Me and a Guy Named Elvis

by Jerry Schilling

  We were taken to the Astrodome on a bus driven by the legendary race-car driver A. J. Foyt, a surprise the Colonel had arranged. The bus pulled into the loading area of the venue and drove up a tunnel that was curtained off from the field and the seats. A part of the rodeo had just finished, the lights were down, and we could just barely see what we were about to head into. Elvis was at the front of the bus, getting ready to disembark, when the curtain before us was pulled open and the lights came up inside. Elvis was overwhelmed. I was standing close to him, and I could see that he was physically shaken—he went pale and came very close to being physically ill. The stage was out in the Dome’s center field, and nobody in the audience was going to have a chance to see the show up close, so the plan had been that Elvis would do a kind of preshow victory lap—he’d stand in a Jeep and be driven near the seats so that he could make some personal contact with fans before performing. Sonny, Red, and Vernon were going to ride in the Jeep with him. Now, looking out at this space, and this crowd, he wanted a little extra support.

  “Jerry, you better ride with us,” he said quietly, still looking white as a ghost.

  We took our places in the Jeep—Elvis standing and holding on to the top of the windshield—and began our slow drive around the edge of the seating areas. The crowd immediately came to its feet and greeted Elvis with a roaring ovation. Elvis was high enough in the vehicle that as we drove, he could reach out and shake hands with people and they could reach out and touch him. I was hunched down next to him, helping him stay up, and as I listened to that crowd roar, I had the sensation that I was in the Roman Colosseum, hanging on to the leg of a Caesar. Hearing that roar and seeing the excitement he created, a single thought kept coming back to me: “Oh my god—I forgot who this guy was.”

  Despite the welcoming, Elvis was not at all happy with that first Friday matinee show. He went directly from being nervous beforehand to being dejected afterward. Once we’d gotten out to the center-field stage, we could see that the venue was only half full. In addition to that discouraging fact, Elvis felt he hadn’t been able to deliver the kind of performance he wanted to, partly due to the unpredictability of the event’s revolving stage (“I finished ‘Love Me Tender’ and I was singing to a cow,” he muttered back at the hotel).

  In the hotel room between the afternoon and evening shows, Elvis started being hard on himself, saying that not only was the afternoon show a failure, but telling us that it was a mistake to think he could pull in a crowd big enough for a venue this size. A Vegas engagement was one thing, but as far as grassroots fans were concerned, he just didn’t have it anymore. We tried to tell him that you couldn’t expect much from a Friday afternoon show—people who wanted to be there were still at work. That didn’t do much to lift his spirits. But then somebody called him over to his room’s window. From our vantage point at the top of the hotel, we could see that traffic was streaming in from every direction to get to the Astrodome. He watched for a while, and then he started smiling. You could see all his uncertainty slip away, replaced by the confidence he’d been bringing to the Las Vegas stage. Obviously a guy who could create a traffic jam that size still had a few fans.

  He did a great show Friday night for a crowd that set attendance records, and he did more great shows and set more records throughout the weekend. Even the cows must have been impressed.

  By the end of the summer, Elvis was back in Vegas for his third engagement at the International, and I was spending more weekends at home in L.A. either enjoying time with Sandy or putting in longer hours at Paramount. One Friday afternoon I got a call at work from Joe Esposito. He told me that Elvis wanted to speak with me. In a moment, Elvis was on the line.

  “Jerry, I need you out here tonight. I’ve sent a plane. I’ll explain it to you when you get here.”

  I didn’t know what was going on, but from the sound of Elvis’s voice, I knew it was serious. I bolted out of work and drove over to Santa Monica Airport, where a Learjet was waiting to take me to Vegas. I got to the International about ten minutes before Elvis was to go on and was immediately led backstage. He was in a little dressing area, in front of his makeup mirror, and when he saw me I detected some conflicting emotions in his expression. He was glad I was there, but he was also clearly angry and upset. Something had gotten to him. It wasn’t common for us to make a big deal about greeting each other, but this time we embraced. Suddenly it felt incredibly important to be standing there with him, to be right here beside him when he needed help.

  “Let me show you what’s going on,” he said.

  He picked up a piece of paper. It was one of the promotional menus for the engagement with his picture on it, except that on this one Elvis’s face had been crossed out and something unreadable was scrawled across it.

  “Read it backwards,” he said.

  The scrawled letters spelled out “I am going to kill you.”

  “Some son of a bitch slid this under my door. The FBI says it looks like the real thing and we have to take it seriously. The hotel said I didn’t have to do the show, but I’m not going to let this motherfucker push me off the stage. I wanted you and Red and Sonny here to watch my back.”

  “I’m here, E.”

  Elvis stared down at his defaced picture, and his anger seemed to push his fear out of the way. “Listen to me, Jerry. I don’t want anybody going around saying they killed Elvis Presley. If anything happens out there, forget about me. You go get the son of a bitch and rip his eyes out.”

  Elvis wanted Sonny and me on stage with him. I was going to take a position behind the piano, with Sonny behind the backup singers on the other side of the stage. Red would be out in the audience along with Ed Parker, a dynamic karate instructor Elvis had become friendly with. All of us would be carrying our own guns, and Elvis would have a small pistol packed into his boot. There were also FBI agents out on the floor. Sonny and I talked briefly about what our best plan of action would be if we heard a shot—we decided that the first guy who could get to Elvis would bring him down fast to the floor, and the second guy would drop over him.

  The backstage area was below stage level, and as we made our way up the stairs toward the stage just a minute before showtime, I noticed that one of Elvis’s personal doctors, Dr. Thomas “Flash” Newman, was there, which was not part of the normal routine before a show. As we continued walking, Elvis nodded over to the open doors of the loading bay at the back of the building, where an ambulance and a crew of paramedics waited.

  The show started on time, and the band members were understandably a little tense—everybody knew what was going on. They were also trying to get used to the fact that Sonny and I were now armed members of the orchestra. Elvis put on a strong performance, though he never stayed in one spot long, and he tried harder than usual to see past the stage lights and keep an eye on the crowd. Somewhere toward the middle of the show, there was a quiet moment before Elvis was to sing one of his ballads—the lights went down on stage until the orchestra was in darkness and Elvis was lit with a single spotlight. Just before the song began, the quiet was pierced by a male shout from the balcony: “Elvis!”

  I reached for my gun, and was ready to make my move toward Elvis. I saw Sonny was ready to do the same. Down in the front of the house, Red was looking toward the voice from above, ready to go for his gun. Elvis immediately dropped to one knee and turned his body sideways—using a defensive karate strategy to make himself the smallest possible target.

  “Yeah?” he growled back angrily at the balcony voice. If this was the son of a bitch who had threatened him, he wasn’t going to give him any satisfaction.

  “Would you sing ‘Hound Dog’?” the balcony voice asked.

  I don’t think I’ve ever seen Elvis take a request so quickly, and I don’t believe I’ve ever heard “Hound Dog” played any faster than it was that night. We made it through the show without any further incident, and the menu-mangling potential assassin was never heard from again.

  Not every m
oment around Elvis was quite that exciting, but even a quiet night at his home could turn into an interesting adventure. I was visiting Elvis and Priscilla at their latest home, on Hillcrest Drive in Beverly Hills, after Elvis had completed a six-city mini-tour. I was in the den talking with Patsy and Gee Gee, who also lived there, when the in-house phone rang. I picked it up—Elvis was on the other end.

  “Jerry, come back to the bedroom. I want to show you something.”

  I headed to the room, and found Elvis and Priscilla standing side by side, looking at a piece of paper that Elvis was holding. I knew it couldn’t be another death threat, because Elvis had a great big uncharacteristic grin on his face—he was clearly thrilled with whatever he was looking at. He carefully handed me the paper and said, “What do you think?”

  It was good to see Elvis this enthusiastic, to see him full of almost boyish excitement. I didn’t want to say anything to sour that mood, but frankly, I had no idea what I was looking at on this paper. It was a drawing of something—a lightning bolt with letters on it.

  “God, Elvis, this is great. What is it?”

  “It’s a TCB,” he said proudly. He and Priscilla looked at each other and smiled.

  “Oh!” I looked a little harder at the drawing. “Uh, what’s a TCB?”

  “Takin’ care of business. Picture it in gold, on a chain. Priscilla sketched it out on the plane from Memphis. You’re going to get one—all the guys will get one. It’ll be our thing.”

  Now I could see it—and the lightning bolt with the “TCB” around it did make a striking jewelry design. Elvis had a favorite jeweler in Beverly Hills, Sol Schwartz, from whom he had purchased a number of pieces. I knew he’d want Schwartz to make up these, and I offered to bring the design to Sol’s shop the next day. That wasn’t good enough for Elvis. It was already past midnight, but he wanted to meet with the jeweler immediately.

  Elvis had done enough special-order business with Schwartz that he had his home numbers, so I gave him a call and asked if he’d come meet us at the shop. Mr. Schwartz didn’t seem too upset about having his sleep interrupted, especially for an Elvis request, and a short while later I was with Elvis and Priscilla outside the shop on Beverly Drive as the jeweler turned the alarms off and the lights on. Elvis and Priscilla presented the sketch to him and explained the design. The jeweler made a few notes, then took the order for the very first dozen fourteen-karat gold TCBs. And while the TCBs may have started as a late-night whim, they would become the most cherished of inner-circle possessions.

  10

  ALL THE WAY FROM MEMPHIS

  I’d gotten used to the fact that my life could change very quickly with a call from Elvis: calls to come join him on a movie set, invitations to Palm Springs and Las Vegas, an intercom call to come check out a jewelry design. Still, nothing quite prepared me for a call I got one Saturday night just before Christmas 1970, or the events it led to. I guess the work at Paramount and some of those Elvis weekends had caught up with me—I’d fallen asleep early, and the phone woke me up. I mumbled some sort of hello into the receiver.

  “Jerry.”

  For once, I was caught off guard.

  “Who is this?” I asked, already suspecting the answer as I said the words.

  “It’s me,” he said. Of course it was.

  “Elvis, where are you?” Last I’d heard he was going to be in Memphis through the holidays.

  “I’m in Dallas. Texas. Changing planes. I should be out there pretty soon.”

  “E, who’s with you?”

  “Nobody,” he said. He sounded proud of it.

  “You’re at the Dallas airport—by yourself?”

  “Yeah. And listen, Jerry—I don’t want anybody to know where I am. It’s important. Can you meet me at the airport?”

  I asked him what flight he’d be on. For all the traveling Elvis had done in his life, he’d never had to worry about flight numbers and gate numbers and terminal numbers. We guys worked out the details—Elvis just got on a plane and assumed it would get him to where he was supposed to be. But here I was on the phone, listening to Elvis rustle through his papers to figure out the flight number of his American Airlines connecting flight from Dallas to L.A. When I was sure I’d gotten the right numbers from him, I told him I’d bring my own car so as not to attract any extra attention.

  “Well, I think we can trust Sir Gerald,” Elvis said. “Why don’t you give him a call. But tell him I don’t want anyone to know I’m here.”

  Gerald Peters was Elvis’s favorite limo driver in L.A., an older, dapper, exceedingly trustworthy Brit. He had never actually received a knighthood, but when Elvis discovered that he had been a driver for Winston Churchill, Elvis immediately titled him “Sir Gerald.” A few hours later, just after 2:00 A.M., I was in the back of a limo driven by Sir Gerald, and we drove right up to the American Airlines plane from Dallas (back then, you could make arrangements to pick up VIP passengers that way). I watched as passengers streamed off the plane, and I began to worry about what might have happened to an unattended Elvis since he made the phone call from Dallas. But after all the others were off, there he was at the top of the steps. I got out of the car and waved him over. As he approached, I saw he was holding a little cardboard box.

  “Hey, E, you OK?”

  “Yeah. Thanks for coming out.”

  “What’s in the box?”

  “That’s my luggage.”

  Back then, a first-class passenger got a little container with a facecloth and a comb and toothbrush inside. Not only was Elvis traveling by himself, he was traveling light. I also noticed that he had some angry-looking red welts on his neck and face.

  “What’s the matter with your skin, E?”

  “Oh, I took some penicillin for a sore throat. I guess I’m having an allergic reaction. Maybe we can get a doctor to the house.”

  “All right, I’ll make the call. Sir Gerald, let’s go.”

  “Wait a minute, Jerry—I promised the stewardesses that I’d give ’em a ride home.”

  He nodded over his shoulder and I saw that we were being joined by a pair of stewardesses from the flight. Apparently Elvis’s desire to travel secretly didn’t stop him from charming the flight crew—and while I made arrangements for a doctor to meet us at the house on Hillcrest, we drove across town, dropping off the very impressed girls at their apartments.

  We finally got to Hillcrest, and a doctor I’d gotten through a referral service was waiting for us at the gate. We got inside and the doc gave Elvis an examination and agreed that it looked like an allergic reaction. It was getting close to dawn, Elvis was already looking pretty tired, and the doctor gave him something to relieve the skin irritation that just about knocked him out. The doctor left and Elvis went off to bed. I called Sandy to let her know what was going on, and as I hung up, the crazy, scary truth of my situation hit me hard: Elvis Presley was my responsibility. His wife didn’t know where he was. His father didn’t know where he was. The guys didn’t know where he was. The Colonel didn’t know where he was. For the first time in fifteen years, nobody close to Elvis knew where he was. Except me.

  I was tired, but I stayed awake, watching the morning sun light up the sky. Taking care of Elvis had brought on a surge of adrenaline, and while he slept, I stayed in the living room, trying to figure out the most sensible way to handle the situation. By Sunday afternoon, I still hadn’t come to any firm conclusions, but Elvis was wide awake. Whatever had gotten him out of Memphis didn’t seem to be bothering him now—he was in a great mood. We made some coffee and sat there staring out at the home’s spectacular view of the city. We caught up with each other and talked about Priscilla, Sandy, and little Lisa. We talked about which guys were doing a good job for him and who was getting into trouble. Eventually he let me know why he’d left Graceland.

  “I’ll tell you why I didn’t want anybody to know where I was,” he said. “It’s because Daddy and Priscilla were complaining about the way I spend my money. The way I spend my o
wn damn money. And they went and brought the fucking Colonel into it, too. I wasn’t going to sit around and listen to that.”

  He’d stormed out of the house in the past after various arguments, but this time he simply walked out of the house and left town. He’d gotten on the first commercial flight out of Memphis he could, which took him to Washington, D.C. He’d checked into a hotel there, but then decided he’d be better off making his way to L.A.

  I’d learn later that Priscilla and Vernon had some reason to be upset. Over the last month or so, Elvis had gone on a spending spree amounting to tens of thousands of dollars, and there was no sign of him slowing down. The gold TCBs had only been the start. After the death threat in Las Vegas, he’d become very concerned with personal protection and had spent thousands on new guns. At the beginning of December he had completely bankrolled George Klein’s wedding, flying all of us to Las Vegas for a weekend. At the end of that weekend, he decided to put a down payment on a house for Joe and Joanie Esposito, and he bought several Mercedes as gifts, one of which went to Sandy and me (Elvis told me he was going to put a down payment on a house for me, too, but Joe talked him out of it, explaining that I wouldn’t be able to make mortgage payments on my apprentice editor’s salary).

  Elvis and I spent the whole day up at Hillcrest just sitting around talking. He was very excited about all the adventures he’d managed to pack into his solo trip so far, and wanted to relay all the details. In the wake of the death threat, Elvis had gone about qualifying for a Shelby County deputy sheriff badge—a credential that allowed him to carry a concealed weapon. But he explained that “a little uppity mustache guy” steward on the flight to Dallas wasn’t going to let him bring his gun on the plane, even after Elvis showed him the new badge. After Elvis angrily left the plane, the pilot himself came running out to get him, apologized for the inconvenience, and insisted it would be all right by him for Elvis to have his registered firearm on board.