.

It's a long story, but by the time the Army psychiatrist at Fort Hamilton had read Dr. Sklar's letter about how messed up I was (not untrue, just slightly exaggerated), and spent 10 minutes interviewing me, he looked up from his writing and asked: "Why did you wait so long to get help?" I knew I was home free, but I told him the truth, in the same affectless monotone I had practiced in my mind: That my parents thought psychiatry a sham, would never admit that I could have problems that might reflect poorly on the family, and I had to move 2,000 miles away to Colorado to get that help. He wished me well.

I was 4-F, a source of shame in previous wars, the gold standard for deferments in Vietnam. The Viet Cong could be marching up Shelter Rock Road, but I was not suited to fight.

The second thing to do in Boulder was to go to the local alternative weekly office, with my clips from the Berkeley Barb and Bard newspaper, and offer to freelance. I soon became music editor of the Boulder Express, thanks to Critical Conditions subscriber and early mentor Robert Wells. The Express morphed into Boulder magazine, and on November 17, 1970, Elvis Presley came to the Denver Coliseum. Our office manager, Jim, who occasionally stole albums addressed to me at the magazine office, was only too glad to call the RCA Records PR executive in Nashville, who handled Presley press tickets. We got a handful: enough for six of us to see Elvis in Denver. In fact, we were a close circle of sort of friends: Jim's girlfriend Kathy was the roommate of my friend Beth and her two housemates. So six of us drove in someone's big enough car from Boulder to Denver.

Beth and I and her other two roommates found ourselves in the sixth row...directly behind the stage! And from the beginning, we wondered, where were Jim and Kathy? There was an opening set by the slick white gospel pop group the Imperials, whose sunny disposition was typified by their version of the secular hymn "Everything is Beautiful,"; an exciting enough  appearance by the black gospel pop group, the Sweet Inspirations. Intermission. All through this, we wondered, where were Jim and Kathy? We found out after the show, Jim actually bragging about it, that he had ripped us off: He and Kathy took the two reviewer's seats that were supposed to go to me and my date: tenth row, center, in front of the stage. Our seats behind the stage were actually for him and Kathy. I still have a bounty on that SOB's head.

When Elvis finally came out, it didn't really matter. If you're going to have to look at someone's ass for most of a show, it might as well have been Elvis Presley's. He turned around often enough to see his face. Still trim and energetic just two years after his 1968 comeback special, he came out rocking, starting with Arthur Crudup's "That's Alright Mama," and keeping the energy high through Ray Charles' "I've Got a Woman." Then, he stepped to the microphone to introduce himself:

"Hello," said Elvis Presley. "I'm Johnny Cash."

Here's what I wrote in Boulder magazine. (Remember I'm 20 years old.)

"The laughter leads into 'Love Me Tender.' The fury of of his entrance subsides, and he's still there in the flesh. Soft white leather suit, with open chest, hair drooped over the high collar, more sleek than slick, and pants tight enough to force joyous squeals from even the most reserved (if that is possible) of his fans."

The material struck me as safe: Dusty Springfield's "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me," the Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling." But he was Elvis. A quick medley of "Blue Suede Shoes," "Hound Dog, "Heartbreak Hotel." The pinnacle of his post-1968 hits, "Suspicious Minds," and the somehow inevitable "Bridge Over Troubled Water." The recent Elvis hit "The Wonder of You," in the Glen Campbell vein, which, I wrote then, "Elvis joked about more than once during the evening."

Glen Campbell, former studio session guitarist turned country pop star, was a major star then, with a weekly network TV show, The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, from 1968-1972. Campbell owed much of his million selling recording success to the young Oklahoma-raised songwriter Jimmy Webb, who wrote such classics as "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," "Wichita Lineman" and "Galveston," that charted country, pop, and what was known as adult contemporary. These were the kind of songs that Presley loved and craved. He was possibly pissed that Glen Campbell had first shot at them.

It's not quite clear enough in Baz Luhrmann's psychotropic film bio Elvis, which I finally saw (reaction: meh plus) recently on HBO/HBOMax. One area that Colonel Tom Parker had most nefarious impact on Presley: The songs he could record.

The Colonel preferred that Presley record songs in which they held at least a share of the music publishing rights, the gift that keeps on giving long after royalties from recordings have dried up. There is an interesting interview with Elvis' music publisher and personal song plugger, the late Freddy Bienstock. It's online at what was EIN: the Elvis Information Network. Bienstock is particularly candid about why the songs on Elvis’ movie soundtracks were generally so awful: Could anyone write a great title song for Harum Scarum?

I have many alternative histories of Elvis that rattle around. I think about when the  Beatles went to meet The King on August 27, 1965, in Beverly Hills.

I always thought of it as a small meeting, but it was a large crew, about 20 people, mostly bodyguards and managers, including both the Beatles' Brian Epstein and Colonel Parker. Epstein wanted to promote an Elvis tour of England; the Colonel told him, "I'll think about it," meaning no.

The Beatles and Elvis didn't have much to say to each other, until a short jam session broke out. ("Ticket to Ride" may have been played.) The Beatles were so concerned about the meeting looking like a publicity stunt that no recordings or photographs were allowed. According to Tony Barrow, the Beatles press rep who was there, Lennon asked Elvis: "Why do you do all these soft-centred ballads for the cinema these days? What happened to good old rock 'n' roll?'' Elvis didn't answer. The small talk got smaller.

But suppose Elvis had said: "I'd like to rock again. You guys got any songs hanging around for me?" Guaranteed, there would be a dozen Lennon-McCartney songs presented to Elvis within a week.

There have been many songs about Elvis Presley, none as beautiful or compelling as Jimmy Webb's "Elvis and Me," from Webb's 1993 album, Suspending Disbelief. The song is based on a true story: Elvis recognizes Webb in the lobby of a Las Vegas hotel. Elvis gives Webb front row tickets to the late show that night. Webb feels as if he has been touched by The Light: he's already feeling the rapture. At the show, a note from Elvis is passed to Webb: come backstage. He and Elvis chat in his dressing room, then go the penthouse for the after show party.

The song laments Elvis' death, articulating the fantasy so many of us have when someone who has touched our lives comes to an untimely demise: "When he died, a part of me passed on too/If only he'd called me/I know I could have saved him for sure," Webb sings.

When I interviewed Webb for the Suspending Disbelief album at his former unofficial headquarters, the Old Town Bar in Manhattan, he told me that at the party in penthouse, the Colonel caught his eye, waved him over, and opened the door to the suite. Ushering Webb out of the party, Colonel Parker told him (and I'm paraphrasing, but not much): "The next time I see you better be at the Brentwood Farmers Market."

The message was cryptic yet clear: Stay away from Elvis. You won't see him again unless you bump into him by accident. You're not going to write songs for him. You only get to Elvis by going through me.

That is also the sad message of the Baz Luhrmann movie: the Colonel's suspicious mind, Elvis caught in a trap, from which he could not get out alive.