Me and a Guy Named Elvis

by Jerry Schilling

  “Yes? Party of?” he asked.

  “Miller. Party of four,” said a well-dressed middle-aged woman.

  “Table for four,” said Elvis. He picked up a pen and made a note in the reservation book, then began to look around the restaurant for an open table.

  The woman had a puzzled expression on her face. “Excuse me—are you…”

  “I get that all the time,” said the pinch-hitting maître d’.

  The other people waiting to be seated started to realize who was now handling their reservations. The real maître d’ now hurried back to his station, looking a little surprised that a VIP guest had found it necessary to step in for him.

  “This man will take excellent care of you. Enjoy your dinner,” said Elvis with a devilish grin.

  Slowly, the Palm Springs weekends began to shift away from the couples and families, and the stays in the desert started to have more of a boys’ club feel. At Elvis’s Palm Springs houses—he went through a few of them—we kept late hours, and the weekends took on the feeling of a more adult version of the old Graceland parties or the nights at the Perugia Way house. Along with Joe and Charlie, the guys at this point included Sonny West, Richard Davis, G. G. Gambill, and a few others. L.A. friends like Pat Parry might come down and join us, and just as a few pretty girls had made it through the Graceland gates, there were some L.A. and Palm Springs women who’d come hang out with us. There was still very little drinking—I don’t remember a stocked bar at any of the Palm Springs houses. There was some music, some storytelling, some laughs, and, with our new guests, some new relationships.

  When we got out of the house, the boys had some interesting encounters with the Palm Springs locals. We’d find ourselves hanging out for a night at Liberace’s house, or riding around in a Rolls-Royce Elvis had borrowed from Sammy Davis Jr., at Sammy’s insistence. One night around midnight, Elvis was driving the Rolls along Palm Canyon Drive when he spotted the silhouette of someone walking across the road up ahead, holding a golf club. “I think that’s Bob Hope,” he said. And as he pulled up to the pedestrian, we saw that it was indeed Mr. Hope, accompanied by his valet. Elvis got out of the car and talked with Bob for a while, and made a point of introducing me and Joe to him. Just another night out for all of us.

  I felt like I was back to leading a double life: on Sundays I’d be riding around in Liberace’s dune buggy (equipped with a pair of chandeliers) and on Monday morning I’d be punching the clock for a day of film splicing. I’m pretty sure I was the only apprentice editor whose Monday morning commute included limos and charter planes.

  By the middle of 1969 Elvis and I had both made important career moves. After putting in my year of apprentice work in television editing, I was hired at Paramount as an apprentice editor on feature films. This meant that I now spent my days lugging around the heavy cans of 35 mm film from the lot’s film library to projection rooms for directors’ screenings. It wasn’t exciting work, but the days were sometimes broken up with some interesting encounters—I helped The Brady Bunch’s Maureen McCormick carry her bags of fan mail to her dressing room, and I sometimes worked the heavy bag in the studio gym alongside Bonanza’s Michael Landon.

  Elvis’s career move may have been a little more exciting—after more than eight years away from the concert stage, he decided to make a return to live performance at the end of July with a monthlong concert engagement at the brand-new International Hotel in Las Vegas.

  At that point, it had become a part of the rhythm of our friendship that, even though I wasn’t working for him, I’d be involved in what was happening around him. So I was there at the RCA studio in Hollywood for most of the band auditions as Elvis carefully selected the players who would back him in Vegas. He started by picking guitarist James Burton, a masterful player whose credits ranged from Ricky Nelson to Shindig to Frank Sinatra sessions. Then, with Burton as a musical anchor, Elvis built up his band, musician by musician. With the TV special still fresh in people’s minds, and “In the Ghetto” now at the top of the singles charts, Elvis could have his pick of the top players in the business. But he didn’t just automatically go after the players generally considered to be the number-one session guys—he wanted musicians who played with some character, too. After so many years of slickly recorded soundtrack sessions, he now wanted a band that would surprise people. After all those years of having his voice pushed up in the mix and the instruments pushed back, Elvis wanted a band that would kick some ass.

  The key to the band’s power would be the rhythm section. Burton brought in a guy named Jerry Scheff, who played what Elvis would always describe as a “thundering bass.” But the band still needed a drummer. With just a few weeks to go until opening night, it was assumed that Elvis would go with one of the top L.A. session drummers who had already auditioned. But on the last day of auditions, another drummer showed up. He was a big, bearded guy named Ronnie Tutt, who’d just come to L.A. from Texas—in fact, he had his family, his station wagon, and a trailer full of all his earthly belongings parked outside the studio. I don’t think anybody had high expectations for Ronnie—he didn’t have anything close to the kind of concert and recording credits the rest of the band had. And when he first played with the band, it didn’t seem like he impressed his bandmates all that much.

  But Elvis heard something. And he wanted to hear more of it. He told the drummer they were going to run through some more songs, and this time Elvis wanted him to use the drums to accentuate the moves he made while he sang. They started a song, Elvis started moving, and you could see Ronnie trying to keep the beat solid while punching drum licks to accent what Elvis was doing. Elvis kept calling out more directions to the drummer, telling him to follow the moves and hit the accents harder. Ronnie’s brow started to furrow and a dark look showed up in his eyes. He was keeping the songs rolling and doing his damnedest to bash out those accents. He started to look like he was playing angry. The whole band’s energy seemed to jump, but when the song was over the other players probably still assumed that they’d be working in Vegas with a dependable session ace behind the drums.

  Elvis came over to where I was standing with Joe and Charlie and some other guys. Somebody asked if he was going to go with a well-known, established drummer. It seemed obvious that the answer would be yes, but Elvis surprised us.

  “I need somebody on stage who plays with my temperament,” said Elvis. “And the guy with the beard’s got it.”

  As usual, when Elvis was allowed to make his own decision about his music, he made the right one. Ronnie Tutt could match Elvis’s temperament—and temper—move for move, song for song. And he’d go on to be recognized as one of the most powerful drummers in the business.

  My work schedule at Paramount prevented me from being in Las Vegas for the big opening night on Thursday, July 31. But I’ll never forget the report I got from Joe Esposito when I called him to make arrangements for Sandy and me to be there the next night. Joe said Elvis was phenomenal, and the sold-out crowd loved every second of it. But the detail that stood out the most to me was this: After the show, the Colonel had come backstage with a tear in his eye. Without saying a word, he’d walked up to Elvis and the two had embraced. You could see, Joe said, that the Colonel was shaking. And Elvis looked just as moved. The Colonel got what Elvis was doing, and for that moment, they’d looked closer than they ever had before.

  Sandy and I were there the next night to see the show for ourselves, and it was just as thrilling as Joe had indicated. Elvis was in a striking, white-on-white suit that had the look of a tailored karate gi, with a low collar and a loose cloth belt tied around his lean frame. As he kicked things off with a rocking version of “Blue Suede Shoes,” I could see right away that everything I had always admired about Elvis as a performer was still there. The jungle-animal-on-the-prowl instincts I’d seen at Ellis Auditorium back in 1956 were right back up on the Vegas stage, but that raw energy had now been channeled and choreographed into a more powerful, physical displa
y of athleticism, including a lot of explosive karate moves. The wild animal had been trained, but not tamed.

  The band I’d seen Elvis put together did in fact kick ass, but he also had a string and horn section up on stage with him, along with a pair of backup singing groups—a quartet of white gospel singers called the Imperials and a quartet of beautiful, black female singers called the Sweet Inspirations. It occurred to me that on this one stage, Elvis had brought together elements of every musical influence that had in some way shaped him: black gospel, white gospel, country-guitar licks, the earthiness of rhythm and blues, the drive of rock and roll—even the orchestral sweep of the Mario Lanza records he’d loved as a kid was part of the act now. That was a lot to try to hold together, but he did it, and the timing, pacing, and dynamics of the show were unbelievable. The show moved with a steady, natural flow from the high-energy opening of “Blue Suede Shoes,” to the power of “Suspicious Minds,” to surprises like Del Shannon’s “Runaway” and the Beatles’ “Hey Jude,” right on through to the emotional finale of “I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You.”

  It wasn’t until that Vegas show that I realized how much I’d missed watching him do what he could do on a concert stage. His performance had all the enthusiasm and intensity that he’d brought to his TV special, but the stage gave him a freedom that he hungrily seized upon. He wasn’t just the rebel anymore, singing to an underground audience. He was more in charge and more exciting. A master performer. Back at Ellis, he had dragged his mike around as if it were putting up a fight for its honor. Now there was no question that Elvis was the triumphant seducer. The bad scripts and the gimmicks and the interference had finally been swept away. This was his room, his band, his show, and his music. Against all odds, the tiger was back—strong and sleek and ferocious as ever.

  In the fall, Elvis and Priscilla headed to Hawaii for an island vacation. The trip was paid for by the International Hotel as a thank-you for Elvis’s engagement, which had set new attendance and box office records in Las Vegas. The couple took the Espositos and Gambills along with them. I was back to my day shifts at Paramount, but a few days after the group had left for the island, I got a call at home.

  “You got a passport, Jerry?”

  “No, Elvis. Why would I need one?”

  “The island’s real nice. But we’ve been talking. We need a real vacation. We’re all going to Europe in a couple of weeks. I want you and Sandy to come.”

  The idea sounded great. But I’d known Elvis long enough to know that sometimes his great ideas weren’t thought through all the way.

  “I can probably get the time off to do it, E, but—are you sure the Colonel’s going to let it happen?”

  “He ain’t got a goddamn thing to do with it. None of his goddamn business. We’re going to Europe—are you coming?”

  “Sure, Elvis, yeah. It sounds perfect.”

  I put in the request to use up my two weeks’ worth of vacation days for the year at Paramount, and when Elvis and the rest returned from Hawaii, we all set about getting expedited passports. There were a few days of high spirits as the wives began to plan the cities they wanted to visit and the sights they wanted to see. But predictably, a European vacation didn’t sound so perfect to the Colonel. As soon as he heard about Elvis’s plan, he came down hard on him, insisting that it would be a terrible insult to European fans to take a vacation there before he’d ever performed there. This didn’t make a lot of sense to anybody, and at first it seemed like Elvis—charged up and riding high on his new string of career successes—would simply ignore the Colonel.

  But before our European itinerary could even be set, Elvis announced that there would be a change in plans. We wouldn’t be heading to Europe—we’d be heading to the Bahamas. The Colonel knew the owner of the main hotel on Paradise Island off Nassau, and had arranged for us to have a spectacular vacation stay there. Elvis was a strong, smart guy, but he also hated conflict. I’m sure that once the Colonel was on him, telling him that he was making a thoughtless mistake, at some point it just seemed a lot easier to stop arguing back and head off to the Bahamas. We all tried to get over the disappointment, and tried to concentrate on the chance for all of us to have a great time together. After all, how bad could a place called Paradise Island be?

  We flew in to the island’s small airport at sunset and checked into the hotel. Then Joe and I went down to the nearby docks to rent some boats we could use the next day—Elvis wanted to water-ski. We had a nice dinner together in the hotel restaurant, then headed off to our separate rooms.

  The room phone woke me up the next day, and I was surprised to hear Elvis’s voice on the other end—in all the years I knew him, there weren’t many mornings when he was up before me.

  “You ready to hit those boats?” he asked. Despite the early hour, he sounded like he was in a great mood.

  “Uh, yeah, Elvis. Just waking up over here, but yeah.”

  “Well, take a look out your window.”

  I put the phone down, walked over to the window, and parted the heavy drapes. The sky was dark and angry-looking, and the wind was so strong it was whipping bullets of rain sideways through the sky. Half the palm trees on the beach had been knocked over. And down at the dock, the boats—including the ones we’d rented—were tangled and tossed and smashed together. We’d come to the island just in time to sit in the middle of a brewing hurricane—a violent stormfront that didn’t let up for days. We ended up hitting the casinos instead of the beach, and managed to have some fun together, but we came back to L.A. a week early, all very conscious of the fact that our grand plan for two weeks in Europe had been reduced to six days of Bahama hurricane. My new passport was still unstamped, and a combination of bad weather and Colonel Parker had wasted away my hard-earned Paramount vacation days.

  In early 1970, Elvis was as free as he’d been in a long time—he’d finally fulfilled all the obligations of his film contracts, and didn’t have any upcoming recording sessions. He also had a number-one hit single: “Suspicious Minds” had made it to the top of the pop charts in November. For the first time in a long while, I got the sense that he was really enjoying what he was doing, and it didn’t surprise anybody when he booked another monthlong engagement at the International in Vegas.

  I’d worked myself up to a higher position at Paramount. Instead of just moving film cans around, I was now doing some hands-on editing. I was working with the syndication department, splicing out the foreign commercials that had been spliced in when the features aired on overseas television, and making sure that the prints were in good enough shape to be sent out again. I enjoyed the work and loved putting my skills to use cutting and restoring those 16 mm feature prints. And I still felt like I had the best of both worlds—most of my Paramount work-weeks ended with an Elvis-hired plane whisking me off to Las Vegas.

  Elvis knew me well enough to know that I didn’t want to feel like I was getting something for nothing, so he started giving me some unofficial duties when I was out in Vegas with him. I became a kind of personal PR man, helping with special arrangements for stars that wanted to come see the show, and making sure that certain guests got an introduction to Elvis. I was also put to use as an extra member of Elvis’s security team. Among the guys working full-time for Elvis, Joe Esposito handled the VIPs and Red or Sonny West was always in charge of security. But when things got crazy and those guys got busy, I was there to help as an all-purpose utility man.

  One weekend in this period I found myself back out in Palm Springs with the Colonel, rather than with Elvis. The Colonel had invited Sandy and me out for a visit. He was putting us up in the Palm Springs Spa and wanted us to come to a dinner there with him and Marie and another couple, a Los Angeles promoter, manager, and former talent agent named Jerry Weintraub and his wife, the singer Jane Morgan. The invitation was a little unusual. The Colonel and I had stayed on good terms, but it seemed strange that he’d have me be a part of a business dinner, and I knew there was no such thing
as a purely social dinner with the Colonel—if he was talking, he was doing business. Elvis’s incredible success in Las Vegas had gotten the entertainment world very excited, and now there was a buzz about his heading out on the road for more concert appearances. If and when that happened, the Colonel was going to need some help to help mount a tour. Jerry Weintraub wanted to be a part of that venture. I’d seen that the Colonel usually liked to have a staff guy like Tom Diskin or George Parkhill at any business meeting to serve as a friendly witness. I felt that at this dinner, I was in that role.

  It was actually nice to spend some time with the Colonel, and as usual, though he didn’t talk in direct business terms at the dinner table, you got the feeling that everything he said had some strategy behind it, and that everything Weintraub said was being very carefully assessed. Weintraub was an outgoing and charismatic young guy, and we got along well enough that before he left he asked me to get in touch with him back in L.A. It seemed like a good contact—I was trying to catch a break in the business, and knowing a guy like Weintraub couldn’t hurt.

  The Colonel thought otherwise. No sooner had Weintraub’s car sped away than the Old Snowman came up next to me, took a puff off his cigar, and said, “Stay away from that guy. You don’t need to get together with him.” I didn’t know if the Colonel was looking out for my interests, or if he wanted to keep me out of his. I was pretty sure it was the latter.

  Elvis did get on the road again, and he restarted his touring career in a typically big way: on the last weekend of February, 1970, he did six shows at the Houston Astrodome, headlining the annual Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo. The huge venue, just a few years old at the time, was the first indoor baseball/football stadium—air-conditioned against the Texas heat—and was still being billed as “The Eighth Wonder of the World.” I flew in to Houston to be a part of the team for the weekend, and got over to the Astrodome Hotel, where I met up with Elvis, Vernon, and the guys. There was a bit of the usual kidding around, but the atmosphere was more strained than usual—it was clear to everybody that Elvis was extremely nervous about the shows. Band rehearsals had been difficult because of the cavernous acoustics of the Astrodome, and the size of the crowd—the place could hold nearly 50,000 people—made it a huge jump from the Las Vegas gigs.