Me and a Guy Named Elvis

by Jerry Schilling

  “Jerry, you’re just no use to me anymore.”

  I’d heard that Vernon usually did the firing. At least I was getting the personal send-off. But I wanted to know why.

  “What do you mean, Elvis?”

  He handed me a thick, folded-up envelope. I opened it up, and was quite surprised to find that I was staring at an open-ended, round-trip ticket to Hawaii. I looked back at Elvis, unable to speak.

  “Go get her, man,” he laughed. “Bring her back. Then maybe I’ll be able to get some work out of you.”

  Soon I was back in Oahu, living in the Polynesian Motel near the Cultural Center and waiting for Sandy to have some free time between her classes and her dance performances. She brought me fresh fruit every morning for breakfast on her way to the campus, and every time she left I was overcome with loneliness, counting the minutes until I’d see her again. In some ways, my romantic circumstances hadn’t changed too much from all those times in New York that I waited for Carol Cook, but it was a lot nicer to be stuck on a Hawaiian beach than in a New Rochelle basement.

  I started spending a lot of time with Sandy’s extended family, who lived in traditional Polynesian style in a collection of humble homes overlooking a bay on the west side of the island. It wasn’t always easy to understand each other—most of her family spoke a mix of Polynesian and pidgin English. But they were incredibly welcoming and friendly, and they accepted me and made me feel at home. I was a part of family luaus, and even developed a taste for the dried octopus the women prepared on the family clotheslines. The only trouble I had fitting in was when Sandy’s brothers took me out fishing—the smell of captured sea turtles mixing with the fumes from the small outboard engine and the nonstop rocking of the boat reduced me to a violently seasick haoli (visiting white guy).

  By the end of my visit, Sandy and I were more in love than ever, and I’d earned enough trust with her parents that they agreed to a rather unusual plan for their daughter: When she finished her studies for the term, she could come visit me in Memphis.

  That Christmas season was probably the happiest I’d ever had. I was living at Graceland, back to staying up late for deep conversations with Elvis, and waiting for the beautiful girl I loved to come be a part of my life. Only one thing bothered me—getting a motorcycle from Elvis was one thing, but it seemed like my own pursuit of true love should have been paid for by me. I made a plan with Vernon that a few dollars would be subtracted from my paycheck each week until my ticket was paid off. I think Vernon was a little shocked that one of the guys was actually trying to give money back to Elvis, but he agreed to the plan. When Elvis eventually found out what I’d done he was surprised, too, and appreciative. The price of one plane ticket didn’t mean anything to him, but I know he understood the feeling behind my settling of the debt.

  Graceland at Christmastime was always beautiful. The trees in front of the house were lit from beneath with soft-colored lights, decorations were everywhere, and there was a life-size nativity scene on the hill outside the front door. The place became a social hub, with all sorts of people coming by to pay their regards. This was also a time when Elvis was at his most generous. A few days before Christmas, he’d sit in the living room with his father and go through a list of fifty local Memphis charities he’d asked the city to provide for him. He’d go through the list and ask Vernon questions about the groups. Vernon would have done his research, and could tell Elvis exactly what each of the wide-ranging charities did and who they were helping. Every year, each of the charities on the list got a thousand-dollar check from Elvis. Some celebrities might have made a big PR moment out of that kind of giving, but for Elvis it was private and personal, part of the holiday season in his home.

  Elvis was better at giving than receiving, and as one might imagine, he was a hard guy to pick out a present for. This particular Christmas, the guys managed to come up with something he really appreciated. Elvis had recently had a “Meditation Garden” constructed off to the side of the house past the swimming pool. It was designed to echo the feel of the Self-Realization Fellowship grounds, and we guys figured the perfect Christmas gift for Elvis would be a statue for the garden. Marty and I got in contact with my old art teacher, Bitter Lemon proprietor and reigning Memphis bohemian John McIntire, and commissioned a four-foot statue of Jesus in his robes, with his arms outstretched offering solace to all seekers. We put it up on a pedestal on a walkway in the meditation garden, and when we took Elvis out to show him he was visibly moved (visitors to Graceland can still see it in the same spot today).

  Not all the rituals we went through that Christmas were quite so traditional. After a great deal of reading up on the subject, and a great deal of psychological preparation, Elvis had decided that he wanted to see what inner knowledge might be gained from an experience with LSD. I had no strong desire to experiment with drugs, but Elvis really approached it as a means of enlightenment—not just as a way to have kicks. Elvis had read some of Timothy Leary’s writings, and he’d been very excited about Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, and I think he hoped that acid might provide the shortcut to the insight that he’d been after. I figured that whatever method he was going to use to better himself was worth a try from me also. And I still felt that whatever I did with him, I’d be safe.

  A few days after Christmas, Elvis, Priscilla, Larry Geller, and I split up some tabs of acid upstairs at Graceland (Larry had managed to procure the LSD). Sonny West was with us, too, to serve as a nonindulging assistant and security detail if any of us needed help along the way.

  We took the tabs, then sat around the big table in the conference room up there and just talked for a while. At some point, it seemed that no matter what anybody said, everybody else started laughing. I looked around at the people with me, and felt like I was not just seeing them, but seeing into them—really knowing them for the first time. I figured maybe they were looking at me the same way, and I started to feel vulnerable, a little too exposed. And that’s when the visuals started to kick in. I stared at Elvis sitting in his chair, and right before my eyes he seemed to morph into a child—a plump, happy little boy. And the more I stared, the more he shape-shifted—until I was seeing him as a great big, chubby baby smiling back at me, contented as could be. I started laughing, and Elvis started laughing, and I realized we were in for quite an adventure.

  As the feelings and visions continued to get stronger and stronger, I became a little frightened. I started to wonder if the visions would ever stop, if I’d ever get back to “normal” again. I wanted to be in a safe, enclosed place, to try to get a hold on my reeling mind’s eye. The spot that seemed safest to me was the walk-in closet in Elvis’s bedroom, where I sat under the clothes hanging there. Once I felt properly protected, I began laughing again, and I heard Elvis laugh in response to my laugh. He was still down the hall in the conference room, but we began communicating by laughing back and forth—a call and response of rippling roars and gut-busting horselaughs. The laughter didn’t feel forced or silly—it felt like a real conversation.

  When the laughter finally subsided, I peeked out from under the hanging clothes around me and saw an attractive creature, half-cat and half-woman, sort of rubbing and clawing its way along the bedroom wall, and then stopping before a mirror: Priscilla, looking striking and beautiful and lost in a world of her own.

  After a while, Elvis, Priscilla, Larry, and I regrouped on the huge bed in Elvis’s room. Elvis flicked on the TV that was mounted from the ceiling above the bed. We looked up and were immediately sucked into The Time Machine, the somewhat disturbing George Pal adaptation of the H. G. Wells story, starring Rod Taylor and a cast of future-world mutants. It was a film we’d enjoyed before at Memphian screenings, but something felt a little off to me this time. The plot of the film somehow expanded around Rod and the mutants to include all of us on the bed. I felt like we were all in the movie—and that everything Rod and the other characters said applied to us.

  At some point, it occur
red to the group that nobody had eaten for ten or twelve hours. Pizza sounded like a good idea, and Sonny made the call to have some delivered. When they finally arrived, they smelled great, but I noticed something unusual—from the bottom of the crust to the topping, the pies looked to me to be about three feet thick. I had no idea how I was going to get my mouth around something like that. From the looks on my partners’ faces as they tried to handle a slice, I could tell I wasn’t the only one overwhelmed by the idea of wrestling our way through the mozzarella and pepperoni in front of us. Sonny had no problem knocking off a couple of slices, but the rest of us realized that food and LSD were not a great mix.

  After a few hours, when the drug’s charged edge had started to wear off, we all went outside to walk the grounds. It was a misty morning, and the drops of dew seemed set on the grass and trees like so many jewels. For a good deal of the trip I had felt set deep inside myself—my sped-up mind somehow apart from my slow-motion body. Now drops blown off the trees in the morning breeze landed on my skin and served as a cooling comedown. I felt back together, and was both relieved to be at trip’s end, and thrilled at what we’d experienced. I also felt a rush of emotion for my fellow seekers. I guess everyone felt that, because I do remember that we all began to open up a bit, telling each other how important we were to each other, what good friends we were, and how much we loved being together. So much always went unsaid between all of us, but this was one of those rare and real times when everyone, even Elvis, spoke openly about our feelings and our friendship. Then, absolutely exhausted, we split up and went to bed.

  I remember that as I drifted toward sleep that night, it occurred to me that I had in fact achieved a kind of enlightenment, but it had come in a way I hadn’t expected, and ended up feeling more personal than spiritual. I didn’t feel elevated to some higher plane, but I did feel I’d been on an amazing adventure that would always be a part of the way I looked at things. The drug didn’t deliver instant knowledge or awareness, but it pulled you on a journey that felt both noble and ridiculous—a jolting mix of Self-Realization Fellowship and the Fairground’s Pippin. Seeing that little boy inside Elvis was an insight I knew I’d hang on to. Pizza a yard thick—maybe there wasn’t so much of a lesson there.

  Allowing ourselves to experience life in such a different way and giving each sense a new power of discovery was worth the trip. At the same time, I had no desire to take that trip again (I didn’t—and neither did Elvis or Priscilla). And just as sleep was finally grabbing ahold of me, I had my most enlightened thought of the night: I had a great friend in Elvis, and I was living a damned good life.

  7

  A MILE IN MY SHOES

  The genius of Elvis Presley was in his music, but the magic was in his voice. He was never more at one with his talents than when he was in the act of singing, putting that remarkable voice to work. One of the most memorable times I got to watch Elvis at work in the recording studio was in Nashville, at the RCA Studios, in the spring of 1966. He, Red West, and Charlie Hodge had been spending a lot of time informally jamming and working out ideas for songs (I hadn’t tried to make a musical contribution since the day we were all driving through Beverly Hills and some catchy song came on the radio. We turned it up and everybody started taking a harmony part and singing along. I thought we had a strong quartet going, but Elvis turned around, looked at me, and said, “What’s that noise?” I haven’t sung since).

  Elvis was listening to newer sounds then, and had become fascinated with the work of Odetta and Bob Dylan—people who managed to apply their musical talents to the same kind of soulful questioning and search for insight that Elvis had pursued in his books. Around this time, I brought Elvis a Peter, Paul and Mary album—not a real natural fit with Memphis Mafia tastes—and I was very happy to see that it became one of his favorites. Elvis hadn’t recorded a non-soundtrack album of fresh material in years, but that spring, with his mind set on finding some material of emotional and spiritual substance, he decided to record an album of gospel music. It would be titled after one of its standout tracks, “How Great Thou Art.”

  It was amazing to watch the work process in the studio, throughout which Elvis was confidently in charge of every detail. In this situation, he was clearly working for himself—not for an audience, or a television camera, or a film director. His music meant everything to him, and when it came to creating something he really cared about, he put himself into it completely. He picked the material. He worked out the arrangements. He went through all kinds of back and forth with the session players to work out all the subtleties of their parts. He brainstormed with his new producer, Felton Jarvis, over the general sound and setup for each track.

  The How Great Thou Art sessions marked the first time that Elvis and Felton had worked together. The young, enthusiastic producer was a huge Elvis fan and had once recorded an Elvis tribute song of his own (“Don’t Knock Elvis”). He’d had some great success with Gladys Knight and The Pips and pop singer Tommy Roe, but one of the main reasons RCA had him on this session was that he was as much of a night owl as Elvis and had no qualms about working through the night. Right away, Elvis seemed to appreciate the positive energy and excitement with which Felton approached their sessions, and the two seemed very much in synch when they discussed the kind of feel Elvis wanted in his recordings.

  Of course, with Elvis in charge, the music-making process was quite a bit different than the movie-making process. On a movie set, time was strictly kept: a 7:00 A.M. call-time meant you got started at 7:00 A.M. In the studio, a 7:00 P.M. session meant that Elvis might turn up around seven, but then he might do everything but record—there might be hours of hanging out before a note was sung. He could step out of his trailer on a movie set and deliver his lines for Harum Scarum on demand. But when he sang he was at his most open and exposed. His singing was at the core of who he was, and to perform as well as he wanted to, he had to feel some creative spark and a degree of inspiration. That spark couldn’t always be tightly scheduled.

  I learned that studio hang-out time was crucial to Elvis’s getting into the right frame of mind. The studio was always part social club and part sanctuary for him, and whenever he was there, that’s exactly where he wanted to be. He loved spending time with the musicians, and enjoyed talking shop with them. There’d be laughing and talking and storytelling between Elvis and his players—his way of taking the pressure out of the situation. Felton himself was a tremendous storyteller with a great sense of humor, and Elvis couldn’t get enough of his crazy tales of working with Fats Domino, one of Elvis’s favorite performers. After the talk and the laughs, when Elvis felt things had built to just the right moment, he’d go to work.

  By the time of the How Great Thou Art sessions, most of the other guys had sat through dozens of recording sessions, and some of the mystique of Elvis in the studio had worn off for them. As on the movie sets, a lot of the guys that came with Elvis would spend some time watching and listening, but also spent a fair amount of time playing cards. Red and Charlie, though, were often very active participants in the studio sessions. They could speak the language of the Memphis guys as well as the language of the session players, and they worked as a pair of very critical bridges between the groups. Elvis made the final calls musically, but Red and Charlie were both talented and comfortable enough to offer musical input as well as moral support.

  I didn’t have much to offer musically, but I had no interest in playing cards. I was interested in watching Elvis at work, and I was also fascinated by the whole studio process. I’d watch the engineer check the buttons on his console, watch the drummer set up and tune his drums, watch the careful placement of microphones. The sounds and the ambience in the studio reminded me of the sounds you’d hear coming from a Broadway orchestra pit as the players loosened up and got ready for a big opening number. That was a lot more exciting to me than any game of five-card stud.

  There was magic in that voice—but there was magic in those ears, too. I wa
s blown away at how Elvis would shape not just his own performance, but the entire track. As the players began work on a new song, Elvis would call for all sorts of changes—he’d want the bass up, or the tempo slowed. He’d work out just how the background vocals should come in, and the manner in which they’d stack their harmonies. He’d work out with Felton how present he felt his vocals should be in relation to the backing track. He was dead serious about getting his music just right (he’d learned from the best, working with Sam Phillips in those early days). In fact, although he didn’t take the credit often, I believe Elvis is the most underrated producer in rock and roll. When you put Elvis Presley in the studio with some decent material, what you got was never just an Elvis Presley vocal: You got the Elvis sound in every element of the music.

  Still, it was that voice—his instrument—that pulled it all together. He’d sing his vocals separately if he had to, but he liked to keep his performances as live as possible, and a lot of his takes were recorded with the band. And when he was done experimenting and was really shooting for a master take, you could feel the energy in the room.

  At that Nashville session, I found a spot at a window looking into the recording room, and watched as Elvis delivered a transcendent performance while belting out the track “How Great Thou Art.” All the showmanship of his stage performances just dropped away—it was just voice and microphone—but you could see in the intensity of his expressions that this one was coming straight from the soul. When he got to the dramatic finish of the song, there was a strange hush in the room—nobody wanted to break the spell. I’ve been in a lot of recording studios since my time with Elvis, but I’ve never seen a performer undergo the kind of physical transition he did during that recording. He got to the end of the take and he was as white as a ghost, thoroughly exhausted, and in a kind of trance. He was on, and everybody in the studio knew it (though no one in the room suspected that Elvis had just delivered his first Grammy-winning vocal performance).